Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide

The Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide is the single richest published source for documenting buildings in Philadelphia, published weekly from 1886 to 1940. This project digitized and made searchable the only complete run of the Builders' Guide, providing researchers, students, and the public with unprecedented access to hundreds of thousands of building references, editorial analysis, and trade advertisements from the city's most dramatic period of growth. The Athenaeum's digital platform allows users to browse and search high-resolution scans with highlighted OCR results, building on the success of the Philadelphia Architects & Buildings and Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network projects. The project was supported by a grant from the Christian R. & Mary F. Lindback Foundation and leverages the Athenaeum's leadership in digital access to historical collections. The platform's technology has been extended to support other major digital history initiatives at the Athenaeum, significantly improving research capabilities for architectural historians, students, and the public.