Some of the marble slabs were too damaged to be reset in Memorial Hall, and they were diverted into the salvage market. They are now reappearing in Philadelphia restaurants and hotels, including The Bread Room, the forthcoming bar that will replace the old Palm Restaurant in the Bellevue Hotel, and the upcoming redesign of Kampar, the James Beard-nominated Malaysian restaurant damaged by fire.
“Stone doesn’t go bad,” said Brian Bendel, of Marguerite Rodgers Interior Design. “It always kills me to see people tear stone out and throw it away. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
Bendel designed The Bread Room’s aesthetic of repurposed fixtures and distressed furniture. He discovered the Memorial Hall marble slabs in Beaty American, the now-closed architectural salvage shop in Kensington run by Bob Beaty.
A marble slab from the Please Touch Museum that Brian Bendel, of Marguerite Rodgers Interior Design, discovered at the Beaty American architectural salvage shop in Kensington, was later used in Ellen Yin’s The Bread Room cafe. (Photo provided by Brian Bendel)
When it came to finishing the marble-topped counters, Bendel did not buff out foot traffic marks, keeping the slabs’ telltale scratches in place.
“The feeling we were trying to invoke was to have a space that felt like it was always there as part of Philadelphia,” he said. “That sense of craftsmanship and things that are local.”