Cost:
$6,500,000

Size:
30,000 sf

Completion:
2004

The Lehigh County Historical Society envisioned a new Heritage Center highlighting the museum's vast collections of artifacts and archival materials related to the history of the Lehigh Valley region north of Philadelphia, PA. The site of the new museum is in downtown Allentown, PA in a public park, the centerpiece of which is an historic stone structure known as Trout Hall, built by William Allen, founder of the city. The program of the 30,000 SF new facility includes a research library with adjacent secure archival storage space, a large multipurpose room, exhibit galleries, classroom, museum shop, staff offices and collections storage space.

The new building is sited on a panhandle of the site along Walnut Street as an extension of the urban fabric of the area and thereby allowing Trout Hall to maintain its traditional presence as the focal point of Allen Park. The new Heritage Center is entered from the east, within the park and facing Trout Hall, thereby establishing a dialogue between the two structures. The building is designed as two principal masses that engage each other. A lower mass along Walnut and Penn Streets contains the library and office areas is clad in brick with stone highlights and is scaled to relate to the adjacent brick rowhouses. This brick portion wraps around a larger scale mass containing the lobby and galleries clad in natural stone. The palette and monumental scale of this portion of the building define it as an important civic structure sited on a large public park. The brick portion has a copper cornice and the taller stone portion has a zinc cornice.

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