“Belmont Freeman’s…21^st century renovation is faithful to the Wilson Brothers’ industrial-age aesthetic. Steel, glass and concrete…set up a play of textures and tones. The spaces are clean, simple, and minimalist…softened by maple details, which take the place of traditional decorative elements.”– Inga Saffron, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, The Philadelphia Inquirer

This project occupies a pair of historic carriage houses, designed in 1876 by Philadelphia architects the Wilson Brothers, on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Prior to this facility, the LGBT Center was housed in a tiny, non-accessible office with no space for students to convene or socialize. Seeking communal space to support this constituency, the university identified two vacant carriage houses ripe for reuse and reached out to Monty, an alumnus of the university, to restore the buildings and design their 6,800 sf of interior spaces for new use. The exterior received a landmark-quality restoration while the interior underwent total renovation to create meeting rooms, a library, offices, a large multi-purpose lounge, and a catering kitchen. A new elevator was strategically inserted to provide handicapped accessibility to the four floor levels in the two-story split-level structure. Extensive landscaping designed in collaboration with Margie Ruddick Landscape provides outdoor gathering space and knits the Center into campus pathways. Completed in 2004, students and staff praise its adaptability and the sense of unity it provides the community. In 2017, the building was named in honor of the Center’s retiring founding director, Bob Schoenberg.

2003 Preservation Achievement Award, Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia