Mulford Building

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

The Mulford Building is a nine-story manufacturing building at 640 N. Broad St. in Philadelphia, built in 1912-1913 in the Classical Revival style by architect Charles Balderston.

Why it's listed

It was listed in the National Register in 2004 under criteria A and C, with local significance in architecture and health and medicine. Its period of significance runs from 1912 to 1954, reflecting its 1912-1913 construction and subsequent pharmaceutical production.

Physical character

Built with a steel frame and reinforced concrete on a granite foundation, its lower two stories are clad in limestone below a buff brick curtain wall. A two-story portico with paired limestone Tuscan columns and a limestone balustrade fronts the tripartite composition, and the interior retains marble wainscoting and bronze mail chutes. A four-story addition was built at the southwest corner in 1934; 1960s work enclosed the elevator cabs and replaced windows with aluminum sash.

Historical context

Garment manufacturers rented space from 1912 to 1918, when H.K. Mulford Company bought the building and moved its offices in by 1919. Mulford supplied diphtheria antitoxin and was licensed to produce insulin in 1924; Sharp & Dohme acquired it in 1929 and merged with Merck in 1953; Merck sold the building to Myer Gottlieb in 1963.