By Caitlin McCabe, Philly.com; April 22, 2019
A little more than a decade ago, when the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Philadelphia’s now-razed Boyd Theater on its annual high-profile list of endangered buildings, a former Democratic City Council member made a bold and swift move.
Former City Councilman Bill Green, the former School Reform Commission chairman who in 2018 toyed with a run for Congress, introduced legislation allowing for the interiors of the city’s great public spaces to be eligible for historic preservation. Until that time, Philadelphia’s preservation laws focused on protecting only buildings’ exteriors. Meanwhile, the interiors of places such as City Hall or the Ritz Carlton rotunda — reportedly modeled after the Pantheon in Rome — were vulnerable to being torn apart.