The Philadelphia Savings Fund Society was founded in 1816, the first of its kind in the young United States. George Howe was a
Philadelphia architect who had designed a handful of local branches of the bank. In the late 1920s, bank president James Wilcox again
called on Howe, this time to design a new bank headquarters in a skyscraper on Market Street. Howe's partner, Swiss born William Lescaze,
helped Howe tone down his original design, consciously applying the new Bauhaus bred architecture -- the "international style" (coined by
Philip Johnson) -- for the first time to a new skyscraper. Some purists refuse to deem the PSFS Building "international" because it
pre-dates Mies's skyscraper efforts, but even given this, it is recognized as the first "modern" skyscraper.
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