Changing Skyline: Rittenhouse Square's traditionalist pretender

Let's cut to the chase on the architectural merits of 10 Rittenhouse, the poshly proper apartment house that has lately assumed its place on Rittenhouse Square's northeast corner, as if the location were its birthright:

It's no Symphony House, not by an urban mile.

But, then, the 400-foot-tall, traditionally styled redbrick tower is not nearly as good as the diminutive, traditionally styled redbrick apartment house that it eyeballs directly across the square. Known as 250 S. 18th St., that early 20th-century high-rise is so unassuming, you've probably never bothered to look at it.

And therein lies the problem with 10 Rittenhouse, the latest offering from the office of New York architect Robert A.M. Stern. The luxury condo tower commits no cardinal sins against conventional taste, unlike its pink-rouged cousin on Broad Street. But neither does Stern's building make much of an effort to incorporate into its public face the craftsmanship that is the lifeblood of classical architecture.

The 33-story tower, which expects several units to sell for more than $15 million each, sports a facade so anorexically flat that it might be confused with a two-dimensional rendering. It's the ultimate social X-ray.

While the cream-colored, metal-trimmed bay windows provide a modicum of textural relief, they also look as if they were screwed into place at the last minute. What does it matter that the brand is the best that money can buy when nothing is done to weave the windows into the overall composition? If you want to see how real bays are done, take yourself over to 17th and Walnut Streets, and examine the routine 1920s office building on the corner.

An almost cynical absence of detailing has become the hallmark of Stern's Philadelphia work, a tally that includes the successful Comcast tower, the schematic McNeil Center for Early American Studies at 34th and Walnut Streets, and a strangely bipolar office design at the Navy Yard. Increasingly, I find that looking at a Stern building is like gazing into the eyes of someone who has undergone a lobotomy. There is an emptiness.

Stern, who moonlights as dean of Yale University's architecture school while overseeing a hugely successful design practice, has positioned himself as the Ralph Lauren of architecture. He may now be the profession's most prominent advocate for traditional styles.