Changing Skyline | Hometown modernists

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, August, 2006 | by Inga Saffron

It's time for Philadelphia architects to stop the griping. Ever since the city's construction boom began, architects have been complaining that they can't build a decent modern building in this old town. Philadelphia's tastes, they say, are just too conservative. Its developers are too cheap. The preservation laws are too restrictive.

Real estate prices are too low, and the trade unions jack up costs by commanding exorbitant wages. How, then, to explain the latest aesthetic triumphs of two fortysomething architects, Scott Erdy and David McHenry? In just over two years, their Old City firm, Erdy McHenry Architecture, has designed and nearly completed three of the most innovative residential buildings in Philadelphia, projects that can hold their own against the best new...