Photo Credit: SSM Photography
We are proud to announce steering committee member David Brownlee as the winner of the Preservation Alliance's 2025 James Biddle Award for Lifetime Achievement in Historic Preservation.
As quoted in the Preservation Achievement Awards program book:
"David Brownlee is a national treasure. A renowned architectural historian and champion of historic preservation, his scholarship on American architectural history shines in the literature, exhibitions, public lectures, conferences, and documentaries with which he has been involved. Despite being a Harvard man, he is beloved at Penn, where he has taught and held leadership positions for 45 years. He has written 12 books, hundreds of articles, and been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, and Japanese. As a lecturer and teacher, he has no equal. His students and peers have honored him with multiple awards, including the prestigious Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, while academic and professional societies have been equally spirited in celebrating his scholarship and activism. He was named a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians in 2015.
We are enormously grateful for the many decades that David has devoted his great passion,
intellect, good humor, modesty, leadership, and force of persuasion to the cause of preservation
in Philadelphia The long list of projects and organizations that he has shaped is astounding --
from Eastern State Penitentiary to the Ben Franklin Parkway; to a better understanding of Furness, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Julien Abele buildings; to the Historical Commission, The Athenaeum, Global
Philadelphia, the Design Advocacy Group, and nearly a decade on the Preservation Alliance board
David Brownlee, in all aspects of his career, is an icon, and we are glad that he feels, quoting W C
Fields in a lecture, “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia."
