The Gladstone

I’m posting another ad taken from the program for the play L’Aiglon starring Maude Adams which played in Philadelphia at The Broad Street Theater in 1901. This ad was for The Gladstone Apartment House built in 1895 by Philadelphia architect Theophilus Parsons Chandler, Jr.

It was a ten story building located at 1101 Pine Street on the northwest corner of Eleventh and Pine Streets in Philadelphia. The ad boasts that it’s absolutely fireproof and its cuisine is unsurpassed. However, in a 1961 article “Sketches of Downtown Philadelphia” By Roy Lisker, The Gladstone is described as less than grand –

In 1961, when these observations were compiled, the antediluvian Gladstone Hotel on 11th Street between Pine and Spruce still stood at the mouth of the posh anomaly of Clinton Street. A few medical students had rented rooms there. Emergencies involving cuts, broken bones or cracked ribs frequently arose at the Gladstone, as might happen for example when a drunk fell down the elevator shaft. When that happened the desk clerk would put out a call for all the available med students. They would hurry down to the basement, apply splints and get the patient ready for the ambulance.

The Gladstone was demolished in March 1971. It is now Louis I. Kahn Park.

Louis I. Kahn Park circa 2012