Originally built as the headquarters of the Curtis Publishing Company (which published, among others, the magazines Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, and Jack & Jill), the Curtis Center underwent a major renovation in the mid-1980s and is now a well-regarded Center City office building. Its location, bordered both by Washington Square Park and Independence Mall, and its light-filled 12-story central courtyard make it a pleasant place to work.

But the building's real attraction is the beautiful glass mosaic in the lobby called "Dream Garden." This fabulous artwork was designed by Maxfield Parrish and executed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The mosaic is said to be made of 100,000 pieces in 260 colors.

For many years, the mosaic was one of Philadelphia's hidden treasures, viewed by few other than the office workers in the building that houses it. Then it made the news in the late 1990's when Steven A. Wynn tried to buy it for one of his Las Vegas casinos. A major brouhaha ensued with the result that the Pew Charitable Trusts donated funds so that the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts could purchase it and keep it at the Curtis Center. (Incidentally, Pew also stepped in to keep the Thomas Eakins painting "The Gross Clinic" in Philadelphia.)

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