Skip to main content

Louis Kahn

    Mill Creek Homes
    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
    Tower Implosion

    Implosion of the Mill Creek Homes tower apartments in 2003

    Mill Creek Tower Homes Shortly Before Demolition
    Tower Demise

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

    Shuttered Low-Rise Buildings Pending Demolition
    The Eve of Destruction

    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
    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.

    Mill Creek Homes Low-Rises

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

    Mill Creek Homes Aerial

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

    Louis I. Kahn

    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
    Kahn's Visionary Plan

    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.”