Becoming Philadelphia: How an Old American City Made Itself New Again 9781978800670

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BECOMING PHIL ADELPHIA

BECOMING PHIL ADELPHIA How an Old American City Made Itself New Again

Ing a S a ffron

Rutger s Un i v er sit y P r ess New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Saffron, Inga, 1957– author. Title: Becoming Philadelphia : how an old American city made itself new again / Inga Saffron. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2020. Identifiers: LCCN 2019042544 | ISBN 9781978817074 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978800632 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978800656 (epub) | ISBN 9781978800663 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978800670 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and society—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia— History—20th century. | Architecture and society—Pennsylvania— Philadelphia—History—21st century. Classification: LCC NA2543.S6 S228 2020 | DDC 720.9748/11—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042544  A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2020 by Inga Saffron All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­rutgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

 For my favorite Philadelphians, Ken and Sky

CONTENTS

Introduction

1

1

Suburbanizing the City

17

2

The Architecture of Revival

48

3

Sweating the Small Stuff

65

4

Age of the Megaprojects

86

5

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

108

6 Rebuilding

136

7

The Spaces between the Buildings

162

8

Building the Equitable City

180

9

Getting around Town

206

10

Success and Its Discontents

221

Acknowl­edgments

257

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BECOMING PHIL ADELPHIA

INTRODUCTION

Twenty years ago, I set down the road that would lead to

this book. ­After spending a good part of the ’90s working as a foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer in Yugo­slavia and the former Soviet Union, I came back to the city in 1998 to start a new ­career as the paper’s architecture critic. I knew I was making an abrupt transition, and not just in location and subject ­matter. As I wandered around Philadelphia during my first few weeks on the job, I was often overcome with a sense of disorientation. Places that had once been familiar seemed oddly off. I felt as if I w ­ ere seeing the city through an old-­fashioned stereograph, with two slightly dif­ fer­ent images arranged side by side: the city as I remembered it and the city as it was. Every­thing looked shabbier and more fragile. I was particularly dismayed to see that the charred wreckage of One Meridian Plaza still formed a sullen backdrop to City Hall, John McArthur’s ­great Second Empire palace. The thirty-­eight-­story skyscraper had been destroyed in a massive fire only a few months before I left for Yugo­slavia in 1991, and yet somehow the ­owners had been allowed to leave it standing. Over ­those seven years, the ruined tower had become a black hole in the heart of the city, sucking life from the surrounding blocks. Many of the nearby shops on 1

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The statue of William Penn on top of City Hall presides over Philadelphia. (Credit: © Jin)

Chestnut Street had closed, and several handsome, early twentieth-­century office towers on Broad Street stood empty. Compared to the place I had known before ­going overseas, the downtown felt noticeably underpopulated. Four p­ ercent of the city’s residents had moved out of town while I had been away. As the sun went down in the eve­ning, street­walkers gathered ­under the yellowish haze of the highway-­style street lamps at Broad and Lombard, just a few blocks south of City Hall. Despite the evident prob­lems the city faced, my husband and I w ­ ere committed to buying a h­ ouse in Center City and sending our five-­year-­old ­daughter to the local public school. We had spent the late ’80s downtown and ­couldn’t imagine living anywhere ­else in Philadelphia. Besides, I felt I should be in the thick of ­things if I ­were ­going to be writing about the city’s architectural ­future. But as we made the house-­hunting rounds, we began to feel increasingly anxious. We found a ­house we liked near Fitler Square and offered the seller $20,000 less than she had originally paid for it—­back in 1989. Much to our surprise, she accepted our price. Yet it hardly felt like we ­were getting a deal. If she w ­ ere taking that much of a hit, what would we end up losing when it came time for us to sell? At the Inquirer, one of my col-

Introduction 3

leagues jokingly referred to Philadelphia as “Brigadoon,” b­ ecause the city seemed stuck in time. Of course, the change has been nonstop since then. My tenure as the Inquirer’s architecture critic has coincided with one of the most remarkable, invigorating, exciting, and—­there is no denying this—­disruptive periods in the city’s history. Philadelphia has gone from a city struggling for its very survival, to one that is struggling to manage the gentrification and inequities brought on by a long-­running construction boom. When I began writing about architecture for the Inquirer, ­there ­were only a handful of new buildings ­under construction, the city was still losing population, and policy makers ­were frantically trying to figure out how to stanch the city’s decline. I started my new job just as Mayor John Street was launching his Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, which was supposed to rid the city of abandoned buildings in depopulated neighborhoods such as Strawberry Mansion and Mantua. The plan had a whiff of the old urban renewal about it, especially when it became clear that the city also intended to evict some longtime residents and demolish their homes, thereby creating tracts of cleared land that could be marketed to developers. Around the same time that Mayor Street was pushing his de­mo­li­tion plan, the renowned planner, and founder of the New Urbanist movement, Andres Duany, gave a lecture in which he proposed a triage strategy for dealing with Center City’s decline. Depending on the amount of vacancy, he suggested, the streets should be assigned “A” and “B” designations—­“A” for ­those that could be saved, and “B” for t­ hose that ­were a lost cause and used to h­ ouse parking garages. Th ­ ose “B” streets included the likes of Sansom and Race. When I complained l­ ater to a well-­regarded urban planner about Duany’s proposal, he crisply responded, “Beggars ­can’t be choosers.” As bad as t­ hings w ­ ere, I ­couldn’t accept that Philadelphia had no other choices. ­After a year of turning out feature stories on architecture, I offered to write a weekly column on the subject for the Inquirer’s arts section. I felt that having a regular slot in the paper would provide a venue where I could riff on new buildings, make my arguments for preservation, and spout off about the city’s defeatist urban design policies. The column, now called “Changing Skyline,” has turned out to be far more than a soapbox for my views on architecture. It has given me a privileged front-­row seat on Philadelphia’s historic transformation.

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I’ve always thought of t­hese Friday columns as installments in a long-­ running serial, a chronicle of the city’s changes on a week-­by-­week basis. But it w ­ asn’t ­until I reread my 1,600-­plus columns in preparation for this collection that the story of Philadelphia’s astounding comeback r­ eally came into focus. We are so caught up in the prob­lems of the moment that it is easy to forget just how far Philadelphia has progressed in this strikingly short span of time. No one, other than a few outliers, talks anymore about reconfiguring the city to mimic the low-­density suburbs or turning vacant lots into urban farms. W ­ e’re too worried about gentrification and ensuring t­ here is enough affordable housing for every­one. My hope is that this collection ­will give readers a small win­dow into this remarkable period in Philadelphia history. Obviously, only a fraction of t­hose 1,600 columns could be included ­here, so I need to fill in some of the gaps in the story. I ­don’t want to suggest that Philadelphia’s turnaround began precisely in 1998, the year I wrote my first architecture story. History ­doesn’t move in a straight line; it lurches. Opposite trends occur si­mul­ta­neously. It seems safe to say that Philadelphia hit bottom during the 1970s, the de­cade in which the city lost 140,000 factory jobs and 13  ­percent of its population. Industrial mainstays such as Philco Ford, the Budd Com­pany, and Midvale Steel vanished overnight. Yet by the late ’80s, Helmut Jahn’s Neo Deco Liberty Place was busting through the city’s traditional height limit, and an entirely new district of gleaming skyscrapers was emerging west of City Hall. It is worth noting, especially in light of ­today’s opioid crisis, that the construction of ­those corporate office towers occurred concurrently with the city’s devastating crack epidemic. Yet even as West Market Street was being remade into a mini-­Manhattan, the city’s population slide continued. Only Baltimore and Detroit lost more ­people during the ’90s. The giddy skyscraper boom ­didn’t last long, nor did it do much to help the areas beyond Center City. The t­ riple scourge of drugs, crime, and incarceration decimated working-­class neighborhoods that had already been weakened by industrial collapse and job loss. By the early ’90s, the city’s finances ­were a mess, and Mayor Ed Rendell strug­gled through the de­cade to keep Philadelphia from falling into bankruptcy. More h­ ouses ­were abandoned as more residents left neighborhoods such as North Philadelphia. It ­wasn’t uncommon to hear p­ eople refer to Philadelphia as the “next Detroit” back in the days when Detroit served as the all-­purpose shorthand for

Introduction 5

Amer­i­ca’s urban apocalypse. The more charitable ones called the city “Bostroit,” a conflation of Boston and Detroit that was intended to convey Philadelphia’s disconcerting juxtaposition of downtown wealth and neighborhood poverty. Not that architecture critics in the ’90s ­were paying much attention to struggling urban neighborhoods. If they thought about cities at all, they generally focused their gaze downtown, where stylish skyscrapers and museums by name-­brand architects ­were ­going up. Frank Gehry’s sensational Guggenheim Museum opened in Bilbao, Spain, in 1997, transforming that down-­at-­the-­heels industrial city into one of the world’s top tourist destinations. The notion that a single museum or concert hall could turn around the fortunes of an entire city became known as the “Bilbao effect,” and it gripped the imaginations of both critics and aspirational cities around the world, Philadelphia among them, in a way that seems utterly irrational ­today. Thanks to ­those glamour buildings, architecture entered the public consciousness in a big way in the early 2000s. As one of a handful of American newspapers to employ a full-­time architecture critic during the ’70s and ’80s, the Inquirer had participated in nurturing that interest. Even so, ­after the paper’s long-­serving critic, Thomas Hine, left in the late ’90s to pursue a book-­writing ­career, the position was left unfilled for long stretches. Another writer, Tom Ferrick, took over for a short while. But like the stately limestone office towers arrayed along Broad Street, the critic’s chair was empty when I returned to Philadelphia. I let it be known that I wanted the job. In ­those days, returning foreign reporters at the Inquirer typically angled for a prestige job in the news sections. They became Washington correspondents, city editors, and metro columnists, or they went overseas again. The Inquirer’s editor seemed baffled by my interest in an obscure culture beat for the features department, whose status could be gauged by its location in a small alcove in the far end of the newsroom, then located in the shining white tower on North Broad Street.. On the other hand, he realized that letting me write about architecture would solve the prob­lem of what to do with me. He never asked me about my qualifications, or how I planned to cover the topic. But a few weeks into my tenure, he pulled me aside. “You know you ­don’t have to do this if you ­don’t want to,” he whispered. I assured him that covering architecture was exactly what I wanted to do. It’s still humbling to think about how much I ­didn’t know about architecture when I began this job. I had taken some college courses in architectural

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history and had gotten my feet wet during a year spent writing for the Inquirer’s home and design section. But that was the extent of my experience. To be honest, it was ­really the fate of cities that obsessed me. Part of this had to do with coming of age during the years when American cities ­were imploding. Although I grew up in the suburban cocoon of the original Levittown, outside New York City, the issues of urban decline and suburban sprawl ­were never far away. My ­father’s f­amily had lost their home, along with their live chicken business, when their building was taken by the government to make way for public housing on Manhattan’s Ave­nue D. L ­ ater, my ­father’s clothing store in the tiny downtown of Kings Park, New York, succumbed to the call of the mall. I was a freshman at New York University the year the Daily News ran its famous headline about the federal response to New York’s efforts to avoid bankruptcy: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” Arriving at my first newspaper job in Plainfield, New Jersey, I was shocked to find that fully half the downtown of the “Queen City” had been razed and left as a multiblock parking lot. “Urban renewal,” someone explained to me with a defeated shrug. The de­mo­li­tions had been carried out in the ’60s, when ­people ­were convinced that a major corporation could be enticed to locate its headquarters in downtown Plainfield. By the time I arrived, it was deep into the ’80s. My experiences covering conflicts in Bosnia and Chechnya further stoked my desire to write about cities. The war in Yugo­slavia can be seen as a clash between rural and urban cultures, between ­those who wanted to create an ethnically homogeneous state and ­those who accepted blended populations as a characteristic of modern life. The relentless destruction of gracious, centuries-­old neighborhoods in Sarajevo, Mostar, and Banja Luka was part of a war against this kind of ethnic mixing, just as race had been the subtext in the de­mo­li­tion of so many American downtowns during the urban renewal period. When I saw the husk of One Meridian hovering over City Hall a­ fter I returned to Philadelphia, I c­ ouldn’t help thinking how much the scene resembled downtown Grozny a­ fter the Chechen capital was bombed by Rus­sia fighter planes. Even though I knew Philadelphia’s Meridian tower had merely suffered a devastating fire (one that claimed the lives of three firefighters), it was hard not to describe Center City as looking “bombed out.” If anyone had asked me back then how I planned to go about covering architecture in Philadelphia, I prob­ably would have given some under-

Introduction 7

cooked answer about promoting urbanist values. I was obsessed with calling out the policies that caused cities to tear themselves apart with highways, parking garages, and wanton de­mo­li­tions of fine old buildings. It ­wasn’t that I had no interest in the more artistic side of architecture. I am perfectly capable of geeking out over a daring cantilever or diving into the comparative merits of vari­ous architects. I refuse to accept that a well-­made, aesthetically pleasing design is an optional frill that can be dispensed with, like an extra closet in a fancy apartment building. You c­ an’t create successful, livable cities without thoughtful, well-­made architecture. But my first love was never solitary buildings. I am drawn to ensembles and public spaces for the way they reveal the values and forces that shape culture and civilization. My guides to understanding cities and buildings are writers such as Jane Jacobs, William “Holly” Whyte, Ada Louise Huxtable, and Elijah Anderson. What unites ­those writers is their conviction that urban form is crucial to the salvation of cities. It is a miracle that Philadelphia never completely destroyed the essence of what made it a city, in the way that Plainfield and so many other places battered by deindustrialization, profound population loss, and crime did. Sure, interstates ripped through the body of Philadelphia, separating the city’s historic center from the river of its birth. Yet by some miracle, Center City and its neighborhoods managed to retain their amiable row­house atmosphere and walkable streets. Threadbare as it was, the existence of this basic urban fabric meant the downtown ­didn’t have to be reconstructed from scratch when ­people began trickling back. It’s one reason I consider historic preservation fundamental to solving the city’s prob­ lems. Our existing buildings—­both the extraordinary and the ordinary—­ are our most undervalued asset. I also believe that retaining t­hese older buildings offers our best hope for preserving affordable housing and stabilizing neighborhoods. Still, I recognize that ­great architecture and smart urbanism by themselves c­ an’t save a ­dying city. Philadelphia was on the verge of bankruptcy when Mayor Rendell took office in 1992. How did “the next Detroit” become what it is ­today—­a city that, in many neighborhoods, feels like a permanent construction zone? The answer is partly related to local policy decisions and partly a result of the sea change in how American cities are perceived. The millennials who began moving into the city and snapping up bargain-­priced rowhomes in the early 2000s belonged to a generation that had been largely reared in the

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suburbs, at a remove from the prob­lems of urban life. They ­were the first post–­World War II generation that had no memories of Philadelphia’s long, painful slide from greatness. For them, the city’s authenticity and grit ­were simply part of its appeal. They marveled that Philadelphia still had neighborhoods populated by ­people and businesses with multigenerational social ties. You could say a lot of bad t­ hings about living in Philadelphia during the doldrums of the ’80s and ’90s, but it was never boring. I’ve noted in a ­couple of columns in this collection that 1998 happened to be the year that the TV show Sex and the City debuted. That series, along with the e­ arlier Friends and Seinfield, was a big departure from the drumbeat of dark crime dramas made during the ’70s and ’80s, when the dysfunction of cities was the dominant theme. While the shows from the ’90s w ­ ere all set in New York, they portrayed urban life in a more upbeat way, particularly for the young and white. Cities ­were depicted as fun places, where you spent your time hanging out with friends and falling in love. The city was a place where you could be as weird as you wanted to be. And b­ ecause cities ­were cheaper than suburbs, they offered young p­ eople an opportunity to pursue a creative life. At the same time t­ hese millennials ­were rediscovering the city, a surge in foreign immigration was repopulating distressed neighborhoods. Even if Philadelphia ­wasn’t New York, it benefited from ­these same demographic trends. Still, Philadelphia would not be the resurgent urban center it is t­oday without the major investments and policies that elected officials pursued over the past two de­cades. ­Because Philadelphia tends to be slow to embrace new ideas, its approach to revitalization generally involved copying the urban strategies pioneered by other cities. A ­ fter New York police dramatically reduced crime by using data to map and fight nuisance activity, Philadelphia introduced a similar approach that helped make the city safer. A ­ fter Baltimore became the Bilbao of Amer­i­ca by building an aquar­ium and the old-­timey Camden Yards ballpark near its downtown waterfront, Philadelphia became determined to position itself as a major tourist destination. Of course, in trying to mimic other cities, Philadelphia often overlooked its own strengths, particularly its tight-­knit neighborhoods and architectural patrimony. With all the focus on blockbuster proj­ects, you rarely heard anyone in the early 2000s mention the role that “meds and eds” would come to play in the city’s economic revival, despite the presence of so many medical schools and ­great universities in the city.

Introduction 9

In ­those years, the Rendell administration was convinced that hospitality was the key to replacing Philadelphia’s lost manufacturing jobs. The mayor soon began pursuing a suite of publicly subsidized megaprojects to attract tourists—­a downtown convention center, new h­ otels, and several entertainment venues. The city’s big weakness, Rendell concluded, was that tourists thought of Philadelphia as an after­noon stopover on the drive between New York and Washington. Getting them to spend the night became his administration’s rallying cry. The Pew Charitable Trusts felt the same way and pushed the city to focus on a few key proj­ects. With Pew’s encouragement and money, In­de­pen­dence Mall was completely rebuilt with an honor guard of history-­themed museums whose main purpose was to give tourists a reason to stick around once they had taken a quick look at the Liberty Bell. The obsession with creating attractions for out-­of-­towners ­didn’t end t­ here. South Broad Street was rebranded the Ave­nue of the Arts and lined with new theaters, including the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, in an effort to get suburbanites to come downtown in the eve­ning. Two modern stadiums w ­ ere built in the South Philadelphia sports complex, both at considerable taxpayer expense. At one point, Rendell went on a major charm offensive to convince the Walt Disney Com­pany to build an interactive urban theme park called Disneyquest in the heart of Center City, at Eighth and Market. But for Rendell, the big prize was legalized gambling along the waterfront. He was convinced that lining the Delaware with casinos and related attractions would create a major tourist destination and fi­nally awaken the waterfront to development. ­Because Philadelphia politicians ­were so focused on the immediate gratification of snagging ­these marquee proj­ects, they tended to see long-­term urban planning as an impediment to realizing their ­grand visions. They ­didn’t want to hear city planners tell them that the presence of I-95 and the lack of pedestrian crossings made the Delaware waterfront a hard sell to developers. Planners ­were often sidelined during the late ’90s, and many of the investments made during the Rendell-­Street era had an improvisational quality. Nearly $20 million in public funds ­were sunk into a failed Delaware waterfront proj­ect that was supposed to feature an indoor shopping mall and aerial tram to Camden. As of this writing, an enormous landing pier for that tram, a concrete monolith that looks like a modern Stonehenge, still endures on Penn’s Landing, a monument to that staggering government failure. The city also had to bail out Disneyquest’s developer a­ fter that proj­ect

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was abandoned in mid-­excavation. For years, the g­ iant pit at Eighth and Market was known as the “Disney hole.” Both sites—­the waterfront mall and the Disney proj­ect—­remain unproductive surface lots to this day, even as development has boomed elsewhere in the city. To be fair, the megaprojects era ­wasn’t a complete bust. Rendell was able to get the new concert hall built, a worthy goal that had eluded several of his pre­de­ces­sors. While the Kimmel Center is no Guggenheim Bilbao architecturally, it did provide the city and its g­ reat orchestra with a modern ­music hall. The cultural building boom of the mid-2000s also yielded several significant new museums: the Constitution Center, the National Museum of American Jewish History, and the new Barnes Foundation. The new In­de­ pen­dence Mall museums did, in fact, play a role in convincing tourists to spend more time in the city. Of course, so did the booming restaurant row on Passyunk Ave­nue, which evolved out of the existing South Philadelphia neighborhood. ­After many twists and turns, Rendell fi­nally realized his long-­cherished dream of getting a casino on the Delaware. But the one-­ story building looks more like a Walmart than a Vegas-­style resort. None of the nongambling attractions that Philadelphia was promised in the promotional renderings ­were ever built—­apart from a large parking garage. Nor has it been much of a catalyst for development on the Delaware waterfront. The casinoless Schuylkill waterfront is where all the construction action is ­today. What is notable about ­these public investments is how much emphasis was put on luring outsiders into the city rather than improving the quality of life for ­people who ­were already ­there. ­Because many suburbanites ­were ner­vous about taking a train downtown ­after dark to attend a show or visit a restaurant, city officials insisted on building new parking decks to accompany all the city’s cultural proj­ects. Never mind that this often meant dismantling the in­ter­est­ing buildings that made Philadelphia an attraction in the first place. At one point, Rendell even enlisted the Philadelphia Parking Authority to erect a garage on Ritten­house Square, perhaps Amer­ic­ a’s loveliest downtown park. That effort failed, fortunately, but a po­liti­cally connected developer did succeed in leveling an entire block of nineteenth-­century buildings on Sansom Street, with the intention of putting up a twelve-­story garage. In the end, the developer c­ ouldn’t get the banks to lend him money for the structure, and the site spent a de­cade as a surface parking lot. In my early years as architecture critic, I wrote so many columns railing against

Introduction 11

parking proj­ects that I often felt like the Inquirer’s garage critic. Amazingly, I  was often told (usually by developers and their minions) that parking garages ­were not a fit subject for architectural discussion. Philadelphia was hardly the only recovering city obsessed with parking. Many policy makers in the 1990s and the 2000s ­were convinced that cities needed to become more like the suburbs if they hoped to survive. As late as 2009, New York City was still boasting about replacing burned-­out apartment buildings in the South Bronx with single-­family ranchers. Philadelphia embraced the suburbanizing fad with a vengeance: We tore down handsome, functioning buildings in Center City to insert large parking garages. We dismantled the Chestnut Street Transitway—­a bus-­only corridor with wide sidewalks for pedestrians—so cars could have ­free rein on that crucial crosstown street. We replaced high-­rise public housing towers with low-­density row­house developments that included acres of asphalt parking. Philadelphia never built Bronx-­style ranchers, but you can find stand-­alone suburban ­houses just south of Girard Ave­nue, four subway stops north of City Hall. If the city c­ ouldn’t beat the suburbs, the thinking went at the time, then it should just copy them. Of course, what ­really brought Philadelphia back from the brink was the opposite of suburbanization: density. When Philadelphia fi­nally turned its attention to housing for its existing residents, the results w ­ ere far more enduring than megaprojects or mimicking suburbia. In the late ’90s, Philadelphia undertook two very dif­fer­ent strategies that would ultimately lay the foundation for the current building boom. The first involved the de­mo­li­tion of nearly ­every low-­income public housing tower in the city—­nearly two dozen in all. The second created a city tax incentive to encourage developers to build middle-­class housing—­ now known as the ten-­year property tax abatement. Thanks to the incredibly generous tax break, anyone who bought a new or substantially renovated h­ ouse was excused from paying the bulk of their property taxes for a de­cade. It’s unlikely than anyone back then realized how inextricably linked ­those two policies would become. American cities had been turning against high-­rise public housing for de­cades, ­because they ­were seen as islands of poverty and crime. In Philadelphia, ­those widely spaced towers-­in-­a-­park ­were architectural interlopers amid the diminutive row­houses. As the towers increasingly deteriorated from poor maintenance and vandalism, you

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could actually see the blight bleeding outward, bringing down adjacent neighborhoods. In the late ’90s, the Clinton administration began encouraging cities to replace the failed proj­ects with lower-­density public housing. The program, called HOPE VI, had been influenced by the ideas of Duany’s New Urbanist movement, which advocated a return to traditional housing forms and street layouts. In the late ’90s, the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA), which received more HOPE VI money than any housing agency in Amer­ic­ a, embarked on a series of federally funded de­mo­li­tions: The four notorious Martin Luther King housing towers at Thirteenth and Bainbridge came down in 1999 in a mushroom cloud of dust, creating a huge, tabula rasa site for development. A few months l­ater, the city council passed a bill authorizing an early version of the tax abatement. In hindsight, it’s hard not to see the switch in support, from public housing for the poor to private housing for the ­middle class, as a major turning point in Philadelphia’s priorities. I have to admit that the abatement bill barely registered with me at the time, and I ­didn’t start writing about it ­until years ­later. But I vividly recall the day when the MLK towers w ­ ere imploded. It was early on a Sunday morning. I was standing in the crowd on Broad Street when the dynamite was ignited, producing a series of rat-­a-­tat-­tats that sounded disturbingly like the sound of the gunshots that had once rang through the proj­ects. The hated towers w ­ ere gone before the smoke cleared, reduced to foothills of rubble. Walking through what is now a quiet, tree-­lined neighborhood, it is hard to believe that this downtown pocket—­a mere ten-­minute walk from City Hall—­was ever considered a dangerous area to be avoided. While the redevelopment of the MLK towers is an example of the suburbanizing mentality that gripped Philadelphia in the early 2000s, ­there is no denying that it has transformed the neighborhood for the better. The isolated enclave of poverty is divided into real blocks and lined with handsome row­houses that blend easily into the surrounding neighborhood, now known as Hawthorne. ­Because HOPE VI wanted to create more economic diversity, some of the new PHA h­ ouses ­were sold at subsidized prices to middle-­class homebuyers. The blocks where the towers stood are still mixed eco­nom­ically and racially. The PHA housing even won a design award from the Congress of New Urbanism. Once the threat of crime was eliminated, the tax abatement made it very profitable for developers to build in Hawthorne. Over the last de­cade, virtually ­every available vacant lot has been filled with town­houses, some selling

Introduction 13

for as much as $1 million. Even the private homes built by PHA now go for over $500,000. But the ­human cost of the redevelopment has been high. Thanks to the ’90s policy of de-­densification, only half of MLK’s apartments ­were replicated in row­house form. As a result, many residents from the old towers ­were forced to seek affordable housing elsewhere, frequently in neighborhoods that are less con­ve­nient to downtown. As problematic as the MLK towers ­were, a community lived ­there, and that community was destroyed. What’s more, the neighborhood surrounding the old MLK site has become increasingly white and affluent. Similar transformations have occurred across Philadelphia’s midsection in old working-­class neighborhoods struggling with disinvestment and population loss. Yet, it is hard not to marvel at the results even as we begin to recognize the side effects of gentrification. Some 15,000 market-­rate homes ­were constructed between 2003 and 2018, increasing the city’s total housing stock by about 2.5 ­percent. If you add in the thousands of rehabs of existing homes, the gain in good quality housing is even higher. The decade-­long construction boom has helped reverse the city’s population decline: since 2006, Philadelphia has added more than 90,000 residents. Property tax revenue is way up. Of course, if you compare Philadelphia to the Sunbelt and many Western cities, the city’s growth has been relatively modest. But if you try to navigate Walnut Street’s crowded sidewalks on a Saturday after­noon, book a t­ able at a chef-­driven BYOB, or just try to take a bus crosstown, Philadelphia’s once sleepy downtown seems to be bursting at the seams. ­Those numbers tell just one part of the story, however. The effects of the boom have been starkly uneven. Just a few miles from Washington Square, where a tax-­abated pent­house sold for a rec­ord $18 million in 2018, neighborhoods such as Nicetown and Frankford are holding on for dear life. In 2016, a Pew study found that only fifteen of Philadelphia’s 372 census tracts had experienced enough of a spike in ­house­hold income to qualify as gentrified. In many of ­those nongentrifying neighborhoods, ­family incomes are actually declining. So are ­house prices. Despite all the keening we hear about the city’s affordability crisis, Philadelphia’s biggest housing challenge ­isn’t gentrification; it’s finding a way to stabilize its “­middle neighborhoods,” the places that are neither rich nor poor but provide the bulk of housing for working-­class residents and recent immigrants. None of that can happen ­unless the city can create the kind of jobs that allow ­people to enjoy a middle-­class life.

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That’s not to say gentrification ­isn’t a challenge in certain neighborhoods. More low-­income ­people and artists are being displaced from familiar surroundings by rising rents. Even ­people earning what we consider middle-­ class salaries are now forced to move further from the center to find housing they can afford. Before the introduction of the tax abatement, nearly half the apartments in Fishtown and Ken­sington ­were easily in the price range of low-­income renters. T ­ oday just 7 ­percent of the available rentals fit their bud­gets, according to a recent market study. For the first time in its history, Philadelphia is having to devise strategies for ensuring that low-­wage workers can find decent housing. It seems a l­ittle ironic that Philadelphia was gleefully pulling down its public housing towers just twenty years ago. Even though I would agree that getting rid of t­hose blighted proj­ects helped launch Philadelphia’s revival, the city lost hundreds of dedicated low-­ income housing units in the pro­cess. This is especially unfortunate when a quarter of the city’s population is living below the poverty line. That is another way of saying that the story of Philadelphia’s comeback is a multifaceted one. In my first few years as critic, I mainly concentrated on new construction in Center City, reviewing ­every proposed condo tower and cultural building. T ­ oday it feels a bit indulgent to spend time reviewing towers for the wealthy. Looking back, I realize I may have focused too much on Jane Jacobs–­style issues of urban form and not enough on issues of equity. As a result, I find myself devoting more columns to the unintended consequences of Philadelphia’s success. Where we once worried about losing our nineteenth-­century churches and ­great muscular factories to neglect and abandonment, we are now losing them to developers, who can replace them with more-­efficient and more-­profitable row­houses. The tax abatement, which initially helped Philadelphia get back on its feet, has completely changed the economics of construction and has led to displacement in several black neighborhoods. Something similar is happening in retail. Looking back, it is difficult to believe that Philadelphia once begged national retail chains to pay attention to it. Now ­there are so many Wawas and Targets colonizing its shopping streets that ­those corridors risk becoming the urban equivalent of highway strips, with their repeating lineup of chain retailers. Faced with generic onslaught, how can Philadelphia possibly maintain the affordability and authenticity that made it so attractive to newcomers twenty years ago?

Introduction 15

­These challenges ­shouldn’t prevent us from celebrating Philadelphia’s very real success. The influx of new residents and money has created amenities that every­one in the city can enjoy, from the recreation trail along the Schuylkill River to the midway at Spruce Harbor Park. Although developers are clear-­cutting the city’s fine vernacular buildings, the boom came just in the nick of time to rescue some of Philadelphia’s long-­vacant architectural trea­sures, such as the Ridgway Library, the Divine Lorraine H ­ otel, and the Metropolitan Opera House, all on Broad Street. The past two de­cades have been a golden age for park restoration, and not just in Center City. Clark Park in West Philadelphia and Lovett Library Park in Mount Airy have become town greens for their neighborhoods. Community gathering spots such as the Grays Ferry Triangle have been conjured into existence out of nothing more than wasted street space. Getting around town is much easier ­these days (apart from the traffic!), thanks to the city’s growing network of bike lanes, the introduction of ride-­hailing ser­vices, and the new electronic fare cards for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). ­Those bike lanes have single-­handedly reconfigured the city’s geography by opening up fringe neighborhoods that once had to make do with subpar transit ser­vice. Through it all, the city has even built a ­couple of memorable works of architecture, most notably Tod Williams’s and Billie Tsien’s Barnes Foundation and Weiss/Manfredi’s nanotechnology building at Penn. What has been most heartening for me is that I no longer feel like a lone crank when I write columns about parking garages and skimpy sidewalks. The city is now inhabited by a generation of residents who care passionately about ­those issues and ­aren’t shy about discussing them on social media. Philadelphia’s planners and engineers have again been empowered to lead the charge for an improved public realm. Alas, t­here still i­sn’t much high-­ design architecture in Philadelphia, apart from a few museum and university buildings. But even developers (the smart ones, anyway) are urbanists now. If you told me twenty years ago that developers would be replacing parking garages with inhabited buildings, as they have done in several Center City locations, I would not have believed it. What a thrill it was for me to write about 1213 Walnut, the first modern apartment tower to be built without any on-­site parking. Of course, the foundation for Philadelphia’s transformation was being laid well before anyone noticed the turnaround. I h­ aven’t mentioned the

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role of the Center City District, a business improvement group, in tidying up downtown and making it feel safer. Or the impact of the East Market commuter rail tunnel, which united the SEPTA’s regional rail lines into a single system. The fact is, cities are constantly evolving, and we merely enter the story in the ­middle of the action. All I can say for certain is that Philadelphia ­will continue to surprise and delight us. While I hope a storyline w ­ ill emerge from this collection, I have tried to strike a balance in choosing my se­lections. This is a book of journalism, first and foremost, so I have tended to f­avor the snappy, clear, well-­written columns over ones that may have furthered the narrative. My columns are a journalistic hybrid, combining reportage and point-­of-­view writing into a single package. Like all daily journalism, t­hese columns ­were written on deadline (too close to deadline, my editors might say), and they rarely exceed 1,100 words. Flaws and all, I believe they should give readers some insights into the ideas and arguments that both propelled Philadelphia forward and held it back during this period of extreme change. I think of this book as a collection of snapshots that w ­ ere assembled over many years. My hope is that, taken together, they w ­ ill reveal what a g­ reat city looked like as it shape-­shifted before our very eyes.

1 ▶ SUBURBANIZING THE CIT Y

A Scar on Center City Makes Way for New Life November 23, 1999 For the moment, the two buildings still sit side by side on the same block of South Penn Square, united by the same tragic history, offering a striking glimpse of Philadelphia past and Philadelphia ­future. At One Meridian Plaza, denuded steel beams poke up from a sooty, one-­ story granite base like the remnants of a buried civilization. Next door, the freshly scrubbed marble of the former Girard Trust building dazzles with the whiteness of a blank sheet of paper. While one building is being renewed to become a swank Ritz-­Carlton ­hotel, the other is at long last being removed. When the w ­ hole sorry saga of One Meridian Plaza is fi­nally over sometime next month, the w ­ hole city should feel ­free to shout, “Good riddance!” It has been eight years and nine months since a carelessly discarded, solvent-­soaked rag ignited one of the most devastating skyscraper fires in 17

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One Meridian Plaza ­after the fire in 1991. (Credit: Gerald S. Williams)

American history. Yet only now is the building that cast a long, dark shadow over Philadelphia, sullying its reputation and sapping its spirit, almost gone. By mid-­December at the latest, when the last scorched remains of the Meridian office tower are carted off to landfills, the burned tower should fi­nally be reduced to ground level. ­After being encircled with a chain-­link security fence, the vacant site ­will become just another piece of valuable downtown real estate offered up for sale. Let us hope that Philadelphians ­will not have to stare at the fence for another de­cade. The good news is that the dealmaking to determine what takes One Meridian Plaza’s place is already underway. W ­ hether the successor to Vincent Kling’s 1971 tower is another corporate tower or a mixed-­use urban shopping mall, two likely options, it is crucial that what­ever is built not be dominated by a parking garage. Not only must the ­future occupant of the site re­spect its position next to City Hall, but it must serve as a bridge between Chestnut Street’s reviving retail district and Market Street’s office zone. The 2,000-­degree blaze that destroyed One Meridian Plaza not only left three firefighters dead, but it killed a piece of the city. Around the corner on Chestnut Street, virtually e­ very major store closed, creating a black hole in the city’s retail core. Several of Meridian’s corporate tenants fled the city. If



Suburbanizing the City 19

that ­were not bad enough, the city became infamous for the downtown slum when the camera circled over the wreckage in the opening scene of the movie Philadelphia. As the object of a tangle of lawsuits, the thirty-­eight-­story ruin of One Meridian Plaza was left standing next to City Hall for most the ’90s, a constant reproach through the final year of former mayor Wilson Goode’s term, through Mayor Rendell’s entire administration, and through the victory of mayor-­elect John Street. The city’s inability to rid Philadelphia of the eyesore became a meta­phor for its lassitude and limitations. “No one could have dreamed [in 1991] that it would take so long” to tear the building down, said Jeffrey B. Rotwitt, the attorney for One Meridian’s owner, E/R Associates, which includes the Equitable Life Assurance Society, a Dutch pension fund, and Center City developer Richard I. Rubin & Co. On the day that One Meridian Plaza burned, the United States had just launched its first ground attack against Iraq. Although Rendell once threatened to have the building condemned, the city could never afford to make good on the threat. Unable to pay compensation to the o­ wners, the city had to leave the boarded-up shell standing across from City Hall, which itself became increasingly sorry looking. Only ­after the One Meridian Plaza ­owners settled a claim with their insurance com­pany in 1997, receiving about $300 million, could the tower come down. ­Because the building was situated in the densest quadrant of Center City, it would not go easily. Instead of being imploded, it had to be dismantled floor by floor, an arduous eighteen-­month pro­cess that cost $23 million. The completion of the job now comes just as Philadelphia is ending a roller-­coaster de­cade of bust and boom. When the twenty-­second floor of the Meridian tower erupted in flames on the eve­ning of February 23, 1991, the city was already on the cusp of a deep recession that produced a glut of office space. ­Today Center City is on the rebound, its prime office space fully leased for the first time since the mid-’80s. This situation makes Rotwitt hopeful that the property w ­ ill soon be sold. “This site has the most potential of any in the city for new, ground-up office construction,” he said. “[Philadelphia’s] office rents are approaching the level where they can support new construction.” Several office developers have expressed interest in the One Meridian site, including Willard  G. Rouse III’s Liberty Property Trust, which built Liberty Place in the mid-’80s.

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The city Planning Commission, however, has a dif­fer­ent vision for the property. In a report prepared for the Ave­nue of the Arts, planners advocated some form of urban shopping mall, supported by a large garage and some outdoor public space, that would strengthen Chestnut Street’s retail potential as it recovers from years as a carless “Transitway.” The report suggests that a small office or residential tower could be built on top of the mall. While it is hard to argue against more retail space on Chestnut Street, the commission’s proposals assume that the proj­ect ­will include a chunk of real estate from the north side of Chestnut’s 1400 block. In essence, the commission is advocating the de­mo­li­tion of the row of early twentieth-­century buildings that suffered most from the aftermath of the One Meridian fire. Taking the hint, the properties’ owner, Berwind Financial Group, has already started the pro­cess of acquiring a de­mo­li­tion permit. Right now, with Philadelphia flush with development opportunities, many ­people are all too ­eager to demolish Center City’s old fabric, even while the city is also trying to market its historic ambience to tourists. Tearing down a block of Chestnut Street must not be done casually. The public needs to know what the city would gain, and ­whether the trade-­off would be justified. On a fragile retail street such as Chestnut, an interior mall could do more harm than good, siphoning potential customers from the few remaining shops. Now that City Hall is overshadowed by a parade of shiny towers, it is easy to forget what a significant building One Meridian Plaza was when it opened in 1971. The thirty-­eight-­story tower, originally known as the Fidelity Mutual Life Building, was the tallest building in Philadelphia of its day, and trustees in its top-­floor corporate dining room could look almost eyeball to eyeball with William Penn atop City Hall. Liberty Place and other Market Street high-­rises now tower above the statue, with views that look far past that symbol of Philadelphia ­toward the region beyond. The Meridian building was designed by Kling, a Philadelphia architect who was responsible for so many postwar towers around City Hall that the area was dubbed “the Klingdom.” Faced in a granite that was sympathetic to City Hall’s coloring, One Meridian Plaza stylistically put its corporate tenants on equal footing with ­those influential public servants across the way. Yet for all its civic-­corporate attire, the building’s interior systems proved inadequate to modern corporate life. Built without sprinklers, as the law of



Suburbanizing the City 21

the time permitted, it had no defenses against the fast-­moving fire that began ­after workers left a container of linseed oil ­behind. A series of other lapses, including inadequate w ­ ater pressure in a standpipe, enabled the fire to burn out of control. Three firefighters—­David Holcombe, James  A. Chappell, and Phyllis McAllister—­perished when their oxygen tanks ran out of air and they became disoriented. The fire, which was the fifteenth-­most-­costly in American history, helped inspire cities across the country to mandate sprinklers in high-­rises. ­After the fire, the Meridian’s ­owners briefly considered renovating the building, but the tower had been made toxic by the release of dangerous chemicals. The nearby Girard Trust building also was put out of business by the fire. The elegant building, designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1923, ­will fi­nally return to life this spring when it opens as a h­ otel. One Meridian Plaza was an eyesore in the city for so long that some ­people grew used to it, just as they have become accustomed to unsightly surface parking lots, derelict downtown buildings, and a highway separating the city from its waterfront. “­Every time you’d come into town down the Parkway, you’d turn right on Fifteenth Street and see it ­there,” historian Kenneth Finkel of the Atwater Kent Museum recalled. Now, with the Meridian tower reduced almost to ground level, ­there are signs of returning life. In the past year, the Prince M ­ usic Theater and a luxury apartment building have opened around the corner. Most in­ter­est­ing, the de­mo­li­tion of One Meridian Plaza has opened up new views of the city. When you walk down Fifteenth Street t­ hese days and see it flooded with sunlight, or gaze for the first time at that vertical version of a French chateau, the American Baptist Publishing Society building, the possibilities for this ­little piece of downtown again seem limitless.

Turning a Parking Lot into . . . ​a Parking Lot February 7, 2000 Let us imagine a thriving Philadelphia neighborhood—­a place with blocks and blocks of sturdy, middle-­class row­houses, some trendy restaurants, and an offbeat cultural attraction. Now let’s suppose that right in the center of this desirable residential neighborhood is a block-­sized vacant lot, a sprawling

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eyesore that has been owned by the school district for de­cades and used freely for parking cars. If your local civic group ­were fi­nally able to wrest control of the property, would you want it to: (a) Turn it into a genteel urban park like Fitler Square, a public garden, a community playground, or some other kind of open space? (b) Find a developer to build new row­houses? (c) Cover the block with asphalt, install a six-­foot-­high iron fence, and lease the site as a commercial parking lot? If ­you’ve recently passed the ­great sea of blacktop next to the historic Eastern State Penitentiary, at Fairmount Ave­nue and Twenty-­Second Street, then you already know that, unfortunately, this is no hy­po­thet­i­cal exercise. Having acquired the block in a deal with the Philadelphia School District, the Spring Garden Community Development Corp. last week celebrated the opening of a two-­acre, fenced-in, pay parking lot in the heart of the residential Fairmount neighborhood. The new lot, far bigger than ones you’ll find in Center City, has been expensively dressed up with Victorian lights and redbrick pavers, but it remains what it has been for years: an ugly scar on the neighborhood. The civic group that promoted the proj­ect—­against the wishes of many Fairmount residents—­boasts that it beautified a block of land that had long ago become a de facto parking lot. Its president, Patricia Freeland, even praises the block’s new look as a “cross between Ritten­house Square and a parking lot,” which is a l­ittle like calling it a cross between a Lexus and a flat tire. Perhaps Freeland d­ oesn’t realize that Ritten­house Square is used by p­ eople. Freeland’s group has compounded a thirty-­year-­old tragedy of urban renewal. The site was razed for a school that was never built. For reasons no one at the school district offices can explain, the blasted block was allowed to lie fallow for three de­cades. If the neighborhood ever hoped to redeem that sorry history and repair the gaping wound in its midst, now was the time to do it. The economy was hot. The Fairmount neighborhood was hot. B ­ ecause the block was still zoned for row­houses, a developer could have built forty or fifty homes without a zoning variance.



Suburbanizing the City 23

Enter the Spring Garden Community Development Corp., the nonprofit group run by Freeland, an aide to power­ful State Senator Vincent Fumo. Thanks to Fumo, her group has received more than $1 million in state funds since 1998. It offered the school district $250,000 for the Fairmount block. Instead of bother­ing with competitive bidding, the district simply nodded yes. Freeland’s group still needed a variance before it could fulfill its dream of building a parking lot. Even the normally timid Planning Commission thought the idea was nuts and suggested that parking was not “the highest and best use” for the land. Nevertheless, the Zoning Board granted the variance ­after Fumo and o­ thers sent supportive letters. Once the variance was secured, the land was quickly leased to Parkway Corp., owned by prominent businessman Joseph Zuritsky. Among the arguments for making the block a commercial parking lot is that residents and visitors had become accustomed to leaving their cars ­there. They had also become accustomed to dumping their trash ­there. Fortunately, no one suggested making it a public dump. This ­isn’t to say that ­there is no need for public parking. But did a residential neighborhood with a half-­dozen restaurants ­really need 274 parking spaces? Without the help of the Spring Garden group, this block in the Fairmount neighborhood might have been so much more. Given all the public money that has been spent ­there, it should have been.

An Obsession with Parking Threatens a Center City Block March 20, 2000 What would you think about someone who wanted to build a ­house on a lot that was too small, but got around the prob­lem by suspending a second-­ floor bedroom in the air over a neighbor’s yard? Ridicu­lous, right? ­Couldn’t happen, right? Wrong. That is pretty much what developer Wayne Spilove intends to do if he wins a zoning variance to erect a twelve-­story parking garage on the 1600 block of Sansom Street. But instead of infringing on a neighbor’s property, the garage would jut over a public street.

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­After all t­ hese months of debate over the merits of putting another parking lot on quirky Sansom, it turns out that Spilove ­doesn’t have quite enough land to build a garage—­rather, to build a profitable garage. The site is too shallow to accommodate a modern, self-­park garage, although it could prob­ably fit the kind of garage where a valet parks your car. But valet parking is not Spilove’s ambition, as he told me during an interview last week at his pent­house office near Ritten­house Square. Given the high ­labor costs, he explained, a valet garage was a guaranteed money loser. Spilove’s new spokesman, Kevin Feeley, formerly Ed Rendell’s representative, nodded solemnly in agreement. Usually when the numbers d­ on’t add up, proj­ects ­don’t get built. However, Spilove, who happens to be the head of the city’s Historical Commission, simply asked City Council last spring to give him air rights over Stock Exchange Place, the narrow ser­vice street between Chestnut and Sansom Streets, enabling him to enlarge his sixty-­five-­foot-­deep site. Council held two public hearings, but no members of the public attended; two bills giving him air rights ­were passed unanimously. If Spilove gets other approvals, he would be allowed to extend the garage nine feet, eleven inches beyond his property line, starting from the second level up to the top of the structure. It’s just enough room to squeeze in the wider parking spaces and more generous ramps a self-­park garage requires. Encroachments on public sidewalks and streets ­aren’t new. But usually they involve awnings, cafes, or other temporary features. Spilove’s overhang ­will be an eleven-­story-­high bulge that plunges Stock Exchange Place into permanent gloom. To make up for the loss of natu­ral light, Spilove has promised to illuminate the extension. True, few p­ eople walk on the narrow street, but ­there are other public issues ­here. By making it pos­si­ble to build a garage in a location where it’s not profitable, Council has skewed the real estate market. Renovation is no longer a competitive option. That’s a terrible shame. The 10 Sansom Street properties endangered by the garage plan may not be premier architectural specimens, but their continued existence is vital if Philadelphia is ­going to survive as a city—as opposed to a shopping center surrounded by parking garages. ­These lots are eating proportionally more land, displacing buildings where ­people used to live, work, and shop.



Suburbanizing the City 25

That makes us all poorer. Brendan Gill, the late New Yorker writer, believed that “the buildings, streets, parks and monuments that we have inherited—­and not merely the best of them, mind you, but rather the most characteristic—­nourish us from one ordinary day to the next and so become indispensable to our well-­being.” Spilove c­ ounters that Center City also needs parking for its well-­being. Following that logic, the city’s Parking Authority ­will seek zoning approval ­today for a high-­rise garage on Ritten­house Square, on a site that seems far better suited for an apartment building. Th ­ ese ­aren’t the only garages planned in the vicinity ­either. But does anybody ­really know how much parking is needed, or where it’s needed, or what Philadelphia would have to sacrifice to provide it? No. But ­there could be answers soon, ones based on fact. At the request of Councilman Darrell Clarke, the city’s Planning Commission is working on the issue. So why rush now? Providing parking is ­going to cost Philadelphia a lot. U ­ ntil we know the real tab, let’s have a moratorium on new garages.

Let’s Not Strip-­M aul a Promising District January 26, 2001 Big-­box stores are a one-­size-­fits-­all form of architecture. ­These generic sheds are designed to rule the suburban highways from Cherry Hill to Beverly Hills. So why is Philadelphia encouraging a developer to build one of ­these mega strip malls in the m ­ iddle of the quirky, up-­and-­coming Northern Liberties loft district? Perhaps the proponents of the Schmidt Plaza proj­ect on Girard Ave­nue at Second Street d­ on’t understand what makes a successful urban neighborhood successful, despite excellent models in nearby Old City and Manayunk. Northern Liberties ­hasn’t reached their level yet, but it’s getting ­there. It has all the hallmarks of a comeback neighborhood: art galleries, restaurants, distinctive local bars, as well as that key development tool—­cafes where you can get decent espresso. Although ­people have been talking about Northern Liberties’ revival for two de­cades, Realtors say it has fi­nally achieved a critical mass. Even long-­suffering Girard Ave­nue is perking up. It is now home to the hottest nightclub in town, the Aqua Lounge; a bakery; a folk-­rock club; a

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Mexican restaurant; and an Albanian grocery store. It’s hard to imagine that a suburban-­style retail strip with a 1,100-­car parking lot is ­going to add to Northern Liberties’ eclectic charm. Th ­ ose big-­box strips are known in the business as “power centers.” And right now, a power center is exactly what developer Bart Blatstein plans to build on the sixteen-­acre tract where the former C. Schmidt & Sons Brewery used to stand. Blatstein has done the neighborhood a ser­vice by tearing down the main part of the derelict brewery complex, but his vision for its replacement still needs work. ­Because no tenants have been signed, ­there is still time to alter the proj­ect. Blatstein says he wants to reprise his RiverView Plaza shopping center on Columbus Boulevard, which includes a multiplex theater and a large Staples office-­supply store. The difference is that the RiverView is located on a highway strip that is separated from the surrounding neighborhood, while Schmidt Plaza bumps right up against residences. In one scheme prepared by J.  K. Roller Architects, the loading docks would face a block of stalwart row­houses that have weathered the hemorrhage of Northern Liberties’ industrial base. Blatstein is talking about bringing in Kmart as a tenant, as well as a supermarket. But the Schmidt site is more than six blocks from Delaware Ave­nue and the I-95 interchange, quite a distance for a shopping center that hopes to fill a 1,100-­car lot. ­Because the site has only a tiny toehold on Girard Ave­nue, the area’s main thoroughfare, Blatstein w ­ ill have to create a sprawling asphalt desert along Second Street to fit in the parking. ­Because the looming Schmidt’s Brewery was an eyesore for so long, the proj­ect has received tremendous support from Philadelphia officials. Councilman Frank DiCicco sponsored legislation to give Blatstein an $8 million tax-­subsidized loan through the city’s Tax Incremental Financing program. Mayor Street kicked off de­mo­li­tion in August by knocking out the first brick. Their view is that anything built on the site is better than what was ­there before. But that sort of thinking is a way of excusing the city from d­ oing any serious planning in Northern Liberties. The city is encouraging a car-­dependent development on the site at the very same time it is spending $150,000 on streetscape improvements to make Girard Ave­nue more pedestrian-­friendly. You c­ an’t have a ­giant parking lot and a nice place to stroll at the same time.



Suburbanizing the City 27

Even DiCicco now seems less enthusiastic about the proposed strip mall. “I never shop in big-­box stores like Home Depot. I always patronize the neighborhood hardware store, even if I have to pay a few dollars more,” he told me, before g­ oing on to rue the continuing suburbanization of Philadelphia’s landscape. He said he supported the proj­ect only ­because he ­didn’t see other ­viable options for the site. But local residents can sure think of a few. In keeping with Blatstein’s plan to turn the historic Boone school on the edge of the site into loft apartments, architect Timothy McDonald has suggested that the developer also preserve Schmidt’s original brew­house, a once-­elegant relic of Philadelphia’s beer-­making past. The brew­house is the only building on the Schmidt site still standing, although it is slated for de­mo­li­tion. With its dramatic four-­story atrium, McDonald believes the building could make a fine location for a brewpub. Schmidt’s brew­house is one of the last remaining buildings by architect Otto C. Wolf, who designed industrial buildings to look like small ­temples. Preserving the distinctive building would prevent Blatstein’s development from being just another anonymous shopping center. With the brew­house and the school framing the site, all sorts of possibilities emerge. What about combining a small-­scale retail complex with new loft-­style apartments? The American Street Empowerment Zone is now considering giving Blatstein a low-­interest loan to help finance the development. But its officials are deeply concerned about what a vast strip mall would do to the neighborhood. They plan to ask Blatstein to revise his design as a condition of the loan. That is a fine idea. For all the money Philadelphia is putting into this proj­ ect, taxpayers deserve to get something that looks as if it belongs in a city.

Manayunk the Fash­ion­a ble Plays Up Its Gritty Past March 6, 2002 ­There are prob­ably hundreds of old, distinctive small towns around Amer­ i­ca where the ­recipe for urban revitalization includes a mix of Victorian street lamps, tasteful wooden signs, and perky flower boxes.

