Without headsets to tote or costumed guides to endure, the Foundation for Architecture attempts to tell the region's 300-year history a different way -- through the architecture itself.
Nearly every day from April to November, over 100 volunteers take tourists -- but mostly area residents -- on 50 tours of Philadelphia and its suburbs.
"We tell the story of the neighborhood and weave the buildings into the story," said Kenneth Hinde, director of the Foundation's tour program. "We learned a long time ago that was the most effective way to do it."
While other tour companies focus only on Old City or Center City, the Foundation takes a larger view. Their offerings stretch from Queen Village to Germantown, and even to such suburban destinations as Haddonfield, New Jersey, and West Chester.
Other tours focus on themes, such as Philadelphia's Gilded Age -- told through several hotel buildings -- and even the maze of SEPTA's underground transit system.
But those whose hands have never touched a T-square and whose spirit has never endured an architecture studio critique take note: these tours are for you too.
"Philadelphia has such a great visual tradition in arts and building, and we walk by it -- architects included -- every day and don't know the stories behind it," said David Anderson, one of only six architects who lead tours. "The stories are what make the place live."
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On a recent tour of downtown skyscrapers, Anderson showed the ability to translate architectural nuances into more relevant terms.
"It's tough if you're drunk," he said about the unusual symmetry of the 61-story Liberty Place. "If you're trying to find your way home and you're looking at this -- forget it."
The tours draw a wide range of people, from lawyers to students to retirees, and even former employees of other tour companies.
"I thought that it would be good to know the real story," Claire Koczak, a former Center City horse-drawn carriage driver, said while on a tour of the downtown monoliths.
Yet despite an increasing number of out-of-town visitors, a significant amount of the Foundation's customers is the hometown crowd.
"We were providing the excuse, or the reason, for people who live up in the suburbs to come into the city," Hinde said of the tour program's inception. "But the other neat thing was... we gave the hard-core urban residents a reason to go out to the suburbs."
The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation sees this native audience as an important advantage for selling the city to visitors.
"When someone takes a [Foundation] tour, they're much more likely to meet Philadelphians who appreciate their city," said Cara Schneider, public relations manager for GPTMC. "The cheesesteaks and soft pretzels get old after a while."
The tour guides themselves are rarely architects -- rather they are what Hinde calls "lay people." Similarly, those on the tours are not professional designers either.
"I'm a lawyer -- I just happen to like architecture," Wilmington attorney Henry Heiman said on a recent tour. "The problem is that I know what I like."
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One tour that goes beyond the city's well-trodden streets is the Foundation's duo of "Littlest Street" tours, which separately explore the areas surrounding Washington Square and Fitler Square.
Taking a group of seven on a recent trek through the latter, guide Grace Najarian navigated the streets that the city's 19th century immigrants first called home.
"When you walk down here, you feel like you're in 1840, and that you're going to meet the Irish immigrants who lived here," Najarian said, pointing out architectural subtleties in the brickwork and finding hidden green gardens amid the paved expanse.
She even knows the decorative tile treatment that marks the houses that once served as Philadelphia's brothels, noting that there were 44 in 1848.
"Why do I mention it? Because all houses are architecture," Najarian explained.
Many of the ideas for the tours originate with the guides themselves. The process of creating a new tour typically takes a year, during which guides must choose a route, research the buildings along its borders and write a tour script.
But despite this detailed study, "it's really just about talking extemporaneously and getting to know their subject matter well enough," Hinde said.
To be able to guide a tour, let alone devise a unique one, is not for the uncommitted. It involves taking a three-month architectural history course taught by the Foundation that is open to the public -- up to 90 people have enrolled at one time.
Prospective guides then undergo several more in-depth training sessions, and then are assigned a mentor to help them grasp the ropes.
However, sometimes even all of this preparation is not enough.
"On my maiden voyage out, I had 27 people and I got laryngitis," Najarian said after another tour. "It went better this time."
As one of the group's few architects, Anderson thinks that while his design background helps, it is not essential.
"I think you just have to be able to tell a good story," he said. "I think there's a lot of architects who are better architects than I, but who are not better storytellers."
Many guides find the rigors to be worth it in the end, as the Foundation boasts an 85 percent guide retention rate, surpassing the industry norm of 50 percent, according to Hinde.
"It provides me with intellectual stimulation, it's socially stimulating and it's good exercise," said assistant director for special tours Fred Vincent. "It's the perfect thing to do."
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The guides' dedication was put to the test last May when the Foundation took 4,000 architects -- in town for the American Institute of Architects' annual convention -- on 110 tours in five days.
After two years of planning for a more discriminating audience than usual, its success "was the biggest feather in our cap," Hinde said.
To make such eventual successes possible, Philadelphia looked to the Chicago Architecture Foundation, which began the nation's first architectural tour program 30 years ago, when it sought to found its own series in 1985.
"We're very flattered that many cities do make an attempt to come and... see how we got started," said Bonita Mall, the Chicago Architecture Foundation's vice president of programs and tours. "We're so pleased that Philadelphia was able to pull it off so beautifully -- they've really succeeded, and not everyone can."
Over the years, the Foundation has become engaged in other activities as well. Their annual Louis Kahn lecture, for example, has brought to the city such notable architects as Frank Gehry and Tadao Ando.
"The tour program serves the grassroots, but the Kahn lecture really serves the architecture community here in Philadelphia," Hinde said.
Some of the Foundation's programs benefit all Philadelphians, regardless of their interest in architecture. The multi-colored driving and pedestrian navigation signs throughout Center City are their handiwork, and new interpretative kiosks that will publicly display the history of the city's significant buildings are in the works.
But in the end, it is all about getting people to take a look at the city's often unnoticed architectural treasures. On a recent "Littlest Street" tour, the group was unexpectedly invited into the converted warehouse home of Penn Radiology professor Calvin Nodine as they walked by.
"Every once in a while somebody will come out like that," Najarian said. "It'll happen if you go on a tour, you'll meet someone -- you might meet your future wife. Everything is so serendipitous."
And -- as if to tempt fate -- the group was welcomed into another home just a few minutes later.
