Opened in 1961 in the working-poor, black-segregated neighborhood of Mantua, Mantua Hall was an 18-storey, 153-unit modernist apartment tower built to house 495 people.
The view is from Mantua Hall, looking northeast across the rooftops of Mantua toward the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Schuylkill River, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (center-right). The Schuylkill River Expressway is hidden by the railroad tracks.
Mantua Hall was an 18-storey edifice built by the Philadelphia Housing Authority to accommodate 465 people. This photo shows the building in its final phase of development in 1960. It would open in 1961.
Mantua Square, a Philadelphia Housing Authority redevelopment project at 35th St. & Fairmount Ave., constructed on the former site of Mantua Hall, an 18-storey high-rise apartment building that was demolished in 2008.
Completed in 1960, Mantua Hall, an 18-storey elevator tower located in Mantua on the 3500 block of Fairmount Avenue, was typical of high density, high-rise public housing constructed in large cities in the two postwar decades.