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Manayunk is not one of them. The once-­gritty Philadelphia mill town, which has reinvented itself as an oasis of chic, has just completed an ambitious $3 million redecoration of its Main Street business district, and the look is as far from “Ye Olde Small Town” as anyone could imagine. Designed by the late Steve Izenour, one of the trio of Philadelphia architects who hailed billboards and strip stores in the groundbreaking Learning from Las Vegas, Manayunk’s new streetscape frankly celebrates its industrial, working-­class heritage. But for t­ hose who can still recall the neighborhood’s days as a rough, dye-­spattered mill town, the cele­bration may be just a ­little too frank. “It reminds me of Happy Days. It reminds me of something old,” said Amy Angelo, a native “Yunker,” sounding as if she w ­ ere in pain. “It looks terrible, hideous.” Many old-­time Yunkers like Angelo can live with the modernist-­white street lamps, whose conical shades would be at home on a factory floor—or an architect’s desk. They ­don’t mind the new, utilitarian concrete sidewalks on Main Street, softened only by the merest strip of gray, square Belgian block. And no one is complaining about the decision to remove the redbrick pavers from the crosswalks ­because they lack “honesty.” What they ­don’t get is The Sign. Hovering at the bottom of Manayunk’s hill where Main Street meets Ridge Ave­nue, the sign offers motorists a big, bright, gaudy “Welcome to Main Street, Manayunk,” punctuated by a large yellow arrow that points the way to the neighborhood’s fash­ion­able restaurants and boutiques. On the reverse side, in a script borrowed from a ’50s soda fountain, are the words “Come Again.” The resemblance to a billboard is fully intentional. Izenour, who loved the visual cacophony of the Vegas strip, used the clashing colors and oddly scaled typeface that are the hallmark of his firm, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates. Joel Katz, a frequent visitor to Manayunk and one of Philadelphia’s premier graphic designers, was shocked by the sign’s combination of red, yellow, and green. “Its typography is insensitive, its colors garish, its structural ele­ments inelegant,” Katz wrote in an email. “Why,” Angelo asked, “­couldn’t they put a nice wooden sign ­there? . . . ​This one looks like something you would see on the boardwalk in Wildwood.”



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Precisely, Izenour would have said. For him, Wildwood’s glitzy neon and ’50s honky-­tonk architecture ­were a source of inspiration. ­Because Izenour, a beloved figure who died suddenly in August at sixty-­ one, is no longer ­here to defend his sign, his partners have been ­doing it for him. “It’s not supposed to be a pretty sign,” internationally renowned architect Robert Venturi said during last week’s ribbon cutting. “History shows that the greatest art was not well-­liked at first.” Indeed, the sign was meant to be the opposite of the typical quaint entry marker, said Kay Smith, executive director of the Manayunk Development Corp., which commissioned the city-­funded streetscape proj­ect. Although the conversion of Manayunk’s mills and modest row­houses into lofts and boutiques revived the fading neighborhood, she said, it has also made Main Street look like dozens of other gentrified places. The sign, the industrial street lamps, and the no-­nonsense paving are all part of a sophisticated branding campaign designed to help Manayunk stand out from the pack of Victorian wannabes. “You see a lot of downtowns that have become cute,” Smith explained. “It becomes hard for ­people to separate one from another. Steve reminded us that ­we’re not cute. ­We’re an industrial mill town”—­hence a sign that borrows from the era of lunch c­ ounters and diners rather than gas lamps and horse-­drawn carriages. Since the sign went up, it has won its share of fans. “I like the sign,” declared Daniela Voith, a Center City architect who has lived in Manayunk for twenty years. “And I’m glad that Venturi, Scott Brown are making their presence known on Main Street.” Venturi and his partner, Denise Scott Brown, opened their Main Street office in 1980, before Manayunk became a yuppie hub. They picked the location ­because they ­were able to buy their building cheap and ­because they w ­ ere already famous for the slogan “Main Street is almost all right.” But despite their world reputation, their work has been mostly rejected in their hometown. The sign is their biggest local statement in a de­cade. A few critics have even learned to love the sign. Dan Neducsin, Manayunk’s biggest landlord, admits he was “not in love with the sign” at first. “I  was the one who wanted the Victorian gaslights. Then, ­after listening to Steve, I realized, ‘Why fake it.’ They ­were never ­here before. Why should they be ­here now?”

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For many, the sign’s eye-­catching design is beside the point. More impor­ tant is that it clarifies a difficult intersection. “It gets your attention,” said Ernie Repice, a Bala Cynwyd financial planner who drove across the Schuylkill this week to lunch in Manayunk. “Now I can fi­nally figure out where I’m g­ oing.”

Failure of Latest Penn’s Landing Plan Offers Hope for Something Better August 9, 2002 ­Things are looking up at Penn’s Landing. Within the next three weeks, Melvin Simon is expected to confirm that his much-­hyped riverside shopping mall is dead. That proj­ect was a clumsy attempt to privatize one of Philadelphia’s most valuable public spaces on the Delaware waterfront. What w ­ ere Philadelphia officials thinking in the booming ’90s when they begged the man who built the Mall of Amer­i­ca to plunk a Mini-­Me version onto the shore of one of the Northeast’s most magnificent rivers? Had Simon succeeded, Penn’s Landing would have been completely covered by an anywhere retail box and a six-­story garage—­all euphemistically dubbed a ­family entertainment center. In the four-­decade strug­gle to do something—­anything!—­with Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia has lost its way. Early plans envisioned a “Riverwalk” promenade stretching from Spring Garden Street to Washington Ave­nue, along with housing, offices, and shops. By the time the city became infatuated with Simon’s mall, both the Riverwalk and the river had been forgotten; in Simon’s renderings, the mall actually turns its back on the ­water. Like a drunk sobering up from a long binge, Philadelphia now has an opportunity to look at the situation with self-­critical eyes. The biggest impediment to recovery, in my view, is the city’s case of Baltimore-­envy. For years, we have deluded ourselves into believing that we could replicate the Inner Harbor’s commercial and tourist attractions on Penn’s Landing. But Baltimore is more fortunate in its geography. Its waterfront is an integral part of downtown, and that gives Inner Harbor businesses a base of office workers and residents. Penn’s Landing lacks such a permanent population b­ ecause it is cut off from Center City by the double divide of I-95 and the six-­lane Columbus Boulevard. Our waterfront shopping mall would have to rely almost entirely on visitors coming by car.



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A better model for Philadelphia is the landfill site along Manhattan’s Hudson River now called Battery Park City. It is separated from the action by the West Street highway, yet Battery Park City has become a thriving residential and office neighborhood, one that has withstood the September  11 attacks on the nearby Twin Towers. The development succeeded partly ­because it forged new street connections to Lower Manhattan. But Battery Park City also brought outsiders in by making its waterfront esplanade an attractive public amenity for the w ­ hole city. It’s a real place that also happens to attract tourists. When word of the Simon proj­ect’s collapse started to leak out, my first thought was that Penn’s Landing was better off the way it used to be, when it was a public venue for outdoor concerts and festivals. The G ­ reat Plaza and amphitheater, designed by Gerald M. Cope in 1986, was a pleasant place to enjoy the river. But while the old, public Penn’s Landing may have been far superior to Simon’s private mall, a plaza and amphitheater ­aren’t enough. Public spaces work best when they are part of neighborhoods and when they have a constituency to use them and watch over them. Developing Penn’s Landing as a Battery Park–­style neighborhood would provide the population base it needs to survive. Indeed, in the five years since Simon’s mall was first proposed, the area has already become more residential with the construction of Hyatt ­Hotel and the Dockside apartments. Both have the potential to bring in p­ eople, despite their weak architecture and Dockside’s tenuous connections to Penn’s Landing. The trend h­ asn’t escaped local developer Bart Blatstein, who has been shopping around a mixed-­use proposal for Penn’s Landing that includes 740 residential units, as well as retail, office space, and parking. Blatstein is primarily known for his shopping centers on Columbus Boulevard, so he’s a long shot to be selected as Simon’s replacement. Yet his proposal includes some good ideas that are worth discussing. The architectural renderings, produced by Richard Gelber of Shapiro Petrauskas Gelber, have a few too many froufrou carnival details, particularly the kitschy Spanish Steps. But they also show how Penn’s Landing could be laid out with stepped levels of apartments, town­houses, offices, and retail spaces. Unlike the inward-­looking Simon plan, Blatstein envisions two one-­story rows of retail shops that would open out onto streetlike spaces and flow into a public promenade.

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­There are several ­things that the city, Penn’s Landing Development Corp., and the Delaware River Port Authority could do to make the area a more hospitable place to live. Like Battery Park City, Penn’s Landing would benefit from better connections to the city across the two highways. Despite the de­cades of development plans, ­there has never been a serious effort to extend city streets like Market, Walnut, and South for car traffic. Since PennDOT rebuilt Columbus Boulevard into a six-­lane highway several years ago, that road has widened the gulf. If it w ­ ere given a more urban scale, with four traffic lanes, wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and on-­street parking, Penn’s Landing ­wouldn’t feel quite so far away. Of course, t­ hese ­things cost money. One way to pay for t­ hese improvements would be to convince the Delaware River Port Authority to stop building the $34 million tram across the Delaware and divert part of the money to street improvements. So far, only the tram’s towers have been built. Conceived as an accessory to the Simon proj­ect, the tram now makes ­little sense. In fact, it made ­little sense from the start. The tramcars carry only eight ­people at a time, and the wide arc of the Delaware promises that passengers ­will have a wobbly ­ride. According to Car­ter Craft, the program director at the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, such trams do l­ ittle to enhance urban waterfronts and are notoriously unreliable and expensive to operate. The tram is ­really a carnival ­ride, but fortunately the carnival has left town. If Penn’s Landing is to become a real place, it has to move on from ­there, with the river as its guide.

Blank Win­dows, Bland Sidewalks June 13, 2003 Once, it was a well-­traveled retail corner, but now the brass-­trimmed shop win­dows are obscured with a plastic so opaque that you ­can’t see if ­there is a light on inside. ­There is only one functioning entrance, and when you step through the door, an ursine security guard bares his teeth in greeting. This would be one of ­those seedy check-­cashing places in the half-­ abandoned urban hinterlands, right? Or, given our post-9/11 anx­i­eties, perhaps it is a high-­security government office?



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Actually, it’s Walgreens’ latest foray into downtown Philadelphia. The drugstore’s Center City flagship has just taken up residence on JFK Boulevard at Seventeenth Street, in the marble-­clad shop fronts of the art deco–­ style Suburban Station, a transit crossroads that accommodates 50,000 commuters each weekday a mere two blocks from City Hall. In theory, the national chain could have left the gracious Suburban Station win­dows clear to tempt you with its wares. Or if it concluded that it needed all that wall space for shelves, it might have covered the win­dows but installed attractive displays of shampoos, face creams, and hair dryers to put you in the mood for self-­improvement. Instead, the face that Walgreens chose to pre­sent to the public is an ominous and an increasingly common one. Call it the “­under siege” look. Batten the hatches, secure all entry points. One moment, ­you’re sauntering past the new luxury apartments at the Phoenix and the new urbane sidewalk ­tables at Marathon Grill, the Corner Bakery Cafe, and Tir Na Nog restaurant. The next, ­you’re hunkering by an intimidating fortress wall, experiencing one of ­those Beckettian moments when it feels as if anything could go wrong. Why continue? I c­ an’t believe that blank win­dows are good for business, although chain-­ store officials insist they have no detrimental effect. But they certainly are bad for downtowns. Blank-­walled buildings deaden city sidewalks b­ ecause ­there is nothing to excite the eye or the ear. Covered win­dows make streetscapes more dangerous ­because fewer ­people can see and be seen. Blank walls send a message that the usual bonds of civility have broken down in the one place we all share: the public sidewalk. Yet blank walls are proliferating in Philadelphia at an alarming rate. One block east of  Walgreens, at Sixteenth Street, 7-­Eleven opened a store with win­dows frosted halfway up, well above eye level. You c­ an’t see what’s ­going on inside the store. The last t­ hing you want to do is open the door and find out. Having colonized Amer­i­ca’s highways with 5,300 stores, 7-­Eleven is now pushing to do the same in the nation’s cities, said Cynthia Baker, the com­ pany’s public relations man­ag­er. Philadelphia is high on its list. It has just opened stores at the key intersections of Twelfth and Chestnut and Eighth and Walnut. More are on the way, including a proposed store at Eigh­teenth

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and Chestnut Streets. “We’ve discovered that smaller, urban stores can be just as profitable in absolute terms” as suburban stores, Baker said. One of the unfortunate t­ hings about con­ve­nience stores is that they thrive on consistency, taking l­ ittle notice of their surroundings. B ­ ecause suburban 7-­Eleven stores frost their win­dows, Baker says, urban ones ­will too. But that ­doesn’t quite explain why con­ve­nience stores d­ on’t also dress up the part of the win­dow facing the street—an old retail tradition. Margaret  M. McCauley, the director of Kravco’s Downtown Works, a retail broker specializing in urban areas, has one explanation: the chains ­don’t care, and neither do their landlords. On average, chain stores pay about one-­third more rent than in­de­pen­dent stores. “It costs money to maintain win­dow displays, to keep them clean and change the merchandise. ­These stores feel ­they’re so well branded that they ­don’t have to do that. They d­ on’t care how they look on the street,” McCauley explained. Seeing blank win­dows on Chestnut Street—­Philadelphia’s traditional shopping street—­upsets McCauley so much that she recently joined the city Commerce Department and the Center City District in protesting the approval of the 7-­Eleven at the Twelfth Street corner. The Zoning Board of Adjustment approved it anyway. Turning inward is not only a private, corporate ­thing. The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts frosted its box office win­dow on Spruce Street. That opaque win­dow is the result of a series of specific design decisions that reflect general discomfort with the unpredictable hubbub of urban life. Since the September  11 terrorist attacks, the unease has grown exponentially. Now the National Park Ser­vice wants to enclose In­de­pen­dence Mall within a high fence, regulating access to the nation’s birthplace the same way shopping malls control visitors. Yet being out in public and freely strolling city streets are as impor­tant to American democracy as our founding princi­ples. Why do red-­blooded Americans love to shop? It’s not only to get more stuff. The desire to shop and mingle on a public street springs from the best of demo­cratic urges. And democracy should be transparent.



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Bring ­People, Not Parking, to Ritten­house August 22, 2003 Ritten­house Square and Washington Square are so similar in appearance and history that you just c­ an’t help comparing them. Both started out as corner parks in Billy Penn’s original Philadelphia Street grid. Both are bordered by tony apartment ­houses. Both serve as gateways to Walnut Street shops. And now, both of t­hese gracious public spaces are the settings for high-­visibility real-­estate ventures. So why is one square getting a glitzy apartment tower and the other a common garage? The answer has nothing to do with the relative merits of the two shady parks. The tale of the two squares is instead a primer on how Philadelphia-­ style po­liti­cal wheeling and dealing distorts the city’s real estate market—­ and threatens to squander the main draw of one of Amer­ic­ a’s most livable downtowns. On Washington Square, we have been treated during this long, soggy summer to the spectacular rise of a forty-­seven-­story apartment building, the St. James. The proj­ect ­will invigorate the area with hundreds of new residents, while preserving several historic buildings that face the square and Walnut Street. It is being built by a private development com­pany, which is risking its money on the luxury rental. Ritten­house Square, meanwhile, is about to see the construction of a garage for 500-­plus cars that is supposed to include a movie theater, a restaurant, and shops. (Cross your fin­gers, please!) Three historic buildings ­will have to be sacrificed to make way for the parking deck. It is being built by the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which is risking nearly $40 million of your money. Never mind that the authority has no signed contracts yet with a movie theater operator or other tenants. Forget, too, that a co­ali­tion of residents, businesses, and churches has been in court since 2000 trying to block the garage. The authority, which is now Republican-­controlled, is determined to forge ahead. On Tuesday, it w ­ ill ask the Historical Commission’s architectural review group for permission to demolish the three historic buildings, including the exuberantly tiled Ritten­house Coffee Shop and a mid-­rise apartment h­ ouse.

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You ­don’t have to be a trained real-­estate appraiser to figure out that the St. James apartments ­will do more good for Washington Square’s property values than this garage ­will do for Ritten­house Square’s. Given the extra automobile traffic the garage w ­ ill generate, it seems reasonable to assume that the neighborhood’s quality of life ­will also decline. Why would anyone—­particularly a public agency—do such a t­hing to one of the loveliest urban parks in Amer­i­ca? Ritten­house Square is not merely a refuge for its elite neighborhood. It functions as a receiving room for the entire city by serving as a venue for concerts, picnics, dog-­walking, snowman-­building, and people-­watching. If anything, Ritten­house Square is overused by the public and underfunded by the city. Unlike the St. James apartments, which w ­ ill enlarge the constituency of caring residents for Washington Square, the Ritten­house garage ­will add more stress to this beloved public space. Perhaps the garage would be less objectionable if it came to the square as a purely market-­driven proj­ect. But the current development is the botched legacy of the Rendell administration’s effort to please several well-­connected campaign contributors. ­Here’s what happened, according to interviews and previous newspaper reports. ­After a fire destroyed a two-­screen movie theater on the 1900 block of  Walnut Street in 1994, a Blue Bell developer called Moreland Investments began to assem­ble property around the site. Moreland, which is associated with the Goldenberg Group—­and which partnered with Ken Goldenberg in the failed DisneyQuest proj­ect at Eighth and Market Streets—­wanted to build a ­hotel or an apartment building on the square, but it was unable to secure financing for the proj­ect. So the Goldenberg gang went to Mayor Ed Rendell for help. The mayor sent in the Parking Authority, which has the ability to raise money through tax-­exempt bonds. In December 1997, the Parking Authority used $10 million in bond money to buy the one-­acre site that Moreland had assembled between Walnut and Sansom Streets. (By coincidence, Goldenberg contributed $20,000 to Rendell’s campaign fund and $15,000 to John Street’s the following month.) The Parking Authority then hired Wallace Roberts & Todd to do some preliminary designs for a mixed-­use development. Their drawings looked a lot like the St. James: they showed a high-­rise tower perched on a parking deck.



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By 1999, the Parking Authority concluded that neighborhood opposition to a tower would be too g­ reat and de­cided to concentrate on the parking. ­Because city law requires ground-­floor retail in all Center City garages, the authority made room for a ten-­screen movie theater and a restaurant in the part of the garage facing Ritten­house Square. Meanwhile, Moreland was quietly dropped from the proj­ect. At least Moreland and Goldenberg understood that Ritten­house Square is too valuable an address for just a garage, even one built around a movie theater. They a­ ren’t the only ones who think the site is a natu­ral for an apartment building. So does Joseph  M. Egan  Jr., the Republican stalwart who was recently appointed head of the Parking Authority. In an interview this week, Egan called the garage site “the best residential site in the city and one of the five best residential sites in the country.” What’s more, he said that a national developer has approached him about buying the property for an apartment tower similar to the St. James. So that’s g­ reat news for Ritten­house Square and Philadelphia, right? Wrong. Egan w ­ on’t sell. Why? The Parking Authority has already secured all the necessary zoning approvals and has spent millions on design work and ­legal fees. Changing the design would cost millions more and take years to win approval. Most impor­tant, Egan said, the authority signed an agreement with the Center City Residents Association promising that it ­wouldn’t build a high-­rise on the site. All that, Egan argued, obliges the Parking Authority to stick with the program. The mind boggles. The head of the resident’s organ­ization, Lou Coffey, acknowledged that his group did oppose the tower in 2001, but only a­ fter lengthy negotiations aimed at reducing the size and bulk of the garage. He told me that his group actually prefers to see apartments and would be happy to reopen discussions. “We’ve asked the Parking Authority for years to tell us what’s g­ oing on, and we never hear from them,” Coffey complained. The Ritten­house garage clearly had a bad beginning, but who says it has to have a bad end? Egan is right in saying that redesigning the proj­ect w ­ ill be expensive and time-­consuming. But what’s the rush? The authority’s site is the last available building lot on Ritten­house Square. A concrete garage may not be forever, but nearly so. Egan only has to look at the tower rising over Washington Square to find the way to go on Ritten­house Square.

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Making an Old Viaduct Vis­i­ble Again February 20, 2004 Coming upon the Reading Viaduct in the Loft District north of Vine Street is a l­ ittle like stumbling upon some industrial-­age Angkor Wat. Its steel rails have all but dis­appeared inside a jungle shroud. Its im­mense stones are blackened with soot from factories that the living no longer recall. You sense that this behemoth once belonged to a ­great civilization, even if its purpose now seems obscure. In fact, the decaying commuter-­rail trestle was rendered obsolete only twenty years ago by the opening of the train tunnel ­under the Gallery mall. Other than a short piece that was torn down to make room for the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the viaduct was left standing. De­mo­li­tion proved too expensive. Nowadays, no one in the fledgling Loft District—­the neighborhood east of Broad Street between Vine and Spring Garden—­would ever suggest getting rid of the viaduct’s remaining half-­mile. The issue is how to preserve it. Nature has already staked its claim, turning the stone-­and-­steel land bridge into an unlikely and wildly overgrown “ribbon park.” The Loft District’s urban pioneers, who have been busy with their own reclamation of the area’s abandoned factories, want to build on nature’s work. They ­aren’t yet sure how to proceed, says John Struble, a furniture-­maker who recently acquired a former machine shop that cleaves to the side of the viaduct near Eleventh Street. So Struble, along with painter Sarah McEneaney, have formed a nonprofit group called the Reading Viaduct Proj­ect to explore the possibilities. McEneaney, who has lived in the Loft District long enough to have boarded trains at the viaduct’s old Spring Garden stop, has come to love the trestle as much for its panoramic vistas as for its looming medieval presence. The viaduct frequently appears in her paintings. If you climb carefully up the viaduct—­through the thick underbrush, heaps of trash, and occasional homeless person’s campsite—­you soon discover that the railroad aerie offers a view of Philadelphia unlike anywhere ­else. The towers of Center City gleam on the horizon like a faraway Oz. Somehow the harsh industrial landscape on its fringes makes the viaduct feel like a serene oasis rather than a gritty outpost.



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­Those atmospheric qualities also caught the imagination of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. ­Earlier this month, the school held a four-­day brainstorming session to come up with new uses for the old trestle, which runs diagonally from Eleventh and Vine Streets to Ninth Street and Fairmount Ave­nue, with a 1,000-­foot-­long westward spur at Noble Street. The Penn design teams ­were partly inspired by Paris’s success in transforming an elevated train trestle near the Place de la Bastille into an elegant, 2.4-­mile-­long landscaped path called the Promenade Plantee. Such obsolete viaducts are fast being transformed into sky parks in cities around the world. New York City is working on plans to convert Manhattan’s High Line, which runs through Chelsea, into an elevated park. In Philadelphia, the challenge ­will be finding government support and money for a park in an area with fewer than a thousand residents. The viaduct ­will require a thorough environmental scrubbing before it can be opened to the public. By the time the last commuter trains trundled out of the old Reading Terminal in 1984, the viaduct’s four tracks ­were sodden with PCBs and other contaminants. Struble and McEneaney must also deal with the Reading Com­pany, which still owns the viaduct. Some of the best ideas that emerged from the Penn brainstorming session w ­ ere the simplest. One team suggested that the Reading Viaduct Proj­ect should start off by installing architectural lighting on the trestle, both to highlight its beauty and to make p­ eople feel safer walking through the space. Its large, imposing walls could be used to show movies in the summertime. Such events could help raise the viaduct’s visibility among Philadelphians. McEneaney and Struble are also taking their cues from the success of several local “rails to trails” proj­ects. Just as a new Schuylkill River recreation path is expected to lure residents and business to the southeastern edge of Center City, they believe a park atop the Reading Viaduct path could help populate the Loft District. But Struble said he sees the viaduct as an amenity for all Philadelphians. “I ­don’t think I should be the one to decide what it should be,” he said as he picked his way along the tracks in the winter sunshine. “Every­one should think about it.”

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Waterfront Needs Policy, Not Politics February 25, 2005 This time, Mayor Street told Philadelphians, the city was g­ oing to do Penn’s Landing right. This time, the city was ­going to select a waterfront developer through an open, deliberative, professional process—­not by mayoral fiat or a backroom deal. This time, policy was ­going to trump politics. What dopes—we convinced ourselves it was true. Throughout the long developer competition that began in December 2002 and ended in October 2004 with the thud of no decision, Philadelphians threw themselves into the debate over the Delaware waterfront’s ­future with a civic vigor that surprised hardened pols. Hundreds of p­ eople came out for eve­ning meetings. They detailed their ideas in passionate emails on a city-­sponsored website. Architects and planners sketched waterfront scenarios late into the night. Inspired by the public’s enthusiasm, some developers spent six figures on full-­scale color proposals. But thanks to the wiretap transcripts released last week in the federal corruption probe, we can no longer ignore the obvious: we ­were all scammed—­ the public, the participants, and, yes, even the developers. And let’s not forget the city employees who worked on waterfront development. They too ­were scammed. Based on conversations recorded by the FBI, the Penn’s Landing competition appears to have been nothing more than a big-­time heist pulled off in broad daylight. The pro­cess was apparently drawn out to extract campaign contributions from the hopeful developers. The legacy of that sham stares us in the face e­ very time we pass by the forlorn Delaware River parking lot at the foot of Market Street, a spot that should be Philadelphia’s pride. The transcripts—­which come from a conversation between Leonard Ross, head of Mayor Street’s Penn’s Landing developer-­selection committee, and Ronald  A. White, an impor­tant Street campaign fundraiser—­ suggest the so-­called competition was used to generate contributions in advance of the November 2003 mayoral election. The original group of nine developers was slowly winnowed to seven, then four, and fi­nally two in what must be the longest se­lection pro­cess in municipal history—­twenty-­ two months. “I wanna make sure all t­hese other guys [i.e., developer candidates] . . . ​ are gonna come to a few of our fundraisers,” Ross explained in a taped con-



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versation on April 1, 2003. “If we eliminate them too soon, then we ­don’t get their . . .” Ross ­didn’t finish, but it’s a good guess that the next word was g­ oing to be “money.” “Right,” White interrupted. “Yeah, I got you. Yeah.” It’s not like we d­ on’t know how sausage gets made. But watching the grinder with our own eyes still ­isn’t pretty. Not only does the competition appear to have been purposely protracted, but the transcript raises the possibility that one developer had an inside track. Bart Blatstein “was gonna be OK,” Ross told White, who was also a member of Blatstein’s Penn’s Landing development team. That suggests the head of the se­lection committee had made a decision about the developer’s role at the waterfront even before the competition was off the ground. This week, Blatstein said he knew nothing about this conversation: “It’s news to me.” Ross ­isn’t a mere nobody who happened to gum up the works. He and Street practiced law together for eight years before the mayor’s election in 2000. Street appointed Ross to the board of Penn’s Landing Corp. and then to the developer-­selection committee. Despite the suggestion of impropriety in the FBI transcripts, first reported in the Inquirer last week, t­ here has been no call for Ross to resign from the Penn’s Landing Corp. board. Street has often reminded us that he was the first city leader in three de­cades to include the public in a discussion about the waterfront’s ­future. But what good is a seat at the ­table when the real conversation is taking place in another room? From the start, many ­people—­including this writer—­suspected the Penn’s Landing competition was a charade. For reasons that ­were never adequately explained, Street refused to prepare a city plan for Penn’s Landing before launching the competition. Even though the nation’s largest retail developer, Simon Property Group, had failed to realize a major proj­ect at Penn’s Landing in 2002, Street rushed to find a replacement. He insisted ­there was no reason to conduct a planning postmortem on the problematic thirteen-­acre site. Yet Simon’s exit was no fluke: it was the sixth major developer to abandon Penn’s Landing since 1973. During the same period, other American cities ­were conducting painstaking development studies and improving infrastructure along their

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waterfronts. Now even small cities from Yonkers to Tacoma are able to offer their residents pleasant walking paths, cultural amenities, housing, and cafes along the ­water’s edge. The heart of Penn’s Landing remains a crumbled expanse of asphalt. That’s not Street’s fault, but his aversion to planning has set waterfront development back years. We d­ on’t know the extent, if any, of Street’s involvement with Ross and White in this case. Street has said he has done nothing wrong, and federal investigators have said repeatedly that the mayor is not likely to be charged with any illegality. But you ­don’t have to commit a crime to govern badly. It is pretty clear that the kind of pay-­to-­play culture that exists in Philadelphia has discouraged serious policy-­making and planning. The prob­lem with planning is that it hems politicians in and inhibits them from the kind of shoot-­from-­ the-­hip Penn’s Landing deal that former Mayor Ed Rendell did with Simon. If Street had agreed to a master plan for Penn’s Landing, it would have been harder to use it as a po­liti­cal poker chip. The federal corruption investigation w ­ ill continue for a long time, and so ­will the fallout on the waterfront. And the stakes are bigger than just Penn’s Landing. Private developers have been busy divvying up the eighteen-­mile-­ long Delaware waterfront for every­thing from 1,000-­unit town­house developments to gated apartment complexes to sprawling casinos. The Street administration points to ­these proj­ects as success stories. But ­unless the city comes up with a waterfront policy that protects public access to the river, the average Philadelphian ­isn’t g­ oing to benefit much from ­these isolated building proj­ects. Without a plan, Philadelphians risk losing the right to bike and stroll along the lush green edge of their historic riverfront. Prepare to be scammed again.

A New Skate Park to Love? May 6, 2005 Thanks to the federal government’s eavesdropping on Mayor Street’s email exchanges, we now know what a vital role the skateboarder vote played in his 2003 reelection campaign. With his opponent giving him grief for ban-



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ning the sport at LOVE Park, Street’s po­liti­cal advisers begged him to compromise and allow eve­ning access. The park’s granite tiers, ­after all, w ­ ere renowned worldwide among skateboarders. But the mayor replied he would not go soft on skateboarding. Then two months before the November vote, Street unexpectedly executed the po­liti­cal equivalent of a skateboarder’s hand-­plant: he promised to support a new “world-­class skateboarding fa­cil­i­ty” on the banks of the Schuylkill. ­Today that riverside site south of the Art Museum is as grassy as it ever was. But buoyed by the mayor’s promise—­and a $100,000 city grant—­ Philadelphia’s skateboard community has managed to complete two designs for LOVE Park’s long-­awaited replacement, both by the nonskateboarding Philadelphia architect Anthony Bracali. The skateboarders, ­under the mantle of Franklin’s Paine Skatepark Fund, intend to pre­sent a final version to the Fairmount Park Commission in June. ­After that, all they have to do is raise the $4 million necessary to build it, twice Street’s original estimate. It’s hard to look at Bracali’s designs without recalling the extreme debate that led Street to ban skateboarders in 2000 from LOVE Park, formally known as JFK Plaza, and to waste $1 million on a subpar renovation ­there. Before the grass medians, wooden benches, and sickly pink trash cans ­were installed, LOVE Park was skateboarding’s Fenway Park, a serendipitous arrangement of ledges, steps, and curves that just happened to be the most perfect arena for the popu­lar, street-­style skateboarding that Philly made famous. LOVE Park was that rare ­thing—an au­then­tic, homegrown attraction, the sort of place that other cities wished they had in their downtowns. As a skateboarding mecca, LOVE Park has taken on the mythical aura of an Atlantis. But as an idea, it lives on in new parks. This summer, skateboarders in Kettering, Ohio, expect to open the first street-­style skate plaza that is an unabashed love song to LOVE Park. Bracali’s two design variations, dubbed the Shard and the Spiral, also show the influence of LOVE Park, but they are not just copies of LOVE Park, which was designed in 1964 by Vincent Kling to cover an under­ground garage at the terminus of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Rather, they tweak the ele­ments that skateboarders loved, including the hard surfaces, level changes, and viewing platform, as well as a­ ctual granite benches sal­ vaged from LOVE Park’s renovation.

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The Spiral, as its name suggests, includes a circular ramp around a central platform that could be used as a multipurpose stage. The Shard radiates several distinct skating paths and is greener at the center. Even ­after two years of planning, it’s not clear why skateboarding should be more socially acceptable in a purpose-­built park than in its old location, especially given that LOVE Park is one of City Hall’s three contiguous and grossly underused plazas. Not only does the new skate park require a huge financial investment and duplication of infrastructure, but it ­will occupy one of the larger and prettier spots along the popu­lar new Schuylkill path. Though the skate site w ­ ill be an easy roll from Thirtieth Street Station, it ­can’t match JFK Plaza’s transit access. Still, that was the hand the skateboarders ­were dealt. To their credit, they have taken pains to design a park that is deferential to the path’s other users. As Jim Cavanagh, of Franklin’s Paine, likes to say, “I’m building a space where I can skateboard and my nonskateboarding friends can read a book.” So both of Bracali’s designs include landscape buffers between the path and the skateboarding areas. Both ­will create a useful paved walkway between the path, the parkway, and Eakins Oval. The skateboarders also plan to extend the sidewalk along a section of the parkway where none now exists—­something the city never both­ered to do. ­Because skateboarding is a very social sport, both designs offer plenty of nooks for hanging out. It would take an experienced skateboarder to evaluate the designs on the more technical points of the sport. Aficionados seem to prefer the Shard. But from an outsider’s perspective, the Spiral seems to offer a greater variety of skateboarding situations. I’m drawn to the Spiral, b­ ecause the idea of a per­for­mance stage overlooking the river is so appealing. That platform could also support an artwork as its centerpiece, just as Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture dominates JFK Plaza. Given the huge price tag associated with the skate park, the proj­ect ­will prob­ably require a corporate sponsor. How that sponsorship is handled is critical. So too is the quality of the skate park’s construction. Bracali wants to use as much granite as pos­si­ble, to replicate the conditions at LOVE Park. But granite is expensive, and it w ­ ill be tempting to substitute cheaper materials if fund­rais­ing falls short. The Schuylkill path, which is about to receive its final landscaping, is evolving into one of Philadelphia’s loveliest parks. At the same time, the skate park’s closest neighbor, the historic South Garden of Fairmount Park,



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is getting a much-­needed restoration. The skate park needs to work itself ­gently into that riverside landscape. The challenges ahead make a skateboarder’s frontside turn look easy, but fortunately the skate park’s supporters are ­eager to give the proj­ect a try.

Developers Fight Plan to Extend Streets to Riverfront October 5, 2007 It seems unlikely that many ­people out for a stroll on Market Street in Center City ever stop to ask themselves, “Should this street be ­here?” Market Street exists ­because Philadelphia does. Some, of course, w ­ ill recall that it was William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme who laid out Philadelphia’s brilliant, character-­defining street grid in 1683. But even ­those who forget their history know it’s their inalienable right to walk, saunter, jog, and drive along the city’s thoroughfares. If ­there is a consensus about anything in our country, it’s that city streets are public places. We can amble along Delancey Street and admire the Quaker mansions without having to worry that ­we’re trespassing on private property. Please excuse me for stating what seems obvious. It’s just that ­there are folks in Philadelphia who are trying to challenge the concept of ­free and open streets. Last month, zoning ­lawyer Michael Sklaroff, former city planner Craig Schelter, and a slew of developers launched what is shaping up as a gloves-­ off campaign to scuttle an eminently sensible proposal to extend the existing city street grid down to the edge of the Delaware River. The new street network would break up the central waterfront’s large, formerly industrial tracts into manageable blocks that could be developed into something resembling a real Philadelphia neighborhood. That recommendation is the centerpiece of a landmark plan for the waterfront that w ­ ill be introduced to the public November 14 at the Convention Center. ­Simple as it sounds, the streets proposal is key to transforming the riverfront into a livable place. But if you listen to Sklaroff and Schelter, you might think that the plan’s author, Penn Praxis, was plotting a socialist-­ style takeover of private property, with the venerable William Penn Foundation and City Hall in cahoots.

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In a recent letter to the city planning director, Sklaroff warned that imposing the street grid would be “a disastrous showstopper for waterfront development.” But he left it to Schelter, a former top planner who now hires himself out as an adviser to developers, to reveal the true ugliness b­ ehind that lawyerly warning. Speaking to a reporter a­ fter the September 20 meeting of Penn Praxis’s citizen’s advisory group, Schelter explained that “­there are a lot of ­people coming in from the suburbs who d­ on’t want the rest of the world walking through their proj­ect.” Sklaroff and Schelter see no reason developers ­shouldn’t be able to erect more gated communities on the Delaware like the hermetic Waterfront Square towers. It’s a good ­thing this pair ­wasn’t around to counsel Penn and Holme against laying down Philadelphia’s original street grid. If they had, we might well have a high fence encircling Society Hill. Penn Praxis ­couldn’t find a better model for the Delaware than William Penn’s plan. Like the long stretch of waterfront, Center City was already sprouting scattered new development when Philadelphia’s founder imposed his enlightened network of big boulevards and slender alleys. The existence of ­those settlements ­didn’t deter him from setting aside land for common use. He also marked off five big squares to be turned into public gardens. We revere Penn ­today as a demo­cratic visionary, but let’s not forget that he was also a canny developer. He recognized that the land grant he received from the king of ­England would be much more valuable if it ­were improved with the infrastructure of streets and parks. As anyone who has tried a hand at SimCity knows, you have to get your streets in first. Parks are the next step. Penn Praxis ­will recommend ten new or improved green spaces between Oregon and Allegheny Ave­nues. Of course, carving out new streets and parks costs money, and ­there ­will be questions about who pays. Penn Praxis director Harris Steinberg maintains that the city has the ­legal right to run public streets through private property, although the issue of compensation remains unclear. The city would prob­ably have to foot the bill for construction, but other municipalities have found clever financing methods to offset the expense. The Penn Praxis plan includes lots of pretty renderings, but keep in mind that ­those geometric grids of streets and blocks are what ­will make every­ thing ­else work. Think of city streets as a corset, holding in check the sprawling tendencies of modern construction. Without the streets, developers ­will



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go wild with acre-­size big-­box stores, massive parking garages, and gated towers. The grid ­won’t be inviolable. Even now, Philadelphia ­w ill zap an existing block off the map when a proj­ect justifies the loss. The magnificence of William Penn’s street grid is that it remains as flexible in the twenty-­first ­century as it was in the seventeenth. “You can still have big stuff, but you have to maintain public access,” Steinberg argues. Public streets are the only way to guarantee that every­one, even ­those who ­can’t afford a waterfront condo, w ­ ill be able to walk to a w ­ ater view. New Jersey was so committed to that idea that it went to court in the 1980s to stop developers from gating its developing Hudson River waterfront. A few days ­after Sklaroff and Schelter ­were arguing for a closed, streetless waterfront, I was experiencing one up close, in San Diego. ­Eager to glimpse the Pacific Ocean, I strolled from that city’s manageable downtown t­ oward the scent of salt ­water. But I was soon confronted by the impenetrable, four-­ block-­long convention center. Trying to find a street to lead me to ­water, I kept walking, past the swirling driveway of the blue-­glass Marriott ­Hotel. Five blocks on, I passed the imposing ­Grand Hyatt and its circular drive. Six blocks. Seven blocks. It felt like the wall of buildings would never end. But ­after ten full city blocks, I fi­nally came to a public street that led to San Diego’s oceanfront. ­There was just one prob­lem: no sidewalks.

2 ▶ THE ARCHITECTURE OF REVIVAL

Cira Centre: An Office Tower Rises in West Philadelphia October 14, 2005 The Cira Centre, Philadelphia’s first new office tower in fifteen long years, is a ­giant crystal that has emerged from somewhere deep in the earth. Scratch that. It is the prow of a ship docked at the entrance to Center City. No. It is an iceberg about to crash into the Philly Titanic. It’s a mammoth laser-­cut diamond. It’s a towering cathedral, ­here to bless the city. Let’s just say this: the beguiling new office tower by Cesar Pelli & Associates is a building that inspires a torrent of meta­phors, none of them entirely satisfactory. Though diminutive by modern skyscraper standards—­twenty-­ nine stories—­the tower is a fascinating chameleon that changes color with the sky. It is a shape-­shifter that looks dif­fer­ent from e­ very corner in Philadelphia. We just ­can’t take our eyes off it.

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The Symphony House condos w ­ ere the beginning of Philadelphia’s building boom. (Credit: © Inga Saffron)

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Cira’s faceted profile has been a fixture on the city skyline for many months, so it’s easy to forget that the West Philadelphia building is only just being completed. The first tenants moved in last week. Its developer, Brandywine Realty Trust, ­won’t celebrate the tower’s opening ­until mid-­November. But the building is finished enough that we can fi­nally get close and stroll freely through the skybridge at Thirtieth Street Station into its gossamer lobby, a room constructed out of ­little more than geometry and light. The Cira’s completion marks a special moment for Philadelphia. Th ­ ese days, it often seems that proposals for new condo high-­rises are announced ­every week. But American cities ­don’t build office towers like they used to. ­We’re too busy outsourcing jobs overseas, which is one reason China has cornered the market on office construction. So when a sophisticated office tower like Cira does manage to rise in hidebound Philadelphia, it is tempting to see the city’s ­future reflected in its flawless silver skin. Pelli’s New Haven, Connecticut, firm is one of the most elegant prac­ti­ tion­ers of office-­tower architecture ­today. The Argentina-­born Pelli had turned out a good dozen towers around the world in the last de­cade, including most recently the forty-­two-­story Goldman Sachs tower in Jersey City and the fifty-­four-­story Bloomberg tower in Manhattan. The Cira, which was overseen by Pelli’s associate principal, Mark  R. Shoemaker, and Bower Lewis Thrower of Philadelphia, is one of his best, more sculptural and less blocky than some other recent designs. The tinted, barely reflective silver win­dows ­were an inspired color choice, the glass equivalent of limestone. The silver glass helps marry the delicate modern tower with the weighty, neoclassical train station. ­There are, however, plenty of reasons to dislike Cira. Stoked with tax abatements, it has stolen life and taxes from Center City. The wealthy ­owners of its tenant companies w ­ ill get away without contributing their share to the public trea­sury. Yet despite ­those generous taxpayer concessions, this building does very ­little for the public realm. The Cira, which was built on Amtrak land and with Amtrak’s guidance, claims to be pioneering a new neighborhood in that no-­man’s-­land of train tracks between Thirtieth Street Station and Powelton Village. But it is hard to imagine how such a neighborhood ­will blossom when no one has yet planned any street connections between the Cira and ­future development parcels on the seventy-­acre rail site. You ­can’t expect to seed a new neighborhood from a hermetically sealed island.



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Right now, the tower’s ground-­floor entrance near Twenty-­ninth and Arch Streets is virtually unreachable on foot. Most employees ­will enter through a glass skybridge—­nicely designed by Bower Lewis Thrower Architects (BLT)—­located at the end of SEPTA’s commuter-­rail corridor in Thirtieth Street Station. Cocooned in a complex that includes the station’s food court, some Cira workers ­will never set foot in the gritty city. The brilliance of Cira’s location is its seamless connections to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, SEPTA’s regional rail, and Philadelphia International Airport. Given such fabulous transit links, the tower’s lack of easy access to the Philadelphia street grid is a ­bitter pill. The design of the ground-­floor entrance reflects ­those sorry conditions. If it w ­ eren’t for Cira’s jaunty glass canopy, a trapezoid that pops out of a flat facade, you might never be able to identify the entrance doors amid all that silvery glass. The only p­ eople who w ­ ill enter the tower at ground level are ­those dropped off by taxi in the big circular driveway. While ­there was plenty of concrete for that turnaround, t­ here i­ sn’t much for the sidewalks along Arch Street; they are narrow and stingy. The blame ­here is not with the architects, the developer, or Amtrak. The poor pedestrian conditions are a direct result of the anti-­urban policies of PennDOT and the city Streets Department. Amtrak had asked PennDOT to install a midblock traffic light on Arch Street ­because it is the most intuitive crossing point between the station and Cira. But PennDOT vetoed the request. Instead, it put new lights at the corners of Twenty-­ninth and Thirtieth Streets. As long as ­those traffic patterns exist, no sensible person ­will dare cross Arch Street ­because of the way ­drivers race around the station. As a result, Cira’s sidewalks w ­ ere narrowed to discourage ­people from attempting to walk to the building. ­There is no doubt, however, that the tower has reconfigured Philadelphia’s skyline more dramatically than any building since One Liberty Place, completed in 1987. ­Because of the huge expense of building over Amtrak’s rail yards, it is unlikely that Cira ­will unleash the same office boom that Liberty did. Still, Amtrak is trying to market several parcels where the rail lines have been removed. Cira’s isolation is unfortunate for West Philadelphia’s ­future development, yet its setting is the source of its impact on the skyline. Its location on the Schuylkill’s west bank means that it is separated from the Center City high-­rise crowd. How often does an architect get a stage all to himself?

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Pelli was fully conscious that the Cira would be seen in the round, and he strove to make it visually kinetic from all sides. He almost succeeded. Simply by slicing off two corners, he has s­ haped the east, west, and north facades into a dynamic sculpture. Unfortunately, Cira becomes just another staid corporate glass tower when viewed straight on from the south side. Philadelphia’s boosters w ­ ill no doubt make speeches that trumpet Cira Centre as a “world-­class building.” It is impor­tant to keep ­things in perspective. Cira ­isn’t a building that challenges the architectural status quo in any meaningful way. It d­ oesn’t incorporate green technology, as the city’s other office proj­ect, Comcast Tower, does. Its form i­sn’t as daringly original as Norman Foster’s recent London towers. And, of course, it takes no stand about its place in the city. Without a doubt, Cira is a gorgeous object that we can look at and admire from afar. The issue for Philadelphia is, as always, ­whether a remote beauty is good enough.

Nightmare on Broad Street October 26, 2007 Except to t­hose who resolutely averted their eyes during construction, it ­won’t come as news that Symphony House is the ugliest new condo building in Philadelphia. The thirty-­two-­story mixed-­use tower flounces onto venerable South Broad Street like a sequined and over-­rouged strumpet. Sheathed in a sickly shade of pink concrete, the building resembles, as one blogger wittily observed, a g­ iant Pepto-­Bismol ­bottle. If only it w ­ ere pos­si­ ble to look away! When architecture is this bad, it’s all too easy to pile on or move on. But the lessons Philadelphia takes away from Symphony House w ­ ill determine what shape this aspiring “next ­great city” assumes in the twenty-­first c­ entury. The Dranoff Properties proj­ect, designed by Philadelphia’s BLT, was chosen in a city-­run competition and was meant to serve as a flagship for a newly revived, and increasingly residential, Ave­nue of the Arts. As a business proposition, the Symphony House condos are such a runaway success that owner Carl Dranoff is developing three more housing concepts for Broad Street. If Symphony House is the flagship, dare we imagine what the rest of the flotilla ­will look like?



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Judging by the flock of city boosters who bleated praises to Symphony House at a recent ribbon cutting, ­there ­will be a mad rush to champion the proj­ect’s virtues. Partisans ­will point out Symphony House’s positives: It replaced a gas station and a surface parking lot. It provides a lavish new home for a growing theater com­pany. It behaves in a proper urban way in that it includes two ground-­floor spaces for restaurants. While that’s all true enough, Symphony House’s defenders operate on the belief that any new construction in Philadelphia is good construction. But a­ fter a vigorous real-­estate boom, Philadelphia ­can’t be satisfied anymore just to build new. The city needs to build well, with taste, integrity, creativity, and, whenever pos­si­ble, real aesthetic ambition. Looks ­matter, especially as the city comes to depend on tourism for its livelihood. Yet when the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. solicited proposals in 2002 for the 36,000-­square-­foot lot between Pine and Lombard Streets, it focused on site planning, not aesthetics. PIDC, which sold the land for $6 million, never instituted a professional design-­review pro­cess or vetted Dranoff ’s material choices. It’s the same story with too many publicly initiated proj­ects around the city, from waterfront casinos to the South Street Bridge. If city agencies are calling the shots, the city should ensure that the public gets a worthy design. Symphony House’s architecture actually grew worse ­after April  2003, when the initial competition rendering by BLT’s Michael Ytterberg was accepted. In that version, the tower was a benign buff color with a green mansard cap. Squared-­off bays projected on the north and south facades, but the crucial Broad Street wall maintained a dignified calm. Then Dranoff and his architects started piling on the doodads. Dranoff ’s design philosophy seemed to be “Too much is never enough.” The team pasted huge silver-­colored bay win­dows on the Broad Street facade. They punched terrace openings between the side bays. The facade went from buff to a blushing red that was intended—­depending on who is talking—to evoke ­either brick or sandstone. In keeping with the general reddening, the cap morphed to burgundy. Ytterberg says he took his inspiration from Philadelphia’s early twentieth-­ century skyscrapers, like Ritter & Shay’s Drake H ­ otel and Trumbauer’s Chateau Crillon on the west side of Ritten­house Square, now a Korman Suites. Dranoff, who was pitching Symphony House to an affluent baby-­ boomer demographic, said he wanted a “timeless building.”

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Timeless is a word that should set off alarms when uttered by developers and architects. Only the hype is timeless. If you love historical architecture, then you ­will prob­ably hate Symphony House. Philadelphia’s old buildings ­were assembled by expert designers and craftsmen who used natu­ral materials and ­were fluent in a well-­established design language. Symphony House speaks gibberish. It is a Frankenstein mix of historical ele­ments, from Palladian arches to art deco porthole win­dows that have been rendered meaningless by modern times, materials, and construction methods. The mansard crown was stolen outright from the Chateau Crillon and reproduced in fiberglass instead of copper, with four pointless hatpins poking up at the corners. Our brains immediately intuit such deceptions. When we describe a brick row­house, we may say that it is red. But we understand that it is actually red and gray ­because about 30 ­percent of the surface is mortar. We appreciate the color and texture variations, even if we never articulate the reason. You can, theoretically, create a good replica of a historic building, but it w ­ ill cost far more ­today than the $125 million Dranoff spent on Symphony House. So when we look at the tower, set on a six-­story garage, we instinctively know something is wrong with its covering of lightweight, carbon-­fiber-­reinforced precast concrete panels. They lack heft. The color is too uniform, too unnatural. BLT used the latest materials and methods, but betrayed their purpose. It’s not just cladding that gives Symphony House away as a clumsy, con­temporary fake. It’s the hodgepodge of aluminum applique. ­You’re not supposed to notice a building’s win­dow frames, but ­here the silver-­colored casings become an overpowering decorative ele­ment. You ­can’t miss t­ hose silver bays ­because ­they’re plastered on the tower like spangles. Meanwhile, the architects used champagne-­colored frames for the six-­ story base. B ­ ecause the darker color is more recessive, it works better against the pink concrete. But your eye rebels at the abrupt change to silver. The garishness ­doesn’t end with the dueling win­dow frames. On the lower level, Dranoff clipped bronze-­colored sconces between the champagne-­trimmed win­dows. And the terraces are secured with black metal railings that look like park fencing. Not surprisingly, the materials that lavishly decorate the interior are significantly better. That’s what p­ eople are buying. The lobby and common spaces have been decorated with the padded-­shoulder pomposity of the Reagan



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era, a look BLT has repeated in Philadelphia’s court­house and Dranoff ’s Left Bank and Victor apartment buildings. ­Don’t they know its 2007? Unlike Chicago and New York, Philadelphia is not known for its dazzling, iconic architecture. The city’s strength has always been its sober, finely crafted designs. Philadelphia buildings take you in slowly. They are rarely vulgar, even if they seldom set the world on fire. In some re­spects, Symphony House is typical of the flimsy false-­front architecture ­going up in cities around the country. Architecture, like the fashion industry, has figured out how to mass-­produce a stylish product for an affordable price. Just ­don’t expect it to stand up to close inspection. ­Because Philadelphia h­ asn’t built many new residential high-­rises ­until recently, it has been spared the move to schlock. Unfortunately, Symphony House looks like a harbinger of what is to come.

