Irem Temple

From its spiky minarets to its great dome in bright orange brick, there are few more remarkable buildings anywhere in Pennsylvania than this hall and auditorium for fraternal orders. An Islamic fantasia that borrows details from across the whole range of the Muslim world, it is more akin to stage scenery than architecture. In fact, F. Willard Puckey's original watercolor rendering showed the building not on Franklin Street but in the midst of a desert peopled by Bedouins on camels—precisely the exotic imagery that his clients desired.