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Wesley Building (Philadelphia)

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ7983857
Source-derived summary

The Wesley Building, also known as the Robert Morris Hotel, is an historic office building and hotel located at 1705 Arch Street, at the corner of N. 17th Street in the Logan Square neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The original six-story section was built in 1914 and 1915, with an eight-story addition erected in 1921 and 1922. The cornice of the original building can still be seen above the sixth floor.

The Wesley Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

History and architectural features

This building was commissioned by the Board of Home Missions of the United Methodist Church as offices and a hotel for the Methodist Church. It was designed by Ballinger & Perot in the Gothic Revival style and features intricate terra cotta detailing.

Located directly across Arch Street from the fifty-eight-story Comcast Center, the tallest building in Pennsylvania, the now century-old structure was converted in 2012 to a 111-unit rental apartment building called "The Arch Luxury Apartments".

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Wesley Building (Philadelphia)” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wesley, Building and Philadelphia, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1705, 1914, 1915, 1921—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Wesley, Building and Philadelphia is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “open-knowledge reference entry” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7983857. Authority coordinates are 39.955, -75.169. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1705, 1914, 1915 and 1921.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Wesley Building (Philadelphia)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Wesley Building (Philadelphia) primary sources, Wesley Building (Philadelphia) archive and Wesley research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Wesley Building (Philadelphia)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.