Frank Gehry Designs an Addition for the Art Museum, and Then Designs it Again October 28, 2007 Surely this ­can’t be Frank  O. Gehry talking about one of his museum designs—­not the acclaimed architect of the swirling Guggenheim Bilbao, master of the titanium ski jump, chain-­link rebel, and special celebrity guest voice on The Simpsons. “The curves w ­ ere killing the flow,” he said during an interview in his hangar-­size Marina del Rey studio. “You ­couldn’t hang the pictures properly. So I came in and squared off the galleries.” What Gehry straightened out was Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum, a charmingly quirky, amoeba-­shaped, ’60s-­era building by a little-­known local architect. It was the late ’90s, just a few months before Gehry’s magical ocean liner docked on Bilbao’s waterfront and made him as famous as an architect can be. Gehry reor­ga­nized the Norton Simon’s galleries into a classic railroad-­car format, finished them with fine woods and French limestone, and touched up the exterior with a coat of paint. In most circumstances, Gehry’s work at the Norton Simon ­wouldn’t be cause for discussion. But it was t­ hose elegantly understated Pasadena galleries, not the ebullient Bilbao or his swinging Disney Hall, that convinced the Philadelphia Museum of Art last year that Gehry was the right guy to carve

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a vast new gallery complex from the hillside below its ­great front plaza, a proj­ect that is expected to take a de­cade and cost around $500 million. Many in the museum world scratched their heads when the commission was announced. Who would hire this playful sculptor of tumbling forms to design something that could be largely invisible from the outside? And why would anyone hold up the impeccable, but sedate, Norton Simon as an inspiration? The cynical response was: only Philadelphia, a city that abhors a show-­off. But Gehry, who offered an exclusive first glimpse at the design’s pro­gress during a wide-­ranging ninety-­minute conversation last month in his Santa Monica studio, suggested that Philadelphians s­ houldn’t underestimate what he might accomplish within the bowels of the Fairmount hill. The snowy-­ haired, seventy-­eight-­year-­old architectural Lieutenant Columbo, who was dressed in a rumpled black T-­shirt, vowed that he would leave his personal tag somewhere on the classical garage that is the Philadelphia Art Museum. “We w ­ ill set off a bomb. But I ­can’t tell what kind till the fat lady sings. I think ­we’ll make it memorable. Anne wants it to feel special, not like the remodeling of an old building,” Gehry said, referring to museum director Anne d’Harnoncourt. “She wants the proj­ect to have the same impact as Bilbao, but under­ground.” D’Harnoncourt has frequently compared the museum’s expansion to the Louvre’s subterranean galleries, topped by I. M. Pei’s iconic pyramid. The glass structure functions as an entrance sign, a front door, and a skylight. Gehry might come up with a Philadelphia equivalent, she suggested. “How ­he’ll express his Gehry-­ness is up to him,” d’Harnoncourt said at another point. ­After a year on the job, Gehry acknowledged that he is still a long way from detonating a bomb. But he has been working ­toward it at his own obsessively deliberative pace. Gehry likes to make models, lots of models. He and creative partner Edwin Chan, who oversaw Bilbao, have been building scale mock-­ups of the Philadelphia museum in their California studio, some bigger than an office cubicle. ­They’re so realistic, you might forget the Venice boardwalk is just outside. In one of ­those models, two broad paths run from Eakins Oval and cut deep into the museum’s east-­facing hillside. The ramped paths, which flank the G ­ reat Steps, would offer street-­level access to the area below the plaza and an alternative to climbing the steps.



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The museum, which declined to release images of the models, intends to capture the space below the plaza, now partly filled with dirt, so it can install new galleries for large sculpture, con­temporary collections, and Asian art. The excavation would give the overstuffed museum 50 ­percent more exhibition space. It also would enable the museum to reclaim a gorgeous vaulted and tiled corridor that runs ­under the plaza, ­toward Kelly Drive. But as Gehry pointed out, providing a direct entrance to the new lower galleries ­won’t be much of an accomplishment if visitors feel as if ­they’re wandering through darkened catacombs. So he and Chan built a scale model of the plaza, a gathering place that offers postcard views of the Parkway and City Hall. Around the plaza’s rim, they inserted a wide strip of glass. It’s as if an earthquake had created a crevasse separating the patio from the building. ­They’re now studying the skylight to see how sun would filter into the galleries. Not that Gehry and Chan are focusing all their efforts on the museum’s famous east facade. ­They’ve also built a model to study the romantic, arched doorway on the museum’s north side. From the foot of the model’s north driveway, a squiggle-­shaped bridge spans Kelly Drive and connects the long-­closed vaulted corridor with the new Perelman Building annex. Yet another model shows several small, boxy galleries marching away from the museum’s west facade. Gehry said the odds are slim that ­these ideas would survive the design pro­cess. The models are the equivalent of a novelist’s early draft, an architect’s way of thinking out loud. And no one does as much verbalizing as Gehry. When New York’s Guggenheim gave him a show in 2001, it included hundreds of his “drafts,” from wads of bunched toilet paper to precision-­cut scale models. In the popu­lar imagination, Gehry is often seen as an artist who sculpts thrilling volumes. But he bristles that the image is too ­limited. Gehry says he takes pride in being a problem-­solver. He also has designed plenty of symmetrical, modernist buildings. Models help him work out the best architectural answers. While Gehry is sure to construct many more, a visit to the Norton Simon offered some clues about what d’Harnoncourt is expecting. Like the Philadelphia museum, a large part of the Norton Simon is wedged into an earthen bank. In its 1969 incarnation, by Thornton Ladd, the lower floor was a murky realm. The street-­level galleries ­were hardly much brighter.

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In keeping with the aesthetic of the time, Ladd designed free-­flowing, open-­ plan galleries. They ­were intriguing spaces but a terrible environment for hanging paintings, especially the museum’s superb Re­nais­sance collection. In the early ’90s, Simon’s ­widow, the actress Jennifer Jones, called her old friend Gehry begging for advice. He ended up completely redesigning the interiors—­gratis—as a ­favor to Jones. The curvaceous spaces ­were reconfigured with geometric precision, and the galleries flow effortlessly. And now you never miss the California sun. ­Because curators fear natu­ral light w ­ ill damage artworks, many museums hermetically seal their galleries from the sun. That bothers Gehry. “Ninety ­percent of museums have gone to sterilized hospital interiors that every­one thinks are so deferential to art and I think are toxic to art,” he complained. At the Norton Simon, Gehry outsmarted light-­averse museum curators by inserting oculus openings over the center point of the galleries The light is sufficient to buoy the spirit of visitors, but the perimeter walls, where paintings are hung, remain out of the sun’s range. It’s lovely, though you c­ an’t help thinking of other fine architects who might have done a good job. So what prompted Philadelphia’s museum to hire Gehry? “What Frank did was to make the spaces in the Norton Simon hospitable to the works of art,” d’Harnoncourt explained. “It’s clear that Frank loves the art and knows the art. . . . ​He thinks hard about what a space w ­ ill be used for.” So hard, he intends to spend a week soon at the Philadelphia museum, wandering its galleries and absorbing the interrelationships among its holdings. D’Harnoncourt compared Gehry to Matisse, and his design for the Philadelphia museum to the paint­er’s Lady in a Blue Dress, which has eighty versions ­under its vis­i­ble layer. At that rate, Gehry still has about seventy-­seven more models to go.

Inserting a Curve into Philadelphia’s Street Grid March 12, 2010 Philadelphia is such a relentlessly right-­angled city, a place so completely devoted to its colonial grid, that it’s not surprising that some architectural dissidents would insist on flaunting their curves. The PSFS tower, now the



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Loews H ­ otel, is the city’s best-­known nonconformist, but plenty of modest row­houses also break out of the box with similar hip-­jutting moves. Take the intersection of Fourth and Poplar Streets in Northern Liberties. For more than a c­ entury, a charming pair of well-­rounded corner h­ ouses have gazed at each other across the narrow breach of Poplar Street. The talented architects at QB3 ­were so taken with the pair that they de­cided to make it a threesome. ­They’ve just completed a voluptuous newcomer on the northeast corner that they call the Split Level House. That’s a pretty modest name for the most innovative take on the traditional row­ house that Philadelphia has seen in years. The ­house is a gorgeous piece of construction, lovingly assembled brick-­ by-­brick by South Philadelphia artisan Luigi DeLaureta and overseen by QB3’s Tim Peters. But what makes it impor­tant architecture is the compare-­ and-­contrast dialogue that QB3 set up with the neighbors. Their modern design abides by all the row­house rules of Philadelphia, even as it cleverly remixes them for the twenty-­first ­century. The ­house’s curves are faced in brick, just like its nineteenth-­century companions, but the architects used a rich charcoal variety flecked with oranges and browns to update the mood. QB3’s ­house comes to the sidewalk and embraces the world with ground-­floor win­dows, as all good row­ houses should. ­Those win­dows, however, cut through the ­house’s core like a seismic fault, opening up dramatic views into, out of, and through the structure. The bold, three-­sided opening confounds our expectation of how a Philadelphia row­house is supposed to engage the street: ­There’s too much glass to condemn the h­ ouse as a fortress, yet its swaths of brick are too extensive to think of it as a transparent building. ­We’re si­mul­ta­neously invited in and held at bay by the arrangement of solids and voids. QB3’s marriage of traditional urban values and boundary-­pushing architecture works so well that you have to won­der why similar fusions d­ idn’t emerge during the city’s decade-­long housing boom. ­After all, the enduring attraction of the row­house form is that it is infinitely malleable. And yet too many designers w ­ ere content to slap a metal bay win­dow on a conventional box and call it modern. Even the client who commissioned the Split Level House, a single man who has insisted on anonymity, w ­ asn’t prepared for quite so edgy a h­ ouse. He gave QB3 three ­simple instructions: Design a three-­bedroom ­house

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that fits the neighborhood. Acknowledge the unique corner. Use natu­ral materials. Then he handed the architects a $1 million check for construction and told them to get to work. Such freedom was at once liberating and terrifying, recalled Stephen Mileto, one of QB3’s three found­ers. Known for their minimalist aesthetic, Mileto and his partners, Kevin Angstadt and Patrycja Doniewski, have designed a series of finely crafted interiors, including Gallery 339 at Twenty-­ first and Pine Streets, but never before had the chance to complete anything from scratch. At first, they ­were anxious about the directive to build a contextual brick row­house. “When you build in brick, every­one assumes ­you’re opting for a pastiche,” Mileto said. “We de­cided to challenge ourselves to do something in­ter­est­ing.” The ­house’s name implies that it has the organ­ization of the suburban classic. It does, if you can imagine a split-­level inside a row­house body. The 3,000-­square-­foot ­house, which sits on a double lot, also happens to be split vertically down the m ­ iddle. On paper, the spatial complexity is enough to make you dizzy. In person, it’s all perfectly clear ­because the staggered levels enable you to see where you are in relation to the h­ ouse’s other rooms and the buildings outside. The central channel means you can stand in the kitchen and look through a win­dow into the living room—or out to the Center City skyline. You ­don’t get views like this in the average row­house. Admittedly, ­there is something of the c­ astle redoubt in the h­ ouse’s dark, rounded brick corner. So when you climb the seven steps to the entrance, it feels as if ­you’re penetrating a forbidden citadel. That changes as soon as you enter the brilliantly sunlit entry hall. Big enough for a small cocktail party, the space is dominated by a half-­flight of concrete stairs that puddle down to form a mini-­amphitheater. The bottom step widens to provide a ledge that is useful for removing shoes. The stairs are the design’s unifying feature, as they are in several QB3 proj­ects. They unfurl through the central core like a ribbon, shifting from heavy concrete in the entry hall to a lightweight oak, bound in steel, on the upper floors. As you move through the h­ ouse, you come face to face with the h­ ouse’s split levels. Since the widest part of the h­ ouse ­faces Fourth Street, the rooms



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are staggered on each side of the stairs. In a sense, each floor dead-­ends into the adjacent room. That means when y­ ou’re in the kitchen, the adjacent living-­room floor is at ­table height. It’s an arrangement that lets you cook and chat with your guests. Meanwhile, on the bedroom levels, the staggered levels encourage privacy and even allow the guest room to be sectioned off with sliding pocket doors. The final reward for taking the stairs to the top is a terrace with almost 360-­degree city views. B ­ ecause the h­ ouse is slightly taller than its thirty-­five-­ foot neighbors, the architects punched openings in the brick parapet that surrounds the deck to make the ­house feel lighter at the top. Now that the Split Level House is done, it’s plain the architects ­needn’t have feared using brick. ­There’s nothing wrong with the earthy and enduring material. The prob­lem is how it gets used in Philadelphia. In last week’s column, I praised Fumihiko Maki for daring to insert a sheer glass building amid the red brick of the University of Pennsylvania campus. QB3’s ­houses apply the opposite means to make peace with Philadelphia’s favorite building material. Someday Philadelphia w ­ ill move beyond the brick-­or-­modern debate. Like the rounded PSFS building—or, for that ­matter, the rounded Reading Head­house across Market Street from it—­the ­grand curve of the Split Level House is an anomaly in tradition-­loving Philadelphia. Cities dearly need such aberrations. They help remind us of the qualities that we value in our city, as well as the ones we ­wouldn’t mind changing once in a while.

Philadelphia’s Fortunes Rise as a New ­C entury Begins January 8, 2010 The tele­vi­sion series Sex and the City debuted in 1998, the same year I began writing about architecture and cities for the Inquirer. ­Little did I guess back then that Carrie Bradshaw’s glamorous gallivanting through the streets of Gotham signaled a major image update for Amer­ic­ a’s cities, from lawless jungles to middle-­class playgrounds. It’s the city that’s sexy now. As we close out this bad-­news de­cade, it’s worth remembering that at least one redeeming trend emerged out of the repeating loop of war, terrorism,

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and economic woes. Many of our cities enjoyed a fabulous ­ride during ­those roller-­coaster years, erecting housing, cultural venues, and medical buildings with an abandon not seen since the Roaring Twenties. Without a doubt, it’s bleak out t­ here at the moment, with urban mayors whacking at bud­gets like samurai warriors. But once the dust ­settles, I suspect the last de­cade ­will be seen as a time when a select group of cities—­ Philadelphia included—­tipped from ­dying to dynamic. Philadelphia may not have been the star performer in that lucky bunch, but look what this old Rust B ­ elt town accomplished since the millennium began: City Hall issued 24,000 residential building permits, the largest number since the creation of the Far Northeast in the ’70s. Taxpayers reached deep into their pockets to pay for five museum buildings, two sports stadiums, one enormous vaulted concert hall, and, soon, an enlarged convention center. And at a time when corporations around the country are consolidating operations, Philadelphia welcomed two gleaming office towers, including one, Comcast, that broke the city’s height rec­ord. Like Carrie Bradshaw’s heels, our condo towers—­nine by my count—­grew ever higher as the years went on. Some good architecture even slipped into the party, notably the Piazza at Schmidt’s and Penn’s Skirkanich Hall. Of course, Philadelphia has seen up-­cycles before, most recently in the pre–­crack cocaine days of the ’80s when Liberty Place was the skyscraper muscling its way to the top of the skyline. The city has an old habit of taking one step back for e­ very two steps forward. It’s still putting up too many parking garages on prime corners. But this time ­there is a sense that the accomplishments ­will stick. Looking for historical perspective, I called Alex Garvin, a renowned urban planner who is a forty-­year veteran of New York’s ups and downs and a survivor of the ’70s financial meltdown that left the Big Apple bankrupt and bereft. Before I had a chance to compose my first question, Garvin declared, “Philadelphia has turned the corner.” It’s hard to imagine anyone uttering such an upbeat assessment a de­cade ago. Philadelphia was far b­ ehind other cities in emerging from our nation’s previous real estate collapse, which began in the late ’80s. Planners and economists ­were more likely to suggest that Philadelphia was about to go the way of Detroit—­one of several Midwest cities that, sadly, ­weren’t saved by the boom.



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Garvin attributes Philadelphia’s good fortune primarily to the big moves initiated by planner Edmund Bacon in the de­cades a­ fter World War II—­ rather than to the leadership of Mayors Rendell, Street, or Nutter. During Bacon’s time, American cities saw their trea­suries drained by the flight of taxpayers to the suburbs, the cost of battling poverty, and the heavy burden of racism. It was common for cities to write off downtowns as obsolete in the automobile age. Philadelphia bucked the conventional wisdom and invested in its office district, Center City neighborhoods, and transit system. Preserving that dense core and extensive transit network was Philadelphia’s salvation. When the boom arrived, Philadelphia ­didn’t have to invent a downtown from scratch, as cities like San Diego and Denver did. Center City’s early twentieth-­century office buildings, made obsolete in the ’80s by the new Market Street towers, w ­ ere available to be resurrected as condos. Factories became lofts. Marble-­clad banks became restaurants. ­Because the city’s row­house fabric survived, most new developments ­were obliged to take an urban attitude, even if they did frequently insist on making room for suburban-­style parking garages. The key is that developers continued to nudge their twenty-­first-­century row­houses into Center City’s colonial-­era lots. And when developers exhausted the downtown sites, they pushed into adjacent neighborhoods. Surely the boom’s most profound legacy is the enlargement of the downtown core and the incorporation of a ring of surrounding neighborhoods: Queen Village, Bella Vista, Fairmount, Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Powelton Village, and University City. That you can now embark on an hour’s walk in any direction from City Hall without encountering significant urban blight is at least partly a result of the city’s tax abatement policy. But tax breaks alone ­wouldn’t have produced all t­hose new row­houses if the Housing Authority had not demolished virtually all of its forbidding, out-­of-­context high-­rises ­under the Rendell and Street administrations. A dozen towers w ­ ere replaced with more than 7,600 new units, mostly in the form of row­houses. What distinguishes this boom from its pre­de­ces­sors is that it was accompanied by a distinct change in the way Americans perceive cities. In the ’70s and ’80s, Carrie Bradshaw would have carried a can of Mace instead of a designer purse. Tele­vi­sion’s gritty urban cop dramas portrayed cities in apocalyptic terms. News images of riots, crime, and angry antibusing protests stuck in ­people’s memories.

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­There’s clearly been a mellowing. Cities and suburbs no longer see themselves as enemies. Race is less of a polarizing issue, and cities are safer than ­they’ve been in de­cades. For t­ oday’s college gradu­ates, a generation that has mostly grown up in the suburbs, cities are an alluring Oz that offers—if Sex in the City is to be believed—­a nonstop whirl of art openings and romantic trysts. Even the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center towers ­didn’t derail the urban comeback. The nation’s outpouring of sympathy for New York was a remarkable turnaround from its response twenty-­six years ­earlier to the city’s bankruptcy, immortalized by the New York Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” In Philadelphia, much has been made of the fact that the city’s population inched up last year for the first time in sixty years. That’s nice, but far more meaningful is the growth in the number of ­house­holds, which shot up by 18,000 by 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Row­houses that once h­ oused sprawling, multigenerational families are increasingly home to singles, gays, and empty nesters. Like other successful American cities, Philadelphia still must reckon with difficult economic issues. Planners argue that urban places ­will need to invest heavi­ly in infrastructure and transit just to stay even, especially as energy prices shoot up. Cities also have to remember t­hey’re competing with the suburbs for residents, and that means matching their rec­ord on clean government, fiscal management, crime, schools, and public amenities like parks. Not every­one w ­ ill want to live in a big city like Philadelphia. But a­ fter a de­cade of improvements and image enhancement, most ­people prob­ably ­wouldn’t mind spending the weekend, especially if they can get a good rate at one of the new ­hotels.

3 ▶ SWE ATING THE SM ALL STUFF

Small Stuff Makes Philly Better, a Bit at a Time January 7, 2011 Architecture tends to follow the money, and right now t­here i­sn’t much green stuff to be pursued. But just ­because banks ­aren’t lending and governments a­ ren’t spending ­doesn’t mean we should assume urban design is dead. Welcome to the year of small—­small parks, small ­houses, small improvements, small plans, but not necessarily small thinking. Only a short while ago, ­there ­wasn’t a big city in Amer­ic­ a that ­didn’t salivate at the prospect of building a downtown sports arena, an attention-­ getting museum, or a clutch of vertiginous condo towers, preferably by brand-­name architects. That’s done. While the lousy economy has forced cities to lower their sights, it has provided clarity about what ­really ­matters. The smart places are investing their l­imited disposable income in low-­cost, high-­impact proj­ects that improve the quality of life for ­people who actually live in them. 65

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Dogs are welcome at the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society beer garden on South Street. (Credit: © Inga Saffron)

Philadelphia’s Race Street pier park, set to open in April, is perfectly tuned to the times, as is New York’s experiment with appropriating stretches of Broadway for pop-up parks. The row­house boomlets taking place in certain Philadelphia neighborhoods, such as Fishtown and the area south of Gradu­ate Hospital, also belong in the category of incremental improvements that make urban life better. And t­ hese infill proj­ects remind us that pro­gress continues even in hard times. One of the nice ­things about the new, do-­it-­yourself-­style proj­ects is the quick payoff. When the Nutter administration painted bike lanes on Pine and Spruce Streets in 2009, it not only provided a crosstown link between the city’s two waterfronts and their no-­frills recreation paths, but it also established the outlines of a major bicycle network. The cost of that instant amenity was ­little more than the price of paint. Philadelphia was never the boldest of places during the boom years. A city of distinct neighborhoods with a rough-­edged authenticity, Philadelphia ­doesn’t do glitzy well. The small stuff suits its spirit better.



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Mayor Nutter’s just-­released Green2015 plan, which calls for converting 500 acres of vacant lots and asphalt schoolyards into an archipelago of green parks, plays to Philadelphia’s strengths. Its proposals are cheap to execute and superlocal. ­Every neighborhood gets to customize its own acre. Developed by PennPraxis, a nonprofit consulting group at the University of Pennsylvania, Green2015 cleverly braids together several policy objectives, such as fighting childhood obesity and controlling the runoff from big storms, with the goal of adding 500 acres of new parkland to the city system in the next five years. In the plan, PennPraxis gets deep into the nitty-­gritty about where the parks should be located and how the city might leverage other p­ eople’s money to pay for them. What the plan does not discuss, though, is how Philadelphia’s design professionals, who have been particularly hard hit by the real estate bust, might be harnessed for this effort. How easy it would be to launch a competition—­a small one, naturally— to identify a dozen young designers and assign each one a park. Green2015 makes the case that peppering Philadelphia with small parks is an investment in the f­ uture of the city’s neighborhoods. Employing up-­and-­coming designers is similarly an investment in the f­uture, in support of the city’s creative economy. After all, those local designers will be among the people who make their homes in the city, who use the new bike lanes to get around, and who take their kids to places such as Race Street pier and Schuylkill Banks Park. They will eventually form businesses that will employ people. Incremental gains come from incremental improvements. How can t­here be so much row­house construction when bankrupt developers are frantically auctioning off unsold condo units? It sounds counterintuitive, but travel around Fishtown, East Ken­sington, ­Temple University, or the former Gradu­ate Hospital, and it seems as if new ­houses are being plugged into e­ very block. Despite the city’s 11.5  ­percent unemployment rate, ­there is still a contingent of p­ eople who need housing and are casting their lot with the city. Realtors call ­these modest infill proj­ects onesies and twosies. Like popup parks, row­houses can be built incrementally, a c­ ouple at a time, making them a relatively low-­risk enterprise for developers, who can sell them as they go. At larger proj­ects, such as Brown Hill Development’s The Nine in Fishtown, the pace of work is scaled to the market. So while the first three

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h­ ouses t­ here have been sold, the developer is just starting to frame out the next trio. Condo towers, in contrast, have to be built all at once, and then the developer has to hunt down a hundred or more buyers. Most developers c­ an’t even get financing u­ ntil ­they’ve secured advance commitments for 70 ­percent of their units. The days of building on spec, with other p­ eople’s money, are over. With row­houses, the main challenge is finding land in the right place at the right price. But once a developer locates a site, Philadelphia remains a relatively strong market, according to tallies provided by the Planning Commission. The number of residential building permits issued in Philadelphia in 2010—1,276—­nearly doubled over the previous year. It’s always hard to tell how many of ­those permits turn into real buildings. But the figures for sales of new homes suggest that construction is holding steady. In 2010, Realtors sold 294 brand-­new ­houses (as distinct from sales of existing homes or dorm units). That’s down about 25 ­percent from the boom-­era high of 386 in 2005 but in line with annual averages for the years that followed. ­After the rapid-­fire boom de­cade, the slowdown is giving Philadelphia a chance to catch its breath and think about what kind of city it wants to be. It’s a good time for prioritizing goals and putting together master plans, like the one for the central Delaware waterfront, which is due in April. Since I-95 is about to be rebuilt as part of a scheduled overhaul, this is also the city’s last chance to get serious about finding ways to minimize the highway’s impact on the Delaware waterfront. No money is required now, just the ­will to grapple with that monster prob­lem. ­After all, Philadelphia is eventually g­ oing to have to start thinking big again.

Pop-­Up Parks Perk Up Dull City Spots July 12, 2013 Need a quick getaway? May I suggest a stroll over to South Broad Street? Look for the opening in the crape myrtles, follow the juniper-­lined path down to the grove, then take a seat in one of the vintage patio chairs, grab a beer, and s­ ettle in with a book. You might actually m ­ istake the whoosh of city traffic for the lapping of waves.



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It seems only right that an instant vacation should be held in an instant space. The hideaway in question is the latest addition to Philadelphia’s growing collection of pop-up parks, an increasingly popu­lar and low-­cost way for cities to carve out green retreats amid the crowded hardscape desert. This one is brought to you by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and, to be honest, it’s not r­eally hidden. It’s right ­there across from the Kimmel Center, between Spruce and Pine Streets. It just feels as if it ­were a world away. You could similarly indulge your escapist fantasies at the Porch, alongside Thirtieth Street Station; at the University City District’s new Baltimore Ave­nue plaza; or at Eakins Oval. As of Thursday, the interior of that glorified traffic circle has been outfitted with Parisian-­style cafe ­tables and christened “The Oval.” But it is PHS’s pop-up that w ­ ill make you feel y­ ou’ve truly left the pressures of the city ­behind. That is due partly to the site—­a vacant lot cradled between the pocked brick walls of two survivor buildings—­partly to good design, partly to beer. OK, beer is a big reason the pop-up is so irresistible. PHS has assembled pop-up gardens on such vacant lots for the past two summers as a way to take its mission to the streets and put leftovers from its annual flower show to good use. ­Those installations ­were artful but static. This year, PHS stepped it up by partnering with a restaurant com­pany, Avram Hornik’s 4 Corners Management, to offer food and drinks. Hornik, whose many venues include Morgan’s Pier on the Delaware River, looked at the site and immediately saw visions of rustic beer gardens. David Fierabend, of Groundswell Design Group, made it real. His design evokes something between a campground picnic grove, a roadside snack bar, and a lobster shack at the end of a Maine fishing pier. Picnic ­tables are arrayed u­ nder forty-­foot-­tall honey locusts trucked in for summer. The lacy Gothic sidewall of the Broad Street Ministry, a paint-­spattered office building, and ivy-­draped row­houses provide a ready-­made backdrop, one that highlights the beauty of Philadelphia’s urban ruins. Food prep (picnic fare comes from the Garces Group) and beer ser­vice ­were set up in discarded shipping containers picked up at the port in Newark, New Jersey. The pine ­tables give way to an ingenious amphitheater, carpentered from sal­vaged shipping pallets and softened by a mismatched riot of outdoor pillows. Thus, the detritus of consumer culture has been repurposed

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in the interest of civic improvement. At night, strings of sparkling lights make it feel like summer ­will never end. The vogue for such temporary spaces began four years ago with the annexing of a c­ ouple of lanes on New York’s Broadway. The city installed a few lawn chairs and called it a plaza. San Francisco followed with its own version, which involved colonizing parking spaces for tiny “parklets.” Both cities have upgraded the spaces into permanent plazas. Philadelphia built its first parklet in 2011. The University City District now manages two plazas and six parklets. Chinatown and Logan have installed parklets, and recently Collingswood became the first suburb to jump on the bandwagon. The initial aim was to create amenities in places where such social spaces ­were lacking. The pop-­ups also w ­ ere meant to help ­people see forgotten corners of the city in a new way, making them v­ iable neighborhoods again. ­Because pop-­ups are so cheap, cities can easily beta-­test the locations. PHS has laid out $20,000 for its Broad Street experiment, which ­will remain open daily ­until October. That block of Broad Street d­ oesn’t exactly lack for activity; it sits at the heart of the Ave­nue of the Arts. Yet for all the bright lights, the Broad Street cultural district is duller than it ­ought to be. Despite new venues and private apartments, ­there has been no investment in public space. The pop-up, which draws 500 to 1,000 ­people on an average weeknight, has changed the mood. It shows that the ideas advocated during the Ave­nue of the Arts design competition last fall have legs. At the same time, you might ask what’s the difference between the popup and, say, restaurants like Frankford Hall and Fette Sau, the hipster meccas in Fishtown similarly carved out of outdoor recesses in weathered buildings. For one, you d­ on’t have to buy anything to hang out in the pop-up. Even though it borrows its design from German beer gardens, Fierabend wanted to create a place where ­people ­didn’t feel obliged to drink. “­People spend so much time indoors during working hours,” he says. “This is a place to relax, to sit around and talk.” He was pleased recently to see two w ­ omen in their eighties talking, alongside two twenty-­somethings knitting. Small ­children clamor to sit on a fragment of an amusement park he­li­cop­ter ­ride.



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Almost since the pop-up opened in May, PHS president Drew Becher has been asked by visitors to keep the garden open permanently. He responds that it ­will reopen next year in a new location. Meanwhile, Carl Dranoff, who underwrote the cost of the Ave­nue of the Arts design competition, has long had his eye on the lot, owned by the University of the Arts. He would like to combine it with the two buildings on the north side, owned by developer Kenny ­Gamble, for a residential tower. Summer ­doesn’t last forever, and neither do pop-­ups.

A Lovely City Park Is Threatened for No Good Reason November 14, 2008 What would ­people say if Mayor Nutter announced one day that he was allowing Thomas Jefferson University Hospital to expand its burgeoning medical campus by building in Washington Square Park? Outrageous! Impossible! The park was a gift to the ­people of Philadelphia! It’s a historic, well-­used, cherished public space! Of course, Washington Square ­faces no such threat. But please ­don’t tell the residents of the lower Northeast that such a travesty c­ an’t happen in Philadelphia. An identical scenario is playing out right now in historic Burholme Park, a lush notch of green on bustling Cottman Ave­nue. The neighboring Fox Chase Cancer Center is attempting to claim the park for its own purposes, and not only has Mayor Nutter endorsed the hospital’s brazen land grab, but he personally pitched in to pull up the boundary fence. ­After a three-­year ­legal ­battle to save the city-­owned park from dismemberment, the case is now in the hands of Orphans Court judge John W. Herron. He wrapped up testimony last month, but not before making a special trip to see for himself the source of all the controversy. “To say the least, the park is magnificent,” he informed the courtroom upon his return, sounding surprised to discover that such a lovely place existed in an unfamiliar corner of Philadelphia. If it took just one visit for Judge Herron to appreciate Burholme Park’s charms, why ­haven’t Fox Chase and Mayor Nutter been able to see them?

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The above comparison with Washington Square ­wasn’t made arbitrarily. At sixty-­five acres, Burholme Park is larger than its downtown cousin, but it similarly serves as town green for a dense residential neighborhood. ­People come from around the Northeast to enjoy its ball fields, wooded picnic grove, playground, driving range for golf, library, and quirky museum of Chinese art trea­sures. And talk about well used. Just try getting a picnic ­table in the summer without a reservation. Like Washington Square, which was a gift of William Penn, Burholme was bequeathed to Philadelphia by a wealthy, pious, and visionary Quaker, Robert Waln Ryerss. An early champion of animal rights, Ryerss turned his country estate into a retirement home for ­horses. His work led him to found Philadelphia’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. But Ryerss ­wasn’t so focused on animals that he forgot about ­people. When he donated his Italian-­style palazzo and its rolling grounds to the city in 1905, he specified in his w ­ ill that the estate was intended “for the use and enjoyment of the ­people forever.” His conditions ­were modest. He simply requested that the grave of his favorite ­horse, Old Gray, remain undisturbed next to the ­house, in the shade of 300-­year-­old oaks. He thoughtfully left a nice endowment to help with the upkeep. The city was perfectly happy to accept Ryerss’s terms and put the sixty-­ five-­acre park ­under the care of Fairmount Park. The arrangement worked well for 100 years, ­until Fox Chase concluded that Burholme Park was the only place in a city rich in empty lots where it could expand. The hospital’s rationale for targeting its neighbor was that it ­didn’t want to operate a divided campus. Unlike most cancer hospitals, Fox Chase is a research fa­cil­i­ty where scientific work takes place alongside patient treatment. The hospital administration became convinced it could maintain the synergy between researchers and doctors only by expanding out from its existing campus. ­There’s no doubt that would be the easy way for Fox Chase to accomplish its goals. But that’s not to say it’s the only way. Surely, Fox Chase could replace some of the low-­rise buildings on its seventeen-­acre campus with taller, more efficient structures. It could make arrangements to share land and facilities with its other neighbor, Jeanes Hospital. While a satellite campus pre­sents challenges, lots of hospitals ­today operate multiple campuses. ­There are so many shuttered community hospitals



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around Philadelphia that Fox Chase could start with a ready-­made medical fa­cil­i­ty. If it was willing to start from scratch, the 1,200-­acre business center at the former Navy Yard could easily accommodate an entirely new cancer center. Just off I-95, it’s a lot more con­ve­nient than Cottman Ave­nue. But big institutions, like hospitals and universities, are by nature greedy, single-­minded creatures, concerned first and foremost with their survival and growth. Give them half a chance, and t­ hey’ll devour all the real estate in their path. That’s why you need a wise city government that can balance the competing interests of the public and big institutional employers. When Fox Chase first approached Mayor Street in 2005 about Burholme Park, he should have offered to help the hospital find another solution. Instead, he promised it the keys to Ryerss’s estate. Many expected Mayor Nutter to employ a more sophisticated approach. ­Isn’t he, ­after all, the guy who pledged to make Philadelphia “the greenest city in the United States of Amer­i­ca”? You c­ an’t do that by paving over twenty acres of parkland. Instead, Nutter echoed Street’s m ­ istake when he brokered a deal in February to get the local councilman, Brian J. O’Neill, to allow the land transfer to take place in his district. At least the ­earlier Street deal had required Fox Chase to come up with a replacement park. In the Nutter version, Fox Chase would contribute a token $4.5 million to the city trea­sury as compensation. What are the chances in this economy that Burholme’s neighbors ­will benefit? Only last week voters approved, at Mayor Nutter’s urging, a merger between the Fairmount Park Commission and the city Parks and Recreation Department. Many voted yes despite concerns that Parks and Recreation might someday be tempted to sell off parkland. The news is, that day is ­here.

A Vision of Philly’s ­Future June 10, 2011 In 1960, Philadelphia peered into a crystal ball and tried to divine how the city would look twenty-­five years in the ­future. The exercise in clairvoyance produced the city’s first Comprehensive Plan, an amazing, 375-­page

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document that showed the rough outlines of what would become Penn Center, Market East Station, and the revitalized Society Hill neighborhood. City planners also misread some key signs. They w ­ ere way off in their prediction that the city’s population would balloon to 2.5 million by 1986. And when they designated land for a new waterfront neighborhood called Penn’s Landing, they neglected to recognize that a certain planned interstate highway would fatally wall off the site. Still, if planners had not pursued a few transformative ideas, such as the tunnel proj­ects that paved the way for a single, unified transit system called SEPTA, Philadelphia prob­ably would not count itself ­today among the nation’s survivor cities. We are once again living in a time of pulse-­quickening civic visions, thanks both to Mayor Nutter, who has made good on his campaign pledge to untie the hands of city planners, and the William Penn Foundation, which has picked up the tab for many of the studies. The planning frenzy is a huge turnaround from the Rendell and Street years. It now feels as if a new report comes out ­every month. Tuesday, it was the “Philadelphia 2035” vision plan. Modeled on the 1960 Comprehensive Plan, it marks the first time in half a c­ entury that Philadelphia’s Planning Commission has taken time to sort out its long-­range priorities and identify proj­ects key to its ­future. The 2035 plan ­will inform ­every major decision the city makes in the next twenty-­five years, what­ever the inclinations of the mayor who succeeds Nutter. Thinner in bulk than the original—227 pages—­the new comp plan also is pared down in ambition. City planners seem to have taken the opposite tack from that advocated by the ­great Chicago planner Daniel Burnham, who exhorted his city to “make no ­little plans. They have no power to stir men’s blood.” The 2035 report is a collection of ­little plans, many of them terrific, but small-­scale nonetheless. The f­uture Philadelphia that appears in the planners’ crystal ball is a place where ­people bike to work, shop at neighborhood farmers markets, dine at the corner brewpub, tap at laptops in the park at the end of the block, and regularly compost their food waste. It sounds like a shinier version of ­today’s Philadelphia, one without the poverty and blight. In part, the city is being realistic. Even as it undertakes more planning, Philadelphia has less money than ever to implement ­grand schemes. The 1960 comp plan appeared at a moment when the federal government was



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raining money on cities through its urban-­renewal and highway programs. ­These days, it’s not clear that the Community Development Block Grant program, one of the last pots of federal money for urban proj­ects, can survive. Just to implement the city’s list of ­little ideas would cost an estimated $43 billion. So if ­you’re looking for paradigm-­shifting infrastructure proj­ects, you’ll find essentially three biggies: t­ here’s a third airport runway to help Philadelphia compete in a global economy, a light-­rail line along Roo­se­velt Boulevard to tie the Northeast and its growing immigrant population into the downtown economy, and an extension of the Broad Street subway to knit the Navy Yard more fully into the city’s core. For the rec­ord, the Roo­se­velt Boulevard transit line was first proposed in the 1960 plan. The ser­vice is needed even more ­today. The plan does include other public works; it’s just that ­they’re mostly patched together from ongoing proj­ects. Significantly, the plan formally endorses the continued development of the city’s two waterfronts for housing and recreation, as well as a recent plan to turn vacant lots into small neighborhood parks. The big news is that the city goes on rec­ord as backing an elevated park on the Reading Viaduct, something it’s been cagey about before. What’s captured public attention is the plan’s population forecast. City planners, who are still celebrating census results showing the first population increase in fifty years—an additional 8,500 residents—­are boldly predicting 100,000 new Philadelphians by 2035. Can the city that only just ­stopped the ­human hemorrhaging ­really attract 4,000 new residents e­ very year for twenty-­five years? Planners arrived at the 100,000 number a­ fter averaging the best-­and worst-­case scenarios from a variety of demographers. Planning director Gary Jastrzab acknowledges the number “is aspirational” but not unreasonable, especially ­because he believes the Census Bureau underestimated Philadelphia’s gains in 2010. The real growth in the last de­cade is closer to 60,000, he says. Greg Heller, a planner who now manages proj­ects for West Philadelphia’s Enterprise Center, agrees the city is on the cusp of major resurgence. Yet he’s worried that huge inflows of educated workers at Philadelphia’s fast-­ growing hospitals and universities ­will drive up rents and make the city less affordable. “The pace of gentrification is staggering,” he argues.

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Considering that the 2035 plan identifies 4,000 acres of vacant land, containing 40,000 vacant buildings, it’s hard to believe ­there is a looming affordability crisis. The prob­lem, Heller explains, is that the city’s property-­tax structure makes it easy for landlords to sit on vacant property while they wait for the right moment to cash in. The 2035 plan talks vaguely about changing that structure by instituting a land tax that would discourage speculation. The plan also advocates the creation of a single agency to manage Philadelphia’s huge holdings of vacant property. Right now, five manage the real estate portfolio, mostly badly. Unlike the 1960 plan, which envisioned a noose of highways around Center City, the 2035 plan foresees a ­future built on mass transit. The plan, prepared in tandem with a new zoning code, encourages higher densities around transit stops. Wayne Junction is singled out as a major hub that would lift the nearby Germantown and Nicetown neighborhoods out of their torpor. But ­there’s one highway the city should be thinking about, and that’s I-95. The portion that runs through Center City, and cuts off downtown from the historic waterfront, is due for a scheduled overhaul by the federal government. OK, work is supposed to start in 2047, but engineering w ­ ill begin in 2020. The city should be making a bid now to have it rebuilt better. Instead, the new plan says not a word on the subject. Planners w ­ ere clearly afraid of proposing a hugely expensive proj­ect like Boston’s Big Dig to cover I-95’s open trench. But ­there are plenty of other options, such as narrowing the width of the ­canyon. And since it’s an interstate, Washington is paying. The ­future ­will be ­here before you know it.

Row­house Revival Suffers Blight of Utility Meters April 16, 2004 The good news is that we are living in the age of the Philadelphia row­house revival. From Fishtown to the ironically named SoWa—­south of  Washington Ave­nue—­builders are erecting townhomes faster than spammers can launch ads for cheap mortgages. Some are million-­dollar mansions. Some are ­humble trinities.



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The bad news is that e­ very one of ­these new ­houses ­will soon come with a big fat wart stuck on its face: a gray utility meter that resembles a small oil refinery. This public defacement of Philadelphia’s row­house neighborhoods is brought to you courtesy of the city-­owned Philadelphia Gas Works and the state-­regulated Peco Energy Co. In September, PGW followed Peco’s lead in decreeing that all new meters must be on the outside of ­houses for accessibility, rather than in basements or closets. Since row­houses are usually accessible only from the front, t­ here is only one place for the meters to go. The clunky assemblages of industrial-­age metal pipes and dials are now sprouting all over the city, alongside shiny new front doors and ground-­ floor win­dows. Given that the standard Philadelphia row­house is only sixteen feet wide, and deluxe models rarely exceed twenty feet, t­here ­isn’t much room for subtlety. Why PGW suddenly de­cided meters had to be on the exterior of h­ ouses is hard to fathom. The days of meter readers knocking at the door are over. PGW and Peco rely on handheld computers or electronic relays that can take accurate mea­sure­ments off a basement meter from blocks away. In many cases, meter readings can even be obtained from the confines of corporate headquarters. Not only can PGW check your gas consumption from afar—it can also cut it off from afar. But ­after several conversations with PGW spokeswoman Trish Cole, this is what I gleaned: It’s easier and cheaper to shut off the gas from the meter head than from what is known in the business as the curb valve, which is located, as the name implies, u­ nder the curb. By mandating exterior gas meters, PGW avoids having to dig up the sidewalk to reach the shut-­off valve. I ­don’t wish to defend PGW deadbeats, who are far too numerous and who reportedly account for nearly one-­third of the utility’s 500,000 customers. But are ­those deadbeats a good reason to scar blocks of new row­houses with bulbous meters? It’s bad enough that PGW’s paying customers are now being asked to fork over an $80 surcharge to compensate for $23 million in unpaid bills. Cole, the PGW spokeswoman, maintains that the new policy on exterior meters is voluntary and that builders can still opt to locate the boxes in the basement.

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But developer Majid Alsayegh, of Alta Management, says his experience was dif­f er­ent. “We went back to PGW three or four times to try to get some leeway” and ­were rebuffed, said Alsayegh, who has just completed the thirty-­unit Museum Commons condos at Twenty-­fourth Street and Fairmount Ave­ nue. PGW meters stand like soldiers next to the front doors of the $420,000 condos. Although Alta plans to camouflage the gray boxes with shrubs, he argues that the condos would have sold at even higher prices if the meters ­hadn’t diminished their “curb appeal.” Julie Welker, a Fairmount Ave­nue real estate agent, complained that ­every new proj­ect in the neighborhood has been saddled with the unsightly meters. That includes an elegant and historic nineteenth-­century brownstone on the 1500 block of Green Street that was recently renovated and converted to condos. A tangle of four meters scars the space between its ­grand ground-­floor win­dows. “When I saw it, I told the owner he had to take off the gas meters if he wanted to sell the condos,” Welker recalled. “He said, ‘I c­ an’t. The gas com­ pany ­won’t let me.’ ” Peco has long required city builders to locate residential electric meters on the outside to make it easier to shut off ser­vice and to repair broken meters, said spokeswoman Cathy Engel. But she conceded that the utility makes exceptions in certain cases. For instance, it’s considered too dangerous to place an electric meter next to a row­house garage. “If a car bumped the Peco meter box, it could be disastrous,” Engel explained. Slamming into a gas meter would be even worse. While the garages at Museum Commons are in a courtyard, the meters on the front facade are just a few feet from Fairmount Ave­nue, where traffic is heavy and speeding is common. Both PGW and Peco defended their policies on meters, saying that the outdoor location is standard in the suburbs. But placing a meter on the outside of a single-­family suburban home is a lot dif­fer­ent than pasting one on the front of a city row­house. Suburban h­ ouses are usually set back from the street and surrounded by plantings. Plus, you can always hide the meter in the back. As more Philadelphia gas and electric meters are installed within arm’s reach of passersby, the public danger w ­ ill only increase. But even if no one is hurt from a shock or explosion, ­those meters leave visual sores on recover-



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ing city neighborhoods, where new housing is a welcome relief a­ fter years of stagnation. The Museum Commons meters make Fairmount Ave­nue “look like the back side of an industrial park,” complained Allen Rubin, who serves on the board of the Spring Garden Civic Association. Philadelphia has spent years fighting blight and beautifying historic neighborhoods such as Fairmount and Spring Garden. But it turns out, blight ­isn’t always the result of neglect. Sometimes it’s imposed.

Creating a Delightful Oasis on Logan Square May 25, 2012 Logan Square, one of  William Penn’s original city parks, ­hasn’t been a true square since the early twentieth c­ entury, when the city began plowing the Ben Franklin Parkway through Center City’s northwest quadrant. The heart of the square was turned into one of the world’s most elegant traffic circles, home to Alexander Stirling Calder’s Swann Fountain, while the remaining pieces ­were cast adrift, an archipelago of mournful traffic islands, uninhabited and bleak. The Center City District has made a mission out of reclaiming t­hose pieces, starting a few years ago on the west side with the scooped trapezoid called Aviator Park, opposite the Franklin Institute. Now, working its way east, it has just rescued the orphan outside the chocolate-­colored Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, a space that goes by the name of ­Sister Cities Park. The transformation of this tiny shard of land amounts to a small miracle. Designed by Bryan Hanes Studio and Digsau, two young Philadelphia firms that w ­ ere practically start-­ups when the proj­ect began, the bare-­bones tribute to Philadelphia’s ten “­sister cities” has been reconfigured into a multifunctional, multigenerational refuge. ­ Sister Cities Park captures the refined whimsy of Paris’s Luxembourg Gardens and packs it into a space a quarter the size of Ritten­house Square. Yet the new park manages to feel cozy and open all at once. It’s hard to believe that such a small site—1.75 acres—­can accommodate this many activities. You can now climb a mountain in Hanes’s delightful ­children’s garden, launch toy sailboats on ­great adventures in the pond, dodge a gusher of ­water in the splash fountain, and then repair to Digsau’s

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crisply elegant pavilion for lunch. (That is, if the cafe operator, Milk & Honey, ­doesn’t run out of food, as it did the day I visited.) With all ­these options, t­ here is still plenty of room left for a broad lawn, shaded by mature London planetrees saved from the park’s previous incarnation. The $5.2 million overhaul is among several public improvements or­ga­ nized in advance of the Barnes Foundation’s arrival at the northwest corner of Logan Square and was paid for with grants from private donors and state agencies. Initially, it was seen as a way station for tourists making the desolate 1.2-­mile trek along the Parkway between City Hall and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Instead, the park has turned out to be something more impor­tant: a destination for the families who make their home in the city. An easy walk from the surrounding row­house neighborhoods of Logan Square and Fairmount, it is already drawing the local stroller set, as well as families who come into Center City to use the F ­ ree Library’s main fa­cil­i­ty and attend mass at the cathedral. If you d­ on’t have a small child of your own, try to borrow one for a visit. Not that the new park is just for kids. Hanes’s landscape and Digsau’s architecture are designed to please discerning adults too. Hanes, who developed the initial concept, envisioned S­ ister Cities as a superconcentrated version of Fairmount Park and the Wissahickon Valley. The idea is an obvious nod to the Parkway’s original role, as a landscape aqueduct to funnel the country experience into the city, but he pulls it off without creating a theme park. At the north end of the park, Hanes fashioned a miniature Wissahickon landscape. You climb a hill along a curving path, past schist boulders, fallen logs, and native plants such as black chokeberry. Along the way you encounter a narrow creek and seats resembling g­ iant mushrooms. Occasional jets of mist, rising like morning dew, add to the alpine experience, although the true source is a concealed cistern of recycled ­water. From the top of the hill, you get a telescoped view of Center City’s towers pressing at the park’s edge like a magical Oz. Despite the difference in scale, the buildings seem to cradle the park rather than dominate it. The vantage also offers a clear understanding of the park’s composition. Digsau’s sophisticated glass-­and-­stone pavilion holds the center. Just beyond, bracketing the building, Hanes created a new tribute to Philadelphia’s ­Sister Cities, a circular splash fountain where concentric



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rings representing the dif­fer­ent cities rotate outward. They are spaced in proportion to each city’s distance from Philadelphia. The flat circle of the fountain, which can be turned off in cold weather, counterbalances the round topographical hill on the other side of the cafe. The arrangement happens to be a variation on the composition of JFK Plaza down the Parkway, where the circular fountain and spaceship orbit each other. ­Here, Digsau’s cafe offers a counterpoint of sharp corners. The architects kept the Wissahickon theme by cladding the building in a gray suit of Emerson limestone to evoke the local schist. It’s cut in long bricks that are smooth in some places and roughly cleft in ­others, to reflect the tension between urban and rural embedded in the design. Unlike the landscape, the pavilion’s heart is with the city. Its roof tilts up at a jaunty ­angle, revealing a sharply creased glass corner. The glass is so clear ­there is almost no distinction between the indoor seating and the section outside ­under the wood-­clad awnings. You are part of the city as well as the countryside. Hanes also introduced a diagonal walkway at the southeast corner that allows pedestrians arriving from the east to merge seamlessly onto the Parkway, without struggling with its oddly located crosswalks. The cafe also includes another passage connecting the park to the cathedral. An attached structure serves as a boat rental. The only edge of the park that fails to connect fully with its surroundings is the northeast corner, at the base of the hill. Hanes felt a protective fence was necessary for safety. But the treatment of the corner effectively turns its back on the new Mormon T ­ emple, which is being built at Eigh­teenth and Vine Streets and w ­ ill be an impor­tant addition to the Parkway’s monuments. Despite all our technological innovations, we seem incapable of constructing urban proj­ects that relate on all their sides to the surrounding city. The freshness brought to Logan Square’s disconnected pieces by the Center City District, and by funders including the William Penn Foundation and Pew Charitable Trusts, is as invigorating as a morning walk in the Wissahickon. ­These private donors have raised design standards enormously for Center City. Now the question is how the same can be done for parks outside the tourist zone. ­Every Philadelphia neighborhood should have a park as good as ­Sister Cities.

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­W ill the Inquirer’s Move to Market Street Move the Street? July 13, 2012 Even at this late stage in the evolution of the business we now call media, I  still think of myself as a newspaper reporter, the ink-­on-­the-­fingertips kind, whose heart rhythms are synced to the arrival of the latest tidbit of information. But I am not the least bit sorry to have left the big white tower on North Broad Street for the grit and bustle of East Market Street. ­After saying our long, sentimental goodbyes to that classic newspaper aerie, the entire population of the Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly​.­com— about 600 reporters, editors, page designers, tech workers, advertising sales ­people, and circulation man­ag­ers—­began moving this week to the third floor of the former Strawbridge & Clothier department store, a case of one surviving mass-­market institution burrowing into the shell of another, departed one. Where we ­were previously stacked vertically in our cloistered compounds, separated by fields of vacant cubicles, we are now pressed together in one sprawling horizontal space spanning three buildings between Eighth and Ninth Streets, from Simon & Simon’s art deco wedding cake to Bower & Fradley’s ’70s-­era Gallery. Yes, the quarters are a bit tighter than w ­ e’re used to. But it also feels as if ­we’ve left the sleepy suburbs for the hyped-up density of the big city, and that can only do all of us—­the com­pany and the city—­some good. East Market Street is not exactly a prestige address, I realize, but then neither was North Broad Street. Once home to a parade of g­ rand department stores that drew shoppers from across the Philadelphia region, the stretch of East Market between City Hall and In­de­pen­dence Mall is now dominated by a dowdy collection of low-­price chain stores, cheap eateries, high-­security government buildings, and surface parking lots. City planners have been trying for de­cades to come up with a strategy to bring back the shopping street’s lost luster. For a while in 2009, it looked as if Foxwoods casino would be the one to rescue East Market. A major planning study by Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn heralded the proposed arrival of that twenty-­four-­hour operation and called for more housing, more height, more offices, more sparkle (in the form of electronic signage) to support the emerging entertainment district.



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Instead, Foxwoods imploded, the recommendations ­were abandoned, and East Market Street got a struggling newspaper com­pany intent on reinventing itself for the Internet age. It’s true that East Market—­like our own media enterprise—­has seen better days. Yet the street, shabby as it is, still thrums with the kind of urban activity that we craved on North Broad Street. H ­ ere the sidewalks are mobbed with ­people who actually seem to have destinations—­shops, jobs, restaurants. Buses trundle by nose-­to-­tail in a never-­ending convoy, and the corners constantly erupt with swarms of rail commuters. We can practically smell the food from Chinatown and the Reading Terminal Market. At our old alabaster tower, I can remember times when I stood on the empty Broad Street sidewalk and wondered if ­there w ­ ere some national holiday I’d forgotten about. City Hall, for its part, was so excited about the prospect of filling an empty floor in the old Strawbridge’s that it provided our landlord, PREIT, with a $2 million low-­interest loan to ready the space, formerly “ladies” clothing, for our dove-­gray cubicles. But d­ on’t expect the mere presence of 600 office workers to transform East Market Street, no ­matter what the boosters say. The com­pany that now owns the papers and Philly​.­com, Interstate General Media, ­isn’t even the biggest single tenant in the building, which has become home to several state and federal agencies since the department store closed in 2006. Still, as Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger noted when we spoke about the move, journalists are dif­fer­ent from government employees. We have a reputation as a hungry and unruly bunch that likes to escape the office and roam around. And ­because we come and go at odd hours, he’s hoping that we ­will inject some much-­needed eve­ning life into the area. How much our arrival helps East Market ­will depend a lot on how the com­pany engages the city below our third-­floor offices. As part of the lease, the newspapers and Philly​.­com ­will have a public lobby on the ground floor of 801 Market Street. Once construction is finished in August, visitors w ­ ill be able to enter through the historic Strawbridge doors into a generous, high-­ceilinged space with direct elevator access to the offices and a light-­ filled event room where public programs are planned. The entrance is flanked by a pair of elegant, brass-­trimmed shop win­dows that ­were once filled with artful merchandise displays aimed at tempting customers inside.

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The hope is that Interstate General ­will use ­those win­dows to create a twenty-­first-­century, media-­company equivalent of ­those ­great display win­ dows—­perhaps as interactive as the Internet. Located next to Walgreens’s atrocious, street-­deadening win­dows, which have been papered over with vapid photos, a creative display could do a lot to elevate the culture of East Market. It’s true, as publisher Bob Hall told me in an interview, that the newspapers do not have a good rec­ord of activating the ground floor on Broad Street, but he says the increased foot traffic on Market Street is an incentive to do better. It’s another way that the new heart-­of-­the-­city location can be a fresh start for an old newspaper com­pany. Interstate Media is also preparing to install electronic signage, which w ­ ill include streaming news headlines, at the Ninth Street corner of the com­pany offices. It’s the first recommendation from the 2009 master plan to be put into practice. Winston Churchill’s famous quip about architecture, that first we shape our buildings and then they shape us, can be applied ­here. We might change East Market Street, but it’s more likely that East Market has the potential to change us. As inspiring as our old Superman-­style tower looks from afar, it was, at ground level, an aloof and isolated building. The architecture, by Rankin, Kellogg & Crane, was perfect as a symbol: a noble white knight of a tower staring down Broad Street at its City Hall equivalent, a secular seat of power, promising truth. But it was not so perfect when it came to interacting with the city it covered, especially ­after the Vine Street Expressway cut its location off from Center City. The white tower was a relic of the golden age of newspapers. Most g­ reat newspaper buildings (in Chicago, Los Angeles) went up in the 1920s, when news flowed in one direction—­beamed out from the towers to the working masses who read newspapers as they commuted to work on trolleys and trains. Now news travels in multiple directions on the Internet, from the content producers, who include both professional and citizen journalists, to content consumers and back. The building ultimately became an albatross, too big for our needs. Making our home in a newspaper building froze us psychologically in history and kept us from interacting physically in the city. The f­ uture for all media is an interactive one. At the Strawbridge building, the linkages are vis­i­ble and real; the offices are connected directly into the Gallery shopping mall, all



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the regional transit lines, and most importantly, onto a street filled with ­people. In equipping the large sunlit newsroom with bright colors and whimsical furniture, the interior designers from Kling w ­ ere clearly hoping to inspire the freewheeling spirit of an Internet start-up. Having the staff all on one floor could generate more energy, by allowing for casual interactions that encourage creativity and ideas, much as they occur in a dense city. Unlike the tower, the new office does not have a cafeteria or dedicated parking garage, and that means more of us w ­ ill have to hoof our way around. Despite some griping about the cost of parking, this is a good ­thing for the city. Freed from our tower, we have a chance to immerse ourselves in the currents of a fast-­changing world just by stepping out onto East Market Street.

4 ▶ AGE OF THE MEGAPRO JECTS

The Linc to Tomorrow August 3, 2003 Even in an age when luxury skyboxes rule the roost, most American football stadiums remain Everyman palaces, where fans can gather to satisfy the ­human craving for beer, brawn, blood, and bravado. They are not usually designed for ­those sensitive souls who eat their hoagies on a plate. But go to the Mercedes-­Benz Club Lounge at the Ea­gles’ new Lincoln Financial Field and you ­will find rows of minimalist sofas; vases of fresh, white gladiolas; arrays of plasma-­screen TVs; and a commissioned set of original black-­and-­white photo­graphs. ­Those with seats on the upper deck can enjoy paeans to two darlings of con­temporary Eu­ro­pean architecture, along with food ­they’ve packed in clear plastic sandwich bags. The Ea­gles’ owner, Jeffrey Lurie, could have chosen any architectural style for his team’s new $512 million home, the most expensive to date in

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The foundations of a never-­built waterfront tram loom over the failed Penn’s Landing site. (Credit: Brad Maule)

professional football. But Lurie, who swooped in from Boston via Hollywood to buy the Ea­gles in 1994, de­cided to appeal to the boutique-­hotel set rather than the Union League crowd. The result is a stadium—­called the Linc—­that forges far beyond the wood-­paneled world of conservative Philadelphia and looks boldly into a dynamic ­future. “Traditional,” Lurie explained in an interview, cutting to the chase, “completely bores us.” Lurie and his wife, Christina, who played a major role in the stadium’s design, made a few peace offerings to the old guard, mainly in the form of the redbrick head­house at the stadium’s entrance, which borrows from the demolished train stations of Philadelphia’s once-­disgraced, now-­beloved Frank Furness. But their hearts ­don’t seem to be in that high-­ceilinged space. Most fans in the luxury suites and club areas ­will reach their seats from other entrances, transported in ­silent, state-­of-­the-­art escalators and elevators. Still, the brick head­house may be a useful reminder that Philadelphia’s prosperity was

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once built on its railroads, especially given that the stadium is now a full three blocks from the Broad Street Subway. The combination of token brick on the stadium’s exterior and modern cool on the inside should call to mind the strategy used at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The two public buildings even feature almost identical, high-­backed minimalist sofas. But the Luries clearly felt less compelled to appease the city’s redbrick lobby than the Kimmel did. Large sections of the stadium’s exterior are sheathed in corrugated metal and girded by X-­braces. The Linc’s stylishness is no doubt accentuated by the contrast with the Phillies’ ballpark g­ oing up on the other side of Pattison Ave­nue. That stadium has the misfortune to pander to Amer­ic­ a’s obsession with retro just as the retro craze that began with Baltimore’s Camden Yards is waning. Spearheaded by a Wharton-­schooled committee, the Phillies’ ballpark looks like a Motel 6 next to the Luries’ swinging Paramount ­Hotel. While the Linc’s clubs and lounges are sophisticated in an urban-­loft sort of way, they could also serve as the lobby for any of ­today’s designer ­hotels. You have to look pretty hard to find the word “Philadelphia” anywhere on this stadium, even though the public paid more than a third of the construction tab. The stadium’s most thrilling space occurs in what used to be considered nosebleed territory, that western upper deck concourse. Th ­ ere, bare steel I-­beams and taut suspension cables crash through the polished concrete floors in a pure cele­bration of the materials’ industrial power. Never mind that the concourse offers a spectacular pa­norama of Philadelphia’s own d­ ying industrial landscape of mothballed warships and creaking rail yards. The view quickly pans across a range of dizzying extremes: from the gleaming Oz of Center City, to the elevated highways speeding the population out to the suburbs, to the scattering of concrete hatboxes known as the Sports Complex. The Linc is very much the Luries’ personal statement. They selected the design-­oriented NBBJ Sports & Entertainment of Marina Del Ray, California, as their primary architect. Agoos/Lovera, Philadelphia architects known for their stylish and hotly colored buildings, ­were hired as the local associate and supplied much of the on-­site supervision. Early in the design pro­cess, the Luries met NBBJ’s principals, Daniel R. Meis and Ronald F. Turner, in Paris to give them a ­grand tour of their favor-



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ite architectural haunts. NBBJ, which designed Milwaukee’s Miller Park as well as futuristic stadiums in Asia, must have taken careful notes, b­ ecause all the architectural antecedents are duly recorded at the Linc. The upper deck’s slashing steel is lifted almost verbatim from Bruno Gaudin’s Stade Charlety in Paris. The winglike canopies, with their sharply pointed talons, take their inspiration directly from Santiago Calatrava’s celebrated anthropomorphic bridges. Look overhead next time you stroll out to the concourse for a Dietz & Watson hot dog, and you w ­ ill see a refinery’s worth of pipelines. Th ­ ose are the beer conduits, and a nod to the exposed pipe of the Centre Pompidou. The soft colors used in the clubs come from Michael Graves, the architect of the Ea­gles’ training compound on Broad Street and a friend of the Luries’. Add a few dashes of hotelier Ian Schrager, Furness, and Christo. Mix in a cocktail shaker. Voilà—­the Linc. It’s fortunate that t­here is no copyright on architectural forms. It’s also fortunate that the Luries have good taste. The Linc borrows far too liberally from big-­name architects to be considered truly original work or an expression of Philadelphia culture. And yet in putting all that high design in a football stadium, the Luries seem to be onto something fresh. Much has been made about the Arizona Cardinals’ decision to hire the deconstructionist Peter Eisenman as their architect, but the Luries have paved the way with their design-­driven stadium. Anyway, as long as the sight lines are good, fans ­won’t care who used ­those muscular steel columns first. And the views of the field are excellent. Unlike the multipurpose doughnut of Veterans Stadium, the Linc subjects none of its 69,000 seats to the shadows of a concrete overhang. The concourses, meanwhile, are twice as wide as t­ hose at the Vet. The Luries may have forgotten the w ­ ater fountains, but t­ here are thirty-­nine rest­rooms just for ­women, who now make up 40 ­percent of the NFL’s fans. If the Birds lose, their supporters can console themselves with the g­ reat views of Philadelphia vis­i­ble through the stadium’s open corners. And if that ­isn’t enough, they need only walk out to the club area, sink into an ultrasuede sofa, and change the channel on one of the 1,000 plasma-­screen TVs.

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Let’s Get Serious about Waterfront Access November 14, 2003 Election Day has come and gone, and Mayor Street has said nary a word about the fate of the four Penn’s Landing development proposals. Shh. Let’s not remind him. The longer the deliberations drag on, the greater the chance that Philadelphia ­will come to its senses, drop the embarrassing developer quest, and start ­doing some serious waterfront planning. ­Because of the ­bitter po­liti­cal campaign, Street was more focused on the instant gratification of dealmaking than on the hard work of planning. First, the mayor promised to pick a Penn’s Landing developer by last May. Then it was ­going to be late October, just in time for a preelection news flash. But the Penn’s Landing deal slipped off the mayor’s agenda in the final buggy days of the campaign. A ­little inertia can be a wonderful ­thing. The delay has given Wallace Roberts & Todd time to complete the first reasonable planning study for Philadelphia’s central waterfront. The shame is that the study had to be commissioned and financed by private citizens, a co­ali­tion of eleven neighborhood groups. They fear that City Hall is heading ­toward another development disaster at Penn’s Landing. Despite its modest bud­get, the WRT study is a fine start. The best t­ hing about the proj­ect, by planners Gil Rosenthal and Scott Page, is that it fi­nally identifies the real subject: Philadelphia’s waterfront i­sn’t just the puny, thirteen-­acre Penn’s Landing site between Market and Walnut Streets; it’s Philadelphia’s entire twenty-­mile-­long Delaware River coastline. If the city wants to get Penn’s Landing right, it must first develop a planning approach for the ­whole waterfront. Look at the ­whole river? What a no-­brainer. The study goes on to articulate a few other, equally basic, equally sensible ideas: Guarantee public access all along the entire length of the river. Lay the groundwork for a twenty-­ mile-­long recreational path parallel to the river. Stop focusing on tourists. Develop neighborhoods and amenities that all Philadelphians can enjoy. WRT’s analy­sis is especially meaningful given the firm’s track rec­ord. Not only was it the original planner for Baltimore’s groundbreaking Inner Harbor proj­ect, but the Broad Street firm produced the set of princi­ples that have guided the development of North Jersey’s Hudson riverfront, a landscape very much like Philadelphia’s own Delaware riverfront.



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Thanks to WRT’s guidelines, and to the commitment of New Jersey’s leaders in the early ’80s, the public was guaranteed access to a thirty-­foot-­ wide path r­unning parallel to the eighteen-­mile Hudson waterfront—no ­matter what private developers built nearby. T ­ oday p­ eople can walk, run, bike, skate, fish, and enjoy the stunning views along eleven miles of completed pathway, even though a varied array of apartments, offices, and shopping centers have popped up alongside the Hudson. But ­because of Street’s obsession with clinching a Penn’s Landing deal, Philadelphians are about to lose the same basic right on the Delaware. Just a few blocks north of Penn’s Landing, at the level of Fairmount Ave­ nue, a group of savvy Israeli developers has begun work on a complex of five luxury apartment towers called Waterfront Square. The handsome, urbane buildings ­were designed, ironically, by WRT’s Rosenthal. The bigger irony, and the bigger tragedy, is that the nine-­acre complex ­will be gated. Except for the affluent few who can live ­there, Philadelphians ­will never get to stroll along Waterfront Square’s beautiful Delaware River path. They ­will never get to take in its resortlike river views or the pa­norama of the city’s skyline. That experience is lost forever ­because Philadelphia had no waterfront zoning in place when the developers acquired their building permits. The gated complex means Philadelphia can never have a continuous twenty-­ mile-­long path along the Delaware. The gates ­will also interrupt the East Coast Greenway, a coastal version of the Appalachian Trail that is being built from Maine to Florida. ­Don’t blame WRT for the loss, or the developers, for that m ­ atter. They played by the rules. Blame former mayor Ed Rendell for tying up Penn’s Landing for years with Mel Simon’s blank-­walled shopping mall. Blame Mayor Street for failing to recognize the opportunity that the Simon proj­ ect’s failure offered. You need some historical perspective to understand the full extent of the tragedy. Philadelphia owes its existence to the Delaware River, but the city was gradually cut off from its founding w ­ aters by industry. As the shipyards and power plants dis­appeared, Philadelphia had an opportunity to reclaim the river for housing and recreation. But private interests are again blocking the public’s way. Yet if you overlook the fact that Waterfront Square is gated, the proj­ect is exactly what should be occurring on the Delaware waterfront. Unlike the

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contenders for the Penn’s Landing site, who whine that they need government subsidies, Waterfront Square’s developer, Isle of Capri Associates, bought the land with its own money ($12 million, cash) and is improving it with its own money. If  Waterfront Square succeeds, as appears likely from the advance sales, other apartment proj­ects ­will follow. Th ­ ey’re likely to be gated too. U ­ nless the mayor acts now to create a waterfront zoning plan, our only view of the river could be from the crumbling asphalt of Penn’s Landing.

A De­c ade ­a fter In­de­pen­dence Mall’s Reconstruction, It’s Time to Evaluate the Results December 26, 2010 In early 2000, In­de­pen­dence Mall was an American Versailles, with brick colonnades, ­great tiered fountains, and row upon row of straight-­backed trees, arrayed across the park’s three city blocks like soldiers awaiting review. Then bulldozers reduced e­ very last piece of the thirty-­year-­old ensemble to rubble. ­Today, a mere de­cade ­after that de­mo­li­tion proj­ect, a gentler, less monumental mall has risen in Philadelphia’s historic heart—­one that lures three times as many tourists as before. In a city that has trou­ble following through on big proj­ects, the improved park offers a lavish buffet of new attractions, including the just-­opened President’s House and National Museum of American Jewish History, instead of purely ceremonial spaces. The reconstructed mall is a mecca for tourists, who can be seen on warm days hugging close to the railroad-­car lineup of new buildings along Sixth Street, lunching in shady groves, ogling the Liberty Bell, and clamoring for brochures and bathrooms at the new In­de­pen­dence Visitor Center. As for city residents’ enjoying the park, well, not so much. The $300 million reconstruction of the ’70s-­era national park was the proj­ect of a generation for Philadelphia, on par in its ambition and cost with Chicago’s hugely popu­lar Millennium Park. Like the Windy City’s undertaking, the renovation of In­de­pen­dence Mall gave Philadelphia a large, public greensward downtown. Both w ­ ere carried out thanks to generous infusions of private money.



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It’s a good bet, however, that few Philadelphians feel the same affection for their new park that Chicagoans do for theirs. Unlike buildings, landscape proj­ects rarely come to a neat conclusion ­because they take so long to reach maturity. Such was the case with In­de­ pen­dence Mall, a construction site u­ ntil the dedication of the President’s House this month. With that memorial and the Jewish museum on Fifth Street, it’s pos­si­ble to say the mall is done and ready for evaluation. The proj­ect’s completion comes as the city is gearing up for the reconstruction of other failed public spaces—­the Parkway, Dilworth Plaza, and, in a certain sense, I-95. Organizers of ­those proj­ects w ­ ill surely look to the mall for guidance on how best to cater to visitors’ needs. The question is: Can they also be designed for the plea­sure of Philadelphians? The ambitious mall renovation, planned by Philadelphia architects Laurie D. Olin and Bernard Cywinski, was launched with two big yet distinct objectives: The first was to turn the desultory historic area into a power­ful tourist magnet. The designers also sought to repair the cruel gash that had been cut into the city’s oldest, and most architecturally rich, neighborhood when the three blocks ­were razed to create the mall in the ’50s. As hoped, the historic area has been reinvigorated, with two million visitors annually, up from 650,000 in the mid-’90s. But of the companion goal of suturing ­those blocks back into the grid, and reintegrating them into the swirl of urban life, the proj­ect has fallen short. If anything, the mall remains as cut off from its surroundings as ever. ­Because of the mall’s role in promoting Amer­i­ca’s history, no one expected it to evolve into an exuberant playground exactly like Millennium Park, which includes a Frank Gehry–­designed band shell and an engaging collection of public art. But given its proximity to such thriving neighborhoods as Old City, Society Hill, Chinatown, and Wash West, the mall could have become a stronger residential amenity if the proj­ect had done a better job of breaking down the physical barriers on its edges. By the time Olin and Cywinski started work on their master plan in the mid-’90s, the mall’s original design was widely considered a failure. Not only did its vast scale and pompous layout dwarf diminutive In­de­pen­dence Hall, but also the space lacked a natu­ral draw; ­there ­were no full-­time attractions, no lawns for impromptu games. But the worst aspect of the old mall was that it formed an empty canyon severing Old City from the rest of downtown.

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Olin, a renowned landscape architect, devised his design as an antidote to ­those conditions. Where the original design emphasized the mall’s monumentality with hard surfaces, a symmetrical layout, and strong axial relationships, Olin called for a more off-­kilter, populist design with a soft lawn and curving pathways. He narrowed the mall’s wide girth by populating its Sixth Street edge with destination buildings. He made the excruciatingly long expanse feel shorter by giving it a terminus—­the National Constitution Center. And ­because ­there had been so few entry points, Olin proposed reestablishing the old alley streets, enabling pedestrians to take midblock shortcuts through the park. As good as ­these ideas looked on paper, implementing them was another ­matter. Whenever the mall proj­ect encountered any roadblocks, interviews with organizers suggest, the solutions tended to ­favor the comfort of tourists over the healing of the city’s wounds. The security demands that followed September 11, 2001, only made it harder to stitch the National Park Ser­vice’s property back into the city fabric. City leaders had to spend years fighting park officials who wanted a perimeter wall. The conflicting needs of tourists and residents are familiar to many big cities, especially as hospitality takes over from smokestack industries as a provider of low-­skill jobs. Yet even as the importance of tourism grows, cities recognize that good amenities are essential to retaining residents and attracting new ones. Their incomes and businesses also fuel the local economy. Still, for all the talk about improved connections, not one of the three new buildings on the mall’s west side—­the Visitor, Liberty Bell, and Constitution Centers—­features a significant entrance facing Sixth Street. Blank walls run for long stretches. Meanwhile, on Fifth Street, the only new building is a rest­room—­a solid brick box that sadly acts as a bookend to the Liberty Bell Center. It was built for tourists’ con­ve­nience although the Visitor Center rest­rooms are a block away. The prob­lems on Sixth Street can pretty much be blamed on the poor urbanism of the architecture, produced by three dif­fer­ent firms. But Fifth Street fails ­because the Philadelphia Parking Authority balked at modernizing the garage ­under the mall’s ­middle block. Like many older garages, it was built without regard to pedestrians. Originally, two long access ramps monopolized the frontage on Fifth and Sixth Streets, keeping ­people from flowing naturally into the park. And since the



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garage’s roof was significantly above street level—­similar to the garage at JFK Plaza—­the ­middle block was higher than ­either of its neighbors. All ­these prob­lems might have been fixed, but the PPA—­then run by Rina Cutler, now deputy mayor for transportation—­balked at the added costs. The PPA had already spent about $16 million on garage improvements. That enabled designers to convert the Sixth Street ramp to a compact spiral, but the long Fifth Street ramp was left in place to save money. ­Because of the outmoded garage, the mall’s crucial ­middle block is a disaster, functionally and aesthetically. Had the Fifth Street ramp been removed, the elegant cafe designed by Erdy McHenry could have been placed at sidewalk level instead of a full story above the fray and thus helped entice pedestrians from Old City into the park. Since the garage roof poked above street level, Olin had to camouflage the structure with landscape ele­ments. Visitors to the m ­ iddle block encounter an ungainly grass mound, a hillock that compromises views and further discourages strollers from wandering through the park. To the original proponents of the mall’s reconstruction—­a group that includes the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Park Ser­vice, and city leaders—­the huge increase in out-­of-­town visitors more than makes up for the design weaknesses. “It’s ­great to look down at the beehive of activity,” said Dennis Reidenbach, who headed In­de­pen­dence National Historical Park during much of the proj­ect. “If you had told me in 1993 that we’d come up with a vision that would produce $300 million worth of investment on the mall, I’d have been skeptical.” Olin is more open about his disappointment with the mall’s urban design. “Sixth Street is not as good as I hoped it would be,” he said this fall during a walk past the unrelenting brick facade of Kallmann McKinnell & Wood’s Visitor Center. PPA “made life hard for us all,” he added. “We inherited a terrible garage that was too high.” He also acknowledged that the focus on tourists had contributed to several larger design prob­lems. “Paris ­didn’t build parks for tourists,” Olin observed. “It built them for itself. If you want ­great tourist places, you have to build them first as places for yourself.” To be sure, Philadelphians do go to the mall for major events. On July 4, the first block hosted an emotional reenactment of a famous Frederick Douglass

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antislavery speech. Crowds assem­ble on the lawn for concerts by the Philly Pops, the city’s annual gay-­pride event, and protests. ­There are even occasional games of pickup softball. But such popu­lar activities are the exception. The Park Ser­vice never installed the Peaceable Kingdom playground Olin designed for the m ­ iddle block, an attraction that would have served nearby residents. And ­there are still no midblock crosswalks so ­people can cross safely from Old City to the alley pathways Olin created. Charlene Mires, a Rutgers University–­Camden historian and author of In­de­pen­dence Hall in American Memory, has another gripe: “You actually need a permit to use the First Amendment plaza. The physical space is in ser­vice to the tourist economy.” That might be expected given that the tourist economy drove the proj­ect. The mall improvements w ­ ere first proposed in the mid-’90s by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which believed that a robust tourism industry could help secure the city’s economic ­future. Philadelphia ­wasn’t ­doing a very good job of marketing itself to visitors, Pew president Rebecca W. Rimel recalled. The existing Visitor Center in the national park was precluded from promoting the city’s other attractions, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and restaurants. Philadelphia had become a “drive by” for visitors who saw no reason to stay overnight, Rimel said. Pew responded by launching the campaign to build a privately funded Visitor Center that would highlight and market all that the region had to offer. Pew not only gave $20 million to the mall, but the foundation also lobbied other donors and po­liti­cal leaders to support the proj­ect, which soon expanded beyond a new Visitor Center. Unlike Chicago, Philadelphia strug­ gled for years to raise money ­because Park Ser­vice rules forbid the sale of naming rights. As the scope of the redesign grew, tourist attractions remained the focus. Even when the architects ­were debating critical urban-­design issues, Rimel said, she stayed neutral. “I d­ idn’t have an opinion [about design issues],” she said. “I just wanted to see the civic space redone.” But many of the design debates, such as ­whether to rebuild the garage, had profound consequences. Early in the pro­cess, another design firm working on the master plan—­ Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates—­argued that the mall was too big and advocated that it be shrunk to one block or possibly two. Then-­mayor



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Edward G. Rendell liked the idea ­because the third block could be sold for a ­hotel. But the Park Ser­vice balked at giving up real estate, and no one had the power to overturn the decision. Tourist issues also trumped impor­tant urban-­design concerns. For instance, the Visitor Center is so uninviting ­because its backers insisted on having two theaters to highlight city history, even though the information is available elsewhere in the historic area. Since theaters c­ an’t have win­dows, the result is the blank wall on Sixth Street, where ­human activity should be vis­ib­ le. If that ­weren’t bad enough, the Park Ser­vice vetoed a win­dow on Market Street for the center’s bookstore. It felt that the sight of commerce would demean the mall’s dignity. Instead, the front of the building is camouflaged with a hard-­to-­decipher artwork by Alison Sky. Its plexiglass screens are now badly yellowed, and cigarette butts gather in the crannies. Venturi Scott Brown, who participated during the early planning in the mid-’90s, argued on aesthetic grounds for shrinking the mall. But it may also be too big for the Park Ser­vice to maintain. This summer the east and west sides of the Liberty Bell Center w ­ ere left unplanted and turned muddy in the rain. Vines that w ­ ere supposed to grow over an arbor w ­ ere stunted. During one of my visits for this story, I found the mall’s Fifth Street rest­ room already filthy at 9 a.m. The federal owner­ship of the mall has compromised its success in myriad ways. With its shady perch above the Christ Church burial ground, the cafe could be a charming place to enjoy a meal and a glass of wine—if the park allowed alcohol, or if the operator offered more than a snack-­truck menu. The new mall ­hasn’t done much for nearby businesses e­ ither. Although ­there are new restaurants on Chestnut Street, several large buildings remain empty on the mall’s immediate periphery. It took the entire de­cade for the stately Lafayette Building, at Fifth and Chestnut Streets, to find an occupant, a Kimpton ­hotel that is expected to open next year. The mall is vastly improved in one key re­spect. Thanks to the reconstruction, the shrine to the American ideals of freedom and tolerance has made a place for three previously disfranchised groups: African Americans through the President’s House, Jews through the new museum, and gays through a historic marker at Sixth and Chestnut Streets. Unfortunately, as long as In­de­pen­dence Mall remains an island in the city, it ­will mainly be tourists who appreciate the improvements.

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­ ill This Be the Convention Center W that Eats Philadelphia? February 27, 2011 In the days when American cities produced t­hings you could hold and touch, Philadelphia built sprawling factories such as the Budd and Baldwin plants. Now that hospitality has become the linchpin of our urban economies, cities instead vie to build ever bigger and grander convention centers. This week it ­will be Philadelphia’s turn, when it opens the largest exhibition hall on the East Coast, joining an elite crowd capable of hosting mega-­ conventions of 20,000 or more ­people. The culmination of a de­cade of effort, the expanded Convention Center is so vast it could roof over three Ritten­house Squares. Other cities may claim bigger boxes, but none can match the downtown location. The hopes that have been invested in the $786 million proj­ect are as enormous as the structure. Not only is the city counting on the enlarged Convention Center to create jobs and spawn new ­hotels and restaurants, but it also believes the building can awaken the sleeping beauty that is North Broad Street. That last item, however, may be too much to expect from a work of architecture, never mind one that w ­ ill be dark more than 170 days this year. Like the factories that once dominated the latitudes north of City Hall, the expanded center is designed for function—­the moving, seating, and feeding of large groups, quickly and efficiently. Th ­ ese are t­ hings it appears capable of ­doing very well. As for the architecture, its only role, unfortunately, is to camouflage the center’s bulk, much like the false fronts used to adorn frontier buildings. Even at that, the screening is applied to only two of the building’s four main facades. Long stretches of blankness and inactivity make it difficult for this gargantuan box—­covering six full city blocks—to sustain the kind of meaningful relationship with its neighbors that we expect from our urban buildings. Produced by a team of architects ­under the leadership of Atlanta’s TVS Design and Philadelphia’s Vitetta, the supersized Convention Center is a virtual clone of the original 1993 building. It exhibits all the same strengths and limitations of that eighteen-­year-­old design, with one notable improvement: now ­people ­will be able to find the front door.



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As befitting such a potent economic engine, the enlarged Convention Center has been given a major entrance on Broad Street, one that is commensurate with its physical and symbolic presence. The eleven-­story-­high shield of curving glass is easily the best of four main facades. To be sure, ­there’s a bit of airport-­modern styling in the arrangement of horizontal sunshades and aluminum-­sheathed columns. But the monumental wall effectively re­orients the Convention Center, placing it at the doorstep of Philadelphia’s downtown office district. The original entrance, an insignificant corner door next to the murky Twelfth Street tunnel, always seemed to lack the proper ceremony that such a prominent building deserves. Now the Broad Street facade puffs out its glass chest, as if to assert the center’s belatedly recognized importance in the city’s orbit. At night, bolts of colored LED lights shoot across the horizontal fins, injecting some needed energy into both the facade and that tattered block north of City Hall. Given the effort that went into creating such strong curbside appeal, it’s hard to understand why the center installed such runty entrance doors, which look oddly out of proportion to the grandly scaled glass wall. The generic, overly shiny, off-­the-­shelf doors, which are said to be easy to maintain and lock, suggest a bean ­counter at work. Once you wriggle through ­those narrow openings into the lobby’s soaring atrium, the place starts to feel familiar. Escalators clad in limestone and granite break down the scale of the im­mense lobby and take visitors up to the main exhibition hall. To unify the interior, the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority had the architects repeat the same finishes, design details, and carpet pattern used in the 1993 building. Outside on Arch Street, the architects also continued the rhythm of gabled sections developed back in the early ’90s, during the waning days of postmodernism. While breaking the long facade into rowhouse-­size sections was effective then in humanizing the large building, the additional run of gables between Thirteenth and Broad makes the facade feel a bit relentless. Real row­house blocks are punctuated with commerce and variety. ­These gables seem to go on forever. The expansion’s star attraction is the Terrace Ballroom on the top level, which can accommodate 3,700 for dinner, 6,000 for a lecture. From the lobby outside the ballroom, the glass facade beautifully frames Broad Street’s ravishing lineup of masonry buildings, including Frank Furness’s masterpiece, the Pennsylvania Acad­emy of the Fine Arts.

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That view, incidentally, ­will be the addition’s only cultural diversion. Unlike the 1993 building, the new portion has no public art in the lobby or hallways. That’s ­because the state Department of General Ser­vices, which took over the construction proj­ect from the convention authority in 2007, killed the bud­get for paintings and sculpture, along with several other features that ­were intended to humanize the center’s vast spaces. DGS, the state’s construction agency, was also responsible for tearing down a historic row of buildings on Broad Street, breaking a written covenant the convention authority had negotiated with preservationists. The question now is what happens to the awkward gap where the buildings stood. The space was set aside to be used as a garden by the ­hotel that ­will someday occupy the Liberty Title tower at Broad and Arch. But ­until the building owner secures a h­ otel deal, the opening w ­ ill remain a windswept desert of concrete. Several other aspects of the proj­ect shortchange the public. While one may quibble with the details, the architectural team, which includes Philadelphia’s Kelly/Maiello and Synterra, clearly went to g­ reat effort to activate the Broad and Arch Street facades. Both offer glimpses into the public areas where conventioneers gather, and ­those views help make the enormous building feel alive. The prob­lem is that the stage inside w ­ ill be bare far too often. ­Because the Broad Street addition is booked only 133 days between now and December, the impressive new lobby w ­ ill stand empty much of the time, and the doors ­will be locked. Perhaps the convention business ­will pick up next year, but such inactivity challenges the assumption that the expansion can be a boon to North Broad Street. Unlike the factories they replaced, convention centers d­ on’t have p­ eople flowing through their doors day in and day out. Their erratic use makes it difficult for shops and restaurants to put down roots nearby. No won­der the 1200 block of Arch Street remains seriously underdeveloped eigh­teen years ­after the original Convention Center opened across the street. The center’s expansion was meant to rectify that situation by reducing the downtime between conventions. The enlarged meeting space allows the convention authority to break down one exhibit while it sets up the next. Now that the exhibit hall spans three city blocks, the center can also accommodate more of the huge, industrywide meetings by the likes of the American Medical Association and other organ­izations. But ­those prizes are rare.



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Given the challenges of keeping the meeting hall filled, the convention authority might have done better to allocate retail-­size space along its long facades to other users. At one stage of the decade-­long design pro­cess, the authority set aside space at the Race Street corner so one of the city’s art museums could open a satellite gallery. Instead, that key corner is wasted with the blandest of plazas, a concrete pad that is virtually unlandscaped. The weakest part of the design, however, is surely Race Street, which has been turned into a three-­block ser­vice entrance. Always treated as the Convention Center’s back door, it’s worse now. Instead of helping to lure development north, it stops it dead in its tracks. My guess is that the momentum ­will spread west instead, ­toward Center City, Pennsylvania Acad­emy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), and the Parkway’s cultural riches. Convention centers, like stadiums, belong to that breed of architecture that is complete only when filled with ­people. On the days when conventioneers are oozing from e­ very doorway, it ­won’t ­matter so much that the building is a twenty-­acre box wrapped in a thin skin of glass and concrete. But without the excitement of the crowds, that may be all we notice.

With Casino Proposals, the House Always Wins April 19, 2013 Philadelphia’s recent casino hearings brought back memories of t­ hose giddy days in 2006 when gambling was new to Pennsylvania and no amenity was too extravagant for our city’s gaming halls. Once again, the applicants vied to seduce us with all kinds of extras. A 320-­room resort ­hotel! Spas! Bike paths! Fishing piers! Skating rink! Luxury shops! A starchitect design! For most ­people, the promises made during the first licensing round have been lost in the mists of time. But ­because I am a magpie of the filing cabinet, I only had to dust off SugarHouse’s 2006 proposal to see how it checked out against the 2013 real­ity. That plan showed a sleek, low-­slung casino design, inflected with a touch of Mad Men–­era glamour in Phase 1. Of course, what we got instead was a Walmart-­style box. For Phase 2, SugarHouse told us it would grow into a dramatic resort complex anchored by a prow-­shaped ­hotel tower overlooking the Delaware River and equipped with a convention-­quality ballroom and a concert venue.

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As it happened, SugarHouse unveiled the expansion plan—­which it now prefers to call Phase 1A—on the same day hearings w ­ ere wrapping up for the city’s second casino. Notably absent from its proposal ­were the ­hotel and the theater. In the renderings, an open-­deck garage looms over the river, however, three levels shorter than the original ten-­story version. Suckers that we are, we continue to speak of the fantasies that w ­ ere presented last week to the Gaming Control Board as “plans.” What they are, in real­ity, is bait. Steve Wynn, in par­tic­u­lar, should have gotten the P. T. Barnum award. ­After declaring his special love for Philadelphia, where he spent his college years, and promising to tailor his Delaware River casino specifically to the city, it was revealed that he is two-­timing us already. The rendering he has been showing to his Philadelphia fans is identical to the one he presented to the citizens of Everett, Mas­sa­chu­setts. The six proposals clearly do not deserve serious architecture reviews. How can you evaluate a mirage? Yet where Philadelphia’s next casino ends up ­will have a lasting impact ­here. Rather than focus on computer-­generated sleight of hand, we should concentrate now on determining which site ­will bring the most gain and do the least damage to the city. The difficulty in evaluating ­these proposals is that ­every casino ele­ ment—­the gaming floor’s size, the number of restaurants—is determined by industry formulas more than by local conditions. The industry has changed dramatically since the first round of licensing in Pennsylvania, when just a handful of states allowed gambling. ­Today casinos have been approved in forty states, and t­ here are 979 gambling halls operating in the United States. With so many flashing slot machines scattered along our highways, the market is nearly saturated, especially in the Northeast, explained Roger Gros, publisher of Global Gaming Business, and one of the most astute industry observers I’ve encountered. Gamblers no longer need to turn a trip to a casino into a weekend getaway or summer vacation, the way they once did. Most p­ eople now treat casinos like supermarkets. They travel to the most con­ve­nient location, sometimes dropping in for an hour on the way home from work. In the Philadelphia area, the nearest casino is often less than ten miles from home. No won­der the three local gaming halls—­SugarHouse, Parx in



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Bensalem, and Harrah’s in Chester—­never both­ered to build their promised ­hotels. And if they have no need for guest suites, what makes anyone think the winner of Philadelphia’s second license ­will? Yet all six applicants tout ­hotels as major ele­ments in their proposals. The Hollywood Casino, one of three applicants grouped near the Walt Whitman Bridge, claims it’s ready to build a 500-­room h­ otel, which would make it one of the largest in the city. It’s hard to believe its clientele, hailing mainly from South Jersey, would need to stay over. Even less plausible is Wynn’s plan for a 320-­room resort on the Delaware. The proj­ect starts with a one-­story garage that sprawls across twenty acres of the lush, sixty-­acre riverfront site. Deep in the belly of this beast, Wynn plans a windowless bunker of a casino—­presumably safe from military attack. Corridors, similar to the spokelike arrangement at Eastern State Penitentiary, would funnel gamblers from their parking spaces to the slot machines. Fun! The upside is that the garage w ­ on’t be as vis­i­ble as SugarHouse’s seven-­story version. Gros ­doesn’t believe the old model of the casino-­hotel—­with its full-­ service menu of entertainment, shops, and spas—is dead. But it does seem that it can only work in locations with special draw, such as places of natu­ral beauty or cultural significance. It w ­ on’t happen on a highway, where four of the six applicants hold sites. But the new kind of casino Gros imagines might be pos­si­ble in Center City. That means the only applications worth considering are the Goldenberg Group’s Market8, at Eighth and Market Streets, and Bart Blatstein’s Provence, on the former Inquirer property at Broad and Callowhill Streets. Both are within walking distance of the Convention Center and Center City’s restaurants and attractions. Of course, both promise to build the usual roster of ­hotels, shops, and entertainment as part of Phase I. Which has the better site? It’s almost a draw, but ­here are some ­factors to consider. The Provence has easier highway access. Market8 has better transit. The Provence’s faux French architecture is tacky. Market8’s architect, Enrique Norten, is a real designer, but his rendering is a total fake, eye candy whipped up in a blender. Blatstein has a rec­ord of building urban buildings; Goldenberg gave us suburban-­style shopping centers like West Philadelphia’s Lowe’s and the Columbus Boulevard Ikea. The Provence would preserve the historic Inquirer tower and occupy a hard-­to-­use site. Although Eighth and Market should be the most desirable

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vacant site in the city, Goldenberg has sat on it for fifteen years. He claims to have rejected a proposal from Target b­ ecause it would be a “two-­story box.” As Philadelphia continues to mull its choices, it’s impor­tant to remember that both developers are master salesmen. Of the handful of downtown casinos in the United States, only two—­New Orleans and MGM Detroit—­ have made good on their ­hotel promises. Once the dazzling renderings fade, ­don’t be surprised if ­we’re left with a downtown version of the SugarHouse box.

Rebuilding a University City Neighborhood—­Again January 29, 2016 Maybe the third time ­will be the charm for the place ­we’ve grown used to calling University City. Originally an African American neighborhood known as Black Bottom, the portion between Market Street and Lancaster Ave­nue was a tight mesh of row­houses and small businesses ­until the early ’60s, when it was leveled to provide growing room for Penn and Drexel. As a token, the city set aside a full block on Thirty-­sixth Street to build a cutting-­edge science high school. It lasted all of thirty-­three years. ­Today that fourteen-­acre site has new, private o­ wners who are preparing to reinvent this corner of  West Philadelphia yet again. The gargantuan University City High School—­sold by the school district in 2014 in a desperate effort to raise cash—­has already been reduced to a field of raw brown earth, a blank canvas for the neighborhood’s dreams. In March, the lead developers, Wexford Science & Technology and the University City Science Center, ­will begin its transformation by ­etching new streets onto the sprawling property. In restoring the two streets—­Thirty-­seventh and Cuthbert—­the developers are attempting to undo some of the damage of the urban-­renewal period, when the enclave was fused into a massive, single-­use superblock. Their plan is driven by the same urban trends that have inspired the redevelopment of Twelfth and Market, where a monolithic retail block is now being reborn as a mixed-­use district laced with small streets, apartments, and offices.



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The key difference is that the West Philadelphia proj­ect is powered by the tech sector rather than retail. The site is also more closely tied in to a dense row­house neighborhood, Powelton Village. That’s a huge advantage, but it also means the developers ­will have to step carefully to ensure their buildings ­don’t bigfoot their neighbors. Wexford and the Science Center essentially ­will be creating a mini-­ neighborhood out of w ­ hole cloth. (Only a fragment of Black Bottom remains, a single row of ­houses on Warren Street.) Though the developers have a f­ ree hand to arrange the pieces on the site, their challenge is to make a collection of shiny new buildings feel like a real place rather than a three-­ dimensional version of a corporate business plan. To emphasize the fresh start, the developers have banished University City in f­ avor of uCitySquare, a name that, unfortunately, also has a generic ring. ­We’ll see how that goes. The broad outlines of the master plan are more promising. The arrangement was sketched out by Baltimore planner Ayers Saint Gross, with an assist from noted architect Jeanne Gang, best known for the undulating facade of her Aqua tower in Chicago. The planners recommended using the new streets to break the superblock into four manageable pieces. Interestingly, Thirty-­seventh Street ­will be situated slightly east of its original alignment to make it easier to walk from Powelton Village to Penn. Cuthbert w ­ ill provide a direct link from Drexel to Presbyterian Hospital. A public square designed by Olin ­will hold the center and provide much-­needed park space, drawing office workers from the south, residents from the north, and students from the east. At this point, only two of the four main parcels have fixed uses. As part of a deal negotiated with Powelton Village, the developers hired Erdy McHenry to design a mid-­rise apartment ­house fronting Lancaster Ave­nue. The building, which should start construction this summer, ­will have a ground floor lined with retail, although Wexford vice president Joseph A. Reagan Jr. concedes that some lots may temporarily host other uses, such as maker spaces, if the com­pany is unable to find enough shops and restaurants as tenants. Drexel has claimed the easternmost parcel for two small neighborhood schools (K–5 and 6–8) to serve what it hopes ­will be a growing population. It expects that the buildings, modeled on Penn’s Alexander School, ­will play host to an array of community ser­vices, and it has hired Rogers Partners,

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who designed the much-­praised Henderson-­Hopkins school in East Baltimore. But ­there is no start date ­because Drexel wants the financing to come out of the tight city and school bud­gets, through an abatement tool called tax incremental financing. Nearly all the remaining land w ­ ill be devoted to the kind of offices and labs that serve start-up companies and feed off the proximity of the universities. In that sense, uCitySquare is r­ eally an extension of the Science Center, a financially successful but architecturally dull group of mid-­rise offices that has made its stretch of Market Street one of the most boring environments in Philadelphia. Reagan and Science Center president Stephen S. Tang vow that this time ­will be dif­fer­ent. Unlike the first generation of buildings, t­ hese should have transparent ground floors with restaurants and retail spilling out onto generous, tree-­lined sidewalks. Th ­ ey’ve penciled in space for a supermarket between the central square and Thirty-­eighth Street. If they can pull it off, they could establish a continuous row of retail on both Thirty-­seventh and Thirty-­eighth Streets. Perhaps most impressive, they plan to put all the parking under­ground. None of this would be happening without the profound shift in tastes among the p­ eople who work in what’s increasingly called the innovation sector, says Glenn Blumenfeld, a principal at Tactix, which helps companies find office space. ­Today’s Science Center tenants tend to be smaller companies, run by millennials who want more intimate work environments with lots of amenities. They have ­little interest in Center City’s button-­down trophy towers, which are now more than thirty years old. As a result, he predicts uCitySquare offices ­will be in high demand. But while the master plan makes it clear that Philadelphia has gotten better at urbanism, it’s not clear yet ­whether architecture ­will enjoy the same leap. The kickoff building, a fourteen-­story tower designed by ZGF Architects and called 3675 Market, is a blocky glass box, saved from pure banality only by a pop-­out bay that grabs the facade like a clamp. It goes into construction this spring with the Cambridge Innovation Center as the lead tenant. Meanwhile, the Science Center’s effort to improve the landscaping of the Thirty-­seventh Street pedestrian passage, which connects to uCity­ Square, is ­little more than brick pavers and scattered chairs. Perhaps the design quality w ­ ill pick up as the developers get g­ oing. A second office tower by ZGF, at Thirty-­seventh and Warren, shows more



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ambition, with its sexy ­angles and solar-­panel-­embedded facade. ­There’s also talk of tucking some apartments into the office towers at the center of the site, to keep the area active 24/7. What a shame the city allowed the high school’s sale without making affordable units part of the deal, especially as the Science Center is now lobbying the state to make the site eligible for Keystone Opportunity Zone tax breaks. So much public money has been poured into t­ hese fourteen acres—­ for building the high school, for eminent domain payments to homeowners. Let’s hope this time Philadelphia gets it right.

5 ▶ ONE STEP FORWARD, T WO STEPS BACK

A Thriving Neighborhood Rises from Philadelphia Rubble August 17, 2012 As a city, ­we’re acutely aware of each discrete change to our physical surroundings. A new building rises h­ ere, a favorite haunt goes dark over t­ here. Philadelphia, like all cities, changes ­little by ­little. So why, then, do the big, historic transformations so often take us by surprise? ­Those ­were my thoughts as I stood at Twelfth and Catharine Streets, gazing across the impeccable lawn of the new Hawthorne Park at the tidy row­ houses that now cluster so tightly at its edges. Adults sought shade ­under spindly new trees; c­ hildren darted ­toward the curvy tangerine chaise lounges arranged in the grass. That scene, on opening day last month, was as sweet and placid as a New ­England commons, even with the glass spires of Center City poking over the rooftops. Yet only thirteen years ­earlier I had waited in the very same 108



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The Sugar­house Casino garage seen from the reviving Fishtown ­neighborhood. (Credit: © 2020 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC, Michael Bryant)

spot with a few hundred o­ thers, tensed for the boom of dynamite. We watched the four gloomy towers of Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza turn to dust, one year shy of the housing proj­ect’s fortieth birthday. Only now, with the completion of Hawthorne Park, designed by LRSLA Studio, a Philadelphia landscape architecture firm, is it clear how dramatically conditions have shifted in that once notorious, crime-­ridden neighborhood just below South Street. ­Unless you knew what t­ hese blocks w ­ ere like when the towers stood, you w ­ ouldn’t find the slightest clue t­oday, so thoroughly have the traces of turbulence been cleared away. A happy ending was by no means a given, says Patricia Bullard, an activist with the Hawthorne Empowerment Co­ali­tion. “The ­whole area looked like hell ­after the towers came down, filled with abandoned buildings,” she recalls. It took several years before traditional-­style brick row­houses, designed by Torti Gallas & Partners, w ­ ere built u­ nder the federal government’s Hope VI program to replace a portion of the lost public-­housing units. A few more years had to pass before the Philadelphia Housing Authority finished a promised cluster of market-­rate ­houses, intended to diversify the neighborhood eco­nom­ically.

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Then, boom: private development took off. Builders scooped up the empty lots that ­were a side effect of the towers’ blight and inserted new homes, some quite ­grand. The old Hawthorne School became condos. Dranoff Properties finished a large, upscale apartment ­house, 777, at Broad and Catharine in 2010. Hawthorne Park completes the tableau of a thriving urban neighborhood. The design, which was done for a modest $2.1 million, ­isn’t as snazzy as the one for ­Sister Cities Park, which opened in the spring on Logan Square. ­There was no money h­ ere for jetting fountains or a sleek cafe. But LRSLA or­ga­nized the ­little oasis—­three-­quarters of an acre—to suit the neighborhood, both its past and its pre­sent. Since Hawthorne Park happens to occupy the site of the towers’ old plaza, LRSLA designer Brad Thornton honored that history by creating a hard surface at the southeast corner. Paved in a distinctive orange-­and-­ brown brick, the new plaza slopes up from the lawn to form a seating area that also multitasks as a stage for outdoor movies, farmer’s markets, and other events. Granite-­lined paths reach out at the corners to new neighborhood anchors, such as the Acad­emy at Palumbo, the well-­regarded public high school that was founded in 2006. The rest of the park is pretty much lawn, where ­people can play impromptu sports, picnic, or sunbathe. The park, which adheres to landscape architecture’s rules for sustainability, was designed to soak up as much rain as the skies can deliver, to keep the w ­ ater from burdening the city’s overtaxed ­water mains. Like all good parks, the open expanse of greenery helps make surrounding housing look more regal. While the park design may be low on frills, it ties together beautifully with the surrounding neighborhood. The elevated plaza looks out at the spot where the towers’ community center once stood—­and where the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously spoke to residents in 1965. The odd, stainless-­steel lectern at the edge of the new plaza is actually an art piece memorializing the event, Object of Expression by sculptor Warren Holzman. One can imagine ­children and politicians alike declaiming t­here, something like Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park. What would King say if he could come back and take the lectern? What would he make of the neighborhood now? The revival of Hawthorne raises the usual, difficult questions about gentrification. The new low-­rise public housing is better built and, so far, better



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maintained than the towers that opened in 1960. Unlike the overpowering high-­rises, the brick-­fronted ­houses look like they belong in the neighborhood. But ­there are fewer affordable units now, roughly half the 576 apartments that existed in the four towers. It’s hard to imagine ­today that a neighborhood within an easy walk of City Hall, with excellent transit connections, was ever allowed to become a dangerous, no-go enclave. Yet as the story of its resurgence sadly suggests, gentrification is one of the few effective tools that American cities have found to repair such damaged places. The urbanist Jane Jacobs, in her landmark book, The Death and Life of ­Great American Cities, predicted that left to their own devices, derelict parts of cities would eventually “unslum” with the same residents. As nice as it is to see Hawthorne’s new development and vitality, that’s not what is happening ­here—or in other reviving Philadelphia neighborhoods. It’s remarkable that this dizzying series of experiments in Hawthorne—­ clear-­cutting a neighborhood, building a utopia of towers, rejecting the model and imploding the towers, then starting afresh with the original row­ house form—­all happened in the brief span of fifty-­two years. The alien towers that Jacobs hated are gone, but her vision of a naturally unslummed neighborhood remains an elusive dream.

Where Politics Meets Poor Design May 23, 2010 I owe the architects at EwingCole an apology for trashing their F ­ amily Court building, planned for an empty lot across from JFK Plaza, at Fifteenth and Arch Streets. It’s not the designers’ fault that the bulky, fourteen-­story building, a clone of the original, mediocre Penn Center slab towers, ­will be a mean and frosty rendition of Amer­i­ca’s most noble architectural form, the court­house. Thanks to Friday’s Inquirer article on the Pennsylvania courts’ casual oversight of the $200 million proj­ect, we now know that the real architect of this affront to democracy is Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille, who presided over the proj­ect while it was milked for fees by a pair of po­liti­cal insiders, ­lawyer Jeffrey B. Rotwitt and developer Donald W. Pulver.

