The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia

Colonial Philadelphia possesses one of the richest collections of Georgian and Colonial architecture in America. This 1920 classic by Frank Cousins and Phil M. Riley presents detailed architectural studies of brick countryseats like Woodford, Port Royal, and Mount Pleasant; ledge-stone Germantown houses such as Stenton and Grumblethorpe; refined city residences; and public buildings of national importance including Independence Hall, Carpenters’ Hall, and Christ Church.

For this new edition, over ninety original architectural plates have been transformed into vivid urban-sketch watercolors using AI image-editing tools, with each historical image serving as the structural source. The aim throughout was to preserve the original geometry, viewpoint, and architectural detail—the Flemish-bond brickwork, Palladian windows, fanlighted doorways, winding staircases, and hand-carved mantels—while presenting the work in a fresh, unified artistic voice. Human review guided every image for color, tone, and restraint.

The result is a book faithful to its documentary origins yet striking in a way the original plates never were—a new way to see the architecture where the nation was founded.

Frank Cousins (1851–1925) was an American writer, historian, and a pioneering architectural photographer best known for his documentation of the Federal and Colonial styles. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, over several decades, he amassed a collection of tens of thousands of glass-plate negatives documenting historic buildings across the Eastern United States, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. His work was instrumental in the early 20th-century preservation movement, as his detailed photographs captured intricate woodwork, mantelpieces, and doorways of buildings that were later demolished. His role in The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia was primarily as the illustrator, providing the high-quality visual plates that served as the book’s foundation.

Phil Madison Riley (1882–?) was an architectural historian and writer who specialized in the technical and aesthetic analysis of American Colonial structures. Riley served as the primary author of the text for several volumes, including The Wood-Carver of Salem and The Colonial Architecture of Salem. In his work with Cousins, Riley was responsible for providing the scholarly narrative—moving beyond mere historical anecdotes to offer a critical analysis of architectural features, materials, and the evolution of styles like Georgian and Federal. His writing aimed to make colonial architecture accessible not just to historians, but to modern architects and students looking to understand the “architectural inheritance” of the United States.