One Way to Save Broad Street's Odd Fellows

There has been little protest (except in a couple of my columns) over the plan by the Pennsylvania Convention Center to demolish the 1892 Odd Fellows Hall at Broad and Cherry Streets so the center can expand its meeting hall two more blocks. It's a shame because this building punctuates a perfectly intact row of commercial buildings that beautifully frames the north side of City Hall, and serves as a counterpoint to the great, early 20th Century skyscrapers on the south side. A small consolation is that a seller on e-Bay is offering gorgeous magazine print by the architects, Hazlehurst and Huckel.
The building, which has an elegantly curved marble lobby staircase and a large meeting room, has been badly treated over the years. You won't find the sculpted figures looking imperiously down from the roof line, any more; indeed that whole roof balustrade is long gone. But it's a trim, well-proportioned early skyscraper in the classical palazzo style that is a reminder of the days when Broad Street was lined with meeting halls of the city's many fellowship societies. The long, bland glass facade that Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates had designed for the convention center's Broad Street facade is a pretty meager replacement for this stout-hearted office building.
The con-vention center is planning to save the front 30 feet of two other buildings on the block, the New York Insurance Co.'s townhouse-size Beaux-Arts structure, and Romaldo Giurgola's equisitely crafted modern addition. It's a sliver of a building, but the design was a landmark that showed modernists could make great, street-friendly urban buildings. Go look at Giurgola's gem before they amputate the back portion and you'll see a composition as disciplined and timeless as any great classical building.
I guess I'm glad the convention center will leave something of these two little buildings, but when the big glass monster (covering 18 acres) sidles up to these itty-bitty row buildings, it's going to look ridiculous. Odd Fellows, at least, has the heft and height to stand up to the convention center, so it's a shame the designers couldn't have incorporated its facade, too.
I suspect the print on e-Bay is pretty rare because it doesn't appear in Robert Morris Skaler's book on Broad Street. But the print will soon be the only thing left of Odd Fellows Hall.