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If the lax management of this impor­tant proj­ect teaches us anything, it’s this: Bad civic design ­doesn’t grow out of barren soil. It takes an entrenched and cynical po­liti­cal culture to provide the fertilizer. Who knows how much more money would have been available for quality architecture if Castille had done a better job policing how the pennies ­were spent? ­W hether he understood what his real estate adviser was up to remains unclear. The Supreme Court justice told Inquirer reporters Joseph Tanfani and Mark Fazlollah that the crafty Philadelphia ­lawyer had duped him. But Castille is the proj­ect’s point person, and he signed off on a 2008 contract that paid Rotwitt handsomely out of a special fund meant to cover the early costs of the desperately needed courthouse—­a fund, incidentally, that was accumulated by adding a 20 ­percent surcharge on ­every court filing in Philadelphia. Your divorce petition helped underwrite Rotwitt’s $55,000-­a-­month retainer. Castille, a former Philadelphia district attorney, agreed to that generous con­sul­tant’s fee even though ­there was no formal contract to build the court­ house. Rotwitt, who would ultimately receive $3.9 million for his advice ­under the arrangement, then significantly boosted his take-­home from the proj­ect by persuading Pulver to give him a 50 ­percent share in the f­ uture development deal. A partner with the high-­powered Center City firm of Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell & Hippel, Rotwitt maintains that Castille had been fully informed about his dual role. In the real estate business, that arrangement is known as “working both sides of the deal” and is generally frowned upon as a conflict of interest. On Friday, Governor Rendell vowed to investigate and to put the proj­ect out to competitive bid. Rotwitt’s complete control of the proj­ect, coupled with Castille’s inattention, ­will cost the public more than just money, however. The Fifteenth Street site was long considered too small to accommodate ­Family Court’s needs. But Rotwitt, billing himself as a representative of the court system, secured from City Council a crucial 2008 zoning change that permitted a bulkier building covering the entire site. He never mentioned in his testimony that, as Pulver’s partner, he had a financial stake in the decision. No members of the public attended that obscure zoning hearing, since its purpose was then unclear. The result was that Rotwitt would not need a zoning variance for F ­ amily Court; therefore, the design would not be made public for two more years. By the time the proj­ect came up for Art Commis-



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sion approval in February, the costly construction drawings w ­ ere 95 ­percent complete. Adjacent property o­ wners, who are outraged by the design, w ­ ere given just two minutes to comment. That lack of demo­cratic input is a l­ittle ironic given that no building speaks more to our core demo­cratic values than a court­house. This i­sn’t China, a­ fter all, where the government simply razes p­ eople’s homes when it needs a building site. Public input i­ sn’t just about making us feel good about our democracy; it also produces better buildings. The unscrutinized ­Family Court w ­ ill do real harm to a corner of the city that is just emerging from de­cades of neglect. In the last two years, its neighbors have invested $150 million to improve their properties. When finished, some three years from now, F ­ amily Court ­will cast long shadows on the beautiful and historic Friends Center, which just spent $15 million to install rooftop solar panels. The court­house’s graceless glass facade is also an insult to the luxury Metropolitan Apartments, just converted from a fleabag ­under the scrupulous review of the Historical Commission. Le Meridien just opened a swanky ­hotel this month a few steps from the court­house site in response to ­these improvements. Worst of all, the court­house design ­will compromise a long-­planned arts walk on Cherry Street that is key to Philadelphia’s tourism goals. The walk is intended to encourage tourists to stroll from the Convention Center’s new Broad Street entrance to the Parkway’s cultural institutions. In anticipation, the Pennsylvania Acad­emy of the Fine Arts just obtained approval to close a portion of Cherry Street and turn it into a landscaped plaza with a cafe. But as conventioneers make their way to the Parkway and the new Barnes Foundation, they ­will first have to hustle past ­Family Court’s loading docks. The new ­Family Court ­won’t even function all that well as a court­house. The 540,000-­square-­foot building can barely accommodate all the court functions, said Frank P. Cervone, who runs the Support Center for Child Advocates and lobbied for a new court­house. “It ­will be too full the day it opens,” he told me Friday. That might not have been the case if the proponents had been willing to build a taller—­but more slender—­courthouse. Such a tower, especially one whose massing was concentrated on Arch Street, would have done far less damage to Cherry Street.

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­There is a tendency in Philadelphia to assume architecture and politics are two distinct and unrelated subjects. F ­ amily Court should make us wiser. It was ­shaped by the city’s cozy insider-­dominated politics. Architecture was an afterthought. ­Those po­liti­cal insiders come and go. But the bad buildings remain with us a very longtime.

The Barnes Foundation Moves to the Big City May 6, 2012 The Barnes Foundation’s feuds with its neighbors in suburban Merion are the stuff of Philadelphia legend. The renowned institution spent two de­cades squabbling with residents of adjacent mansions over visitation hours, parking, and other issues. The resulting lawsuits, as well as its own poor stewardship, left the Barnes’s finances in ruins and eventually led to the controversial decision to move its storied collection to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the city’s museum row. The Barnes gets off to a fresh start May 19 when it reopens in a new, larger home, designed by two of our most sensitive architects, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and situated in a garden by top landscape architect Laurie Olin. Through their efforts, the Barnes comes as tantalizingly close to being a real work of art as anything Philadelphia has seen in de­cades. But while ­there are moments of breathtaking refinement, and the galleries themselves are a revelation, the result is sadly—no, tragically—­a long way from being a successful addition to the city. The emotional wounds of ­those battle-­scarred years have wormed their way deep into the Barnes psyche and severely compromised what could have been Philadelphia’s best building since the PSFS tower. Like it or not, the Barnes is h­ ere, and it is impor­tant that the proj­ect be evaluated on the same terms as any architectural newcomer. In seeing the Barnes in April, it was instantly clear to me that the 4.5-­acre site is too small for the building’s program and for the sprawl of suburban-­style, automobile amenities demanded by the Barnes’s board. ­Because so much is squeezed onto this l­ ittle site, the parking lot and driveways visually strangle the architecture and, worst of all, cut off the building physically from the city it is meant to serve.



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­Until now, most of the critical focus has been on w ­ hether a modern building in an urban location could possibly capture the unique cultural environment that Albert C. Barnes fashioned at his Merion estate. Visitors to that hallowed spot ­were treated to a cloistered, place-­specific fusion of art, architecture, and horticulture that was unlike any other modern art institution. The good news is that the new Barnes succeeds in making the experience inside the new gallery a credible one—­that is, once y­ ou’ve run the gauntlet on the exterior. Entering the re-­created spaces is like encountering a friend who just spent time at a spa. The rooms look rejuvenated and fresh, the paintings appear more alive than ever. It is dif­fer­ent, to be sure, yet the same. Less discussed, however, but no less urgent, is the issue of how the new ensemble fits into its new home in the city. The answer is that it ­doesn’t. In a nutshell, every­thing wrong with the new Barnes stems from a desire to compensate for the prob­lems of the past. Hence the huge, unnecessary parking lot. It not only blocks the view of the Barnes’s elegant entrance facade, but it also weakens the emerging hub at Twentieth and Callowhill Streets. The bus drop-­off is comically overscaled—­like the driveway at a Merion mansion—­and cursed with a canopy so tacky one can imagine it presiding over a highway gas station. Add a grotesquely large, all-­too-­visible loading dock on the building’s west side, and what you get is a site that has all the aesthetic coherence of a suburban supermarket. In no way am I suggesting the Barnes building could be mistaken for a supermarket, as some Internet wags have been shouting at the top of their online lungs. By itself, the gallery structure is ravishing. Its creamy Negev limestone, arranged to evoke African textiles, sparkles in the sun, and its asymmetrical pattern keeps ­things lively when clouds move in. But this is a case where the star of the show has been sabotaged by the supporting cast, that unruly gang of vehicular amenities. Now some may argue that car and bus access is crucial to the functioning of any modern cultural building. And if the Barnes w ­ ere in a more inaccessible location, the claim might be justified. But the art foundation is practically downtown, a few pleasant blocks from subways and regional transit. A pull-­over lane would have sufficed for tour buses. As for t­ hose who must drive, ­there is a nice choice of nearby parking lots. Somehow Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Barnes’s cousin in eccentricity, manages just fine without parking or a bus drop-­off. Motorists are told to park a few blocks away at the Museum of Fine Arts.

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For the Barnes to devote its entire north side, and half its east side, to vehicles amounts to pathological overkill, particularly when you consider how integral landscape is to the collection. ­There ­isn’t the land to spare. ­Because the site is overprogrammed, a third side of the building is also wrecked, this time by the loading dock. ­Here the architects bear responsibility. One of their nice design features is the covered porch that extends beyond the building’s west wall. Shielded by the rooftop light box, the porch was meant to offer views of the neighboring Rodin Museum, whose collection resonates on many levels with Albert Barnes’s Francophile interests. But a virtual stockade was built to camouflage the loading dock’s unsightly trash storage. Th ­ ose angled walls undermine the Barnes’s clear, straight geometry—­and block the intended view. The extreme effort to shield the mess from visitors’ tender eyes obscures the building’s best architecture. Take the Callowhill facade, where Olin has produced a sublimely Zen moment by framing the cream walls with an allée of blood-­red Japa­nese maples. Too bad passersby can barely see their tops over the prisonlike parking-­lot wall. The architects insist ­things ­will improve once vines grow over the walls. (Since when did vines become an all-­purpose solution to architectural missteps?) But vines w ­ ill not save Callowhill Street. The dead parking lot has made walking t­here less appealing than before, when the block was enlivened by a building with ­people and win­dows. From the start, many Philadelphians ­were disturbed by the architects’ decision to place the Barnes’s front door on Callowhill, in the correct belief that main entrances should be on main streets. Without a door, the Parkway facade feels static, much more so than I had hoped. The placement of the main entrance on Callowhill can be traced back to the Barnes’s l­egal pledge to faithfully re-­create the Merion galleries. The new building easily could have felt like a mausoleum housing a mummified version of Merion. But Williams and Tsien devised an ingenious solution for the collection: They separated out the galleries in a virtually freestanding box. It’s cradled in an L-­shaped addition that ­houses every­thing ­else, including modern museum ser­vices like a cafe and shop. The two touch at only a single point, marked by a vertical slot on the east facade. For the plan to work, the architects had to place the re-­created galleries in the same relationship to the sun as in Merion, with the entry room’s ­great trio of win­dows facing south t­oward the Parkway. By having visitors enter



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on the Callowhill side, the architects put them in position to enter the galleries in the precise sequence they did in Merion. They also guarantee that the first t­ hing visitors see is a sliver of garden inserted between the gallery rooms, just as they glimpsed the gardens at Merion. The hard truth is that the architects sacrificed the street for the collection. Olin’s entry garden, at Twentieth and the Parkway, is the Barnes’s attempt to compensate the city for the loss. The centerpiece ­will be an elevated ­water ­table dotted with ­water lilies where the public can sit. Two rows of lacy conifers already give the gentle climb up to the Callowhill entrance the feel of a mountain pilgrimage, with the old Granary looming above like a summit crag. Though lovely, it’s unlikely to become a locus of activity. Still, the roundabout entrance is not without pre­ce­dent. Although never said explic­itly, it is clearly inspired by Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. The ghost of the ­great Philadelphia architect is everywhere at the Barnes, in the heft and feel of the materials, in the gentle perfection of the interior light. Unlike starchitect show-­offs who wow with impossible shapes, Williams and Tsien are masters of craft and light. They treat stone like fabric, ­etching and marking to reveal its personality. Their hand is on ­every material surface, down to the gorgeous bronze radiator covers, a nod to Kahn’s at the Yale Art Gallery. Philadelphia has not seen such quality detailing in de­cades. Williams and Tsien use their skill to shape an architectural narrative and create hierarchies. For example, the new special-­exhibition gallery is decked out in a nice but low-­status sandblasted concrete. Once you move into the interior court, they step it up with more lavish and warmer Negev limestone, scored with vertical bands resembling hieroglyphics. The sequence culminates with a fine, textured burlap in the re-­created galleries. This compositional strategy struck me as an architectural echo of the formalist approach Barnes used to arrange his paintings. Paintings with diagonals are grouped in one place, ­those with diamond shapes in another. The architects seem to have considered the philosophical implications of e­ very joint. As with any high art, you need to be a close reader to gain the full meaning of the Barnes’s architecture. Sharp eyes ­will notice the subtle changes the architects employed in the re-­created galleries. ­They’ve lightened the wood trim to a golden chestnut, added an African-­inspired frieze just below the ceiling, and substituted glare-­reducing glass for win­dow shades.

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Working with the excellent lighting designer Paul Marantz, they took the liberty of installing skylights in the galleries and applying silver paper on the ceilings. The galleries are now washed with a soft, even light that brings out the paintings’ rich purples and blues. ­These colors ­were lost in Merion’s dim galleries. The architects’ initial concept for the new Barnes was a “building in a garden,” both part of the city and cocooned from the city. It is clear now that the Barnes cannot be both ­things. All the fine details are not enough to make the ­great building that Philadelphia deserves.

Murals ­W ill Not Save the City December 7, 2012 Despite having left its mark on some 3,000 walls around Philadelphia, the Mural Arts Program has always yearned to work on a larger canvas. Now it’s found a way: it just finished wrapping two blocks of Germantown Ave­nue storefronts in a tapestry of painted stripes, drenching almost e­ very surface in vibrant color—­save for the “For Rent” signs. As big as this proj­ect is in scale, the claims for its transformational powers are even more outsized. During a two-­hour dedication ceremony last Saturday, a parade of speakers boasted that the dramatic new artwork, Philly Painting—by the celebrated Dutch duo Hahn & Haas—­will revive the battered shopping district at Germantown and Lehigh, and turn it into an offbeat tourist destination. “­There is no reason,” one giddy participant told me, “that this street ­can’t be the next SoHo.” Ahem. A ­little real­ity, please. While speakers like City Council President Darrell L. Clarke w ­ ere exulting over the “changed street” from the comfort of a nearby community center, Mohammed Sisco, a Bangladeshi immigrant, sat huddled in his underheated store, hoping for a customer who might purchase one of his scented oils, special soaps, or even something from the dollar bin. It was the first Saturday of the busiest shopping month of the year, yet only a trickle of pedestrians wandered the sidewalks outside. Not that the absence of Christmas shoppers surprised Sisco or his fellow merchants. Once an impor­tant retail hub for North Philadelphia, this stretch of Germantown Ave­nue between Cumberland and Somerset has been skid-



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ding downhill for more than a de­cade. The local Rite-­Aid, which is what constitutes an anchor store in t­ hese parts, abandoned its corner location three years ago, and nothing has taken its place. The ave­nue’s shuttered security gates and plywood-­covered upper win­dows a­ ren’t exactly a big retail comeon. Too bad no merchant was available to give his take at Saturday’s event. What­ever you think of murals—­and I am not their greatest fan—­there is ­little doubt that this retail strip cries out for an intervention. Make that the ­whole neighborhood just north of T ­ emple University, which has shed 7 ­percent of its population since 2000. Purely as a composition, ­there is much to admire about Haas & Hahn’s luminously colored mural. It recalls the famous grid paintings by their twentieth-­century compatriot, the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, whose jazz-­ inspired work also celebrates the city. Their grid moves to a hip-­hop beat, and that injects the appearance of energy into this anemic commercial corridor. That, if nothing e­ lse, argues Alan Greenberger, deputy mayor for commerce, “­w ill be a source of pride to p­ eople who use the corridor ­every day.” But it’s naive to think that painting over this depopulated blightscape can do anything more than mask the ave­nue’s failure. It’s a feel-­good strategy being passed off as an economic development one. Mural Arts spent $500,000 on the cover-up, including $215,000 from the Commerce Department. Like the program’s other murals, it provided employment for local youth and gave them, as one speaker said, “something they can put on their resume.” Having celebrity artists Haas & Hahn (their real names are Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn) on the proj­ect ensures that Philadelphia ­will be getting international attention for the mural. Jane Golden, who runs Mural Arts, also believes that “what happens afterward ­matters.” The Commerce Department now says it ­will invest an additional $3.5 million in regular street cleaning and new sidewalks and lighting. It’s an astonishing sum, and it suggests the Commerce Department ­doesn’t fully understand what makes retail tick. For starters, retail follows ­people, not the other way around. This retail corridor failed b­ ecause it lost its local market. It’s a fantasy to think other Philadelphians and tourists w ­ ill travel to Germantown Ave­nue to poke around the dollar bins. It’s not impossible to resuscitate a ­dying shopping street, but ­there are proven strategies, best articulated by the National Trust’s Main Street

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Program—­and none of them involve murals. No shopping street is revived without a strong corridor man­ag­er and a strategic plan. Germantown Ave­ nue has neither. Although the neighborhood conditions are dif­fer­ent, North Philadelphia should look to two recent success stories: Thirteenth Street in Center City and East Passyunk Ave­nue in South Philadelphia. One was saved by a private developer, the other by a nonprofit. But in both cases, the corridor man­ag­er started by gaining control over the real estate in the shopping district. Control is essential ­because ­people ­won’t invest their own money to fix up buildings if they feel they w ­ ill be undermined by a blighted neighbor. On Thirteenth Street, the late Tony Goldman, a New York developer, was able to buy an entire block. It’s also pos­si­ble for a corridor man­ag­er to achieve the same result by organ­izing the district’s ­owners into a nonprofit partnership. Once Goldman had control, he began to repopulate the upper floors with residents and offices and to install distinctive retail tenants. In l­ittle over a de­cade, he transformed the stretch between Chestnut and Walnut Streets from a prostitute’s haven to a dynamic boutique street. Of course, it helped that Center City was already on the rebound. Even if the city does use the Main Street strategy to help Germantown Ave­nue, it’s not clear that the North Philadelphia shopping district can be sal­vaged in the near f­uture. It lacks the con­ve­nience and good transit of close-in neighborhoods—­like Northern Liberties or Hawthorne—­that have rebounded. Not to mention that ­those places ­hadn’t suffered the extreme population loss of North Philadelphia. Murals have been used as a cheap crowd-­pleaser for years. Maybe it’s time for city officials to acknowledge that it’s just not pos­si­ble to paint your way out of blight.

­Doing Affordable Housing Right February 28, 2014 Stand at the corner of Ninth and Berks Streets in North Philadelphia and you can practically feel the tidal wave of gentrification bearing down from both directions. One block west, the twin concrete towers of ­Temple University’s Anderson Hall loom up like a medieval gate. Walk a few blocks east and ­you’re enveloped in the hipster precincts of Fishtown.



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But the parts in between have been forsaken for so long that it’s hard to recall what this row­house neighborhood was like in its prime. Empty lots outnumber buildings on many blocks, the surviving ­houses arrayed like tombstones. With conditions changing, you might expect the response to follow the usual Philadelphia script. ­Either the neighborhood would surrender to developers and allow a construction free-­for-­all, or it would dig in, using its po­liti­cal power to hold onto the acres of vacant land in the hope that someone, some day, might build subsidized housing. Instead residents found a third, and better, way. It’s called Paseo Verde. The four-­story apartment h­ ouse makes peace with gentrification by accepting high-­end, modern apartments as a fact of life. But it also ensures that longtime residents ­will have a good place to live if the area takes off and prices spike. To achieve that tricky balance, nearly half of Paseo Verde’s 129 units are set aside for low-­income residents at reduced rents. The other sixty-­seven go for market rates. A ­ fter a quiet opening in the fall, Paseo Verde is now home to a mix of T ­ emple University students, professionals, and low-­wage workers. Actually, Paseo Verde is a lot more than just a utopian experiment in mixed-­income living. A collaboration between a local community group, Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha, and a for-­profit developer, the New York-­based Jonathan Rose Companies, the $48 million proj­ect is a trifecta of socially responsible development. It’s environmentally friendly, transit friendly, and urban friendly. All that, and the design by WRT’s Antonio Fiol-­Silva still manages to slip some real architecture into the mix. Nurtured by the Nutter administration, the proj­ect is one of ­those rare cases where all the pieces came together just right. The 1.9-­acre site had been a PGW parking lot for de­cades, but the city took the land back a­ fter the lease expired and or­ga­nized a competition to find a better use. Rose and APM, which has been building affordable housing in the neighborhood for twenty-­five years, won, and ­were awarded the property for a dollar. The site might seem to be an improbable location for an apartment ­house. The long skinny block backs up to SEPTA’s T ­ emple University Station, a major regional rail hub. Commuters waiting on the elevated platform have been scratching their heads for months, trying to figure out what’s ­behind the colored panels that form Paseo Verde’s rear wall.

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Although building next to the busy station presented some design headaches, the con­ve­nient transit connections more than made up for them. It’s just four minutes by regional rail to Center City, and residents can easily walk to the Broad Street subway or choose among seven bus lines. For low-­income residents, that kind of access is as impor­tant as subsidized rent, says Paul Freitag, the Rose Com­pany’s development director, ­because it enables families to get around without a car. “It removes a huge financial burden,” he says. The Nutter administration deserves credit for making such transit-­ oriented developments a priority, by raising the zoning densities near train stations. It’s crazy that e­ arlier administrations allowed peaked-­roof, clapboard ­houses with driveways—­the kind of ­thing you expect to find in a suburban subdivision—to be built just a block away from the station. Transit is this neighborhood’s ­great asset. SEPTA also has pitched in by building a generous new entry plaza to replace the narrow stairs that used to serve the station. The new space flows into Paseo Verde’s own small plaza and leads visitors around to the front of the apartment ­house on Ninth Street. To deal with the train noise, the architects at WRT laid out Paseo Verde as four small bar-­shaped buildings perpendicular to the station platform. The Berks corner is marked by a slightly higher module, perched on jaunty, angled legs. The sections, clad in shades of grays punctuated by oranges and reds, are connected by a soundproof corridor that runs parallel to the tracks. While dictated by necessity, the arrangement has advantages. The four distinct modules hark back to the early twentieth-­century apartments, like the Ben Franklin House in Center City, which ­were broken into sections to reduce their mass and ensure that ­every unit receives ample light. At Paseo Verde, WRT inserted gardens between the bar buildings, providing open space where residents can hang out—­hence the name Paseo Verde, which translates as “Green Lane.” At street level on Ninth Street, the four modules are linked by a one-­ story commercial space. Faced in a handsome black brick, the ground floor is lined with public uses, including a pharmacy, a health center, and a computer lab. The premier spot, next to the station plaza, remains empty for now while APM mulls over dueling applications from a cafe and a bank. (Go for the cafe!) Even though APM and Rose ­were working on a tight construction budget—­$147 a square foot versus the typical $230—­they managed to incorpo-



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rate just about ­every energy-­saving feature in the book. Paseo Verde includes Philadelphia’s first “blue roof,” a rooftop water-­retention system, as well as green roofs and solar panels. Philadelphia developers should take note: the proj­ect boasts more bike spaces than parking spaces. The bike racks are a concession to a neighborhood in flux. You c­ an’t stop neighborhoods from evolving, explains APM development director Rose Gray. All you can do is “try to manage economic change,” she says. “If you can build this ­here, you can build it anywhere in the city.”

What ­Really Happened ­a fter the Ave­nue of the Arts Came to South Broad Street November 1, 2013 In 1993, when Philadelphia’s downtown was hitting bottom, Ed Rendell launched a visionary revival strategy disguised as an arts initiative. First, create a Philadelphia version of Broadway by clustering cultural venues on South Broad Street. Then pray that suburbanites and tourists ­will feel safe enough to venture ­there ­after dark and drop a wad on dinner and show tickets. Twenty years on, as the organ­ization that manages the Ave­nue of the Arts celebrates its accomplishments, South Broad Street between City Hall and Spruce Street is, indeed, a sparkling ­Great White Way, abuzz in the eve­ nings with ­people rushing to events. And yet the original premise is outdated: out-­of-­town visitors are no longer the key to the city’s salvation. The challenge ­today i­sn’t to cajole suburbanites to come downtown for an eve­ning; it’s making the city more livable for the thousands of new residents who are putting down roots in Philadelphia’s reviving neighborhoods. No one anticipated that population surge when the ave­nue was created. Without a doubt, South Broad has come a long way from its pre–­Ave­nue of the Arts days when office buildings stood empty, prostitutes strutted near the corner of Lombard Street, and the gloomy husk of the Ridgeway Library served as the face of the city’s decline. The Ave­nue of the Arts was first proposed by Paul Levy’s Center City District in 1990 as a way to clean up that mess, but it was Rendell who ran with the idea. Rendell’s l­aser focus, Levy says, enabled him to attract the public and private cash necessary to bankroll a dozen arts-­related proj­ects and fund a major streetscape overhaul.

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Glamorous new destinations such as the Kimmel Center, which opened in 2001, helped rebrand the ave­nue as an entertainment district. Historic buildings ­were saved; that white-­columned Ridgeway is now home to the Creative and Performing Arts High School. Developers responded by renovating their mothballed Class B offices and, ultimately, dotting the blocks south of Spruce with new, high-­end apartments and restaurants. But while the Ave­nue of the Arts has enjoyed a respectable run as the star of the city’s revival efforts, other, more sustainable trends have pushed it off the marquee. The most impor­tant is the rediscovery of the city by the millennial generation, which has dramatically repopulated the ring of neighborhoods around Center City, places with names that would have drawn blank stares in 1993, such as Newbold, Old Richmond, and Spruce Hill. And their residents ­aren’t the ­people filling Kimmel’s balconies. Ever since New York carved Lincoln Center out of the decaying Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in the ’60s, cities around the country have dreamed of having their own arts district. But concentrating culture is an old strategy that has run its course, says John  D. Landis, chairman of Penn’s regional planning department. What drives cities now are entrepreneurs and what he calls “the Brooklyn phenomenon.” The city, he explains, is where p­ eople go to “consume urbanism.” Jeremy Nowak, the former head of the William Penn Foundation, agrees: “We’ve moved on to other strategies.” Some argue the Ave­nue of the Arts created the conditions that made the millennial boom pos­si­ble. “Maybe the ave­nue i­ sn’t 100 ­percent responsible, but it was the catalyst,” Rendell told me. “It got suburbanites to come in the city and eat.” It is certainly true that the fear of the gritty city has lessened in the last two de­cades. But that seems more likely the result of a bundle of policies that helped the ­whole city to reset its image. Attention to the so-­called broken-­windows crimes by Rendell and Levy was at least as impor­tant in making ­people feel comfortable downtown. Without the ten-­year property-­tax abatement as an incentive, it is hard to imagine that Philadelphia would have seen its entire stock of vacant, early twentieth-­century office buildings transformed into apartments, or the subsequent boom in infill housing. And let’s not discount the profound changes in American life over the last twenty years. At the exact moment that the millennials—­a generation,



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incidentally, with no memory of the urban upheavals of the ’60s and ’70s—­were coming of age, the Internet gave them the flexibility to live wherever they like and to work from home. Since the branding of the ave­nue, Philadelphia has become a more multipolar place. While Broad Street is still filled on the weekends with ­people seeking food and entertainment, so is Thirteenth Street, the high-­style restaurant row developed privately by the late Tony Goldman. The same is true of East Passyunk Ave­nue and the Northern Liberties hipster cluster at Girard and Frankford Ave­nues. And soon the ave­nue w ­ ill have to compete with the Fringe Festival on the Delaware Waterfront. It’s worth noting that most of the ave­nue’s culture is produced by legacy institutions such as the Philadelphia Orchestra and theater companies whose audiences are rapidly graying. The new residents of Gradu­ate Hospital and South Ken­sington tend to seek their amusements in nontraditional venues such as the Fringe, Johnny Brendas, and the aptly named Under­ ground Arts. No won­der several ave­nue stalwarts are struggling financially. ­There are indications that the Ave­nue of the Arts Inc. recognizes that it needs to stretch its appeal beyond its core audience. This summer’s pop-up beer garden, or­ga­nized by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society on a vacant lot across from the Kimmel, drew millennials in droves to South Broad. Too bad, though, that the agency chose to celebrate its anniversary with a cocktail party this week for the city’s clubby (and el­derly) elite, rather than a true, Philly-­style block party for the masses. The ave­nue’s ­future—­like that of the rest of Philadelphia—­rests on its growing residential population. Developer Carl Dranoff is completing his third building and has his eye on at least two other sites, including Spruce Street’s southeast corner. With Philadelphia’s population on the rise, developers are scrambling to discover the next hot residential neighborhood. Who knows? It could be South Broad Street.

Zoning Board Thwarts Vision for City May 3, 2013 What makes Philadelphia’s new zoning code such a landmark policy is that it embraces the modern view of cities first articulated by such urbanists as

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Jane Jacobs and William  H. Whyte. They understood that cities c­ ouldn’t survive with fortified streets and blank ground floors. In the spirit of that movement, the code took the bold step of banning a par­tic­ul­ar local scourge: garage-­fronted row­houses. Apparently, the Zoning Board of Adjustment never got the memo. The new rules went into effect eight months ago, yet the board continues to conduct business as usual, handing out variances that allow row­house developers to install garages where the living rooms are supposed to be. Last week it was a pair of ­houses at Nineteenth and Catharine Streets. ­Those variances came just weeks ­after five garage-­fronted row­houses w ­ ere approved nearby at Nineteenth and League. Across town, in Bella Vista, two more such ­houses on Eighth Street recently secured the board’s blessing. ­Because no city agency tracks the board’s decisions, it’s impossible to know precisely how many of t­hese Franken­houses have been approved since the code debuted. I learned about the nine I mentioned from neighborhood groups. The city’s chief planner, Gary Jastrzab, told me he had identified eight ­others, bringing the known variances to seventeen. We should assume ­there are more. ­Every one of ­these faceless garage doors is like a dagger in the body of the city. B ­ ecause they occupy so much facade space on the ground floor, t­ here is usually no room for a win­dow and the sense of habitation that would convey. Garages make the street less friendly, less safe, less comfortable. ­After all the work by planners to stop their proliferation, the board’s actions are “demoralizing,” said Lawrence Weintraub, who co-­chairs Bella Vista Town Watch’s zoning committee. “I’m concerned that this makes the new zoning code look like a joke.” The nine variances in the Gradu­ate Hospital and Bella Vista sections are especially disturbing ­because they ­were opposed by a broad civic lineup: the Planning Commission, the neighborhood association, and the district councilman. By disregarding their voices—­not to mention the City Council–­approved zoning code—­the board is effectively setting its own planning policy. That’s not what a zoning board is supposed to do. And it’s certainly not the way a democracy is supposed to work. High-­handed decisions are hardly a new t­ hing at the zoning board. Mayor Nutter campaigned in 2007 on a pledge to rein in the out-­of-­control board. He made good on that promise, in part, by supporting the citizen-­led effort



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to update the ’60s-­era zoning code, a pro­cess that took four years of grueling negotiations. The result is a civic compromise that deserves to be respected. So why ­won’t the zoning board behave? The garage variances expose a fundamental weakness in the structure of Philadelphia’s government embedded in its 1951 Home Rule Charter. The Planning Commission can only recommend what should be built in the city; it’s the zoning board that has the power to issue the necessary permits. So even though the Planning Commission oversaw ­every step of the code rewrite, it ­can’t force the zoning board to execute its policies. The mayor can, through his appointments to the zoning board. Yet board members often seem to develop their own agendas. That was true of the strong-­willed chair, Lynette Brown-­Sow, who left last week a­ fter Nutter named her to run the Philadelphia Housing Authority board. Jastrzab told me he hopes Brown-­Sow’s replacement, Julia Chapman, ­will be more sympathetic to the Planning Commission’s wishes. “It’s very likely attitudes ­will change with Julia,” who ran Nutter’s Council office, he said. But ­unless Nutter lays out his expectations in no uncertain terms, expect Chapman to revert to type. Garage-­fronted row­houses have, of course, afflicted the city’s streets for de­cades. But their numbers are growing as gentrification comes to once-­ blighted areas such as Gradu­ate Hospital and Point Breeze, where t­ here are large tracts of empty land for infill housing. You can already see blocks in Gradu­ate Hospital deadened by lines of garages ­running end to end. It may be hard to believe, but the city once required a garage in e­ very new row­house. About a de­cade ago, policy makers began to understand the harm they caused Philadelphia’s charming row­house streets. It is not an easy issue. Many developers are convinced they ­won’t be able to sell a new ­house without a garage. Of course, many buyers want garages too. ­Because of the configuration of Philadelphia blocks, it is often impossible to tuck garages in the back of ­houses, where they would be less obtrusive. It is worth remembering that most older row­houses have no garages. Car ­owners park on the street. Yet ­every time a developer builds a garage-­fronted row­house, the city loses an on-­street parking space. A scarce, public commodity is transferred to the private realm. By approving garage-­fronted row­houses, the zoning board sends a message that the Nutter administration wants to encourage car use. It undermines his transportation staff who are working hard to encourage SEPTA

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ridership. The variances go against Nutter’s stated promise to make Philadelphia the greenest city in the nation. Along with property-­tax reform, the new zoning code promises to be Nutter’s greatest legacy—­unless he continues to allow the zoning board to sabotage it.

Real Estate Speculators Turn Buildings into Killers June 6, 2013 Richard Basciano and the late Samuel A. Rappaport w ­ ere friends, business partners, and slumlords. Both ­rose from ­humble beginnings to become real estate speculators extraordinaire. They scooped up blighted properties in Philadelphia and sat on them for years while the structures crumbled, eventually selling them at huge markups to be developed by ­others. Now they have something ­else in common. Both owned buildings that killed. While the circumstances of the two fatal accidents are very dif­fer­ent, the cases are linked by more than just the two men’s complex relationship; the tragedies reveal the city’s inability to enforce basic building safety. And it’s not just the Nutter administration. For more than thirty years, ­every mayor—­Street, Rendell, Goode, Green—­has exhibited a stunningly high level of tolerance for the blight the two men wrought. Basciano, eighty-­seven years old, who still likes to practice his boxing moves, was in the midst of razing a row of poorly kept properties on Market Street when an unsupported party wall gave way Wednesday and tumbled onto the Salvation Army thrift store next door, killing six p­ eople. Turns out that Basciano’s contractor has a criminal rec­ord. In Rappaport’s case, he was already in the grave when his killer building struck. In 1997, the bolts on an eighteen-­foot-­tall “Park” sign came loose from a garage his estate owned at Broad and Pine Streets. It plunged onto the sidewalk, striking common pleas court judge Berel Caesar, who was out for a walk. The judge died four days l­ater. At the time, Basciano was the executor for Rappaport’s estate. ­After the tragedy, the Department of Licenses and Inspections promptly announced it was launching an investigation into the condition of the estate’s



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hundreds of properties. We heard similar promises a year ago, ­after a blaze in a neglected Ken­sington mill owned by the Lichtenstein ­family claimed two firefighters’ lives. Want to bet ­we’ll hear the same clarion call again this week? By the time of his death in 1994, Rappaport had racked up more than two hundred violation notices from L & I. Not only did the department rarely follow up, but another agency—­the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp.—­lent him money to buy more vacant buildings. Rappaport, it should be noted, was generous to mayoral campaigns. The city was just as kind to Basciano. In 2010, when the operator of the Forum Theater porn ­house wanted to enlarge one of Basciano’s Market Street properties, the city’s zoning board gave the green light for a bigger red-­light district. The expansion was s­topped only ­after neighborhood groups took the case to court. Years a­ fter Caesar was killed by Rappaport’s building, Basciano moved into Symphony House on South Broad Street, which provided a straight-on view of the site but clearly no lessons. Of course, Rappaport and Basciano are hardly the only speculators who have left a trail of neglect across the city. Given the thousands of hollowed-­ out structures gradually coming apart at the seams, it’s amazing that more lives ­haven’t been claimed over the years by killer buildings. Rappaport and Basciano ­were never indiscriminate collectors of crumbling relics. They had a keen eye for identifying derelict diamonds in the right spot. Rappaport (not to be confused with the former state representative of the same name) assembled w ­ hole blocks of rundown properties that w ­ ere ­later acquired at hefty prices for the construction of the Convention Center, the commuter rail tunnel, and Liberty Place. He made $7.5 million on the Liberty towers alone. Basciano was not quite so ­adept, although he did just fine in his speculation. Roughly two de­cades ago, he acquired the better part of the 2100 and 2200 blocks of Market from Herman Benn, an owner of Nate Ben’s Reliable furniture store. Just across the Schuylkill from Thirtieth Street Station, the two blocks should have been a shining gateway to the rising office towers on Market Street. Instead, Basciano stuck with the Rappaport program. Basciano, once involved in a Times Square porn business, tolerated his mini red-­light district on Market Street ­until he had a change of heart last

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year. Explaining his plans in a December interview, he told me it was fi­nally the right moment to cash in on Center City’s re­nais­sance. But to market his property, he first had to clear away the mess. The city approved the de­mo­li­ tion permits. Then every­thing came crashing down, taking six more innocent lives.

What Is Happening to Old City’s Buildings? April 13, 2014 The Shirt Corner and the Suit Corner buildings had been through a lot during their nearly 200 years at Third and Market Streets in Old City, but somehow they always found a way to adapt. Only two months ago, the two w ­ ere still inseparable companions, still standing eyeball-­to-­eyeball, still trying to outdo each other with their blazing, red-­white-­and-­blue facade graphics. ­Today, the Suit Corner, on the southwest corner, is a smoldering ruin, its roof gone, its timbers charred black from Wednesday’s fire. The Shirt Corner, on the northeast corner, is a hole in the ground. It collapsed March 13 as construction crews ­were taking it apart on ­orders from city officials, who deemed it a ­hazard. Many are wondering how it is pos­si­ble for one of Philadelphia’s most vibrant neighborhoods to lose two historic corners—­eight buildings in all—in a ­matter of weeks. Philadelphia certainly has plenty of derelict and depopulated neighborhoods where old structures regularly fall to neglect and fire. But Shirt Corner and Suit Corner ­were surrounded by popu­lar restaurants, boutiques, antique shops, and high-­end condos. The Old City neighborhood is also one of fifteen historic districts u­ nder special protection of the city. Since receiving that honor in 2004, it has lost at least four other significant structures—­two to fire, two to neglect. One of the fire victims, Friedman’s Umbrella, sat next door to Suit Corner. Another, the Five Spot dance club, was around the corner on Bank Street. “What is it about Old City?” asked Ellen Yin, who owns two top-­ranked restaurants, Fork and High Street. Situated two doors west of Suit Corner, they had to shut for two days to be cleared of smoke and dust. (The fire’s cause has not been determined.)



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“­There is such opportunity ­here,” she said. While Old City’s rents could not compare with Center City’s, she said the area was quite desirable and getting more so all the time. A Historical Commission official agreed, saying the agency was now reviewing one or two renovation proj­ects ­every month. “Old City is getting developed like crazy,” he said. Yet stubborn examples of blight persist. This is not the blight of abandonment, Yin said. Suit Corner was a ­going business when flames w ­ ere spotted licking at its third story. Although Shirt Corner had been empty since 2009, a new owner was planning to convert the linked buildings into apartments. Alterra Property Group said it had no trou­ble signing up a CVS as its ground-­floor tenant. It was not ­until renovations had begun that Alterra discovered what bad shape the buildings w ­ ere in. As workers peeled away drywall, engineering con­sul­tants discovered wide cracks in the brick walls of the buildings, which had been built in the early nineteenth c­ entury to serve the busy docks then at the foot of Market Street. ­Because Old City was, as its name suggests, one of the first areas settled in Philadelphia, its buildings tend to be de­cades older than o­ thers in Center City. Even so, Joe Schiavo, a civic activist, said he did not believe age alone explained why so many Old City buildings ­were in such poor condition. Rather, the common thread is that Old City buildings tend to be owned by individuals or families, who inherited the properties. They did not set out to own large, mixed-­use commercial buildings. Many ­owners are el­derly, and some are simply hanging on, “waiting it out till someone scoops it up for big bucks,” Yin said. In contrast, many large commercial properties on the west side of Broad Street, in Center City’s commercial heart, are now owned by property management companies, some local, some national. Yin, who just took over A. Kitchen in a renovated early twentieth-­century tower at Eigh­teenth and Walnut, argued that ­those ­owners see maintenance as their core business and a way of preserving value. As large companies, they also have easier access to capital for improvements and to the professional skills needed to execute them. To Rich Thom, an Old City architect and activist, owner­ship is just one part of the prob­lem. He blames officials at the Department of Licenses and

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Inspections for poor enforcement. Even when inspectors do cite ­owners for building violations, Thom said, he sees ­little follow-up. Graham Copeland, who runs the Old City Special Ser­vices District, insisted that the prob­lem is not as bad as Thom suggests. ­Those two examples “are isolated situations,” he said. “­These are t­hings that happen with older buildings.” By Thom’s estimate, nearly 15  ­percent of Old City’s buildings are not properly maintained. Few have sprinklers or other effective means of fire suppression. “We keep increasing the number of historic buildings in Old City,” he said. “But what are we ­doing to protect them?”

A Risky ­G amble in North Philadelphia March 4, 2016 One by one, the totems of poverty that once dotted Philadelphia’s urban landscape have been disappearing. Since the late ’90s, the Philadelphia Housing Authority has imploded twenty-­three public housing towers and replaced them with traditional row­houses. On March 19, two more of ­those alien towers, the Norman Blumberg Apartments, w ­ ill be reduced to dust in the North Philadelphia neighborhood the PHA has dubbed Sharswood. This time, however, the housing authority’s ambitions are much bigger than usual. Rather than limiting itself to installing PHA row­houses on the cleared site, the agency has concocted a ­grand plan to take over the neighborhood that surrounds the towers—­a vast band of territory between Girard and Cecil B. Moore from Nineteenth to Twenty-­seventh Streets. The PHA says its goal is to remake the area from the ground up as a model community of affordable housing, complete with a reinvigorated commercial strip on Ridge Ave­nue. If this sounds a l­ittle like the failed, old-­style urban renewal in new clothes, well, it is. PHA is in the lengthy pro­cess of seizing 800 private parcels through eminent domain—­many of them vacant lots—­and ­will acquire 500 more from public ­owners. What makes the authority think it can get t­ hings right this time? Unlike the urban renewal of the ’50s and ’60s, which was meant to revive neighborhoods that had no hope of private investment, the Sharswood



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proj­ect is a response to Philadelphia’s growing concerns with gentrification. ­Because Sharswood is sandwiched between the rapidly changing Brewerytown and Francisville neighborhoods, and the expanding student zones of ­Temple University, it now sits in the direct path of development. PHA’s goal is to preserve Sharswood as an oasis of affordability before the deluge hits. ­There’s a definite logic in that approach. Sharswood is one of the most devastated neighborhoods in the city, and the high concentration of empty lots means ­there is plenty of unwanted land for affordable housing. The prob­lem is that PHA’s target area also encompasses remarkably intact blocks where homeowners have stuck it out for years. You can see remnants of the surviving community on homey blocks like the 2300 block of Nicholas Street, with its Flemish-­gabled h­ ouses, or in the small churches that t­ remble with m ­ usic on Sunday mornings, or in the community garden known as the North Philly Peace Park on Jefferson Street. Jacquelyn Courtney, a third-­generation resident widely known as Miss Jackie, has or­ga­nized a “Friends and F ­ amily” day on Turner Street for years. Adam Lang, a more recent arrival, hosts movie nights for his neighbors in his sideyard on Master Street—­a yard that PHA is now trying to seize through eminent domain. Could Sharswood use some emergency care? Absolutely. Is PHA the right agency to resuscitate the struggling neighborhood? Some redevelopment specialists worry about the authority’s ability to take on a job that i­ sn’t just about housing. The agency, they say, knows nothing about commercial redevelopment, urban design, placemaking, or preservation—­all skills essential to the revival of any shattered neighborhood. PHA is also just emerging from years of turmoil ­under two disgraced leaders. “I am intrigued by the boldness of this plan, but I worry about the mismatch of ambition and capacity,” said Jeffrey Allegretti, a former city official who now specializes in developing subsidized housing. “PHA is set up to provide public housing but is now unilaterally implementing a ­grand reenvisioning of this part of the city. It highlights the prob­lem of PHA operating outside of the city’s planning and development purview.” Reviving Sharswood’s Ridge Ave­nue as a shopping street is key to the proj­ect’s success, but its previous attempt at retail, on the East Falls section of Ridge Ave­nue, was a failure. A de­cade ­after it completed a new housing proj­ect ­there, most of the shops remain unrented.

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Just as worrisome is the lack of detailed design guidelines in PHA’s master plan. To attract retailers to Ridge Ave­nue, the agency is preparing to relocate its headquarters from Twenty-­third and Market to Sharswood, to serve as an anchor. Yet the six-­story office building, set to begin construction ­later this year, has no retail planned for the ground floor and w ­ ill be surrounded by surface parking. PHA’s president, Kelvin Jeremiah, told me that the parking lot on Ridge is only temporary u­ ntil retailers can be signed, and that he was committed to maintaining the corridor’s urban form. In recent years, PHA has done its best work on the tabula rasa sites it created ­after demolishing high-­rise towers. But critics say the agency is less ­adept at managing infill proj­ects in existing neighborhoods. That’s the kind of sensitive development that Sharswood’s gap-­toothed, nineteenth-­century blocks need. As Philadelphia’s largest property owner, with more than 4,400 scattered sites around the city, PHA has often seemed indifferent to such older buildings. Many of the tumbledown ­houses and vacant lots that contributed to Sharswood’s blight have been owned for de­cades by the PHA. A recent study undertaken by a group of historic-­preservation students at PennDesign, led by architect Fon Wang, raised alarms about the agency’s lack of attention to preservation in Sharswood. Although the first three phases of the ten-­phase proj­ect are underway, the agency is only just beginning to inventory the area’s impor­tant structures, which include old jazz clubs, a h­ ouse where Malcolm X lived at Twenty-­fifth and Oxford, and dozens of ­houses decorated with turrets and stone carvings. The students fear the agency ­will acquire significant historic buildings through eminent domain only to allow them to sit empty for years. Jeremiah said he shared their preservation concerns and was working to identify good infill sites. A harder prob­lem w ­ ill be the cost of the new housing, which w ­ ill be a mix of 1,200 rentals and sale properties. ­Because PHA is obliged to use u­ nion ­labor, each new ­house ­will cost $400,000 to build. ­Those put up for sale ­will prob­ably have to be subsidized to the tune of $200,000, PHA acknowledged. That seems like a crazy way to spend scarce housing dollars. Malik Car­ter, a former PHA property man­ag­er who left the agency to renovate ­houses, told me he was now selling rehabbed shells for as l­ittle as $150,000.



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“­There are lots of places around the city where you can buy a ­house for $200,000 and not be in the ­middle of an experiment,” Car­ter added. PHA’s first fifty-­seven ­houses are ­under construction across from the Blumberg towers. In appearance, the cozy, three-­story ­houses are clearly a big improvement over the weedy lots that w ­ ere ­there only a few weeks ago. Now PHA just has to figure out how to build the next 1,143 units.

6 ▶ REBUILDING

Design Promises a New Image for Technology Companies January 16, 2014 ­Until now, Amer­i­ca’s most glamorous tech companies have largely been ­housed in suburban oases, velvet prisons that offer employees endless supplies of vitamin ­water and protein bars but require lengthy commutes in com­pany caravans from San Francisco to the cluttered highway strips of Silicon Valley. ­There’s plenty of interaction inside the ­bubble, but hardly any with the wider world. With its new 1,121-­foot-­tall loft building, designed by Britain’s Norman Foster, Comcast fashions a rebuttal to all that. Think of the towering waterfall of glass that was unveiled Wednesday as a skyscraper version of the ­great, light-­filled factory lofts of the early twentieth ­century, but wedged into the unpredictable heart of Center City atop the region’s densest transit hub. In the six years since Comcast embedded itself in one of the city’s more straitlaced corporate towers, it has done a complete 180: its second high rise should be a glorious vertical atelier where employees can make a mess while they invent and build stuff. 136

A new tower rises on the site of the historic Boyd Theatre in Center City. (Credit: © Inga Saffron)

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In short, this is what the ­future of the growing Comcast campus at Eigh­ teenth and Arch Streets w ­ ill look like: suits to the east, hipster engineers in cutoffs and flip-­flops to the west. Yes, Foster & Partners’ glass tower w ­ ill be the tallest building in Philadelphia when it opens in 2017, the eighth tallest in the United States, and the tallest building outside New York and Chicago. But its height, surgically enhanced by the presence of a new Four Seasons h­ otel on the top twelve floors, is hardly the most in­ter­est­ing ­thing about the $1.2 billion mixed-­use tower. With this proj­ect, Comcast stands to reformulate the architectural imagery of the technology industry. An urban icon for the wired world has been long overdue. Foster’s design promises to provide it. ­There is a certain irony in Foster’s involvement. He’s the same guy who is designing Apple’s sprawling new headquarters on a 170-­acre suburban site in Cupertino, California, a low-­slung, four-­story ring that reinforces the status quo. But Foster also has produced plenty of strong urban buildings, including New York City’s Hearst Tower. Comcast, he promises, “is a way to bring a new kind of industry back into the heart of the city.” It’s not the shape of the Comcast building that is particularly innovative. A stack of gradually narrowing glass boxes, the tower ­will rise at mid-­block from a podium on Arch Street, separated from the ­mother ship by the domed Arch Street Presbyterian Church at the corner of Eigh­teenth Street. In form, Comcast’s fifty-­nine-­story tower bears a strong resemblance to Foster’s design for Three World Trade Center, which is still unbuilt. What distinguishes the proj­ect, now being called the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center, is the organ­ization and aesthetic sensibility of the interior spaces. The tower’s simplicity is as potentially radical as Walter Gropius’s Fagus factory was in 1913, b­ ecause it recognizes that urban skyscrapers are not just for paper pushers but also for collaboration and creativity. Foster’s office has designed Comcast’s tower with an unusual off-­center elevator core, located at a Nineteenth Street corner. Ordinarily, offices revolve around a central core that helps support the structure. By pushing the elevator banks to one side, Foster creates a large, column-­ free space that can be arranged and rearranged for any purpose. Comcast plans to leave ­these high-­ceilinged floors in a relatively raw state—­well, raw for a $60 billion com­pany. The floors ­will be populated by about 3,000 software engineers, product designers, and other freewheeling types who ­will adapt the space to their tastes.

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All Foster buildings like to wear their structure on their skin, and Comcast is no dif­fer­ent. ­Here, Foster exploits the building’s unusual organ­ization for decorative purposes by ­running the elevator banks up the outside of the building. Glass cabs on the north side ­will be vis­i­ble as they travel. The elevator banks also have been split into two sections, with strips of glass marking the space between. Telescoping as they rise, the towers w ­ ill form a mast that terminates in a bladelike spire that feels almost art deco. On the west side, Foster expresses the structure in a dif­fer­ent way, corseting the facade in a stainless steel ziggurat that ­will stiffen the building, literally helping it stand up. The tower is placed so that it stares, eyeball to eyeball, at Comcast’s headquarters, designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects. You should be able to see right through the Foster building into the Stern tower. But unlike Stern’s slick obelisk, Foster’s promises to be minutely detailed. The north and south facades are divided into three-­story sections marked off by a rib of stainless steel. The purpose i­ sn’t only aesthetic. Comcast sees each three-­story module as a discrete neighborhood, each with its own lounge. All this is very nice for the p­ eople who w ­ ill work t­ here, but what about the rest of us? Tech companies have become almost pathologically private, and their ground floors are increasingly fortified. A ­ fter taking over a San Francisco office building recently, Google drove out the lone Starbucks. Liberty Property Trust, Comcast’s partner in developing the Foster tower, as it was with the headquarters, vows to make the ground floor welcoming to the public. On Eigh­teenth Street, a winter garden w ­ ill function much like the one in the existing Comcast tower, with a small cafe and a more formal restaurant at mid-­block on Arch Street. The real dazzler, Comcast hopes, ­will be a thirty-­five-­foot-­high, all-­glass pent­house at the top of the building, which w ­ ill serve both as the Four Seasons’ lobby and a swank public lounge. On a clear day, you’ll be able to see the ­hotels in Atlantic City. But given all the effort Comcast is making to shift the imagery of the building from triumphal corporate trophy to creative loft in the sky, it might be nice to include a more edgy public space, perhaps an auditorium or small theater. Without the opportunity for ­people to bring ideas in from the outside, all ­those cool social spaces are just more ­bubbles.

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The Anti-­G allery Shopping Mall December 26, 2014 If ­you’re looking for an easy way to describe the ambitious, $230 million mixed-­used proj­ect that ­will soon sprout from a block-­size hole on East Market Street across from the Reading head­house, just call it the anti-­ Gallery. For years, the Gallery has been seen as a primo example of how not to design a retail complex in an urban setting. The building is too monolithic, too monotonous, too introverted. Its design dates from the time when enclosed urban malls w ­ ere heralded as the replacement for the traditional downtown shopping experience. Now the pendulum and our tastes, especially ­those of millennials, have swung the other way, and the Gallery is about to be upstaged by a retail proj­ect that does every­thing it can to mimic a traditional downtown shopping district. The development team—­a group of local and national investors led by National Real Estate Development—­has begun taking down the remains of the former Snellenburg store for the proj­ect, which ­they’re calling “East Market.” Eventually it w ­ ill span the entire four-­acre block, from Market to Chestnut, between Eleventh and Twelfth. East Market’s master plan calls for no fewer than six buildings and ­will incorporate high-­rise apartments, boutique offices, and a small ­hotel. All of the retail w ­ ill be at ground level, with entrances on the street. And in a move that should warm the hearts of urbanists everywhere, the large site is being brought down to neighborhood scale by a network of interior streets. Like the old-­school malls, East Market ­will still have its share of big-­ name chains: Uniqlo, Topshop, and Neiman Marcus’s Last Call are all being courted. But ­those stores ­will have other kinds of tenants as neighbors: bars, restaurants, a gourmet grocer, and a fitness center. Residents and office workers ­will populate the upper floors, providing a built-in clientele for the retail. All this is in the first phase, between Market and Clover Streets, and should be finished by the spring of 2016. East Market may sound like a bland name for such a radical shift away from Philadelphia’s usual car-­centric development, but that’s intentional. While East Market does tuck 210 parking spaces under­ground, ­they’re meant for apartment residents. The developers see the proj­ect as serving the city’s residential core and tourists who wander by.

