Chestnut Square

The new 865-bed Chestnut Square development will provide Drexel University students with two-bedroom and four-bedroom suites organized as duplexes, with a living room and kitchen at the entry level and bedrooms alternately above and below. Six-story residential blocks sheathed in metallic panels and glass will sit above transparent ground-level retail and cantilever toward each other to frame a view toward the Mandell Theater (1973). A cast stone 18-story residential tower on 32nd and Chestnut Streets will form a visual counterpoint to the neighboring Left Bank apartment building (BLT Architects, 2007) and Drexel's Main Building (Joseph M. Wilson, 1891). The tower's entrance will open into a suite of student amenity spaces including a lounge, game room, fitness center, and laundry. A nine-story cast stone facade on 33rd and Chestnut Streets will anchor views from Woodland Walk and, together with the Papadakis Integrated Science Building (Diamond & Schmitt, 2011), will compose a western gateway to the core of the campus. 

The Chestnut Square development will reinforce Drexel University's evolving urban West Philadelphia campus, which features other new buildings including, in addition to the Papadakis Building, Millennium Hall (Erdy McHenry Architecture, 2009), and our own LeBow College of Business, currently under construction and scheduled for completion in 2013.