Plenty, it seems.
The secrets of the Dark Knight have just been opened to the light, thanks to a top-to-bottom renovation by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the same architects who created the Apple store a few doors to the east. Not only did they rip off the building's solid facade and transform it into a glowing column, they also uncovered a wealth of stories about a little building that played an outsize role in the history of television.
It turns out that the six-story building - a sort of skyscraper in miniature - was once the home of KYW's radio and television operations.
This was where America's first televised soap opera was performed, where comedian Ernie Kovacs adapted his zany routine for a TV audience, where a salty-mouthed Zsa Zsa Gabor inspired the invention of the tape delay, and where Mike Douglas perfected the art of the celebrity talk-show host. Everyone from John and Yoko to Richard Nixon obligingly trooped into his basement studio for conversation before a live audience.
As hard as it is to imagine, all those milestones occurred in a building that is just 51 feet wide and only slightly taller than the townhouse-size shops on its flanks.
The little retail and office tower was commissioned in 1938 by Westinghouse Broadcasting - the Comcast of its era - to house its newest trophy, KYW radio, which the company had just relocated from Chicago to Philadelphia.
Because Walnut Street was so noisy, Westinghouse's architects, Tilden & Pepper, covered the facade with the thick stone tablets to soundproof the recording studios, located on the upper floors. When television came along in the early '40s, the two-story-high spaces were easily adapted for cameras.