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The name also signals that East Market is about placemaking. All of the buildings w ­ ill be known by their addresses, rather than an in­ven­ted brand, says Daniel Killinger, who is overseeing the proj­ect’s development. Killinger once worked for the developer Tony Goldman, famous for dusting off historic buildings and making them anchors for redevelopment in places like SoHo, South Beach, and Philadelphia’s Thirteenth Street. Killinger has picked up the same instincts. East Market also uses older buildings as a way to infuse the new development with a ready-­made past. The diminutive Stephen Girard tower on Twelfth Street—­Philadelphia’s first skyscraper—is being eyed as a ­hotel, while Snellenburg’s Eleventh Street ware­house is being “re-­skinned” and marketed as office space for small creative firms. While it’s sad to lose its creamy terra-­cotta facade, which has been deemed unsalvageable, the new one by New York’s Morris Adjmi is a worthy replacement. Adjmi started out working for the celebrated Aldo Rossi and has perfected a neo-­industrial style on buildings such as Brooklyn’s Wyeth H ­ otel. It would be g­ reat if the developers could use the same approach to retain the art deco parking garage on the Chestnut Street edge of their site. ­There is no doubt that East Market’s placemaking is part of a calculated branding strategy intended to trade on our memories of Market Street’s retail heyday. The marketing prospectus for East Market is so packed with images of natu­ral fabrics, vintage cameras, and old-­timey cobbled streets that it could be mistaken for a J. Crew cata­log. But who cares, when the plan is so perfectly in sync with what the city needs in this place at this moment? The irony is that the master plan is the work of the same firm that designed the Gallery four de­cades ago, BLT Architects. It virtually owns the look of East Market—­the street, that is. Over the years, its architects have produced a long list of acceptable but unmemorable designs: SEPTA’s headquarters, the Marriott ­Hotel, and PSFS and Strawbridge renovations. To make East Market look like it evolved organically, its developers have pulled in multiple architects. BLT ­will design the development’s retail buildings along Market and the two seventeen-­story towers that w ­ ill sit on top. It’s clean, straightforward architecture, which ­will be faced in precast, limestone-­colored panels that defer to the PSFS building. Their real accomplishment, however, is the way ­they’ve or­ga­nized the ­things we prefer not to think about: the loading docks. Th ­ ey’re hidden under­ground and ­will be discreetly accessed from Twelfth Street.

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­They’re also the ones who pushed the idea of breaking up the block with an interior street network. Most large-­scale urban developments tend to erase the eccentricities of the city grid. East Market w ­ ill put the quirky back by resurrecting the block’s original alley streets, Ludlow and Clover, and introducing one pedestrian walk that ­will connect Market and Chestnut. It’s not just smart urbanism—­it’s smart business. Instead of one building with four pos­si­ble frontages for retail, the developers get six buildings with twenty-­four facades. While the developers are ­going to ­great lengths to give East Market a vintage patina, ­there ­will be one distinct difference: digital signs. East Market is the first to take advantage of the city’s new Market Street sign district. ­There’s big money in ­those electronic billboards. It ­will be a tricky balancing act to integrate ­those commercial screens in a development that also hopes to attract residents and offbeat office tenants. Killinger says the signs ­will be ­limited to the Market Street retail facades and insists the atmosphere w ­ ill become edgier as the proj­ect shifts south, t­ oward Washington Square West and Thirteenth Street’s so-­called Midtown Village. Screens aside, ­there is good reason to hope that no one should ever confuse East Market with a shopping mall.

Plan’s Failure Raises New Hope for Boyd December 19, 2014 All anyone had to do was say the word “multiplex,” and the Boyd Theatre’s fair-­weather friends abandoned the ­grand dame of Philadelphia movie palaces as if the place w ­ ere on fire. De­mo­li­tion of the art deco auditorium was sanctioned by the Historical Commission in March, and within days wrecking crews ­were on the scene, supposedly for the Florida chain iPic. Now we know it was all magical thinking. Neil Rodin, the developer who said he was bringing iPic to Philadelphia, never followed through on his much-­ballyhooed plan to buy the Boyd from its longtime owner, Live Nation. Meanwhile, iPic has prob­lems of its own and lost its financing for the proj­ect, according to a source involved with the com­pany. In late October, Live Nation quietly sold the theater at Nineteenth and Chestnut to Jim Pearlstein and Reed Slogoff of Pearl Properties for $4.5 million.

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What happens next is anyone’s guess. IPic insists it is negotiating a new lease with Pearl, but that may be just part of the script. Nationally, the theater business is in decline. Overall ticket revenue has fallen 4 ­percent this year from 2013, and the all-­important cohort of thirteen-­to twenty-­four-­ year-­olds seems more interested in video games than in ­going out to the movies. IPic’s concept, which relies on $24 tickets and in-­theater dining, always sounded like a risky business model. In March, iPic CEO Hamid Hashemi admitted the com­pany w ­ ouldn’t have been able to afford a Center City location if Rodin h­ adn’t offered a bargain rent. So maybe it w ­ ouldn’t be so bad to have them out of the picture. Pearl’s main interest i­sn’t the movies anyway. Though Pearlstein and Slogoff ­didn’t return my phone calls, it is well known that Pearl has been trying to get approval for a twenty-­six-­story, neo-­traditional apartment tower on a small Chestnut Street lot immediately east of the Boyd. The prob­lem is that his 295-­foot building would be twice as dense as zoning allows for that tiny site. Adding the Boyd to the mix enlarges the footprint of the property and solves the density issue. Instead of having to seek a zoning variance or special City Council bill, Pearl can now construct the tower by right, simply by applying for a building permit. So what happens to the Boyd, which opened in 1928 and is the city’s lone survivor of Hollywood’s golden age? One person who has spoken to Pearlstein, Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger, says the developer “is still trying to figure out what he’s d­ oing.” That suggests, hopefully, that he has no immediate plans to demolish the theater if his negotiations with iPic go nowhere. Pearlstein could even emerge as the hero of this sorry preservation debacle. During the hearings before the Historical Commission’s hardship committee this year, iPic and Live Nation argued that the Boyd’s huge, 2,350-­seat auditorium and odd footprint made it impossible to adapt the historic building for any new purpose. The committee agreed and granted them permission to tear down every­thing but the Chestnut Street facade and an exterior vestibule. As awful as it was to lose the auditorium, designed by the theater duo Hoffmann & Henon and decorated with ornate stencils and richly colored plasterwork, many w ­ ere surprised the commission also approved de­mo­li­ tion of the Boyd lobby. Prob­ably the best space in the theater, it is sheathed

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from floor to ceiling in ­etched mirrors and includes a mural celebrating the history of ­women’s achievement, quite an unusual subject for 1928. What­ever happens now with iPic, Pearlstein has the power to insist that the lobby stay. The Boyd’s auditorium is certainly big enough to accommodate any number of new uses. Of course, it would be better still if Pearlstein found a way to repurpose the auditorium without destroying its exuberant decoration. I never bought the testimony from Live Nation, Rodin, and iPic that the Boyd was too eccentric to save. A credible plan was put forward in 2008 to turn the auditorium into a multiuse space for concerts, events, business meetings, and the occasional movie, but it collapsed ­after its developer suffered a fatal heart attack. In that plan, the event space would have been linked to a high-­rise ­hotel west of the theater and transformed into a traditional ballroom. Pearl now has the opportunity to do the same ­thing on the east side by connecting the auditorium with his apartment tower. ­Because his apartment design calls for ground-­floor stores, it’s also pos­si­ ble to imagine the Boyd auditorium getting a new life as a funky retail space, especially now that Chestnut Street has reemerged as an impor­tant shopping thoroughfare. Pearl already owns the store lots attached to the Boyd on Chestnut Street, and it’s done a ­great job with retail at its two recent apartment developments, the Sansom and the Granary. Turning the Boyd into a nonprofit cultural center—­long championed by the Friends of the Boyd—­remains an option, although a difficult one. It’s disappointing that a succession of city administrations have ignored the Boyd’s potential, even while other cities ­were lobbying for grants and funding to preserve their classic theaters. Indeed, the city seemed almost e­ ager for the Boyd’s demise when Rodin announced he would buy the building if he could knock it down for a multiplex. ­People who had fought for the building’s preservation, such as Sharon Pinkenson of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, abruptly switched sides. IPic, she wrote, “­will become an instant asset to Center City and to film lovers like me.” In most cities, historic designation means a building is protected—­ forever. In Philadelphia, designation is increasingly seen as a temporary state, good ­until a developer offers a compelling alternative. For movie lov-

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ers, the short-­term prospect of a Center City multiplex trumped the Boyd’s long-­term historic value. Let’s hope the sequel with Pearl Properties has a better ending.

History versus High-­Rises: A Debate on Preservation June 3, 2011 ­Here’s a l­ittle thought experiment to get you steamed: What if the celebrated urban planner Edmund Bacon had embraced the prevailing ideology of the ’60s and leveled Society Hill, replacing its blocks of outmoded, colonial-­era town­houses with high-­rises? Would Philadelphia be a livelier, more successful place ­today? Frankly, it’s hard to imagine that wiping out one of t­ oday’s most desirable urban neighborhoods in the city, if not the country, could have benefited anyone, rich or poor. In the best case, Society Hill might have become a boring, middle-­class enclave similar to New York’s Upper East Side. I’d rather not think about the worst case. The story of what happened in Society Hill has long been regarded by planners as a watershed moment for American cities. By renovating its dilapidated housing stock, Bacon demonstrated that historic preservation could be a power­ful economic-­development tool, one that has guided Philadelphia’s slow but steady revival for half a ­century. That narrative is now being challenged in some unlikely intellectual corners. Rather than helping our cities recover their bearings, historic preservation is strangling them, the revisionists assert. They blame our sentimental affection for old buildings for every­thing from sky-­high rents to the economic whupping the United States has taken from China. This argument comes not from a lone crank but from two of the most respected thinkers in their fields: Pritzker Prize–­winning architect Rem Koolhaas and Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser. ­These are not two guys you would normally expect to find at the same party. Koolhaas is the cooler-­than-­cool, leftist provocateur best known for designing the Seattle Public Library and the Prada “Epicenter” in New York’s SoHo. Glaeser, who ­will address the Philadelphia chapter of the

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Urban Land Institute June 14 at the Union League, is a wonky free-­marketeer who just published an unlikely cele­bration of urban centers called Triumph of the City. Overall, Glaeser’s book is a welcome corrective to Robert Bruegmann’s 2005 free-­market defense of sprawl. Glaeser, by contrast, believes cities have a built-in competitive advantage b­ ecause their dense, diverse concentrations of p­ eople create the perfect ecosystem for generating new ideas and new businesses, and ­doing it in the most efficient way pos­si­ble. But Glaeser goes overboard with his emphasis on efficiency, which, like many economists, he sees as the ruling determinant in the universe. Since close proximity increases the frequency of serendipitous exchanges, he concludes that cities should cultivate maximum density and allow as many skyscrapers as the market ­will bear. More high-­rises, he says, translates into greater supply and lower costs. If housing in Philadelphia w ­ ere as cheap as in Houston, Glaeser suggests, this city would ­really rock. Smart ­people would be drawn h­ ere ­because rent was such a bargain, and they would create businesses and jobs that would make Philadelphia wealthy again. If only! Just look at China, Glaeser insists. They c­ an’t erect skyscrapers fast enough. And ­isn’t China booming? The prob­lem is the darn preservationists ­won’t let American cities behave like Shenzhen. Places like Philadelphia are so irrationally attached to their old, low-­rise, inefficient row­houses that they protect them with a Byzantine web of preservation laws. The occupants of ­those fine Society Hill ­houses are effectively keeping prices high for every­one ­else, forcing ­people to seek housing and work in less expensive places. It’s funny to hear Koolhaas echo this free-­market analy­sis. Like Glaeser, the Dutch-­born architect has a natu­ral affinity for cities, which he championed in Delirious New York, the 1978 manifesto that was one of the first books to appreciate the messy vitality you get in less-­than-­perfect urban conditions. Koolhaas has always positioned himself as a critic of capitalism (even while taking commissions from some of its biggest prac­ti­tion­ers) and its ramped-up consumer culture. But Koolhaas also has had several proj­ects thwarted by a power­ful group of anticonsumers: preservationists. His proposal for expanding the Whitney Museum of Art in New York was checked ­after an uproar over four adjacent historic town­houses, and he lost the commission for London’s Tate

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Modern to competitors who preserved an old power plant. Th ­ ese grudges heavi­ly inform his show “Cronocaos” at the New Museum, located on a rapidly gentrifying stretch of the Bowery in Lower Manhattan—­not far, as it turns out, from his Prada store. Instead of staging the show, which runs through Sunday, in the museum, Koolhaas sets up his polemic in a former restaurant-­supply store next door. Half the room has been left untouched, with torn patches of fake-­brick vinyl flooring and framed certificates from industry associations. The other half is given the white-­walled gallery treatment, so we can witness gentrification in pro­gress. Koolhaas gets to condemn the cycle even as he aids and abets it. The thesis of Koolhaas’s rant is that the world is being frozen in amber by a power­ful heritage mafia, which he suggests is one reason Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca are falling ­behind China—as if its lack of concern for ancestral hutongs explains its growing economic might. Occasionally Koolhaas hits a bull’s-­eye, as when he complains that preservationists force architects to design in historically friendly but fake-­ looking, traditional styles. He’s also right that excessive zeal for historical accuracy can lead to a form of architectural cleansing that costs neighborhoods their grit and authenticity. The show gets its name, “Cronocaos,” from Koolhaas’s cheeky conflation of the words “chronological” and “chaos”; it’s his phrase for the excessive worship of civilization’s past glories. Even as they decry totalitarian preservationists, both Koolhaas and Glaeser seek to impose a one-­size-­fits-­all approach to cities. Skyscrapers have their place, and Philadelphia could do with a few more. But tall buildings ­aren’t the only way to achieve high density. With eleven p­ eople to the acre, Philadelphia holds its own with parts of New York. A neighborhood of tightly packed row­houses is a far more attractive place to live than one made up of widely spaced high-­rises—­like Koolhaas’s CCTV tower in Beijing, almost a mile from its nearest neighbor. I also won­der if Glaeser knows that most of the Philadelphia condo towers built in the boom de­cade now sit half empty, while individual row­houses continue to be built and sold, or that the city has no shortage of vacant land for affordable new housing. It’s no accident that Philadelphia’s strongest neighborhoods are t­hose with the most intact historic fabric. The city’s comeback has been built on old foundations. That, more than cheap high-­rises, is what ­will make ­people want to live ­here.

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Old Churches in Search of an Afterlife July 24, 2015 Hoping to dissuade the Historical Commission e­ arlier this month from landmarking Fishtown’s beloved Saint Laurentius Church, parish attorney Michael  V. Phillips reeled off a litany of reasons that its preservation was doomed to fail. The nineteenth-­century building is no longer a working church. Its brownstone facade requires expensive repairs. If the Polish Catholic church received city protection, he predicted darkly, “it would just end up sitting empty.” ­There it was, the killer argument. By conjuring up an image of the once-­ handsome Saint Laurentius wasting away, blighting the row­house neighborhood around it, Phillips tapped into the common view that old churches and synagogues (not to mention movie theaters) are just too quirky for our modern world. With their soaring sanctuaries and oddly ­shaped floor plans, it is certainly true that aging religious buildings are hard to adapt for new uses. At the same time, a new study by the Philadelphia-­based Partners for Sacred Places offers evidence that the most crucial f­ actor in repurposing a h­ ouse of worship is not money but imagination. ­Because so many local congregations have shuttered their buildings recently, the group de­cided to track the outcomes. To its surprise, Partners discovered that fifty-­two sanctuaries in the city and four in the Pennsylvania suburbs have found an afterlife with nonreligious tenants in the last de­cade. In contrast, about twenty have fallen to the wrecking ball in the last five years. The roster of the reborn includes cavernous landmarks and cozy neighborhood churches, elaborately decorated Victorian-­ era aristocrats and eccentric modernist designs. Repurposing religious buildings has become so common that renovation pictures are a staple of the web, with posts such as “Beautiful Churches” on io9​.­com charting their transformation into bookstores and brewpubs. In Philadelphia, sanctuaries have most commonly been turned into private homes, apartment buildings, offices, and performing-­arts centers. A few, though, have lent themselves to less conventional uses, such as the tiny, ’60s-­era Presbyterian chapel on South Broad Street that is now a home-­style Italian restaurant called Criniti’s, and the Third Presbyterian Church on

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Front Street in South Ken­sington, which ­houses a small manufacturing business. Like Saint Laurentius, Third Presbyterian was just placed on the city’s historic register. Too often, though, religious groups resist historic designation, believing it ties their hands. The parish that owns Saint Laurentius, Holy Name of Jesus, ­didn’t bother looking for a new user for the church on Berks Street, choosing instead to make de­mo­li­tion its first resort. Had it not been designated, the parish would have been able to sell the land for a nice profit in Fishtown’s hot row­house market. Yet designation has its financial advantages too. Ken Weinstein, a developer working in Germantown and Mount Airy, has now rescued three churches and one religious school, altering the interiors to accommodate a bakery, a drama school, and condos. Once a building is designated, ­owners can leverage the status to obtain federal tax credits and grants that help make renovation as attractive as new construction. Weinstein is wrapping up his most challenging salvage effort yet: Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church on Wayne Ave­nue in Germantown. The original church, designed in 1873 by Furness and Hewitt for the railroad tycoon Henry Houston, had been abandoned by its congregation more than a de­cade ago. When Weinstein first saw the Victorian church, with its gray stone walls and country spire, “­water was cascading through the roof.” The damage did give him pause about moving ahead with the $6.5 million proj­ect, even though he had paid just $450,000 for the property. The church, which sits on a hilly 1.5-­acre site near Germantown’s business district, is surrounded by four equally formidable companions, including a Gothic parish ­house from 1898 by T. P. Chandler. The ensemble overflows with stunning architectural details, such as stone fireplaces, carved gargoyles, and vaulted ceilings. The proj­ect became v­ iable when Weinstein landed the Waldorf School as his tenant. A K-8 private school, the Waldorf saw the leafy grounds as the perfect space for a new campus. But first, Weinstein had to figure out how to convert its multiple chapels and lofty halls into classrooms. His architects, Seiler & Drury, developed a clever space plan that partitions the enormous rooms into usable sections while retaining the charm of their wood-­ribbed ceilings and leaded-­glass win­dows. As more religious buildings are converted, architects have developed several tricks to bring the sanctuaries down to usable size. When David

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Gleeson, developer of the Crane Arts Building, and partner Cynthia Porter de­cided to make their home in a fresco-­covered Serbian Orthodox Church in South Ken­sington, they inserted drywall boxes into the main space to create individual bedrooms. ­Because they “­couldn’t live with all the wall paintings,” Porter says, they de­cided to preserve the best by leaving framed openings in the new walls. They sleep ­under a heavenly blue vaulted ceiling, spiked with golden stars. Eduardo Glandt, the former engineering dean at the University of Pennsylvania, and George Ritchie took the opposite approach when they acquired an impor­tant 1848 African American church on Lombard Street. The exterior is a perfect restoration of  William L. Johnston’s classical facade, but inside, the old church has become a serene ­temple to minimalist design. Interior designer Val Nehez originally had planned to convert the Falls Methodist Episcopal Church in Manayunk into condos, but switched to offices when the housing market tanked. Now, the 9,000-­square-­foot stone church is a hub of creative and tech firms. She saved the top-­floor sanctuary, with its enormous Gothic win­dow, for her firm, Ennis Nehez. Although she sent the pews and parts of the organ off to a salvage com­pany, she kept a few pipes and turned them into a dramatic light fixture, a reminder of the celestial ­music that once filled the airy space. That kind of improvisational thinking is essential for preserving any religious building, Weinstein believes. He has even taken a look at Saint Laurentius, which he says is in better condition than Saint Peter’s. He sees it as an entertainment venue or maybe a coworking space. At the right price, he says, it ­wouldn’t have to sit empty very long.

Achieving Heft with Sleight of Hand August 14, 2015 The Cheesecake Factory’s design sensibility, like its menu, is founded on the belief that too much is never enough. In contrast, the architects at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson operate on the presumption that ­you’re usually better off with less. That thinking has informed their coolly minimalist designs for the Apple stores, most notably their wispy glass cube in Manhattan. But development often makes for strange bedfellows, and so BCJ was hired by Midwood Investment to design a new Walnut Street building that

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could contain the restaurant’s par­tic­u­lar brand of excess. The sparkling glass box, which opened last month at the corner of Fifteenth Street, i­sn’t officially called the “Cheesecake Factory Building.” The chain ­isn’t even the lead tenant; a Verizon store has that honor. But b­ ecause the mash-up is so memorable (and b­ ecause Verizon’s street presence has none of the bite of an Apple store), the name has stuck. The incongruity of it all has made the modest three-­story retail building one of the most anticipated works of architecture in Philadelphia, right up ­there with Norman Foster’s 1,121-­foot Comcast tower. That’s pretty amusing, given that glass facades are popping up everywhere—­with mostly unremarkable results. Would ­people ­really be hungering for BCJ’s diet-­conscious design if the pairing ­weren’t such a novelty? As one who lavished praise on the BCJ design in 2013, I feared I might have to eat my words at certain moments during the construction. So I am happy to report that the finished building is a design with real meat on its bones, even if it ­doesn’t quite rise to a five-­star architectural experience. The proj­ect takes BCJ’s Philadelphia office in an in­ter­est­ing new direction. Like their colleagues in BCJ’s San Francisco outpost, which produces most of the Apple stores, their approach to glass has been all about transparency and lightness. Facades are treated as ethereal membranes, barely perceptible barriers between inside and out. With Cheesecake, though, lead designers Frank Grauman and Andrew Moroz want you to feel the building’s weight, an approach normally reserved for masonry structures. The historic Drexel & Co. building across from Cheesecake is a classic example. Modeled on a Florentine palazzo and constructed with huge granite blocks, it’s the architectural equivalent of a Transformer character. ­Because Cheesecake is surrounded by such hefty architecture—­Fifteenth Street between Chestnut and Locust is practically Re­nais­sance Row—­ ethereal ­wasn’t ­going to cut it. Instead, Grauman and Moroz de­cided to treat Cheesecake as though it ­were a solid block of crystal. They cut a deep gash across the surface. As the opening zigzags down the corner, it creates the impression that the building is faced in thick slabs of glass. The cutaway defines the ­whole design. It calls your eye to the main corner, but it also proves useful in highlighting the presence of each tenant. One opening becomes an entrance for Verizon, another a sunporch for the restaurant, which is on the second floor. The top opening outlines a picture

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win­dow for a f­ uture office tenant. It’s framed by a glass slab that juts precariously past the Walnut Street facade, piercing the sky. The architects have nicknamed it the “diving board.” Yet the heft that t­ hese cutouts suggest is pure illusion. What appears to be a staggered arrangement of three-­dimensional glass slabs is just a flat glass wall, boxed at the ends to suggest thickness. Grauman and Moroz continue their sleight of hand by covering part of the roof in glass. Each floor is also separated by a horizontal I-­beam that adds to the feeling of heft. ­Those ­aren’t the real deal ­either, ­because they ­don’t support the structure. Yes, it’s foolery, but the sophisticated composition is also what elevates Cheesecake above the current crop of banal glass buildings. The strong design earns the building the right to stand alongside the likes of the Drexel palazzo and Trumbauer’s Union League. The architects had originally expected to peel away even more layers of the building. They balanced the corner openings with a two-­story void at the east end of the facade, with the expectation it would become the Cheesecake Factory entrance. Unfortunately, the restaurant has packed the void with so many doodads—­curving metal sun fins, backlit yellow glass, wrought-­iron lanterns—­that it has ruined the effect. The clutter is a good indicator of the disconnect between popu­lar taste and modern design. Transparent modern buildings like this are in demand by retailers ­because ­they’re ­great containers for showing off merchandise. Yet tenants still want to doll them up with symbols of traditional architecture. Walking into the Cheesecake Factory’s vestibule is like stepping into a Vegas casino. But architects also like to bask in the reflective glory of their older neighbors. As the sun passes over Cheesecake, the building’s facade becomes a mirror for its masonry surroundings. It’s as though the modernist box is one of the crowd. This works best on Walnut Street ­because of the way the cutouts interrupt the reflection and remind us of the building’s own identity. But the exceedingly long Fifteenth Street wall lacks the same relief, and it ends up being pretty dull. Pedestrians walking along Fifteenth Street ­will notice another odd feature along the curb line. Though the sidewalk next to the building is flat, the part known as the “furniture zone” slopes down to the street like a child’s

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slide. The awkward incline, the architects say, is the result of their attempts to deal with a sloped site. The most unusual ­thing about the Cheesecake building, though, is that it exists at all. We ­don’t see many pure retail buildings in our downtowns anymore. But Midwood, a New York developer with large holdings in Philadelphia, still has faith in the old-­fashioned shopping experience. That’s reason enough to celebrate with a large slice of cheesecake.

Bait and Switch on Affordable-­Housing Deal June 3, 2016 One ­Water Street, the first proj­ect built ­under Philadelphia’s Delaware waterfront master plan, i­ sn’t quite finished, but the luxury apartment h­ ouse already towers over Columbus Boulevard. At sixteen stories, it promises residents spectacular views of the river, from the Ben Franklin Bridge to the sailboats bobbing in the marina next to Morgan’s Pier. One-­bedroom apartments are listing for an impressive $1,875 a month. One ­Water owes its statuesque proportions and fabulous pa­norama to a new provision in Philadelphia’s zoning code that was intended to boost the supply of affordable housing in fast-­gentrifying neighborhoods. In exchange for making twenty-­five units available at subsidized rents, the developer, PMC Property Group, was allowed to add forty-­eight feet—­roughly five stories—to the height of the building. But as One ­Water prepares to welcome its first tenants, it seems unlikely that any low-­income renters w ­ ill ever get to enjoy the stunning river views. The developer wants out of the deal. The prob­lem, of course, is that One ­Water Street ­can’t exactly return the five extra floors already built. PMC’s executive vice president, Jonathan Stavin, declined to discuss the com­pany’s decision to renege on its affordable-­housing obligation, but two city officials confirmed the builder was in talks to substitute another public amenity in place of the subsidized units. Among the proposals: public art. Talk about a bait and switch. This ­wasn’t how ­things ­were supposed to work when Philadelphia introduced an affordable-­housing bonus into the zoning code in 2012. At the time, the provision, officially known as inclusionary zoning, was hailed by city officials as a progressive, market-­based strategy to help booming neighborhoods

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retain a degree of income diversity. One ­Water Street was the first to sign up for the bonus. The approach may be new to Philadelphia, but the nation’s reviving cities have been turning to inclusionary zoning as a way to cushion the impact of skyrocketing rents. Cities with stratospheric housing costs such as San Francisco and Boston have even moved to make inclusionary zoning mandatory for all large apartment proj­ects. New York just approved set-­asides of 20 ­percent to 30 ­percent. At a time when the federal government has virtually cut funding to city housing authorities, inclusionary zoning is one of the few means left to pay for affordable housing. Philadelphia’s rents a­ ren’t nearly as high as they are in t­ hose cities, so officials ­here de­cided to make the inclusionary housing voluntary and to offer compensation. Developers who offer subsidized units can qualify for a substantial height bonus. On paper, the One W ­ ater Street bonus looked like a perfect test case. PMC agreed to rent twenty-­five apartments at below-­market rates. The city, in turn, let PMC construct a taller building—­with space for thirty more full-­priced units. That way, the developer came out ahead in the bargain, with a total of 250 units. Though twenty-­five subsidized units ­aren’t g­ oing to solve Philadelphia’s housing prob­lems, they did promise to make this building more eco­nom­ ically diverse. Instead of paying $1,875 a month for a one-­bedroom unit at One ­Water, a qualified renter—­say, a single person earning less than $32,000 a year—­could lease the apartment for $940. But that ­didn’t count on having the developer build and balk. So what happens now? PMC is scrambling to come up with another bonus option to justify One ­Water’s extra forty-­eight feet. According to Karen Guss, a spokeswoman for the Department of Licenses and Inspections, PMC ­will have to start the zoning pro­cess from scratch. That means the changes w ­ ill have to be vetted by the Planning Commission and Civic Design Review. “I’m a bit concerned about ­doing the swap ­after the fact, ­after the building is essentially built,” said Gary Jastrzab, head of the city’s planning department. That’s a nice way of saying that zoning One W ­ ater retroactively ­won’t be easy. In addition to the forty-­eight-­foot bonus for affordable housing, PMC received a twenty-­four-­foot height bonus for providing public open space, bringing One ­Water’s total height to 190 feet.

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Of course, if you visit the site, you might be hard-­pressed to identify the “public open space” that PMC created to satisfy the bonus requirement. Is it the planted berm in front of the building? The generous driveway? Or maybe the row of concrete benches along Columbus Boulevard? Whichever it is, it’s a pretty stingy contribution to the public realm. Jastrzab suggested that one way PMC could make up for the twenty-­five affordable units is by retrofitting One W ­ ater to include ground-­floor retail. The irony is that PMC was excused the first time around from that obligation, a key requirement of the Delaware waterfront master plan, ­because the city felt the market was still too weak to support retail uses on the river. What­ever happens, the city needs to keep a sharp eye on PMC’s next proj­ect, a massive overbuild for the former Marketplace Design Center on the Schuylkill. Through the use of vari­ous zoning bonuses, PMC claims it can legally increase the proj­ect’s size by 20 ­percent, to 860,000 square feet. Let’s hope someone checks the math. Gaming the zoning system, unfortunately, is a time-­honored practice in Philadelphia. Dockside, an apartment building a few blocks south of Penn’s Landing, also attempted to wriggle out of its obligations ­under the ­Percent for Art program. It got away with building a reduced-­scale version of the art installation, and the piece has never looked quite right. The excuse we always hear is that Philadelphia’s construction costs far exceed the rents developers can charge. But with the median rent now topping $1,250 for a one-­bedroom apartment—up 3.1 ­percent over last year—­ how much longer can the city’s developers cry that they are the ones too poor to follow the rules?

Jewelers Row Fights Not Just for Buildings August 19, 2016 Reuven Cohen and John Khodanian ­were relaxing around a card ­table they had set up on the Jewelers Row sidewalk, nibbling on watermelon, kibitzing about the old days, and sharing an only-­in-­America moment. In 1967, Cohen, born on a farm in Israel, and Khodanian, an ethnic Armenian by way of Syria, fought on opposite sides of the Six Day War. ­Today they own shops a few doors apart and have become the de facto mayors of the block.

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“Have some watermelon,” Cohen called out to Jean Huffenus, a transplanted Frenchman who designs fine jewelry for several shops on Sansom Street. Proffering a chunk of fruit on the point of a knife blade, he upped the offer: “How about a glass of wine?” ­After thirty-­plus years on Jewelers Row, Cohen, seventy, and Khodanian, sixty-­seven, are known to e­ very designer, caster, engraver, polisher, and gem merchant packed into the eclectic ­jumble of buildings between Seventh and Eighth Streets. Theirs is an interconnected world where every­one does business with every­one ­else and million-­dollar deals are confirmed with a handshake. As Toll ­Brothers moves ahead with plans to demolish five properties at the eastern end of Sansom Street—­three from the nineteenth ­century—­more than just buildings w ­ ill be lost. Jewelers Row is an ecosystem as much as anything in nature. Cohen and Khodanian a­ ren’t being forced out. But once Toll inserts a sixteen-­story luxury condo tower into the mix, the intricate relationships among merchants, craftspeople, and customers w ­ ill be stressed as never before. Founded in 1851, Jewelers Row is the oldest diamond district in Amer­ic­ a. That alone makes it a national trea­sure. Yet it has been undervalued by one city administration ­after another, including the current Kenney administration, which pledged to make historic preservation a priority again in Philadelphia. Though not as strong as it was in the days before Internet shopping, Jewelers Row is still a major force in the industry, supplying stores throughout the region and catering to streams of retail customers. Consumers, it seems, still like to eyeball their gold and diamonds before they hand over their money. Just a block west of In­de­pen­dence Hall, the redbrick street is also a tourist magnet. “­Every ­horse carriage, ­every double-­decker bus slows down to brag about this block,” said Huffenus, who works out of an upper-­floor studio at 704 Sansom, one of the five destined for destruction. Few think of it this way, but Jewelers Row also happens to be an industrial hub, a rare enclave in the heart of the city where high-­value products are still manufactured. When I wrote about this unique makers zone last year, Michael Cooper, then head of the city’s Office of Manufacturing and Industry, estimated nearly a thousand ­people work in the district, which spills down Eighth Street and over to Chestnut.

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At least a hundred are employed in the five threatened buildings, Hy Goldberg, head of the merchants’ association, told me this week. Are we ­really ready to sacrifice t­hose jobs for eighty condo units—­ones that w ­ ill pay virtually no property taxes for a de­cade? Toll ­hasn’t released a tower design or even hired an architect, but vice president Brian Emmons told me the com­pany is committed to replicating the street’s retail rhythms. Toll’s plan calls for five shops arrayed along ninety feet of frontage. The tower ­will be set back fifteen feet from the sidewalk, an arrangement similar to the one used at Ten Ritten­house. Toll was clearly drawn to the Jewelers Row site ­because the tower ­will have fabulous views of  Washington Square once it rises above the adjacent town­houses on Walnut Street. In any other context, such urbanist touches might be applauded. But what’s happening on Sansom Street is classic gentrification, the kind that drives out distinctive, homegrown business and tears apart long-­standing community bonds. Even if Toll makes good on its promise to include retail on Jewelers Row, it’s hard to believe that brand-­new shops ­will rent at affordable prices. All the craftspeople on the upper floors ­will have to find new space, on Jewelers Row or elsewhere. As it is, many building ­owners are increasingly converting their upper floors to apartments, b­ ecause “­people get more rent from residential than workshops,” according to Goldberg, who supports Toll’s proj­ect. It’s worth noting that Toll’s track rec­ord on retail has not been good. Its new developments at Head­house Square and Twenty-­fourth and South lack retail space even though ­they’re in the ­middle of commercial corridors. Some in the development community have dismissed the historic value of the five buildings b­ ecause they are a mishmash of styles and eras and their storefronts have been modified over the years. It’s true that the buildings have changed a lot since William Sansom built what is considered Philadelphia’s first row­house development in 1799. But it’s the visual cacophony that makes the block so wonderful. The architecture of Jewelers Row gains its power as an ensemble, one that is largely intact. No one ever expected that such perfectly good, occupied buildings would be de­mo­li­tion targets when the ten-­year property tax abatement was instituted in 2000. What may be most shocking about this case is that it revealed that only three addresses on the landmark block are protected on the historic register.

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The Historical Commission has been moribund for so long that no Jewelers Row historic district was ever established. Toll B ­ rothers needs no variances or approvals, other than a courtesy visit to the Design Review Board, to construct its tower. (The Design Review pre­sen­ta­tion must be completed before a building permit is issued, the Department of Licenses and Inspections acknowledged Wednesday.) The absence of a historic district means all the nondesignated buildings are up for grabs. ­Because Sansom Street has the most generous zoning classification—­CMX-5, which places no height limit on buildings—it is incredibly attractive to developers. The same holds true for the rest of the neighborhood. Not only can Jewelers Row be wiped out, but so can a trove of nineteenth-­and twentieth-­ century commercial buildings east of Broad Street between Market and Walnut. With the construction of the East Market complex and the new Collins apartments on Chestnut Street, Center City’s long-­neglected east side is suddenly hot. “Who knows how many developers are assembling parcels for de­mo­li­tion right now?” noted the Preservation Alliance’s Paul Steinke, whose organ­ization has been fighting to save the five buildings. Even if it is impossible to stop the Toll ­Brothers proj­ect, Jewelers Row should be a wake-up call to the Kenney administration. Without an immediate preservation push coupled with strategic re-­zonings to preserve low-­rise pockets, the eclectic commercial streets that give Center City its identity ­will be obliterated. Imagine a day when carriage ­drivers on Sansom Street tell their passengers, “This is where Jewelers Row used to be.”

An Architectural Zombie Looms over Jewelers Row March 2, 2018 Believe it or not, the Jewelers Row saga is about to get worse. During the nearly two years that Toll ­Brothers has been pursuing its misguided plan to replace a group of handsome workshops on that storied Sansom Street block with a luxury condo tower, the exact look of the skyscraper has always been in flux. One early design showed a bizarrely two-­faced

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structure—­brick on one facade, glass on the other. Even if Toll ­couldn’t be persuaded to preserve the old jewelers’ buildings, it was assumed the developer would eventually come up with an architectural design worthy of historic Washington Square. But with Toll scheduled to cross the procedural finish line next week at a meeting of the Civic Design Review board, it is now evident that the tower’s design amounts to a second act of civic vandalism. Generic, placeless, and grossly underdetailed, the twenty-­four-­story high-­rise is an architectural zombie that ­will loom over both Jewelers Row and Washington Square. Designed by New York’s SLCE Architects, the tower offers the public nothing in return for the rich history that Toll is destroying. The evolution of the building’s design has played out as predictably as a Greek tragedy. Each time the Washington Square neighborhood association or design review board would point out a prob­lem with the composition, Toll would respond by having the architects delete the offending ele­ment. Most recently it was the third-­floor veranda. That’s how public relations works, not architectural design. ­Because of the haphazard slicing and dicing, the 291-­foot monolith is now even more lifeless than before. On Washington Square, the tower’s most impor­tant side, the glass facade rises like a vertical skating rink for fourteen floors before conceding to a modest setback. Though the Sansom Street facade is somewhat better, with a series of indentations breaking up the flat surface, Toll still seems determined to claim almost e­ very inch of airspace with its bulky tower. One of the challenges of designing an all-­glass skyscraper is that t­ here are no win­dow frames or floor dividers to interrupt the smooth expanses and give the surface texture and scale. Towers sheathed entirely in glass ­really succeed only when they are exceptionally crisp, like the original Comcast headquarters, or very sculptural, like FMC and Cira. Like Toll’s building, Comcast’s facade also suffers from vast stretches of flatness, especially on the Arch Street side. But Comcast’s tapered, obelisk form, notched corners, and purposeful setbacks elevate it far above the ranks of dumb monoliths. The randomness of the SLCE design is evident in the disconnect between the base and the crown. The bottom two floors on Sansom Street are outlined in brick in a weak effort to make a contextual connection with Philadelphia’s loft buildings, none of which exist on Sansom Street. But the top is glass, pleated to evoke the art deco crowns of the ’30s. Although we no

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longer expect our skyscrapers to be segmented into three distinct parts—­ base, shaft, crown—­there should at least be a logical relationship between the top and bottom. Given that Toll has been pushing this proj­ect for more than eigh­teen months, you have to won­der ­whether this half-­hearted effort is a real design or simply a way to get the site permitted so it can be flipped as a ready-­to-go development package. Toll has followed this script before. A ­ fter acquiring the handsome Society Hill Play­house, built in 1898 as Garrick Hall, it sold the property to a developer who demolished the theater and constructed a barracks-­like apartment building. Toll also abandoned a previous condo proj­ect on Ritten­house Square, easily the best address in the city. High-­rise condos are notoriously difficult to finance and sell in Philadelphia, which is one reason the city has produced only a few hundred, for-­sale apartment buildings in the last de­cade. To appeal to discerning buyers, developers usually hire a big-­name designer to create an alluring exterior. Toll used that strategy itself when it hired Rem Koolhaas, one of the most famous architects in the world, to design a building in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Toll’s Philadelphia proj­ect has none of that pizzazz. Its architect, SLCE, is not even known as a design firm; it primarily turns out construction drawings for more polished architects. It also seems a ­little strange that most of the condos ­won’t have balconies—­not even t­ hose overlooking Washington Square. It’s hard to imagine Philadelphia buyers paying big bucks for a unit that offers no outdoor space. The lack of balconies also raises questions about ­whether the current renderings represent a real design. The city seems powerless to stop the farce. Hoping to elevate the quality of design in Philadelphia, the city set up the Civic Design Review board in 2011 to vet all large proj­ects. A ­great idea in theory, the board has been nearly useless in practice b­ ecause it c­ an’t reject a subpar design. It can merely force the developer to attend a follow-up session. So while Toll got an earful at the board’s February meeting, the design it ­will pre­sent at Tuesday’s meeting includes only a token revision. Initially, it seemed the Kenney administration might intervene to stop Toll from gutting Jewelers Row. The district is the oldest and most intact jewelry district in the country, a haven for skilled artisans, and a popu­lar tourist destination. It’s also just a block from In­de­pen­dence Hall and Old City. ­After news of Toll’s plans broke, Mayor Kenney even criticized the

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design publicly, urging the developer to shorten the tower and retain the building facades. Since then—­silence. The Historical Commission has been its usual passive self. Although the Preservation Alliance submitted a nomination to make Jewelers Row a historic district more than a year ago, no action has been taken. The designation would not save the five buildings Toll wants to demolish, but the designation of a historic district would give the city more say over the design of the tower. Meanwhile, the Planning Commission has yet to take any action to downgrade the zoning on Sansom Street, a mea­sure that would go a long way ­toward protecting the remaining buildings. The development boom, which has been cutting a swath through Philadelphia for more than a de­cade, shows no signs of abating. ­Unless the city starts making choices about what parts of its architectural patrimony are worth saving, we can expect more Jewelers Rows.

7 ▶ THE SPACES BET WEEN THE BUILDINGS

Traffic-­Free Zone Proves That the City Can Rein in Cars September 28, 2015 When Pope Francis spoke about joy this weekend, he prob­ably ­wasn’t thinking about the ecstasy that comes from being able to stroll down the center of  Walnut Street without a car at your back. Or the rapture of skateboarding the wrong way on Pine Street. Or the bliss of biking twenty abreast on Broad Street. Or the pure, giddy fun of playing touch football in front of the Convention Center on Arch Street. The unpre­ce­dented shutdown of the five-­square-­mile heart of Philadelphia was driven by the need for security (or rather, the perceived need for security), but it inadvertently created the kind of car-­free city that urbanists dare imagine only in their wildest dreams. The virtual absence of vehicles in the sprawling secure zone, from Girard to Lombard, was a revelation. Instead of locking us in, it turned out that the much-­maligned traffic box liberated us from the long tyranny of the car. 162

Sculptural poles ­were installed to brand North Broad Street. (Credit: © 2020 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC, Michael Bryant)

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Philadelphia has always claimed to be a walkable city, but this weekend we saw walkability redefined. Tentative at first, p­ eople w ­ ere still sticking to the sidewalks on Friday night when the Pope Francis security fence went live. But soon they w ­ ere rushing into the streets like toddlers too long strapped in their strollers. By Saturday morning’s Pope Ride, which brought 3,000 cyclists onto Center City’s streets, they had begun to thrill to the illicit plea­sure of blowing through red lights. I saw ­people sit down in the street to look at their phones, simply ­because they could. It was as if we w ­ ere celebrating the end of a war we d­ idn’t know we ­were fighting. The streets ­were ours at last. Walnut was transformed into a Barcelona-­worthy rambla, packed with strolling crowds whose only purpose was to be out and about among ­people. At some point during that delirious, citywide block party, it began to dawn on us: Why ­can’t Philadelphia be like this ­every day? Why not, indeed. While no one would advocate making the traffic box a permanent feature of the city, this car-­less weekend has opened our eyes to the possibilities of limiting car traffic. We’ve seen that closing Center City streets, far from paralyzing the town, can make it a more joyful place. Let’s say Philadelphia did close, or narrow, a few streets to create dedicated corridors for pedestrians and cyclists. That would eventually result in denser settlement patterns downtown. Having more p­ eople concentrated in Center City would make SEPTA’s operations more efficient and help support improved service—­something that Pope Francis, a former Buenos Aires subway rider, would surely applaud. The benefits would grow from t­here. As our streets became less congested, more p­ eople prob­ably would feel safe commuting and d­ oing errands by bike. That, in turn, would help small businesses, ­because ­we’re more likely to poke our heads into a shop when ­we’re not locked inside a car. ­There ­will be skeptics, of course. Philadelphia has still not gotten over its ill-­fated experiment with the Chestnut Street Transitway, the car-­free zone that lasted from 1976 u­ ntil the early 2000s. But the city is a much dif­fer­ent place ­today. Over the last de­cade, as the city has added 30,000 downtown residents, ­we’ve begun to question w ­ hether all the real estate w ­ e’ve ceded to cars for streets and parking is r­ eally necessary. We’ve made a few cautious



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adjustments, reclaiming barren traffic islands and a few parking spaces for miniparks, but we can do more. Now we have real-­time data to support shrinking the city’s asphalt inventory even more. As Carolyn Auwaerter, an avid cyclist, observed ­after taking part in the Pope Ride, “we just got a f­ ree experiment in open streets.” And not just us. On Sunday, Paris also shut down its historic center to car traffic to highlight the impact of automobile-­generated carbon on the earth’s climate. One way that Philadelphia could continue this weekend’s experiment is by putting some of its streets on what traffic engineers call a “road diet.” The canyonwide expanses of Broad Street, JFK Boulevard, and Washington Ave­nue are obvious candidates. Imagine if we used some of their excess roadbed for wider sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and light-­rail lines. I just returned from a trip to Bilbao, a city in Spain known for its Frank Gehry–­designed Guggenheim Museum. Although the museum’s fame is deserved, it’s not Bilbao’s most remarkable accomplishment. Abandoibarra, the newly rebuilt waterfront promenade, is. Once a car-­dominated boulevard, it has been refashioned with a wide pedestrian esplanade, a tramline, and a two-­lane bike highway. The automobile area has been slimmed down to one travel lane and one parking lane. ­After Saturday’s Pope Ride, I ran into Jim Kenney, the Demo­cratic mayoral candidate, who was walking down Pine Street (on the sidewalk) to the pope events. He told me he’s interested in repeating this weekend’s street closures, perhaps on August weekends. He said he would also consider creating permanent pedestrian and bike corridors in Center City. ­After Mayor Nutter first revealed plans for the traffic box, it seemed that all we heard ­were the complaints about the miles ­people would have to walk. Obviously it would have been better if SEPTA ser­vice ­weren’t s­ topped short of Center City. Yet despite the grumbling, p­ eople did walk, often playing guitars and singing all the way. It’s no accident that Pope Francis chose a tiny black Fiat as his papal vehicle during his U.S. tour. It served as a symbol of both his concern with climate change and his disdain for material t­ hings. But we should also take it as evidence that cars are not his priority. ­We’re more likely to care about the poor and homeless when we see them at close range rather than through a car win­dow.

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On Friday eve­ning, I saw a ­mother teaching her child how to ­ride a bike in the ­middle of Chestnut Street. “It’s amazing,” she told the girl. “­There are no cars h­ ere, just p­ eople.” Maybe someday that w ­ on’t be such an amazing sight in Philadelphia.

A Dim Idea for Lighting North Broad Street October 16, 2015 If ­you’ve wandered along North Broad Street lately, you may be scratching your head at the phalanx of stainless steel columns that have suddenly appeared in the center, marching single file from Callowhill Street to the North Philadelphia station. Are they modernist Wi-­Fi antennas? Props for pole dancers? Or maybe just a vulgar gesture aimed at Center City? The answer is: none of the above. Folks, t­ hose fifty-­five-­foot-­tall poles are supposed to be art, of the iconic variety. This misguided proj­ect, which has cost the public $14 million, is the combined work of City Hall and Ave­nue of the Arts, the nonprofit established during the Rendell era to clean up and market Broad Street. For the last twenty years, the group has lavished attention on South Broad, providing it with pedestrian-­scale streetlights, lush planters, brick crosswalks, and fresh sidewalks. ­Those amenities ­were indeed transformational, turning the wide, workaday street into an urbane, pedestrian-­friendly boulevard. But the more attractive South Broad became, the more ­people wondered why its sibling north of City Hall was getting the stepchild treatment. The Ave­nue of the Arts fi­nally responded in 2007 with a $50 million master plan to fix North Broad’s crumbling infrastructure, light its gloomy sidewalks, attract development, and “brand” the street with a memorable icon. That bud­get proved, sadly, to be too ambitious, especially a­ fter the recession set in, and parts had to be thrown overboard. Unfortunately, they w ­ ere the most impor­tant parts—­the ones designed to improve the wretched pedestrian conditions. What North Broad ended up with instead are forty-­one light masts that could easily be mistaken for highway lighting. Rather than calm car traffic on that scary speedway, the extra brightness encourages motorists to move even faster.



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Talk about a branding misfire. When the masts are illuminated, they are nearly indistinguishable from the landing lights you see on airport runways. Unbelievably, the design—­a joint effort by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and James Carpenter Design Associations—­was inspired by the well-­known light pylons at the Los Angeles airport, according to Duane Bumb, the city’s deputy commerce director. ­Didn’t anyone point out that the LAX pylons are meant to be viewed at 10,000 feet from an airplane making its descent, not at eye level from a city sidewalk? Of course, the seductive renderings used to promote the proj­ect in 2007 depict the masts as a series of shimmering points of light, stretching as far as the eye can see. That’s ­because they ­were drawn from the perspective of a bald ea­gle. But ­unless we climb to the top of City Hall tower, w ­ e’ll never get that view. Public art, well chosen, can make us see our city with fresh eyes. But too often public art fails, ­because we confuse such renderings with real­ity. It’s true the masts cast a pretty glow at night. But s­ houldn’t a basic criterion for such proj­ects be that they also look good during the day? Both BCJ and James Carpenter f­avor a minimalist aesthetic, and they clearly wanted to distinguish the North Broad light poles from the nostalgic design on the southern part of the boulevard. That was the right instinct; it’s the result that fails. The columns are so severely vertical they end up accentuating the street’s unrelenting straightness. The weak design is especially frustrating b­ ecause the needs along this two-­and-­a-­half-­mile stretch of North Broad Street are so ­great. In some sections, the sidewalk pavement has actually been reduced to gravel. At night t­ hose pathways are cast in near-­total darkness. What ­little light t­ here is comes from the highway-­style gooseneck lamps that light the road (although several bulbs are burned out). ­Because of its width, North Broad is also a difficult street to cross, especially for older p­ eople and parents with small c­ hildren. The proj­ect’s $14 million would have been much better spent on medians that could serve as refuges from the traffic, instead of the tiny islands that support the masts. Linda Richardson, who runs the Uptown Entertainment and Development Corp., told me she repeatedly pleaded with Ave­nue of the Arts, which held numerous community meetings, to do just that.

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“The traffic is becoming faster, especially during rush hour,” she said. “It’s not just se­nior citizens who strug­gle. I find I ­can’t cross in time ­either.” The sorry pedestrian conditions have become even more urgent in the last few years. North Broad Street is bristling with development, from new bars and shops to the renovation of the long-­vacant Divine Lorraine ­Hotel. Now that T ­ emple University had transformed itself into a residential campus, the number of ­people flowing across Broad Street has grown exponentially. “Anything the city can do to slow traffic and strengthen the pedestrian character of the street would be a good t­hing,” said Margaret Carney, the university architect. Though the city is still adding 150 sidewalk trees, t­ here is no money yet for any of ­those improvements Carney recommends. The city, however, has announced plans to set up yet another agency. It’s establishing a special ser­ vices district called Ave­nue North Re­nais­sance to maintain the trees and work on marketing—as though Ave­nue of the Arts ­weren’t enough. Mayor Nutter seems oblivious to the real needs, however. At the ritualized dedication of the proj­ect in August, he declared that the new light masts would make North Broad a “more attractive, safer, better-­lighted . . . ​ inviting place to walk.” Council president Darrell L. Clarke did no better with his platitudes, saying the masts send the message “North Broad Street, we are ­here, and we are ­here in a big way.” ­After interviewing several officials involved with the proj­ect, I found no one who could explain why the city opted to spend its l­ imited money on the masts instead of on pedestrian improvements. With each phone call, I was referred to another person, and another. It became clear a big reason for this debacle is that the proj­ect was done on autopi­lot. No agency took real owner­ship. No one listened to the ­people who actually use this boulevard. The result is that, ­after blowing through $14 million, North Broad Street remains firmly in the dark.

