Riverbend Environmental Education Center, Gladwyne, Pennsylvania
Additions and alterations to an environmental education center housed in a dairy barn purchased through a Sears & Roebuck catalog in 1923. Located on a 26-acre wooded site at a "bend" in the Schuylkill River west of Philadelphia, Riverbend had once been part of a working farm. The program required the creation of a new exhibition and teaching areas, bird observatory, library, kitchen, and ADA bathrooms on the main level, with meeting space on the upper level and new offices storage on the lower level.
In 2000 Riverbend Environmental Education Center received an award from the Historic Architecture Review Board of Lower Merion Township. The jury recognized "the adaptive reuse of the Sears & Roebuck barn, the highly creative cantilevered addition as it relates to the barn’s indigenous form, and an extremely respectful use of materials and design elements."
