229 S. 22nd at Locust St.
John C. Bell House
1906, Horace Trumbauer
One of Horace Trumbauer’s specialties was designing impressive town and country houses in whatever style his well-to-do clients required. The Bell House epitomizes the early-20th century Colonial or Georgian Revival, stimulated in part by the glorification of America’s colonial past at the 1876 Centennial in Fairmount Park. Like the 18th-century townhouses of Society Hill, this house is brick trimmed with marble. On the second floor of both the main and side facades, the principal ornaments to this relatively restrained composition are the sets of tall double-hung windows which create the appearance of French doors framed with delicate iron balconies. Above each window is a segmental arch enclosing a relief medallion on a plain marble field. When he commissioned this house, John C. Bell was serving as district attorney of Philadelphia County and in 1911 he was appointed attorney general of the state.