Market Street as Main Street? April 22, 2016 When Jonas Maciunas and Mark Keener ­were collecting data for the Old City District’s new plan, they stumbled across an astonishing statistic. Since



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2000, the amount of automobile traffic on Old City’s stretch of Market Street has plunged by a third, even as the neighborhood’s old cast-­iron ware­houses ­were filling up with thousands of new residents. The combination of rising population and declining car use prompted the two planning con­sul­tants to reexamine some long-­cherished notions about Old City’s place in the constellation of Philadelphia neighborhoods. Instead of continuing to promote the area as a nightlife destination, they said the district should focus on enhancing the residential feel of the colonial-­era enclave. It was time, they suggested, to put Market Street on a road diet. Their report, Vision 2026, is more of a wish list than a master plan, yet it reveals a profound shift in thinking among neighborhood leaders. The Old City District—­a business group that is usually all about bringing more traffic into the neighborhood—­eagerly embraced the idea of making Market Street less like a highway-­style thoroughfare and more like a friendly neighborhood Main Street. Such a transformation, of course, would require radically reconfiguring the street’s design. To force motorists to slow down, space for cars would have to be reduced to a single lane in each direction. Sidewalks would be furnished with benches and trees. Between the seating and walking zones, the planners envision what’s called a “sidepath,” a protected bike lane on the sidewalk. Curbs might even be banished to create a seamless, flat space for all travel modes. If ­these ideas sound familiar, it’s ­because similar proposals have been popping up in many of the recent master plans issued by other neighborhoods that straddle Market Street. Schuylkill Yards, the Science Center, and the Center City District all are looking for ways to tame traffic. That’s no accident. The demographic changes w ­ e’re seeing in Old City are playing out along the entire length of the street. Long viewed as a business corridor, the essence of Philadelphia’s downtown, Market Street is being rapidly domesticated with apartments and shops. Pedestrians and bicyclists are coming out of the woodwork. Not surprisingly, their safety is a growing concern. Market Street has effectively become the central spine for the ever-­ expanding Drexel campus. Since the university completed the 1,300-­unit Summit dorm last year on Thirty-­fourth Street, you can see knots of students gathering on the corner as they prepare to wade across the wide boulevard.

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The mixed-­use East Market development at Eleventh Street, which opens in 2017, promises a similar pedestrian surge at what already is one of the city’s most dangerous intersections. The new way of thinking about Market Street is most clearly reflected in the Schuylkill Yards master plan, which lays the groundwork for a new live-­ work district in the no-­man’s land between Thirtieth Street Station and Drexel University. In a rendering of the Thirty-­second Street intersection, the planners (West 8 and SHoP) show a much-­narrowed Market Street with a sidepath nearly identical to the one in the Old City report. Th ­ ey’ve even proposed a diagonal crosswalk to make it easier for students to flow across Market to Drexel’s LeBow College. ­These pedestrian improvements ­aren’t all in the f­uture. Five years ago, the University City District established the Porch, a pop-up park next to Thirtieth Street. At the time, the Market Street sidewalk was a stingy three feet wide, and pedestrians had to walk single file next to the speeding traffic. Using planters and other design ele­ments, the Porch carved out a generous pedestrian walkway. The city Streets Department also has played around with temporary improvements along the stretch of Market west of City Hall, where new apartment buildings and restaurants have been creeping in amid the staid office towers. Using traffic cones, one lane was closed to cars to create a bike path. Unfortunately, the experiment was short-­lived. It certainly ­wasn’t ­because Market Street was overwhelmed by traffic. “The average daily traffic counts are falling along the entire length of the street,” said Mike Carroll, deputy commissioner for transportation at the Streets Department. Though that d­ oesn’t mean ­there ­aren’t pinch points that cause annoying backups, he told me that, overall, Market Street has more automobile capacity than it needs. So how should the city respond? Ideally, the Streets Department would or­ga­nize the Market Street neighborhoods into a single working group. That way, the vari­ous proposals could be stitched together into a unified plan the city could use as a basis to apply for government funding grants. Carroll acknowledged his department had not been focused on Market Street as a single entity, largely b­ ecause it has its hands full with Roo­se­velt Boulevard, the most dangerous street in town. The department is also worried about Chestnut and Walnut Streets, which have become their own speedways.



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But ­here’s an in­ter­est­ing fact: Even though Walnut and Chestnut are narrower than Market and JFK Boulevard, t­hey’re safer roads. Between 2010 and 2014, Market and JFK together had 27  ­percent more total crashes, according to the Bicycle Co­ali­tion’s Sarah Clark Stuart. It’s been a particularly bad time for Market. This week, Jamal Morris, a promising young engineer and Drexel gradu­ate, died ­after a hit-­and-­run motorist knocked him off his bike at Forty-­fifth Street. Another cyclist was badly injured last week near Thirtieth Street. Last summer, actor Michael Toner lost a leg ­after he was struck by a car as he crossed at Twelfth Street. One obvious reason is that the wide-­open spaces on Market Street make it easier for motorists to floor the gas pedal. Given Philadelphia’s obsession with parking, declining car use may sound counterintuitive. But for proof, look no farther than the 1,662-­space garage that Brandywine Realty Trust built to serve the IRS headquarters on Market Street. It’s so underused that Brandywine is considering converting the lower floors into a food market along the lines of Reading Terminal. As car sharing and bike use grow, Brandywine believes traffic counts are likely to fall even more. The city needs to plan for the way the city ­will be, not the way it was. Market Street, the city’s main street, could be a good place to start.

Development Booms without Architecture May 13, 2016 ­There’s a big national convention coming to town that ­will give Philadelphia a chance to show off what a spiffy, exciting place it has become. No, not the Demo­crats; it’s the American Institute of Architects. Some 19,000 of ­those exacting design minds ­will be prowling our streets next week, taking mea­ sure of our stone citadels, peering at our construction sites, and generally giving us a professional once-­over. What w ­ ill they make of the t­ hings ­we’ve built? The visiting architects w ­ ill find that Philadelphia is a very dif­fer­ent city from the one they experienced in 2000, the last time the AIA held its convention h­ ere. (That also happens to be the year the city hosted its most recent presidential convention.) Back then, Philadelphia was just starting to pull itself out of a decades-­long slump.

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­Today a sizable chunk of central Philadelphia feels like a thrumming construction zone. (Watch your step, architects.) Three glass skyscrapers are rising on the Schuylkill waterfront, and thousands of new row­houses are gobbling up empty lots, not to mention way too many nineteenth-­century buildings. It’s not only Center City that is thronged with pedestrians t­ hese days; the neighborhoods are as well. The surging restaurant scene and growing bicycle culture add to the bustle. Philadelphia is by no means the only large city to experience a warp-­speed comeback over the last fifteen years. Amer­i­ca is living through a historic period of urban reconstruction at a level not seen since the early twentieth ­century, when immigrants and industry w ­ ere pouring in. That was a g­ reat era for architecture in Philadelphia. The AIA members w ­ ill find that it’s more of a good news–­bad news story ­today. The city’s institutional buildings—­its universities, hospitals, and museums—­are becoming ever more deluxe and bespoke. High on the AIA’s list of must-­see sites are the Barnes Foundation and the glass outcrop of the Singh Center for Nanotechnology. Designed by celebrated out-­of-­town architects, they rank among the best new buildings in Amer­ic­ a. But our everyday buildings, the ones where we spend most of our time and that shape our response to the city, ­aren’t getting the same first-­class architectural treatment. Th ­ ose structures tend to be built by private development companies whose business is turning real estate into money—­ quickly. Some developers do produce memorable architecture, but ­they’re the exception. Of course, you’ll find mediocre developer-­driven architecture in ­every American city. What’s dif­fer­ent ­here is the numbing sameness of the designs, especially among the high-­rises. University City’s emerging skyline is largely made up of slab towers artlessly clad in asymmetrical arrangements of glass and solid panels. In place of carefully worked details, the designers simply pop in some colored panels to capture our attention. It’s as though they ­were designing two-­dimensional objects instead of buildings that are seen in the round. One of the first buildings the visiting architects w ­ ill encounter when they leave the Convention Center is Home2Suites at Twelfth and Arch, a design that could have been airlifted straight from a highway. The boxy mid-­ rise is encased in a wan, plastic-­looking stucco nearly devoid of refining details that bring a flat facade to life. The cheap facade makes for a sharp



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contrast with the neighboring Reading Terminal market, a stone heavyweight that was a technological marvel when it opened in 1893. Its glass barrel vault was the largest single-­span structure in the world. Such innovation and ambition are virtually absent ­today. Home2Suites epitomizes several architectural trends w ­ e’re seeing in Philadelphia and other booming cities. As developers have scrambled to capture the growing urban market, ­they’ve abandoned traditional materials like brick and stone in f­avor of EIFS stucco, metal panels, cement board, and glass. ­These products ­aren’t necessarily cheaper, but you ­don’t need the same level of skill to install them. That means buildings can go up faster. Another f­actor working against good design is the way buildings are financed. In the days when developers held on to their buildings for de­cades, they had an incentive to invest in good craftsmanship and durable materials. Now most apartment proj­ects end up being flipped to big management companies, and developers want to spend as l­ittle money up front as pos­si­ ble. Philadelphia’s high l­abor costs make even less money available for real architecture. Philadelphia is suffering in par­tic­u­lar from a scourge of metal-­panel construction, such as PMC Property’s 1900 Arch Street. The building is blanketed in an array of blue-­gray matte panels, which absorb light like a black hole. The material produces an entirely dif­fer­ent experience from the one you get looking at a masonry building. Even though we might describe bricks as “red” or “buff,” ­they’re actually a range of colors, contrasted by bands of mortar that add texture, shadow, and scale. It’s not that metal panels are inherently bad. Th ­ ey’re actually very energy efficient. Used creatively, they can give a building a techy, modern feel. At Twelve/40, a new condo building at Thirteenth and South, ISA’s Brian Phillips wove silver panels into a rippling composition. One reason it works is that vertical seams and deeply set terraces give the facade texture and rhythm. You could hear some of the frustration with the state of Philadelphia design expressed at several recent meetings of the Civic Design Review board. In April, Nancy Trainer—­who worked alongside Denise Scott Brown, who ­will receive this year’s AIA Gold Medal—­begged the architects of Bart Blatstein’s South Broad Street bulky high-­rise to return to the drawing board. It’s not all bad news, though. Philadelphia architects have s­ topped trying to pass off faux historical buildings, such as Symphony House, as the real ­thing. Designers and developers have begun to master the basics of good

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urbanism. Even Home2Suites, for all its faults, is ringed on the ground floor with big win­dows and a lively array of restaurants. If this boom keeps up, maybe Philadelphia developers ­will start to get the architecture right too.

Busy with Every­thing but Protests July 22, 2016 You only have to spend a few minutes in Dilworth Park to see what a ­people magnet it has become since the Center City District completed a dramatic $55 million make­over two years ago. Besides regular attractions, such as the cafe and sparkling fountain, ­there is something special ­going on 186 days a year—­that’s ­every other day—­ranging from concerts and farmers markets to bocce tournaments and Lupus Awareness booths. Every­thing, that is, except demonstrations. You read that right. In response to a formal request I submitted to the Kenney administration, a spokesperson confirmed that the city’s Office of Special Events has not issued a single protest permit in the twenty-­two months since Philadelphia’s g­ reat public living room reopened u­ nder CCD management—­a period of extraordinary public discontent that brought the rise of the Black Lives ­Matter movement, terrorist attacks, and police killings. That rec­ord ­won’t change when the Demo­cratic National Convention pulls into town next week. Though some 35,000 protesters are expected to descend on the city, they w ­ ill have to go elsewhere to exercise their First Amendment rights, at least if they want to do so legally. Not one group was able to secure a protest permit for convention week, ­because Dilworth was booked solid months ago, with vendors and entertainers, as well as a tent for a nomination-­watch party. The CCD manages the space, but it is the city that vets all event applications, and it ­won’t approve a demonstration if anything ­else has been scheduled. Unfortunately, when I asked city officials how many applications had been rejected over the last two years, I was told the special events office was “swamped” and it would take several weeks to assem­ble the information. But you can contrast the absence of po­liti­cal debate in Dilworth with the scene in Cleveland during this week’s Republican National Convention. Its newly redesigned downtown plaza, Public Square, has played host to an outdoor ­people’s convention, with dozens of peaceful protests competing



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for attention. That noisy soapbox coexists with Public Square’s other attractions, including a splash fountain similar to Dilworth’s. Philadelphia protesters ­will have to go farther afield to express their views. The closest they w ­ ill be able to get to City Hall are the cramped aprons on the north and south sides. Several protests are also planned for the aptly named Thomas Paine Plaza—­the one with the game pieces—­across the street. Named for the phi­los­o­pher and professional agitator, Paine Plaza is not a bad substitute venue for displays of ­free speech, but it’s no Dilworth. As the doorstep to City Hall, the seat of government power, and a crossroads where Philadelphians of all sorts collide, Dilworth’s symbolic meaning is unique. With City Hall’s familiar beaux arts facade as a backdrop, it is a tailor-­made stage. That’s the role the three-­acre granite expanse has played in the life of the city ever since its completion in 1977. It was where ACT UP protesters gathered when they w ­ ere desperate to bring the AIDS crisis to wider public attention in the early ’90s. Antiwar activists protested the Iraq invasion ­there in 2003, and education advocates begged for increased school funding in 2011. Even organizers of marginal ­causes knew they could get a hearing in Dilworth. In 2006, Philadelphia cabdrivers massed on the plaza to denounce a new rule requiring them to install GPS devices in their cars. (OK, not ­every protest is on the right side of history.) And on t­hose rare occasions when our sports teams ­didn’t embarrass us, it was where we went to cheer them on with pep rallies. The last time a major protest was held in Dilworth Park was before the renovation, in fall 2011, when Occupy Philadelphia was hunkering down for what became a fifty-­five-­day demonstration to highlight the plight of Amer­ i­ca’s have-­nots. The sleep-in ended when Mayor Michael Nutter ordered Occupy’s tents cleared from the plaza. Soon a­ fter the dust settled, Dilworth’s management was transferred to the Center City District, which raised the money to make the renovation pos­si­ble. The new version of Dilworth, designed by Olin and KieranTimberlake, was intended as a flexible space that can support a variety of events. At the center is a flat, in-­ground fountain that can be turned off to install a stage or ice rink or farmers market. So how is it pos­si­ble that this spiffy new surface has not been able to accommodate a single ­legal protest in two years?

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It’s true that several small protests have invaded Dilworth Park in the last two years, but none had obtained permits. In each case, the city and CCD allowed ­those groups to make their voices heard. But being tolerated is not the same as knowing you belong. Nothing dramatized the disconnect like the moment when Black Lives ­Matter activists had to shout over the rumble of the skating rink’s Zamboni during a protest to mourn the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. It’s entirely pos­si­ble many activists d­ on’t bother to apply for demonstration permits. But it’s also pos­si­ble the heavy scheduling has scared some away. The CCD, a private business group, submits its events schedule as much as a year in advance. Protests, by contrast, are spontaneous occurrences. Then, so are sports cele­brations. Yet Villanova somehow managed to secure a permit in April to hold a public bash ­there ­after its basketball team won the national college championship. ­After Cleveland’s exemplary openness, the absence of ­legal protests in Dilworth during the DNC w ­ ill be glaring. At least one group had its application rejected for the DNC b­ ecause Dilworth was booked, Mary Catherine Roper of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania told me. Ironically, the same t­ hing happened during the Republican National Convention in 2000, for the same reason. Ajeenah Amir, the city’s deputy communications director, said it was not the city’s policy to discourage protest in Dilworth Park. But that does appear to be the result. The city, to its credit, seems to be troubled by its rec­ord. In an email, Amir wrote, “The Managing Director’s Office agrees that it’s unusual that no demonstration permits have been granted to date, so we intend to look at all previously submitted permits to verify that they w ­ ere in fact denied b­ ecause of preexisting programming.” Good for them. But it w ­ on’t be enough to justify the rejections as the result of conflicts. As more public spaces are forced to rely on fee-­paying activities to support their upkeep, the pressure to book moneymaking events has intensified. See: Franklin Square and the recent Chinese Lantern Festival. The Center City District deserves credit for transforming Dilworth Park from a derelict and unloved park into a people-­pleasing hive of or­ga­nized



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activity. But it would be a terrible ­thing if all ­those entertainments crowded out space for the real basis of public life: ­free speech.

The ­Great Ritten­house Square No-­Sitting Controversy January 17, 2017 Thanks for the tweet, Mayor Kenney, but the ­Great Ritten­house Square No-­Sitting Controversy is far from over. For t­ hose of you who managed to stay away from your social-­media feeds last weekend, Philadelphia’s mayor took to Twitter on Saturday night to reverse his administration’s new ban on the time-­honored practice of parking your bottom atop Ritten­house Square’s elegant limestone balustrades. The tweet was a response to the mounting outrage over the ban’s exclusionary implications and to plans for a “Sitten­house Lunchtime Sit-in” on Tuesday. “This government is very large and at times t­ hings just get by you,” an apol­o­getic Kenney wrote. “Sit where you want.” ­There is something wonderful about having a mayor who can be so self-­ effacing and responsive, and he immediately received an outpouring of praise for the message. He l­ ater tapped out another tweet, promising to deal with the details ­later this week. Yet as the country is quickly learning, Twitter statements are not the same as policy making. Two days ­after his declaration, a stack of issues remain unresolved: The offensive (and seriously twee) signs, which bear the logo of the city’s Parks and Recreation department, remain in place next to the balustrades that encircle the square’s central court. The park’s security guards must not be Twitter users, ­because they ­were apparently unaware of the mayor’s decree as late as Sunday, according to several p­ eople who attempted to take to the walls. We’ve also heard nothing about the obnoxious police cruiser that has been parked in the square, r­ unning its engine and spewing exhaust—­a violation of park rules, incidentally—­pretty much nonstop since October’s drug-­related shooting. If the prob­lem with the no-­sitting signs is that they make the park seem unwelcoming, the cruisers practically exude a police-­state sensibility. So though the mayor’s tweet was a crowd-­pleaser, it addresses only the most superficial aspect of the larger prob­lem: the city’s increasing reliance

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on a private partner to manage and fund this most beloved and demo­cratic of Philadelphia public spaces. Even though Ritten­house Square is in the toniest part of town, ­there is a strong sense that ­these gracious seven acres belong to all of us. It’s common ground. Yet ­after the Billy Penn website broke the news of the ban last week, that private group, the Friends of Ritten­house Square, issued a statement that seemed to express more pique than penitence. B ­ ecause the group raised $1 million to restore the limestone balustrades to pristine condition, the statement suggested the signs w ­ ere a justified effort to protect its investment from graffiti and vandalism. That sentiment, along with the police cruiser, is something you might expect from an authoritarian state, not the city we proudly proclaim as the birthplace of liberty. So far, not a single board member has granted an interview to explain their thinking. Of the three emails I sent to three Friends’ leaders, not one was answered. Where’s the accountability? Maybe it’s a coincidence, but w ­ e’ve seen similarly high-­handed be­hav­ior from other private parks groups. In the spring, Historic Philadelphia shocked many in the city when it cordoned off another of  William Penn’s original parks, Franklin Square, for seven weeks in the eve­nings to host a ticketed Chinese lantern exhibition. It happened again over the summer during the Demo­cratic National Convention when protesters ­were told they c­ ouldn’t assem­ble on Dilworth Park, managed by the Center City District. Like the Friends of Ritten­house Square, the boards that run t­hese groups are largely controlled by power­ful, monied, but unelected, bigwigs. That i­ sn’t a criticism of the work ­these groups do. All three have devoted themselves to rebuilding parks that ­were neglected and underfunded by the city. The Friends have done a superb job of restoring Ritten­house Square’s original balustrades, fountain, and planting beds, laid out by Paul Philippe Cret in 1913. Though the city employs a full-­time maintenance person to empty trash cans and flag graffiti, the square ­wouldn’t be the beauty spot it is without the Friends’ vigilance. All the landscaping is funded by their contributions. When you put so much effort into a space, it’s hard not to start thinking of it as your own. Pretty soon, you start to feel you have the right to make the rules.



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It’s been suggested that the real motivation for the sitting ban was to discourage teens and ­others from smoking marijuana. Sure, that stuff goes on. Drugs ­were the motivation for the October shooting. Homelessness has also been a prob­lem. But such be­hav­iors can be handled with existing laws. Banning sitting targets every­one. One of the wonderful ­things about Cret’s design is the way it creates informal neighborhoods: the toddler zone around the goat, the lovers’ lane around the perimeter, the bike messengers’ break room at the corner of Eigh­teenth Street, and, yes, the teen zone near the balustrades. A microcosm of the city, the park is the place where we learn to tolerate p­ eople who are dif­fer­ent from us. “What makes parks work is having as many types of users as pos­si­ble,” said Chris Bartlett, head of the William Way Community Center, who took to social media to condemn the sitting ban. It’s not only teens who hang out on the balustrade. I fondly recall the hours I spent t­here ­under the shade trees, watching my young d­ aughter climb the bronze lion that she called “Aslan.” The distance between the balustrade and the sculpture was just far enough that she could play without feeling a parent breathing down her neck. ­Until ­those signs are removed, I would be considered a scofflaw. That’s why I plan to stop by Tuesday’s Sitten­house, between noon and 1 p.m. The mayor’s communications director, Lauren Hitt, told me the administration intends to reevaluate its Ritten­house Square enforcement policies, including the presence of the police cruiser. While ­they’re at it, they should consider how to diversify the membership of the city’s private parks groups. Only by including every­one can Ritten­house Square remain a pristine and demo­cratic space.

8 ▶ BUILDING THE EQUITABLE CIT Y

Clear Titles Can Help Ease Gentrification May 12, 2017 Tracey Anderson has spent all of her fifty-­six years in Point Breeze, much of it playing a game of musical ­houses. ­After starting a ­family, Anderson took over her m ­ other’s redbrick row­house at Nineteenth and Tasker. Her ­sister ­later acquired a ­house on the same block that had once belonged to their grandparents, saving it from a sheriff ’s sale. Soon a­ fter, their m ­ other moved to a h­ ouse a few blocks away, at Eigh­teenth and Manton, where she cared for an el­derly aunt and cousin. ­After t­ hose relatives died in the early ’90s, Anderson’s ­mother considered the ­house hers. In ­those days, nobody both­ered clearing the title ­because Point Breeze h­ ouses ­were barely worth the paper their deeds w ­ ere printed on. Why pay all the ­legal fees or the state’s stiff inheritance taxes? Then, as we w ­ ere reminded once again by last week’s arson attack on a new housing development in Point Breeze, gentrification happened. 180



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North Philadelphia’s Paseo Verde apartments provide affordable housing next to a major rail hub. (Credit: Halkin Mason Photography)

Anderson and her ­sister managed to register their ­houses in their own names without much trou­ble a few years ago, but their ­mother has been slogging through the courts, trying to prove she actually owns the ­house she has lived in for the last twenty-­five years. Now that many Point Breeze ­houses are selling in the six figures, her aunt’s relatives have shown up to claim a share of its value. “You’d think it was a million-­dollar estate, not a ­little two-­bedroom row­house,” Anderson said with a sigh. The l­egal mess that Anderson’s ­mother f­aces is known as “tangled title,” and it is one of the most common ways that ­people get displaced in Philadelphia’s changing neighborhoods. Without clear title, low-­income residents ­can’t access crucial city programs that help them stay in their homes at a time when their ­house prices are rising and taxes are increasing. ­There are prob­ably thousands of city residents in the same boat as Anderson’s ­mother. As gentrification becomes more of an issue, housing experts believe that tackling the tangled-­title backlog would go a long way to offsetting its negative impact on low-­income residents. “This is about making sure generations who stuck with Philadelphia get to share in its prosperity,”

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said Karen Black, a cofounder of the Healthy Row­house Proj­ect, which advocates for low-­income homeowners. Gentrification has become a fraught subject in many Philadelphia neighborhoods, but nowhere more so than in Point Breeze. Virtually ­every new housing development is met with fierce opposition and repeated calls for the construction of affordable housing. Yet as Black observed, Point Breeze already has a huge inventory of affordable ­houses: the ones that ­people are already living in. Even though the neighborhood went through tough times during the crack epidemic of the ’80s—­when it lost almost a fifth of its population—it is still graced by fully intact blocks of cozy two-­story ­houses. What’s more, nearly 60 ­percent of its residents own their homes—­significantly above the citywide average of 53 ­percent—­according to the latest census data. In theory, Point Breeze should be well placed to absorb the changes brought on by an influx of new residents. That’s not how many old-­timers see it, however. “­There is so much uncertainty now,” Anderson explained. “I ­didn’t like it back when we had all t­ hose vacant lots. But now p­ eople are afraid they ­won’t be able to afford to live h­ ere anymore.” Mary F. Chicorelli, a ­lawyer, is part of the wave of newcomers who are making Point Breeze more desirable and expensive, yet she understands exactly what Anderson is talking about. She moved to the neighborhood in 2012 for the same reason many ­people do: Point Breeze ­house prices are still affordable compared to neighborhoods like Center City or Fishtown. She lives half a block from Anderson, in an old two-­story row­house. The two met during a fund-­raiser for the new Ralph Brooks basketball court on Twentieth Street. ­After Anderson told her about the difficulties she was having with her ­mother’s ­house, Chicorelli offered to help with the ­legal filings. Pretty soon, ­people ­were stopping Chicorelli on the street to seek advice about clearing their tangled titles. She fi­nally set up a nonprofit practice last summer, Equal Access ­Legal Ser­vices, specializing in the issue. Philadelphia has no shortage of agencies that offer low-­income homeowners ­free ­legal services—­for example, Community ­Legal Ser­vices and Philadelphia ­Legal Assistance. But ­those programs are meant to serve ­people living below the poverty line. Chicorelli geared her nonprofit to help the working poor, p­ eople who earn too much for ­free ­legal ser­vices but who are unable to afford standard ­legal fees. Her fees start at $50 an hour and include payment plans. The city also has a fund to pay for court fees for low-­income residents.



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The prob­lem of tangled titles i­sn’t unique to Philadelphia. Detroit and New Orleans are also struggling to sort out owner­ship issues as part of their efforts to stabilize low-­income neighborhoods. Tangled title is a cultural legacy, left over from the days when Philadelphia’s close-­knit neighborhoods ­were populated by extended families that passed their h­ ouses around like heirlooms. What Chicorelli has learned from the work has shocked her. It can easily take two years to litigate a tangled-­title case. Yet residents ­can’t continue to ignore the prob­lem of tangled title, ­because so many city programs aimed at mitigating the impact of gentrification require them to prove owner­ship. For instance, the city offers to cap property-­tax increases for longtime homeowners, but first they need to show a deed. Tangled title makes that impossible. If residents fall b­ ehind on their taxes, they risk losing their ­houses through tax foreclosure. The inability to keep up with repairs is another big reason that older residents on fixed incomes are forced to abandon their ­houses. Without a clear title, you ­can’t get a home-­improvement loan or receive a city repair grant. So, many ­houses in Philadelphia have been abandoned b­ ecause their ­owners ­couldn’t afford repairs, adding to neighborhood blight. Unfortunately, the reason that many ­people have avoided dealing with their tangled titles remains: inheritance taxes. Pennsylvania imposes unusually high rates—4.5 ­percent for ­children and 12 ­percent for other relatives. For older p­ eople on fixed incomes, paying the tax on a $100,000 home can be an impossible sum. Yet b­ ecause it costs more than $300,000 to build a single unit of affordable housing, the city w ­ ill never solve its housing prob­lem with new construction. The Reinvestment Fund has suggested another approach: it estimates ­there are 43,000 h­ ouses that could be made habitable for less than $30,000 each. It’s a real bargain, but first the city w ­ ill have to figure out how to resolve the prob­lem of tangled title.

­Temple’s Stadium Would Cause Big Disruptions October 28, 2016 It was most definitely not a quiet summer on the ­Temple University campus. In a few crazy months, the president was fired, the provost was replaced,

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and the school’s widely admired chief architect and planner abandoned ship to take a similar job at another school. Yet somehow, ­Temple’s plan for a football stadium on Broad Street refuses to die. At the same July meeting where board members voted to dismiss Neil D. Theobald as T ­ emple’s president, they doubled down on their commitment to the stadium by appropriating an additional $250,000 for architecture and traffic studies. Despite an already difficult relationship with the neighborhood, ­Temple remains intent on d­ oing what almost no urban university in Amer­i­ca has done: inserting a 35,000-­seat stadium into a dense residential area. ­Temple says moving the Owls from Lincoln Financial Field to its own stadium ­will save it a bundle in rent. I was g­ oing to wait to write about the proj­ect ­until ­after the traffic report was made public this month. But when its release was delayed, I de­cided to undertake my own on-­the-­ground study. ­After walking the proposed site and adjacent streets, I became convinced that T ­ emple’s board could have saved a big chunk of change—­$1.5 million and counting—if members had first performed the same exercise. Certainly, many p­ eople have voiced valid concerns about the stadium that have nothing to do with traffic or urban design. As Gilbert M. Gaul, author of Billion-­Dollar Ball, has written, big football programs frequently become entertainment juggernauts that siphon money from academics. Universities that succumb to football-­as-­religion are also notorious for shortchanging other student athletes who just want to compete for fun. W ­ asn’t it just three years ago that Theobald tried to ax ­Temple’s rowing teams? My issue is with the location T ­ emple has chosen for the proj­ect, a two-­ block site between Broad and Sixteenth from Berks to Norris. ­Temple’s campus has been inching west of Broad Street, and the stadium would run smack up against a fragile African American neighborhood that has been desperately trying to hold its own against “dormification” by student housing developers. Sometimes called North Central, it is a storied place that has nurtured Philadelphia’s black m ­ iddle class—­people such as the Reverend William Gray Sr. and his son, U.S. Rep. Bill Gray; Cecil B. Moore; Helen Dickens, Philadelphia’s first black, board-­certified obstetrician; and filmmaker Louis Massiah. ­Temple’s architect, Curtis  J. Moody of Moody Nolan, told me he was studying ways to reduce the stadium’s physical impact on the neighborhood, from submerging the playing field—or “bowl”—­below sidewalk



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level, to screening the east and west facades with classroom and office buildings. But no ­matter how well it might be designed, any structure that spans two full city blocks ­will naturally be a behemoth—­and not the only one in the vicinity. The stadium would be a continuation of a row of massive buildings that include the Liacouras Center, McGonigle Hall, and their accompanying garages. Who wants to walk around such superblocks or the dark canyons they create? On Broad Street alone, this lineup of athletic facilities would create a 1,600-­foot-­long wall. Even if Moody manages to enliven the proj­ect with some ground-­floor retail, ­there’s still the prob­lem of dialing down the scale along Norris Street, where the stadium would come face to face with row­ houses, including a few ornate stunners listed on the historic register. The most mind-­boggling part of all of this is that the stadium would necessitate closing a block of Fifteenth Street, disrupting one of the most impor­tant corridors in the Philadelphia grid. Grids, as one traffic engineer reminded me, are flexible networks. If one route is blocked, you can always shift to another. But what makes Fifteenth Street significant is that it is the only numbered southbound road between Broad and Twenty-­sixth that runs uninterrupted into Center City. All the other numbered streets have gaps or dead-­end at the long wall of Girard College, forcing motorists and cyclists to wind through neighborhood streets. Estelle Wilson, who has lived on Fifteenth Street, just above Norris, since she was a child in the ’40s, believes the closure is reason enough to scrap the stadium, and notes the street is a major feeder into I-676. Of course, ­drivers could always take Broad Street, but it has jams even on a normal weekday. “It makes no sense to close one of the few streets that goes directly to Center City,” adds the Reverend William B. Moore, pastor of Tenth Memorial Baptist Church. It’s worth noting that two de­cades ago ­Temple tried to annex part of Thirteenth Street to expand its campus. That road performs a similar role to Fifteenth Street for travelers heading north, and Council rejected the idea. Though ­there are certainly streets that can be given up to improve the quality of life in Philadelphia, Fifteenth is not one of them. The impact of the closure would ­ripple through the ­whole city. ­Temple is counting on a large proportion of fans coming to the stadium without cars. Many students now live near campus, and the university has a

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g­ reat array of SEPTA options. As officials point out, some 45,000 p­ eople converge on the campus ­every day. Still, it would be no small challenge managing ­those who drive to games for tailgating parties, or the students who ­will use games as excuses for day drinking. The same concern with nuisance be­hav­ior was one of the issues that derailed an ­earlier stadium proposal for the Phillies at Broad and Callowhill, a site much closer to I-676. ­Temple officials point to New Orleans’s Tulane University as a model of how a football stadium can be integrated into an urban area. But Wilson ­isn’t buying it. She and several neighbors w ­ ere brought down to Tulane by ­Temple for a weekend. “The stadium was jammed against p­ eople’s backyards. It was horrible,” she says. “And Tulane is not an inner-­city area.” Not only has Wilson chosen to remain in the neighborhood where she grew up; so have several of her ­children and grandchildren. ­They’ve hung on through redlining, riots, disinvestment, the crack epidemic, and the influx of student housing. But the stadium, she believes, would be the death knell for the neighborhood. It’s g­ reat that T ­ emple is now determined to field a winning football team. But providing its players with an appropriate home ­shouldn’t ruin Philadelphia for every­one ­else.

A Black Church Leaves ­a fter More Than Seventy Years January 16, 2017 The lavender velvet pews at the First Colored Wesley Methodist Church in the Gradu­ate Hospital neighborhood ­were packed from end to end, just like in the old days. The choir was in fine form as it delivered a rousing version of “We’ve Come This Far by Faith.” As the strong winter sun filtered through the tall, arched stained-­glass win­dows, the second-­floor sanctuary felt as cozy as a row­house living room. But ­there was a bittersweet feeling to all of it. A ­ fter the clapping and singing and words of praise w ­ ere over and most of the hundred or so attendees had filed downstairs for lunch, the Reverend Ralinda Golback gathered a tiny group of regular church members in the sanctuary, shut the door, and turned off the lights. Then she asked them to pray that Wesley would remain the same close-­knit ­family church it has been for the last seven de­cades.



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“I felt like I was preparing a funeral,” Golback said afterward. With its final ser­vice on Sunday, Wesley becomes the latest black church to pack up and leave the Gradu­ate Hospital neighborhood, which was identified in a recent Pew study as the most intensely gentrified section of Philadelphia. Greater Saint Matthew Baptist Church sold its massive building to a condo developer about three years ago. First African Baptist moved out last year. Three smaller black churches—­all of them Methodist—­have been sold and demolished for housing since 2011. Golback is quick to acknowledge that gentrification i­ sn’t the sole reason for the move. Nor is the church a victim of economic displacement. Even though Gradu­ate Hospital has transformed from a predominantly black neighborhood to a predominantly white one in less than fifteen years, Wesley has owned its handsome Italianate church at Seventeenth and Fitzwater Streets since buying the building for $22,000 in 1943. But the web of neighborhood connections that gave Wesley its reason for being in this part of South Philadelphia is rapidly disappearing. In a sense, the neighborhood left Wesley. And ­every Sunday, that diaspora of former residents would have to make its way back to Center City by car—­ and then find a spot to park. So now the historic congregation is striking out for new territory. Depending on how you count, this w ­ ill be Wesley’s seventh move since it was founded in 1820 in the back of a carpenter’s shop at Fifth and Lombard. This time it is heading northwest. Having sold its Fitzwater Street building to ­lawyer Charles Peruto Jr. for $1.6 million, Wesley has its eye on a large church in East Oak Lane, one that comes with an ample parking lot. Since most of its members now live in northwest Philadelphia or the suburbs, Golback said, it makes sense to relocate Wesley to a place where parking ­isn’t a hassle. The lack of easy parking was also cited by Greater Saint Matthew as the reason for selling its historic building. “It could take twenty to thirty minutes to find a space,” complained Debora Knowles Anthony, who grew up a few blocks away at Seventeenth and Fernon but moved to Lindenwold “so my kids could grow up with grass.” While the city offers Wesley discounted parking on South Street, the walk was too difficult for some older church members, Anthony said. Much as in the rest of Amer­i­ca, churchgoing habits in Philadelphia have changed. Fewer ­people attend worship ser­vices regularly. And ­those who do ­don’t necessarily head to the nearest church or synagogue, preferring to find

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one that suits their identity. On Sunday mornings in Gradu­ate Hospital, church vans transporting el­derly parishioners are a regular sight. Yet even though Wesley’s new location promises to be more con­ve­nient, it was clear Sunday that the prospect of leaving the familiar sanctuary has left many of  Wesley’s members deeply conflicted. Many are third-­or fourth-­ generation church members who have planted themselves for de­cades on Sundays in Wesley’s plain, whitewashed sanctuary. “This was always a family-­oriented church,” said Charlene Reid, one of the few members who still live in South Philadelphia. She feels a deep attachment to Wesley’s h­ umble, redbrick building, designed in 1857 by the noted architect Samuel Sloan. The Fitzwater Street church, Reid said, was where her ­mother and nine siblings first slept when they arrived in Philadelphia in 1944 from eastern Georgia, as part of the G ­ reat Migration northward. Wesley “provided food and clothing ­until the ­family became stable,” said Reid. Growing up, she walked to church ­every Sunday from her home at Seventeenth and Tasker, just as she walked to school at Edwin M. Stanton at Seventeenth and Christian. “I ­don’t blame gentrification,” she said. Th ­ ings change. “But I w ­ ill miss the love I feel in this building.” Since Wesley was recently nominated for historic status, the hope is that the building ­will survive in some form, perhaps as condos. Before Wesley acquired the church, the building had three prior occupants, and they tell the story of a constantly changing neighborhood: it opened as a Presbyterian Sunday school, was sold to Saint Paul’s German Reformed Church in 1865 and acquired by the First African Presbyterian Church in 1890. The churn never stops, the Reverend Charles Fenwick, former pastor, reminded worshipers. “Every­thing is changed by time, and the church is no exception,” he said. “You ­can’t stop change ­because you c­ an’t stop time.”

Tending to Philadelphia’s ­Middle Neighborhoods March 17, 2017 ­They’re not among the star neighborhoods that can boast slick new town­ houses and trendy bars serving craft beer. But t­ hey’re not blighted messes



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e­ ither, forever struggling with drugs and shootings. Th ­ ese places are poised somewhere between success and failure. And they have a catchy name: ­middle neighborhoods. Tacony is a classic Philadelphia ­middle neighborhood. Perhaps best known for its namesake bridge spanning the Delaware, it is too far outside the orbit of Center City to feel the warmth of its white-­hot revival. But having come through deindustrialization and the foreclosure crisis with relatively modest damage, Tacony’s strength is that it remains an intact, working-­class neighborhood where you can buy a decent h­ ouse for ­under $100,000 and walk to schools, shops, and transit. If some of t­hose ­houses and stores could use a ­little TLC, well, ­they’re working on it. The term “­middle neighborhood” was pop­u­lar­ized by Paul  C. Brophy, who runs an urban-­planning firm outside Baltimore. He grew up in Philadelphia’s Hunting Park section in the ’50s, and the ups and downs of that neighborhood inspired him to edit a book published last year on the subject, On the Edge: Amer­i­ca’s ­Middle Neighborhoods. The echo of “­Middle Amer­i­ca” is intentional. Th ­ ese working-­class survivors, Brophy explained, “are not getting the attention they deserve” and need to take ­matters into their own hands if they hope to ward off further decline. Philadelphians tend to obsess over gentrification, but the decline of ­middle neighborhoods is the far bigger challenge. As a Pew Charitable Trusts study recently pointed out, only fifteen census tracks meet the definition of gentrification, and 164 are suffering from falling h­ ouse­hold incomes. The story of how Tacony is tackling its issues is particularly instructive. Ten miles upriver from Penn’s Landing, in the Lower Northeast, Tacony lacks the locational advantage of its closer-in neighbors served by subways and trolleys. Yet its civic leaders are still ambitiously trying to follow the playbook pioneered by East Passyunk and Fishtown. Tacony does have a stop on SEPTA’s Trenton line, a huge asset. But tucked in the lee of I-95, the neighborhood feels like an in­de­pen­dent village. It emerged in its current form in the late nineteenth c­entury when progressive-­minded industrialist Henry Disston moved his saw factory ­there and laid out streets for a planned com­pany town. As other factories followed, Irish and Italian immigrants poured in. Life revolved around the parish, Torresdale Ave­nue, and the gracious parks that Disston built as a buffer between the ­houses and the industrial zone along the river.

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Even ­after factories started closing in the ’50s, many families stayed put, often finding jobs at the nearby prison in Holmesburg, said Brian Costello, a disabled veteran who married his high school sweetheart and who now lives in the h­ ouse his grandparents used to own. Tacony never emptied out the way some neighborhoods did, thanks in part to an influx of Latinos and African Americans, but it has become poorer and more run-­down. Brophy believes deterioration is the canary in the coal mine for m ­ iddle neighborhoods, and that they need to quickly or­ga­nize ­people “with a shared interest in the ­future” to combat the trend. Declining neighborhoods have a bad habit of obsessing over their flaws, he noted, rather than trumpeting their positives, such as Tacony’s walkable streets and ­great housing stock. The effort to prevent Tacony from falling off a cliff began about five years ago, when local civic leaders grew concerned about the rise in vacant storefronts on Torresdale Ave­nue. They de­cided it was time to rev up the nonprofit community development corporation by hiring a full-­time man­ag­er, Alex Balloon. His first goal was to freshen up the Torresdale Ave­nue shopping district. The CDC tapped into the city’s storefront improvement program and now boasts thirty renovated facades, the most of any Philadelphia neighborhood. Other city grants helped Tacony buy security cameras and plant street trees. The group has also been vigilant in ­going a­ fter the ­owners of boarded-up ­houses. Their work is starting to pay off. Several eateries opened on Prince­ton Ave­nue ­after the CDC lobbied to have the street made two-­way to slow traffic. That includes Becky Rogers’ Puddin’s Cake Corner, a fancy bakery that was priced out of East Passyunk, and the Sawtown Tavern, founded by Troy Everwine and Mike “Scoats” Scotese. One of the city’s best charter schools, MaST, is opening a Tacony branch. Impressed by the efforts, Councilman Bobby Henon opened a satellite office in the m ­ iddle of the shopping district. Tacony is also getting a trickle of artists. In pursuit of a bigger studio, sculptor Jim Licaretz and his partner, Sandra Larimer, are renovating Tacony’s nineteenth-­century post office, which they bought for $198,000. They moved from Tulip Street in Fishtown to Tulip Street in Tacony, a distance of seven miles. For similar reasons, two Brooklynites, Ashley de Vries and Darren Musatto, de­cided to relocate to Tacony. Both musicians (their band, the SB Deluxe, plays the World Cafe on Friday), they wanted to start a recording



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studio and needed a large open space. B ­ ecause their d­ aughter attends ­Temple University, they initially looked in Fishtown. Then they stumbled on the 10,000-­square-­foot Tacony Savings Fund Building, built in 1897 by John Ord. “Other neighborhoods ­were more popping,” said de Vries, “[but] we de­cided space is more impor­tant than proximity to bagels.” The price, $412,000, would have bought them a 2,000-­square-­foot row­house in an established neighborhood like Fishtown. De Vries said they have been welcomed by Tacony’s old-­timers, and they have thrown themselves into civic work. Integrating newcomers is key for ­middle neighborhoods, Brophy argues. Along with longtime residents on the civic association, de Vries is trying to assess a controversial proposal to install a sex-­themed “community center” in the former Tacony M ­ usic Hall, the neighborhood’s only designated historic building. Ironically, the CDC is being forced to move from the hall ­after losing its lease. Tacony’s historic housing stock is something Balloon wants to use to promote the neighborhood. Tacony just succeeded in having fifty-­five blocks of Disston’s planned neighborhood listed on the National Historic Register. “­We’re not trying to turn Tacony into a Fishtown or Northern Liberties,” Costello told me, but he believes preservation can be a stabilizing force. Other proj­ects are in the works. Tacony is waiting for the K&T trail on the Delaware to reach its Lardner’s Point park at the base of the bridge. And ­there’s hope for a farmers market. For now, the threat of gentrification remains a long way off. “We tend to think of millennials as all the same, a group of latte-­and-­laptop-­toting ­people. But ­they’re also SEPTA d­ rivers and casino workers,” said Balloon. If Tacony can find a way to prosper and remain affordable, it w ­ ill have succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations.

Union Unmade September 22, 2017 Nearly two-­thirds of Philadelphia’s residents are nonwhite and 53 ­percent are ­women, but you ­wouldn’t know it from a visit to a city construction site. Despite de­cades of official hand-­wringing over the lack of diversity in city

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trade ­unions, it’s still mostly white men who weld the steel, pour the concrete, and install the shiny glass facades on our new buildings. In 2008—­the last time anyone was able to pry any numbers from u­ nion leaders—­just 10 ­percent of their members w ­ ere African American. ­Under pressure from City Council, Mayor Kenney has taken some baby steps to address the imbalance. His administration just negotiated a deal to ensure that minorities account for 45 ­percent of the workforce who ­will be reconstructing the city’s recreation centers as part of the Rebuild program. At a June event touting the accord, Kenney declared that “a shiny new skyline means nothing to Philadelphians who ­can’t find a job” and hailed the program as a new beginning. Too bad the Zoning Board ­wasn’t looped into the conversation. When the board rejected a developer’s proposal last week to build apartments in a vacant West Poplar ware­house zoned for industrial use, it d­ idn’t merely condemn a blighted building to stand empty. Its 4-­to-1 vote also killed an innovative agreement that would have created dozens of good-­ paying jobs for minorities. Unlike the deal Kenney arranged, this one was reached directly between the community association, Richard Allen Homes New Generation, and the developer, Post B ­ rothers, specifically for the conversion of the massive Quaker ware­house at Ninth and Poplar. Post’s o­ wners, Matt and Mike Pestronk, pledged that 50  ­percent of the construction crew for the $100 million proj­ect would be black, Hispanic, or Asian, and that 10 ­percent of the total workforce would come from the West Poplar area. The outcome thrilled the largely African American neighborhood, said Bruce Crawley, a former neighborhood resident who helped found the civic association and helped broker the agreement. The catch is that Post would need to employ significant numbers of nonunion workers to meet ­those ambitious hiring targets, ­because so few minorities have been admitted into Philadelphia’s insular building trades. The deal did not sit well with the five-­member Zoning Board, which is dominated by ­union officials, including Anthony Gallagher, business man­ ag­er of Steamfitters Local 420, and Confessor Plaza, a field representative with Laborers’ Union Local 57. ­Until he was caught up in an FBI investigation last year, the Zoning Board was run by James Moylan, a close ally of John Dougherty, the head of the electricians’ ­union and one of the most power­ful politicians in the city.



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In their world, Post B ­ rothers is still remembered—­and resented—­for bucking the trade u­ nions during the construction of the Goldtex apartments in Callowhill in 2012. Not a single Philadelphia elected official rallied to the developer’s defense a­ fter the ­unions laid siege to the Goldtex site, blocking deliveries for six months. Last week, the only ZBA member to vote in f­ avor of granting the Post ­Brothers a variance for the West Poplar proj­ect was Thomas Holloman, an architect who is the sole African American on the board. Of course, the board never explic­itly said the minority hiring plan was the reason for rejecting the request. That’s not how t­ hings work in Philadelphia. The official explanation is that Post B ­ rothers failed to demonstrate that the Quaker ware­house’s industrial zoning classification was obsolete and prevented the developers from profitably using the building. In the language of zoning, they d­ idn’t prove “financial hardship.” No hardship, no residential variance. The board’s logic strains credulity. The Planning Commission supported the Post B ­ rothers request for a variance and sent a staff member to testify at last week’s hearing. At my request, the head of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., John Grady, did a drive-by analy­sis of the building. His conclusion: “The cost to retrofit it as a ware­house, or for light manufacturing, would be a significant challenge.” Multistory factories with narrow floor plates just d­ on’t work for modern industry, which prefers sprawling, single-­story facilities. That’s why a slew of former industrial buildings on the edge of  West Poplar are being turned into apartments: Eastern Lofts, Oxford Mills, Fairmount at Brewerytown, Pyramid Electric. This week Kenney proudly celebrated construction at the Heid Building at Thirteenth and Wood in Callowhill. The former hat factory received a residential variance several years ago. The idea that the West Poplar neighborhood could accommodate a big industrial user is especially outlandish. The neighborhood, which occupies the pocket south of Girard Ave­nue between Eighth and Thirteenth Streets, is a veritable suburb-­in-­the-­city, populated by twin homes set on large lawns with ample driveways. It is the product of a Clinton-­era program to replace public housing proj­ects with low-­density, mixed-­income neighborhoods. ­Because of the Quaker ware­house’s enormous size—350,000 square feet of solid concrete—it was virtually the only large industrial building to survive the urban clearance that created West Poplar in the ’90s. Built in 1910 as a furniture ware­house for the Strawbridge & Clothier department store, the

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350-­foot-­long building hugs SEPTA’s elevated viaduct. It was originally served by rail, and a spur still cuts through the building. The loading docks on Ninth Street are barely deep enough to accommodate a van, never mind a tractor trailer. No won­der the eight-­story ware­house has sat boarded up since the late 1990s. Back then, no one could imagine Philadelphia’s revival spreading as far north as Girard Ave­nue. But with the construction of T ­ emple University’s new athletic fa­cil­i­ty at Broad and Girard, Center City and lower North Philadelphia are about to merge into a single mega-­neighborhood. West Poplar is in Council president Darrell L. Clarke’s district, so you would think he would be all for its residents’ fi­nally getting a piece of the construction action. Yet strangely, his office has offered no support for the Post ­Brothers proj­ect. The Kenney administration may be regretting the episode. Post B ­ rothers’ ­lawyer, Carl Primavera, said that he had requested a do-­over hearing, known as “reconsideration,” and that he expected it would be granted. A city spokesperson said a final decision on the new hearing would be made within the next thirty days. Then ­we’ll find out ­whether the Kenney administration and the union-­controlled Zoning Board are truly serious about diversifying the construction industry.

The Slow De­mo­li­tion of Spruce Hill July 28, 2017 As you read this, another handsome Italianate villa is being ripped apart in the Spruce Hill section of West Philadelphia, this time at Forty-­first and Sansom. Its demise comes on the heels of a big loss around the corner on Chestnut Street, where a stately row of identical, Civil War–­era town­houses lost four of its members. Not long ago, developers gouged a hole in the ­middle of a picturesque block of Victorian twins on Forty-­fifth Street, the kind with deep porches supported by classical columns. In each case, flimsy student housing is taking the place of the lost nineteenth-­century buildings. Never has Philadelphia seen so many good buildings displaced by bad ones. Mayor Kenney responded this spring by forming a task force to look for strategies to contain the damaging side effects of the city’s decade-­long building boom, and the thirty-­member group fi­nally got down to work last



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week. If they want to understand what’s wrong with the system, they should take a good look at Spruce Hill, the leafy suburb-­in-­the-­city west of the University of Pennsylvania. Spruce Hill f­aces a Jewelers Row–­style preservation debacle, but on a neighborhood scale. In theory, Spruce Hill should be thriving. Considered one of the finest nineteenth-­century “streetcar suburbs” in Amer­i­ca, its eclectic blocks of Victorian homes and apartments w ­ ere recognized as a National Historic Register district in 1997. Since then, it has seen significant public and private investment, including a Penn-­supported public school and the sparkling transformation of Clark Park. Young families are flocking to the area. Yet de­mo­li­tions continue for one ­simple reason: Philadelphia has never protected Spruce Hill by making it a city historic district. That is not for want of trying. The Spruce Hill Civic Association strongly supports the designation b­ ecause it would require development proj­ects to undergo Historical Commission review. Twice in the last thirty years, the commission’s staff and residents have laboriously cata­loged the neighborhood’s buildings and prepared a formal nomination to put Spruce Hill ­under its protection. Twice, the neighborhood’s City Council representative, Jannie Blackwell, has used her clout to quash the effort. “I tried to hold up the historic district as long as I could,” Blackwell told me in interview, boasting of her success. Unwilling to cross her po­liti­cally, e­ very mayor since Wilson Goode has deferred to her wishes. Her rationale is that it would be hard for low-­income homeowners to meet the Historical Commission’s rigorous renovation standards. But the commission has a long history of helping financially strapped ­owners find affordable solutions. Meanwhile, the lack of a district designation has cost the neighborhood dearly. It’s not just that the civic association has no l­ egal basis to stop developers from tearing down its Victorian classics, said Barry Grossbach, who heads the civic association’s zoning committee. The group also has no say in the design of what replaces them, as long as the new building conforms to zoning. ­Under Philadelphia’s rules, you can get an over-­the-­counter de­mo­li­tion permit for any building that is not listed on the city’s historic register. The National Register listing is merely an honor and offers no protection.

