David S. Traub

Traub has been involved in the area of historical restoration preparing plans for the reconstruction of a 19th century Philadelphia school house and the Old Stetson Hospital Building. For the last several years, he has been very active in historic preservation in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood in Philadelphia. Traub has written many articles concerning preservation issues that have arisen near the square and elsewhere, published amongst others in the Center City Weekly Press and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the co-founder of a new city wide preservation organization called SOS – Save Our Sites.

Traub's long-time interest in Lincoln and issues of racial equality converged with the historical anniversaries in 2015: the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Lincoln, the end of the Civil War, and the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery everywhere in the United States. Kentucky was once a slave state itself and the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. Since 1990, Traub has published journal articles for the Philadelphia Weekly Press on Abraham Lincoln and other subjects.

In 2009 and 2001, Lincoln in Louisville was produced in a staged public reading at the University of Louisville Thrust Theatre. The final production in staged public reading format was performed in 2012 at the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville, successfully received by the audiences and actors, who urged that the play be presented in a full production. The play was finally performed at the Louisville Alley Theatre in June 2015.

Traub studied playwriting with Ed Shockley, a well-known Philadelphia playwright, actor, dramaturge and director, from 2007 until 2011.

The exhibition "Drawings" at the Central Penn National Bank in Philadelphia showed Traub's drawings in April 1981. In celebration in 1982 of the Tercentenary of the founding of the City of Philadelphia, Traub produced an exhibition entitled, Philadelphia, the Concealed City. The exhibition documented with photographs, Philadelphia's multitude of narrow streets, small public squares and hidden gardens, focusing on a "secret" city many residents and tourists never see. It was shown at the American Institute of Architects gallery, Girard Bank and at an architectural museum in Dayton, Ohio.

In 1974 Traub established his own office in Philadelphia. His firm, David S. Traub Associates, Architects, Planners and Interior Designers, has performed a variety of projects in the residential, commercial, and institutional fields. He has designed for the City of Philadelphia, including projects for The Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation and the Fairmount Park Commission. The firm's work also includes, historic restoration, town planning and interior design of offices, houses and condominiums. Together with the firm Cairone and Kaupp he has envisioned a preliminary plan for a greenway along the Allegheny Avenue that connects Campbell Square and Pulaski Park on the Delaware River. Traub is a member of the American Institute of Architects, the Society of Architectural Historians and the Housing Association of Delaware Valley. He is also a contributor to the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archive.

From 1970 to 1973, Traub worked in the office of Louis I. Kahn where he was assigned to two of the most important projects in the office at that time, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas and the Mellon Museum of British Art at Yale University in New Haven. During this time, Traub was also teaching in the Architectural Department at Philadelphia's Temple University from 1970 to 1971.

Besides Traub's teaching in the Architectural Department at Philadelphia's Temple University from 1970 to 1971, the following gives an overview of his lectures:

David S. Traub, a native of Louisville Kentucky, studied architecture and city planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Pennsylvania School of Design where he received a Masters of Architecture degree. At Penn in 1964, he studied in the Master's Class of the famous architect, Louis I. Kahn, with students who had gathered from around the world.

David S. Traub (September 6, 1941, Louisville, Kentucky) is an American architect, author and playwright based in Philadelphia.

Traub's play in two acts Lincoln in Louisville, is a dramatization of an actual historical event, Abraham Lincoln's 1842 visit to Louisville, Kentucky, to stay at his close friend Joshua Speed's Farmington plantation where as many as fifty slaves toiled. Lincoln was in a depressed state of mind at the time due to the breakdown of his engagement to Mary Todd, setbacks in his political career, and his separation from Speed, who had recently left Illinois to return to Kentucky. Burdened with these problems, Lincoln had his first encounter with slavery operating all about him, rendering the visit a pivotal moment in his life. Lincoln's friendship with slaveholder Speed changed for the worse, but still their friendship survived. Speed's last visit to the White House was just two weeks before Lincoln's death.