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Louis Kahn

Mill Creek Homes

The architect Louis I. Kahn’s design for Mill Creek Homes—three 17-storey high-rise buildings and a cluster of two- and three-storey low-rises—was implemented by the Philadelphia Housing Authority in the Mill Creek neighborhood beginning in 1953 and extending into the 1960s, though with reductions in Kahn’s original design. 

Mill Creek Homes Tower Demolition

Implosion of the Mill Creek Homes tower apartments in 2003

Mill Creek Tower Homes Shortly Before Demolition

Viewed from the south, the Mill Creek Homes tower apartments shortly before their demolition in 2003.

Shuttered Low-Rise Buildings Pending Demolition

This photo shows the boarded-up low-rises on Aspen Street.  Sulzberger Middle School (formerly Junior High School, latterly Parkway West High School) at far left. 

Mill Creek Homes Low-Rise Greenspace

This photo shows the greenspace in the low-rise complex. Mill Creek Homes had 100-percent African American occupancy.

This photo shows a courtyard of the low-rises when they were new.

This aerial photo highlights the high-rise apartment buildings in the Mill Creek Homes development. 

Louis I. Kahn (left), with G. Holmes Perkins, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Fine Arts (second from left), and students. Kahn planned Mill Creek Homes. At Penn, 1957–61, Kahn designed Richards and Goddard Laboratories, today a National Historic Landmark.

Louis Kahn Rendering of Mill Creek Project

Louis I. Kahn’s diagram of his comprehensive plan for Mill Creek Homes. The drawing shows Aspen Street as the primary civic street of the development. Note Kahn’s designation of the high-rise apartment group as the Mill Creek “Acropolis.”