Stock Exchange
Stock Exchange, ca. 1920, Etching
Joseph Pennell (American, 1857 – 1926)
#2011.0002.0004
Joseph Pennell published an extensive number of city
views from the 1880s to the 1920s, a period known as
the Golden Age of Illustration. A Philadelphia native, he enrolled in courses at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Although
he never graduated from either program, Pennell enjoyed a successful career in printmaking. His illustrations appeared in Harper’s and Scribner’s magazines, among numerous other publications. In the 1880s, Joseph and his wife Elizabeth Robins Pennell moved to London, where they lived for three decades. Upon their return to the United States in 1917, Pennell produced prints of Philadelphia
and New York City, where he spent his remaining years.
The etching Stock Exchange, Philadelphia presents an impressionistic view of bustling Walnut Street in the
age of streetcars and gas light posts. The building in the foreground was built at Broad and Walnut Streets by architect Horace Trumbauer to house the Stock Exchange, which moved to its new quarters in 1913.
