Philadelphia has chosen the site of an old juvenile detention center near its Rodin Museum as the new home site for the Barnes art collection.

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Mayor John Street said the site is within a short walk of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and close to another site proposed for an Alexander Calder museum.

One of the world's greatest collections of French Impressionist art, the Barnes is currently housed in an exhibition building built in the 1920s by the late Albert C. Barnes, inventor of the patent medicine Argyrol, in suburban Merion, Pa. A Pennsylvania Orphan's Court ruling announced Monday approved removal of the collection from Merion to Philadelphia.

Judge Stanley R. Ott's ruling said the move, backed by $150 million in pledges from three Philadelphia foundations, was the only realistic solution to the Barnes' financial problems and possible bankruptcy.

The collection includes 170 Renoirs, 50 Cezannes, 20 Picassos, and 1,000 other Impressionist paintings, interspersed with Indian and African handworks and colonial ironwork. The collection attracts 64,000 visitors a year, a number that is expected to rise to 240,000 after the move to Philadelphia.