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None of that mattered back in 1987 when the Historical Commission first proposed forming a district, similar to ­those that now exist in 15 other neighborhoods. Although many of Spruce Hill’s large Victorians already had been carved into student apartments, t­here was no extra profit to be made by replacing them with something new. That remained more or less true in 2005, when Blackwell blocked the second attempt to create a Spruce Hill district. Since then, several forces have come together to create a perfect storm. Changes in the zoning code enabled p­ eople to put up slightly larger structures without a zoning variance. ­Because ­house lots in Spruce Hill tend to be very deep, landlords found they could significantly increase the number of apartments by replacing a quirky Victorian with a more efficient modern building. A proposed zoning remapping might have acted as a brake, but Blackwell said she has blocked that too. The city’s generous property-­tax abatement ensured that developers ­wouldn’t even have to pay higher taxes for the larger buildings. Meanwhile, the local universities—­Penn, Drexel, and the University of the Sciences—­embarked on massive expansions, adding students and employees. Even though they have been constructing new dorms, demand for apartments in Spruce Hill never faltered, said David J. Adelman, who runs Campus Apartments, the largest property owner in Spruce Hill. Even in an old h­ ouse, he said, a one-­bedroom commands $800 to $1,500 a month in rent. ­Because virtually all of Campus Apartments’ units are in older buildings, the com­pany has been a force for preservation. But that could change. For just the second time in its history, the com­pany is demolishing an intact Victorian—­the Italianate h­ ouse at Forty-­first and Sansom—to erect a modern apartment building. If Campus Apartments generally operates at a higher level, that c­ an’t be said for many other developers who have joined the Spruce Hill gold rush. Take a look at the new apartments on Forty-­fifth Street between Kingsessing and Woodland Ave­nues. The developer replaced a mixed group of handsome Victorians and two-­story workers housing with a row of slapdash, three-­story ­houses. Although faced in red brick, they are accessed by industrial-­style metal staircases that lead to unpainted, Home Depot–­style doors. Mailboxes hang loosely from the railings, while trash pools below. What’s most confound-



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ing about ­these student ware­houses is that the block ­faces the rolling green of Clark Park and is steps from well-­maintained private homes. But as investors push up prices for rent-­producing ­houses, it becomes harder for homeowners to afford Spruce Hill. What can the mayor’s task force do to save Spruce Hill and other neighborhoods facing intense development pressure? Paul Steinke, head of the Preservation Alliance, suggests that the city immediately set up a “de­mo­li­tion review” board, similar to t­hose in cities such as Chicago and Boston. The board would review de­mo­li­tion permits for any building over a certain age—­say fifty years. Steinke has been urging city officials to act now, rather than wait eigh­teen months for the task force to finish its work. The goal i­sn’t to impede development, but to manage it. Other­wise, come 2019, the preservation task force could find ­there is l­ ittle left to preserve.

Revolutionary Museum, Retrograde Design April 16, 2017 The story the Museum of the American Revolution tells is a refreshingly inclusive one. Inspired by the same thinking that informed the hit musical Hamilton, the museum deepens the oft-­told history of our nation’s birth by bringing to life the ordinary ­people who participated in the ­great American experiment. Enslaved Africans, American Indians, and ­women are all given their due in its vivid displays. But at some point during the decade-­long pro­cess of creating this progressive l­ittle museum, the goals of its historian-­curators and its architects diverged in a big way. In contrast to the narrative established by the exhibits, the building is overblown in scale, false in its approach to architecture, and stridently conservative in appearance. If architecture ­today is a means of telegraphing your brand, the design of Philadelphia’s newest museum amounts to a major communications misfire. The museum board certainly knew what it was getting into when it hired Robert A. M. Stern as its architect. His firm has made a profitable business out of producing stylized modern interpretations of historic architecture. Philadelphia, unfortunately, has been an all-­too-­welcoming locale for the firm’s retrograde designs. See the meeting­house next to the new Mormon

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­ emple, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies on Thirty-­fourth T Street, or 10 Ritten­house. The Revolution museum at Third and Chestnut is no less stodgy. The boxy redbrick structure is meant to be an updated take on the Georgian style, so named ­because it originated during the reign of the British monarchs who ruled the colonies in the lead-up to the revolution. In­de­pen­dence Hall, that ­great symbol of American democracy, is a Georgian building, as are most of the city’s impor­tant Colonial buildings. One of the characteristics of real Georgian buildings is that they are small and intimate. But the Revolution museum suffers from the same affliction that has plagued the last several museums to have opened in Philadelphia: giganticism. Though the three-­story Revolution museum contains 118,000 square feet of space, a mere 32,000 of that is devoted to exhibit galleries. The rest of the building is occupied by offices, conservation labs, and, most space-­ consuming of all, event rooms. You sense the bigness the moment you walk into the main lobby. Designed in a relatively subdued fashion that might be called “Stripped-­ Down Georgian,” it could be the lobby of an affluent suburban high school. The large open space is backstopped by a ticket desk and flows into another sizable room, this one dominated by a large curved staircase. Even when ­these rooms are eventually filled with noisy schoolchildren, I suspect ­there ­will still be plenty of acreage left over. The two rooms may have been designed to move crowds of exhibit-­ goers, but the museum board also expects t­ hese lobbies to double as party spaces that can be rented out for weddings, receptions, and other revenue-­ generating events. The floor plan revolves around a purpose-­built event space on the third floor, a massive, double-­height room that features spectacular city views from its terraces. Like the National Constitution Center and the National Museum of American Jewish History, the building feels like a sprawling banquet hall that happens to operate a small museum. ­These days, no museum gets designed without such event rooms. Although the $120 million Revolution museum is starting out with no debt and a sizable endowment (thanks in part to a $63 million gift from philanthropist H. F. “Gerry” Lenfest, a former Inquirer owner), the institution still needs to generate money to keep up its massive property. A sprawling office suite on the third floor is largely dedicated to the fund­-­rais­ing and member-



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ship departments. Imagine if they had used the ample bud­get to install the museum’s exhibits in one of In­de­pen­dence National Park’s deteriorating historic buildings, such as the First Bank of the United States on Third Street. So where is the a­ ctual museum in this g­ iant new building, you might won­der. The main galleries are all clustered on the second floor. If you take the curving staircase rather than the elevators, you arrive at another massively scaled room—­more party space!—­that leads to a sequence of exhibition rooms. Though the oddly old-­fashioned staircase seems better suited to a McMansion than a history museum, the pathways through the galleries are clear and logical. That is no small ­thing. You conclude your journey with a visit to an intimate (relatively speaking) theater where viewers are offered a glimpse of the museum’s prize piece, the scallop-­edged tent from which George Washington plotted his war strategy. Glimpse is the operative word h­ ere, as the tent comes into view only for a minute or two, then is submerged in darkness to preserve its delicate fabric. The architectural team, led by Alexander P. Lamis, insist they settled on the Georgian style to help the museum fit its surroundings in the ­middle of the historic area. Yet you can find examples of Greek Revival t­ emples, mid-­ nineteenth-­century Italianate mercantile buildings, art deco—­not to mention several crisp modernist offices—­within half a block of the museum. Given that we fought a b­ itter and protracted war to f­ree ourselves from the Georgian tyranny, how is it that Philadelphia had to end up with this retro-­monster? Philadelphia seems unnaturally drawn to backward-­looking architecture. The city’s two newest institutional buildings, the museum and the Mormon T ­ emple, ­were both designed to mimic historic architecture. Few other American cities cling so stubbornly to an antimodern view of the world. We can be grateful at least that Stern’s firm has embraced a more up-­to-­ date view of urbanism. Unlike the unfortunately blank-­walled visitor center that previously occupied this site—­a modernist building, admittedly—­ Stern’s design breaks open the facade with large win­dows, a gracious corner plaza, and outdoor seating that ­will surely enliven this Old City intersection. The division of the Third Street facade into three bays, topped with arched niches, goes a long way ­toward reducing the building’s im­mense scale. Too bad the Georgian-­inspired entrance doors look like something you might see on an ’80s shopping mall.

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By and large the exhibits are stirring, even if their target audience does seem, at times, to be the ­middle school set. I ­didn’t even mind the posed-­ figure dioramas that fill out the rather l­imited displays of historic artifacts, although I did worry when I visited that the sharp stick carried by one of the Oneida Indians still needed to be childproofed. Perhaps the most moving moment comes in the last gallery, where a collection of mid-­nineteenth-­ century photo­graphs of el­derly Revolutionary War survivors is on display. They are male, female, black, white, American Indian, and immigrant, and their worn ­faces testify to the ­human variety that established our American identity. They are also a reminder that the architecture of Philadelphia’s newest civic building is not just out of sync with the museum’s content and its location, but with a fast-­changing, diversifying world.

Affordable-­Housing Developers Push to Stay Ahead of Gentrifiers September 21, 2018 A mere four years ago, the Oxford Mills apartments felt like the edge of the gentrified world. The sprawling nineteenth-­century dye works at Philadelphia’s Front and Oxford Streets was bordered by empty lots, shuttered factories, and a sprinkling of auto mechanics. ­There was no Honeygrow, no Suraya, no Evil Genius Beer Co., no City Fitness, and definitely no suit-­ wearing brigades striding down Front Street. That made the brick buildings perfect for subsidized housing in the view of Greg Hill and Gabe Canuso, two Philadelphia developers with a do-­good streak. By cobbling together a variety of federal tax credits, they w ­ ere able to turn a historic industrial relic into a mixed-­used development and offer ninety loft apartments at a serious discount. ­Today Oxford Mills is an island of affordability in a sea of $500,000 homes. The neighborhood now goes by the name “Olde Ken­sington.” Hill and Canuso immediately de­cided they wanted to repeat the model, so they went hunting for a similar industrial building farther up the Market-­ Frankford El corridor. They found the Frankford Carpet Mill in 2015 at Huntingdon Street and Trenton Ave­nue, a block south of Lehigh Ave­nue and Ken­sington’s notorious heroin encampments.



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The pair plans to start construction on their next batch of affordable apartments this fall, but this time the conditions are very dif­fer­ent. Gentrification arrived before they could even get started. From the upper win­dows of the old carpet factory, you can see the distinctive plywood framing of new row­house construction dotting the landscape. Five new ­houses across the street are selling for north of $400,000. A coffee-­and-­comics shop has planted its flag down the block. “If I ­hadn’t bought this building three years ago, I could never afford to do this proj­ect,” Hill told me. Gentrification used to creep up on Philadelphia neighborhoods imperceptibly over the span of a de­cade or two. Th ­ ese days it’s moving at warp speed, especially through the river wards served by the El. It took just four years to spread two stops, from Berks to Huntingdon Station, and now the march of development is poised to make the leap across Lehigh Ave­nue into Ken­sington proper. While ­those neighborhoods need affordable units more than ever, good development sites are getting harder to come by, says Felix Torres-­Colon, who runs the nonprofit New Ken­sington Community Development Corp. His group opened the fifty-­one-­unit Orinoka Civic House across from Somerset Station last year and plans a companion building on its remaining land. ­After that? “We have about ten rowhouse-­size sites in Fishtown,” Torres-­ Colon explains, where the group could build discounted, for-­sale ­houses. They would prob­ably end up selling for $250,000 to $325,000—­a relative bargain, but beyond the reach of many low-­income families. Anyway, it’s affordable rentals that are in short supply. In 2000, 45 ­percent of the apartments in New Ken­sington’s ser­vice area, which stretches from Girard Ave­nue to the Frankford Creek, rented for less than $500. ­Today just 7 ­percent are in that price range, according to a market study by the development corporation. Hill and Canuso are an unlikely duo to come to the rescue. Their résumé is dominated by blue-­chip proj­ects such as the Ayer condos on Washington Square, the Bridge in Old City, and million-­dollar-­plus Mode7 h­ ouses in Logan Square. But ­after the 2007 recession, which their com­pany barely survived, they vowed to devote more of their time to socially conscious proj­ects, what the industry calls “social impact development.” Hill and Canuso still do the high-­end work, but mainly to pay the bills so they can concentrate on developing affordable housing and office space for

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nonprofits. “I wanted to do something meaningful with my skills,” Hill said. It’s a ­labor of love, he added, noting that if he simply sold the carpet factory to another developer, he would make more than he w ­ ill turning it into affordable housing. The old carpet factory is a perfect place to replicate the Oxford Mills proj­ect. The high-­ceilinged, brick buildings also w ­ ere erected in the late nineteenth ­century, during the “loom boom” when Ken­sington was the epicenter of American carpet manufacturing. Designed by William Steele & Sons, the engineer-­architects responsible for many of Philadelphia’s ­great loft buildings, the buildings have big open floor plans that make conversion to apartments easy. ISA is ­doing the architecture and has added a new stair tower to make access easier. Hill and Canuso ­aren’t just interested in building cut-­price apartments. They also use their proj­ects to create communities. With Oxford Mills, they built a social network around education. Teach for Amer­i­ca rents the lion’s share of the office space, and their recruits get priority on the apartments, which are priced 25 ­percent below market rate. Both buildings are designed around generously landscaped courtyards with outdoor seating and firepits to encourage socializing. The new proj­ect, which is being called Huntingdon Mills, ­will bring together ­people involved in health care and social ser­vices. Low-­income social workers, therapists, and nurses w ­ ill get first crack at the thirty-­nine subsidized apartments. Given the proximity to Ken­sington, Hill believes many of his ­future tenants w ­ ill be serving the local population. The developers already have lined up an early learning center for the ground floor. But given all the development in the neighborhood, t­hey’re also making space for a cafe and gym. When I asked Hill and Canuso how long they can stay one step ahead of gentrification, they sighed. They ­haven’t found their next building yet. Maybe something in Port Richmond. They had better hurry.

LGBT Friendly, Urban Friendly January 17, 2014 I had to go deep into the Inquirer’s archive to look up the name John  C. Anderson. A rising star in Philadelphia politics, he was a first-­term city



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councilman from Wynnefield when he died suddenly in 1983, at age forty-­ one. Anderson was gay, and his life was cut short by AIDS. But in keeping with the times, none of that was mentioned in his obituary. Just how much the world has changed since then is poignantly vis­i­ble when you walk down Thirteenth Street in what is popularly known as the Gayborhood. On a site dominated by a city garage, ­there now stands a stylish new residence cloaked in charcoal brick and pumpkin panels that caters to low-­income se­niors who are gay. It’s called the John C. Anderson Apartments, his name emblazoned in big silver letters next to the front door with the words “An LGBT-­Friendly Community.” The Anderson Apartments is the first senior-­citizen housing proj­ect built by and for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Pennsylvania and only the third of its type in the United States. That alone makes it a huge accomplishment for Philadelphia. But the LGBT-­friendly apartments—­that’s the official term—­also happen to be a useful model for how to build urban-­friendly, affordable housing in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The proj­ect was conceived by Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News and a gay activist who has been fighting for equal rights since the ’60s. He belongs to what he calls “the first out generation,” the cohort that insisted on being open about sexual orientation. Having lived through the historic gay-­rights protests at In­de­pen­dence Hall with Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings, the Stonewall uprising, the AIDS crisis, and other pivotal moments, Segal realized this band of young radicals was no longer so young. With members of the “out generation” now entering their golden years, Segal saw a need for low-­cost housing where gay ­people would feel comfortable, not unlike the se­nior homes built by Chinese and Jewish groups. Many gay ­people ­don’t have families, he noted. Th ­ ere’s also a myth about gay ­people being affluent, but few can afford the fancy duplexes springing up in the once run-­down Gayborhood. “A lot of gay p­ eople d­ idn’t get good jobs,” Segal said, “­because of discrimination.” In many ways, the trajectory of the Gayborhood—­south of Chestnut, east of Broad—­mirrors what has happened to the LGBT community over the last fifty years. The area became a center of gay culture when gays and ­those seedy blocks of Center City w ­ ere both shunned. But as discrimination has waned and Philadelphia’s downtown became a desirable, even glamorous, place to live, prices soared. Gentrification accelerated a­ fter Tony

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Goldman developed Thirteenth Street into a hip restaurant row from Chestnut to Locust. Although the Gayborhood’s population is diversifying, activists insisted that their housing proj­ect should be built ­there, close to impor­tant anchors like the William Way LGBT Community Center. They ­were able to buy the truck garage from the Redevelopment Authority for $1.5 million and an empty lot next door. But with l­ ittle development experience, Segal de­cided to partner with Penrose Properties, which specializes in affordable housing and has worked on such proj­ects as the new Martin Luther King Plaza a few blocks south. Penrose hired Joe Salerno, a WRT architect who has worked on dozens of affordable-­housing proj­ects. He happens to be gay, a member of the “out generation,” and he sees the commission as the capstone of his ­career. Anderson Apartments may be a pioneer of its type, but it’s also an old-­ fashioned urban building that fills its lot, comes proudly to the street line, and uses plenty of glass to connect to the life of the city. In addition to the lobby, ­there is room on the ground floor for a small retailer, prob­ably a cafe. While the six-­story residence acknowledges its neighbors, which include a row of sedate nineteenth-­century town­houses and one of the city’s last SRO ­hotels, the Parker-­Spruce, it d­ oesn’t dress in historical drag. Initially Salerno had gone for a more traditional look, but the Washington Square West Civic Association pushed back and urged him to be openly modern. That liberated him to design a trim, layered facade that pops with color and texture. Like all affordable housing, the bud­get was tight, with $19.5 million for every­thing—­$6 million from the Corbett administration, $2 million from Washington, and $11.5 million in low-­income tax credits. To keep the building from feeling static, Salerno composed the facade as a series of overlapping planes. An enormous rectangular bay, clad in burnt orange panels, juts out like a shield from the main facade. It’s pierced with an off-­center void treated in black seamed metal. Inside, the fifty-­six one-­bedroom units are all saturated with light from a large internal courtyard. Segal’s favorite part, though, are the walk-in “drag-­ queen closets.” Salerno’s passion for the proj­ect shows in the details, like the win­dows at the ends of the corridors. ­There’s even a win­dow in the laundry room. ­Because the lobby and a community room wrap around a glass wall looking onto the courtyard, both are also bathed in light. It might have been better,



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though, if the community room had been placed at the rear of the building, facing picturesque Camac Street, so ­there could be a door and activity ­there. Residents began moving in last week. Not all are gay. Anderson is open to any eligible se­nior, although Segal expects 90 ­percent of residents to be part of the LGBT community. Even now, it seems remarkable that Pennsylvania, a state with no laws against discrimination and no l­egal gay marriage, could pull off such a proj­ ect. San Francisco and Chicago are only just starting work on their own LGBT-­friendly se­nior housing. Chris Bartlett, who runs the William Way Center, has a theory: “I think we may be aging out of homophobia.”

9 ▶ GETTING AROUND TOWN

Subway Riders Get Shortchanged at Thirtieth Street Station March 7, 2003 With no small amount of ceremony, Amtrak and a developer broke ground last month on a $50 million, state-­funded parking garage next to Thirtieth Street Station. When the structure opens next year, d­ rivers w ­ ill be able to saunter directly from the garage to the station via a sun-­dappled sky bridge, thanks to a $3 million federal transportation grant. Life ­isn’t quite so con­ve­nient for the users of SEPTA’s Market-­Frankford Line. For nearly two de­cades, the tunnel connection between the station and the Thirtieth Street subway stop has been shut tight—so tight that Amtrak covered the stairwells and rented the space above them to a pub, Auntie Anne’s pretzels, and a Smoothie King. Subway riders must walk out of the station and dash across an access road with traffic resembling the Indy 500 to reach their destination. 206



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Bicycles are an increasingly common form of transportation in Philadelphia. (Credit: Benedek, iStock image 1012190318)

If ­you’re looking for an example of the institutionalized inequity in the funding of public transit and our car culture, go no further. Our tax dollars are used to subsidize and encourage private automobile use, while the local transit system is left to fend for itself. Not that SEPTA appears outraged about the slight. The regional transit agency ­can’t quite recall why the tunnel was closed, although spokesman Jim Whitaker said safety concerns ­were prob­ably a ­factor. In 2001, SEPTA gingerly raised the idea of reopening the passageway with Amtrak, but then September 11 happened and the agency de­cided not to push the issue. L ­ ittle did the terrorists know that their attack would become the universal excuse for all bureaucratic inertia. Amtrak, meanwhile, is pleased as can be with the pro­gress on the garage, which is being paid for with $50 million in tax-­exempt bonds issued by the Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority. ­Because the troubled national railroad has staked its f­ uture on the success of its high-­priced Northeast Corridor trains, it wants to make it more con­ve­ nient for its affluent riders to use its stations. The nine-­story, 1,525-­car garage ­will do that by easing the parking crunch around Thirtieth Street Station.

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The garage also ­will use land more efficiently than the existing surface lots and could lead to the construction of an office tower next to the station. Fair enough. Amtrak needs to serve its market to survive. It would be nice if Amtrak riders ­didn’t add to the traffic jams and instead took SEPTA to and from Thirtieth Street Station, which is the hub of one of the country’s best transit networks. And ­after all, conserving gas is now patriotic. But passengers paying the $204 round-­trip fare on the Acela Express to New York ­don’t seem to mind laying out another $20 for parking, prob­ably ­because many are on corporate expense accounts. The issue h­ ere is parity. If d­ rivers have a direct connection to the train station, so should subway riders. Indeed, it’s in Amtrak’s best interest to open that passage and promote all forms of mass transit. When the once-­ mighty Pennsylvania Railroad—­ one of Amtrak’s predecessors—­hired Daniel Burnham’s architectural firm to build Thirtieth Street Station in 1929, it requested an under­ground passage to the subway for its customers’ con­ve­nience, even though the subway was owned by a dif­ fer­ent com­pany. The Market-­Frankford line is now SEPTA’s best-­used, with 100,000 riders a day, and deserves to be integrated fully into the region’s transit network again. ­Today planners get misty-­eyed when they talk about such “intermodal” connections ­because, like Amtrak’s garage, they help to make mass transit more competitive—­which makes cities more competitive. The power of transit is one reason that New York officials are lobbying hard for an intermodal station ­under ground zero, which would connect all Manhattan’s subway lines, the New Jersey PATH trains, regional buses, and new airport trains. That under­ground station ­w ill prob­ably have lots of connecting tunnels similar to the one at Thirtieth Street, but you can bet that New York officials ­will find ways to keep them open and safe. SEPTA and Amtrak officials could do the same h­ ere with police patrols, security cameras, and emergency intercoms. Better yet, they could rent space cheaply in the tunnel to newsstands, coffee shops, shoeshine stands, or other businesses that would make ­people feel safe. Amtrak won federal financing for its garage sky bridge partly ­because it argued that the Arch Street crossing is unsafe, with motorists whipping around the train station. But when the subway tunnel was deemed unsafe, riders lost a con­ve­nience.



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Most ­people can prob­ably guess why. SEPTA’s subway riders d­ on’t pay $102 for a ninety-­mile trip. But just ­because Amtrak’s prices keep the masses from using its trains d­ oesn’t mean it should keep SEPTA riders from using theirs.

The Long Road to the Schuylkill Riverfront Trail December 7, 2003 In 1965, when the coal yards and rail spurs ­were still being cleared from the banks of the Schuylkill, landscape architect John F. Collins sat at his drafting ­table and tried to reimagine Philadelphia’s second waterfront as the Seine in Paris. He sketched a stone walking path on the river’s eastern shore, shaded by a regiment of straight-­backed trees and dotted with formal plazas. The Philadelphia Museum of Art hovered regally in the background, framed by the arches of the Market Street bridge. Now, at long last, a version of Collins’s riverfront path is nearly done. The 1.2-­mile linear park extends the popu­lar Kelly Drive path south into the city’s urban heart, providing Philadelphia with its most impor­tant recreational amenity in de­cades. The extension ­will make it pos­si­ble to bike along the Schuylkill from Center City to Valley Forge. Although the new park is not exactly Collins’s Parisian-­style promenade, it is glorious in its own no-­frills way. The railings and lights have been designed with an unusually deft touch by the Schuylkill River Development Council and Collins’s Delta Group. When you whiz around the cove at the foot of Arch Street on a bicycle, or stroll into the dense, woodland greenery south of the museum, Philadelphia feels like a better place to live than a few months ago. The park w ­ on’t formally open u­ ntil spring, yet joggers and bicyclists have been streaming onto the path for months—­despite having to navigate a gauntlet of earthmovers and construction material. Such anticipation shows the power of waterfront amenities and should be kept in mind as the city tries to overcome the legacy of failure at Penn’s Landing. It’s the l­ ittle niceties of urban life, rather than the megaprojects proposed for Penn’s Landing, that can help Philadelphia in the cutthroat competition for new businesses and residents, particularly the kind who ­aren’t tethered

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to a com­pany desk. Imagine zipping out of your home office and onto the path for a quick midday bike ­ride. Yet completing the park was an epic strug­gle by a group of devoted citizens, and the effort shows—in the clunky, zigzagging access ramps and in the off-­putting security fence alongside the CSX railroad tracks. W ­ hether the park can truly succeed in making Philadelphia more livable ­will depend on how much support it gets now from Mayor Street and the Schuylkill River Development board. Users ­will be surprised to learn that the stripped-­down appearance is not a temporary condition. Schuylkill River Park ­w ill consist of a bare blacktop ribbon. ­There are no Pa­ri­sian paving stones, no shady trees. The park’s $14 million bud­get was so eroded by inflation and ­legal fees that ­there is no money for landscaping, benches, or public art. Even worse, getting to the w ­ ater’s edge w ­ ill become more difficult a­ fter the park opens. ­Because the CSX freight line runs alongside the path, the city was required to install a safety fence separating the park from the tracks. Had the city been more aggressive when the issue came up before the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, it might have negotiated a less draconian solution. Instead, the city was obligated to barricade the existing grade crossings at Arch, Cherry, and Locust Streets to force users to enter on ramps from the Market, Chestnut, and Walnut Street bridges. The barricades are a huge blow for Philadelphians who dreamed of biking and r­unning effortlessly between city streets and the river. Logan Square residents, in par­tic­ul­ ar, ­will have to go blocks out of their way. But a bigger threat to the success of the park may be its low priority within the city bureaucracy. No agency has agreed to maintain the park. Louise Turan, who has spent more than a de­cade lobbying for the path’s completion and is now executive director of the Schuylkill River Development Council, still ­isn’t sure who ­will cut the grass, replace the burned-­out street lamps, or clean off the graffiti. Neither Mayor Street’s press office nor the city Commerce Department responded to my inquiries about the issue. Meanwhile, Karen Borski, the interim head of Fairmount Park, argues that her agency is too broke to take responsibility, even though the park owns the path. Turan remains optimistic. “I’ve always felt that once we get the park built, the public pressure would bring the access issue to the forefront and get the railroad to be more accommodating,” she argued.



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The access issue is not as intractable as it sounds, especially b­ ecause ­there are countless grade crossings in the region that are used safely, and CSX’s freight trains creep at a snail’s pace ­here. Perhaps CSX could be persuaded to reopen the grade crossings if the state agreed to assume accident liability for the track bordering the park. That solution has worked in other cities. Finding money for landscaping and maintenance also requires some creative governance. Borski is right that Fairmount Park is strapped for cash. Addressing that park’s financial prob­lems would also help the Schuylkill River Park. Friends groups can always be counted on to raise money, and concessions such as cafes, bike rentals, and boat cruises could help offset some of the park’s operating expenses. But neither ­will provide funds anywhere near what it needs. Elsewhere in the country, city park systems have turned to two other strategies to keep themselves in the green when municipal bud­gets have proved inadequate: the Central Park method and the Chicago method. Central Park looks so good b­ ecause a lot of wealthy p­ eople live nearby and contribute to its upkeep. Chicago, on the other hand, levies a separate park tax as part of the local property tax. Both approaches help ensure that t­ hese valuable amenities remain amenities. Would a park tax work in Philadelphia? It sounds like a stretch, but then so was the Center City District, which levies an assessment on local businesses. No doubt, Philadelphia residents would have to be convinced that they would receive something worthwhile in return. The Schuylkill River Park is exhibit A.

Pedaling in a Lane That’s Their Own October 30, 2009 I was idling at a red light on Seventeenth Street the other after­noon, at ease on my nameless, burgundy-­colored three-­speed as I enjoyed the gentle fall sun, when a taxi driver pulled up in the left lane and barked, “Do you always stop at lights?” I figured I’d answer honestly. “I try to,” I told him. “Then I’ll give you re­spect,” he allowed, before flooring the gas and charging off into Center City traffic.

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Though his tone was grudging, I considered the exchange a hopeful break in the long-­running cycle of animosity that seems to divide ­drivers and bicyclists in Philadelphia. I’ll never forget a previous conversation with a motorist waiting b­ ehind me at a red light near Ritten­house Square. That guy threatened to run me over ­unless I got out of “his” lane. Yet for all the palpable anger on the streets ­these days, times have never been better for the urban cyclist. In June, Mayor Nutter issued an executive order compelling the city to give equal treatment to bikers, ­drivers, and pedestrians, redressing an imbalance that has existed virtually since the first Model T rolled off the assembly line. In short order, his transportation czar, Rina Cutler, launched a bold experiment to put policy into practice. With a few cans of white paint, her staff reconfigured the traffic stripes on Pine and Spruce Streets to transfer a car lane’s worth of asphalt to the bicycle. If the new bike lanes pass a city review in December, the city ­will create more permanent versions, perhaps with colored asphalt, when the two streets undergo their scheduled resurfacing next summer. To anyone who travels on two wheels, it’s already clear that the new bike zone has solved a major headache: getting crosstown in Center City during business hours. The generous lanes, separated from cars by a hatched buffer, provide the missing link in Philadelphia’s growing downtown bike cir­cuit, connecting the successful Schuylkill Banks trail to the brand-­new, 1.3-­mile Delaware River bike path that opened this month between Lombard Street and Pier 70. Already bike traffic on the two city streets has more than doubled, according to the Bicycle Co­ali­tion of Greater Philadelphia. Just as impor­ tant, the reallocation of space has brought a welcome order to ­every form of ambulation. Now that ­drivers, bikers, and walkers have clearly defined bound­aries, they appear to be interacting better on t­ hose streets. That ­can’t help but make bikers safer. For all that, re­sis­tance to the new bike lanes remains intense. Some motorists are convinced that any gain for the bicycle is a loss for the car. Exactly one day ­after the bike lanes debuted, Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky gave voice to their resentment when he denounced the city’s decision to sacrifice “precious space” to two-­wheeled vehicles. “I like bicycles,” he explained. “It’s bicyclists I hate.”



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In making his case, Bykofsky offered up the usual litany of accusations against cyclists: They r­ide on sidewalks. They ignore stop signs and red lights. They weave through traffic. He’s right that some bicyclists ignore the rules. In Pennsylvania, bikes are considered slow-­moving vehicles, much like horse-­drawn carriages and tractors, and need to follow traffic laws. Sadly, a bicyclist may have been responsible for last week’s death of pedestrian Andre Steed near Sixteenth and Locust Streets, a hit-­and-­run as unconscionable as any involving a car. But let’s remember that d­ rivers ­don’t always behave perfectly e­ ither. And ­those disorderly Goliaths are far more likely to kill you when they break the rules. Yet no one would ever suggest that cars ­don’t deserve space on the city streets ­because a small percentage of motorists flout the traffic laws. One of the most common complaints Cutler has heard about the new bike lanes is that t­ hey’ve slowed traffic to a “snail’s pace” on Pine and Spruce Streets. Her retort: “Traffic has always moved at a snail’s pace.” Actually, calming traffic is a good ­thing, improving the quality of life for residential neighborhoods and pedestrians alike. Philadelphia has allowed too many downtown streets to evolve into raceways. Besides, the extra driving time on the two streets is minimal. If the traveling speed across Center City is reduced from thirty to twenty miles per hour, that adds just two minutes to the two-­mile trip. Still, it’s no surprise that some motorists would perceive themselves as the injured party in the city’s decision to reallocate its street space. The same psy­chol­ogy ­causes ­people to clamor for more highways and parking garages, even though they know deep down that cities with easy driving and parking are cities that no one cares to visit. ­There remain some bugs to work out before Cutler’s transportation staff makes the bike lanes permanent. Many ­drivers see the new zone as a con­ve­ nient place for short-­term, and sometimes long-­term, parking. During a recent trip, it seemed ­there was at least one vehicle blocking the lane on ­every block. Contractors’ trucks seemed to dominate. The city also allows churchgoers to park in the bike lanes on Sundays, rendering them useless. Cutler suggests educational advertising could help, followed by stricter police enforcement. That includes getting tough with wayward bicyclists, especially ­those who r­ ide on the sidewalks.

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No less an authority than David Byrne, the former Talking Heads front man, makes a good point in his new book on urban cycling, Bicycle Diaries: “If bikers want to be treated better by motorists and pedestrians then they have to obey the traffic laws.” So next time a motorist stops you at a red light, tell him that’s exactly what ­you’re ­doing.

The Delivery Economy: Bringing Congestion to Your Doorstep June 9, 2017 It was a typical Friday morning on Seventh Street in Philadelphia’s Jewelry District. A delivery truck from Flying Fish Brewery pulled into the left lane next to Jones, the retro diner at the corner of Chestnut. Minutes l­ater, a FedEx driver eased in ­behind him. A second beer truck soon joined the parade just below Sansom Street, and the driver began unloading kegs. Balancing a metal barrel on his shoulder, he did a nimble do-­si-do across the street and deposited his cargo at the door of the Cooperage bar. Meanwhile, traffic on Seventh Street came to a standstill. Welcome to the delivery economy, where anything can be brought to your doorstep. The price of that con­ve­nience, we are learning, is a dramatic increase in traffic congestion, as thousands of delivery trucks fan out through Philadelphia’s narrow, colonial-­era streets. ­Because so few of the city’s buildings have internal loading areas, ­drivers have no choice but to park at the curb, even if it means stopping traffic. On a typical day in Philadelphia, nearly 18,000 deliveries and pickups occur within Center City’s four main zip codes, according to data compiled by José Holguín-­Veras, an engineering professor specializing in freight studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. ­They’re joined at the curb by 2,500 more trucks providing ser­vices. ­Those numbers are only g­ oing to keep growing. Internet shopping now accounts for only 8.5  ­percent of retail sales in the United States, but web ­orders are increasing at an astounding 15 ­percent a year. E-­commerce deliveries recently surpassed commercial deliveries in number, Holguín-­Veras



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told me. In 2009, t­ here was one Internet delivery a day for ­every twenty-­five ­people. By 2014, one in ten p­ eople w ­ ere receiving an online package e­ very day. On top of that, more ­people are demanding same-­day or next-­day deliveries. The congestion unleashed by the delivery economy is just one of the more vis­i­ble examples of how technology is altering the way we interact with the city. As more retail stores dis­appear and more consumer goods are delivered to our front doors, how long ­will it be before the fleets of trucks make our streets impassable? And can we do anything now to prevent crippling gridlock? The answer is yes, said Holguín-­Veras. But cities like Philadelphia have their work cut out for them. No one is talking about putting the brakes on e-­commerce. The elaborate ballet of pickups and deliveries is evidence of Philadelphia’s vitality, a real-­ time display of goods and ser­vices moving through the economy. The ubiquity of UPS, FedEx, postal ser­vice, and private delivery trucks also reflects the city’s growing density—­a welcome development. Not only are more ­people living in Center City and the surrounding neighborhoods, but more small businesses and restaurants are moving in to be near them. As rents become more expensive, ­those businesses are likely to cut back on storage space, which means they ­will need to be resupplied even more frequently. Traffic congestion ­isn’t the only downside to the delivery economy. Parked trucks can reduce visibility for other d­ rivers and greatly increase the danger to pedestrians and bicyclists. SEPTA buses are already having a hard time sticking to their schedules ­because of the volume of Uber, Lyft, and taxi ­drivers prowling the streets. When delivery trucks park near corners, they compound the prob­lem by making it more difficult for buses to turn. Bicyclists are also affected. So many city bike lanes are now blocked by vans and trucks that the spaces ­really ­ought to be renamed “delivery lanes.” “It seems like t­ here are always two trucks per block,” complained Erick Guerra, a PennDesign planning professor specializing in transportation issues who regularly commutes on Spring Garden Street’s bike lane. Giving out parking tickets ­doesn’t seem to be a deterrent, he said, ­because the delivery ser­vices have already built the penalties into the cost of d­ oing business. Some have suggested that Amazon’s plans for drone delivery could solve every­thing. But we s­ houldn’t expect our packages to fall from the sky anytime

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soon. Th ­ ere are too many security concerns, said Theodore Dahlburg, a freight specialist at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. For now, the issue of managing delivery vehicles is so complicated that many cities are forming special task forces to oversee freight deliveries. Philadelphia ­hasn’t gone that route, but it did commission a report from the regional planning commission to look at its options. Called the Philadelphia Delivery Handbook, it borrows from research that Holguín-­Veras did for New York City. To understand the impact of deliveries ­here, Dahlburg, the report’s author, came up with a chart based on a metric Philadelphians can appreciate: How many deliveries does it take to make a cheesesteak? The answer: four. To prepare one of t­ hose fat-­and-­carb bombs, fresh bread is key, Dahlburg said. A busy cheesesteak stand receives one to four bread deliveries a day from a local supplier. Meat comes on another truck, from the Midwest, usually once a week. The onions are also delivered weekly, but from a dif­fer­ent supplier. Unlike the other ingredients, the “cheese” sauce (note the quote marks ­here) needs to be delivered only e­ very six months ­because of its long shelf life. The easiest way for cities to reduce traffic congestion, Dahlburg and Holguín-­Veras believe, is to shift ­those deliveries from standard business hours to the eve­nings. Ironically, Philadelphia’s parking signs have posted delivery hours, and ­they’re usually in the morning. Mandating night deliveries, especially for drugstores and high-­volume stores like Target, could not only reduce congestion but also save energy, Holguín-­Veras said. Demarcating delivery zone parking on city streets could also help. If you wander by Tenth and Market a­ fter 5 p.m., you often see a tractor-­ trailer parked in the bike lane across from the Rite Aid. Dahlburg also suggests the city should establish “break bulk” sites on the periphery, where deliveries could be sorted into smaller, more manageable vehicles—­ including bicycle-­powered ones. If the city could also persuade vari­ous delivery companies to cooperate, the cargo could even be or­ga­nized geo­ graph­ic­ ally, further reducing the number of delivery trips. Eventually, ­there ­will be more centralized delivery points in neighborhoods, like Amazon lockers, to reduce the volume of house-­to-­house drop-­offs. One of the big debates that freight specialists are having is w ­ hether traffic congestion ­will eventually level off once most of our consumer acquisitions



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migrate to the web and we stop using our cars to shop. ­Will we still run out to the grocery for a quart of milk? Guerra expects ­people w ­ ill still be using their cars. “It’s not that ­we’re not ­going out shopping anymore. W ­ e’ll always be shopping, just for dif­fer­ent ­things.”

It’s Time to Bring Bus Riders in from the Cold July 29, 2016 Consider it a tale of two transportation modes. Go to JFK Boulevard in University City and you’ll see travelers huddled on the sidewalk like refugees, in the scorching sun of summer and the chilling wind of winter, while they wait for buses to New York or Washington. Then walk across the street to the soaring waiting room of Thirtieth Street Station, where Amtrak riders heading to the same destinations relax in climate-­controlled comfort, sipping lattes ­until their trains are called. Though no one could argue that conditions for American rail travelers are ideal, intercity bus riders have it many times worse. Philadelphia boasts the second-­highest bus ridership in the country, a­ fter New York, and yet our main bus station at Tenth and Filbert is a grim, one-­story, cinder-­block affair that would not look out of place in a third world country. At least it has a roof. For riders taking the BoltBus or Megabus from the university area—­ some 5,000 ­people a day—­there is no cover at all. But Philadelphia’s neglected bus riders could eventually see some relief. Buried deep within the new Amtrak master plan is a proposal for a modern bus terminal on the north side of Thirtieth Street Station. And unlike most of the proj­ects depicted in Amtrak’s eye-­catching renderings, the bus station is something that could actually happen in our lifetimes. Building a new bus station for its competitors was prob­ably the last ­thing on Amtrak’s mind when it commissioned the long-­range plan from SOM, WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff, and Olin. The main goal was to monetize the underused real estate over the Thirtieth Street Station rail yards to compensate for the never-­ending reductions in federal funding. What seemed to captivate the public most ­after the plan was released this summer was a proposal to build a miniature Center City north of the station, between the Schuylkill and Drexel University.

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The high-­rise development would certainly be a huge boon to Philadelphia’s economy. Unfortunately, the forest of skyscrapers is unlikely to materialize u­ ntil Amtrak can build its long-­promised high-­speed rail network. At best, ­we’re talking three or four de­cades. When ­those superfast trains fi­nally do arrive, you can bet ticket prices ­will be in the stratosphere, beyond the reach of anyone who ­doesn’t travel on an expense account. Buses, on the other hand, are cheap—as ­little as $10 for a one-­way ticket on the Philadelphia–­New York run—­and are likely to remain so. Low fares are one reason private motor coaches are now the fastest-­growing form of intercity travel, growing faster than planes, trains, and automobiles. By beefing up its bus infrastructure, the city could enjoy an economic jolt at a fraction of the cost of high-­speed rail. Long-­distance buses w ­ ere once seen as the travel mode of last resort, patronized by drifters and lost souls. But the introduction of luxury coaches equipped with rest­rooms and Wi-­Fi has changed all that, explains Joseph P. Schwieterman, a transit expert at DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development. Rising Amtrak fares on the Northeast Corridor accelerated the shift. Now every­one from college students to business travelers rides short-­haul buses. Bus operators have done particularly well on the East Coast, where cities are crammed close together. Philadelphia’s location in the ­middle of the vast Northeast megalopolis has made it “a hotbed for short-­haul bus companies,” Schwieterman says. Together, BoltBus and Megabus carried more than 1.8 million Philadelphia riders in 2013. Greyhound, which owns BoltBus, ­handles similar traffic at the Filbert Street station. The growing numbers makes the deplorable condition of the city’s bus infrastructure unacceptable. B ­ ecause the Filbert and JFK depots are next to Regional Rail stations, they are, in theory, an intermodalist’s dream. Yet ­there are almost no signs or pathways in e­ ither location to smooth the connection to the trains. “­People are always stopping to ask me, ‘Where is the BoltBus?’ ” says Natalie Shieh, who is overseeing Amtrak’s master plan from her office at Thirtieth Street Station. Amtrak’s design for the new station is still preliminary, but the early concept calls for a covered, eleven-­bay terminal on Arch Street, steps from the train station’s north entrance. A ticket office and waiting room would be incorporated into the canopy structure. ­Because the site borders the Cira



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Centre’s front plaza, t­here is an opportunity to create an outdoor seating area served by food vendors. With the Amtrak parking garage next door, it’s an intermodal trifecta. ­There’s just one hitch. Before a new bus station can be built, the alignment of the I-76 and I-676 ramps complicates vehicle access to the site, forcing buses to loop around from Market Street. The ramp arrangement is also the main reason Amtrak has never been able to get the traffic circulation right at Thirtieth Street Station. So before it builds the bus station, Amtrak wants PennDOT to reconfigure the ramps. As highway proj­ects go, it’s small change—­$32 million. But given the pace of ­these ­things, Shieh estimates it ­will take ten years before Amtrak can start work on the bus station, which is now estimated to cost $17 million. That’s too long for ­people to stand out in the heat and the cold. It’s also too long for Drexel University, which is planning to expand onto JFK Boulevard as part of its Schuylkill Yards innovation district. Why wait for the ramps to be reconstructed? Amtrak owns the one-­acre surface lot. It ­wouldn’t cost much to erect a temporary canopy and small enclosure, and make a few street adjustments to accommodate buses. This is exactly the kind of prob­lem architectural competitions are meant to solve. If we can do pop-up beer gardens, we can do a pop-up bus station. Boston, Washington, and Denver have already taken steps to improve conditions for bus travelers by carving out space in their Amtrak stations for bus bays. Though ­these makeshift depots ­don’t offer the graciousness of a classic train station, ­they’re far better than leaving riders out in the ele­ments. Amtrak might also consider setting aside space in its garage for buses. Initially, bus operators resisted moving indoors ­because it meant paying docking fees. But city officials in Boston and Washington put down their respective feet. The operators, in turn, added a small surcharge to their ticket prices. As the popularity of bus travel broadens, operators have come to believe that civilized waiting areas are crucial to their brands. The prob­lems at Filbert Street go beyond the station’s dismal physical condition. Traffic congestion is terrible ­because buses must navigate Chinatown’s narrow streets. A 2009 Planning Commission study noted that putting bus bays on Arch Street created a wide gap that “cripples one of Chinatown’s most impor­tant retail streets.” B ­ ecause the property is privately

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owned, it is hard to believe the station’s large surface lot w ­ ill remain undeveloped ­after the Gallery reopens in 2018. So ­here’s the big question: Instead of having two substandard bus depots, should Philadelphia aim for one gracious, modern bus fa­cil­i­ty? Bus travel is expected to double by 2040. Philadelphia ­can’t just wait around to solve the prob­lem of its bus infrastructure.

10 ▶ SUCCESS AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Say Goodbye to the Porch August 4, 2017 In many ways, the history of the Porch at Thirtieth Street Station neatly tracks the rise of the millennial generation in Philadelphia. The DIY public space on Market Street came into existence during the ­Great Recession, just as millennials ­were starting c­ areers and moving into their first apartments. Opened in 2011, the Porch prized many of the same qualities they favored: spontaneity over formality, flexibility over permanence, creative whimsy over design with a capital “D.” Now many millennials are settling down, entering into commitments, acquiring homes, and buying nice furniture. And so is the Porch. Amtrak just rolled out a preliminary design for a permanent version of the successful pop-up, which it calls Station Square. In place of the Porch’s brightly hued picnic t­ ables, goofy swings, and planters made from retrofitted sheep troughs, ­there are granite pavers and artfully sculpted tree pits. The plan calls for a formal ­water feature. 221

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The remains of the historic Boyd Theatre on Chestnut Street. (Credit: James Fennell)

It’s all very grown up and appropriate. But what happened to the fun? The design, by two New York firms, !melk and FXFowle, is still in the early stages and likely to undergo revisions, but it highlights the difficulties of translating the freewheeling sensibility of a pop-up into a plaza meant to be with us for a good half-­century. In their attempt to create a respectful gateway to Philadelphia’s ­great art deco train station, the designers have stripped the plaza of the convivial ambience that made the Porch such a popu­lar space. It’s as dull as a hospital entrance. To understand what makes the Porch special (even at a time when Philadelphia seems saturated with pop-­ups), let’s go back to ­those pre-2011 days. What should have been a vibrant transit gateway to West Philadelphia was then nothing more than a traffic island wedged between Market Street and the chaotic inner road ringing the station. Pedestrians trying to reach the entrance risked their lives dodging cars. A huge area between Center City and the university felt like a no-­man’s land. The Porch did more than just make it safer for travelers to get to their trains. The brainchild of the University City District, the pop-up was inspired by the pavement-­to-­parks movement that was then sweeping American cities. New York had just created the first instant park by annexing a stretch of Broadway and setting out lawn chairs. The University City District went a step further. A ­ fter scattering loose t­ ables and chairs around



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the traffic island, it brought in food trucks and began scheduling lunchtime concerts, farmers markets, and other events. Though the original Porch design (by Ground Reconsidered) was bare bones, the shaded seating and activities transformed the barren traffic island into a welcoming refuge. Overnight the Porch became a destination for office workers and neighbors, as well as a pleasant spot for travelers to pass the time. Plenty of homeless folks gathered ­there too, yet even on a recent Sunday after­noon they w ­ ere outnumbered by families. I saw a group of ­women on the way home from church joyfully pile onto the swings, which ­were introduced a­ fter Groundswell Design refreshed the space in 2015. The ­whole ­thing cost less than a million dollars. Of course, pop-­ups ­were never meant to be permanent, and Amtrak has good reasons for wanting to upgrade the plaza. As part of a larger plan to develop the empty land around the station, the railroad needs to improve the Thirtieth Street’s tangled vehicle circulation. This aspect of the FXFowle/!melk redesign represents a huge advance over what now exists. The ring road and awkward parking zones would be eliminated. The design team has reduced the vehicle drop-­off area on the east side of the station to a compact, U-­shaped driveway. A second driveway on the north side would provide short-­term parking for pick-­ups and drop-­offs. The configuration is informed by a new real­ity: ­because increasing numbers of travelers are using ride-­hailing ser­vices to access the station, Amtrak wants to carve out a dedicated waiting area in the under­ground space where rental cars are currently stored. A portion of the area would also be dedicated to taxi queuing, which would keep taxis from clogging the streets around the station. The main weakness with the plan is that ­there may not be enough short-­term parking spaces, but Amtrak says it w ­ ill modify the plan to add slots on the station’s east side. The beauty of consolidating pick-­ups and drop-­offs into a more compact zone is that it doubles the size of the pedestrian plaza and extends the apron to the station’s front door. If Drexel University’s planned Schuylkill Yards “innovation district” takes off, the area around the station ­will become dense with new offices and apartments, increasing the need for places where ­people can eat lunch and relax. The university plans to start work soon on its own park, Drexel Square, across from the station on Thirtieth Street, but it’s a relatively small space. Station Square w ­ ill be twice the size of the Porch, bigger than Dilworth

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Park. Rina Cutler, Amtrak’s director of planning and development, predicts the number of ­people passing through the park w ­ ill double to 200,000 a day within the next three years. ­Later this year Amtrak plans to advertise for a master developer to oversee its development effort, she said. That’s why it is so impor­tant for the landscape architects to infuse some of the Porch’s spirit into the plaza. Though !melk’s lead designer, Jerry van Eyck, has worked on several imaginative designs, including the hills on New York’s Governors Island, Station Square is disappointingly formulaic. Too much effort has gone into creating a canopy of trees, which ­will never get as big as the renderings suggest. ­Because the plaza is a cap over the Northeast Corridor tracks, the trees need huge planters to thrive. The design scatters enormous petal-­shaped tree troughs across the space. The huge planters w ­ ill merely form a ­cattle chute, directing travelers to the station doors. ­Because ­people ­don’t naturally face one another when they sit on planters, the seating is inherently less sociable than ­tables and chairs. The planters’ size also cuts down on Station Square’s flexibility, making it harder to offer programming. The other strange feature is the array of polka dots embedded in the paving. ­They’re meant to represent the columns supporting the plaza cap, but what passerby would guess that? The design treats the plaza as a piece of patterned fabric, rather than space inhabited by real live ­human beings. As the Porch’s pop-up transitions into a more mature form, the designers need to figure out how to infuse its playful spirit into its permanent form. That’s a challenge, but no one ever said growing up would be easy.

Tennis on Ritten­house Square, Anyone? November 20, 2017 Once again ­there is a mansion on Ritten­house Square. And yes, ­there is a regulation-­size tennis court in the basement. And a Parisian-­inspired central courtyard with a three-­story-­high green wall, studded with orchids, bromeliads, and other tropical plants. Overlooked by an infinity pool. And rimmed by a sequence of airy, open-­plan spaces. Philadelphia has seen its share of large and opulent ­houses emerge during the recent building boom, but this newest one, built on Ritten­house



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Square’s southwest corner for developer Bart Blatstein and his ­family, has attracted an extra degree of public curiosity b­ ecause of its storied location and unusually protracted construction. ­After three years of work, involving the same techniques and materials used to erect skyscrapers, it is now an occupied ­house again—if you can call a sprawling 17,000-­square-­foot urban villa a ­house. In the late nineteenth ­century, the genteel square was ground zero for Philadelphia’s Gilded Age millionaires, who hired the likes of Frank Furness to build their city ­castles. But high-­rises gradually displaced all but a handful of private homes, and Ritten­house Square became, if not scruffy, then as threadbare as a dowager’s shawl. Such was the exodus of wealth from Philadelphia in the ’70s and ‘80s that the grandest of the square’s mansions, a compound owned by the famed art collector and philanthropist Henry P. McIlhenny, sat empty for nearly thirty years ­after his death in 1986. No more. In 2013, Blatstein acquired five ­house lots that had been part of the McIlhenny estate for $4.2 million. (Two ­others facing Ritten­house Square w ­ ere sold off in the early 2000s and turned back into single-­family homes.) Blatstein—­who made his money lining Delaware Ave­nue with suburban-­ style strip malls, betting on casino proj­ects, and building the successful Piazza at Schmidts (now Schmidt’s Commons) in Northern Liberties—­has completely reor­ga­nized the properties, adding a substantial addition in the courtyard where McIlhenny, chairman of the Art Museum board, once hosted glamorous parties for his art-­world friends. So expansive is the property that a colleague refers to it as the “Blat Cave.” Blatstein’s four-­story mansion sprawls across the 4,000-­square-­foot site, from the southwest corner of Ritten­house Square to Manning Street. Like McIlhenny’s ­house, Blatstein’s mansion is or­ga­nized around a courtyard, albeit one no longer vis­i­ble to the public. The space is protected by a retractable glass roof, a kind of miniature version of the Houston Astrodome. One wall of the courtyard is carpeted with a dense array of tropical plants, a design that was apparently inspired by the courtyard of Paris’s Pershing Hall, a former palace that was converted into a luxury ­hotel. In an interview, Blatstein was circumspect about the proj­ect, agreeing to discuss only the exterior architecture and to confirm a few details about the interior. But building plans submitted to the city provide ample insight into the design, by Shimi Zakin and Evan Litvin of Atrium Design Group.

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­Because the main h­ ouse, a mansard-­roofed Victorian dating from the 1850s, is listed on the city’s Historic Register, Blatstein was obliged to maintain the facade. Every­thing ­else is new. The h­ ouse’s geometric composition w ­ ill remind many of the high-­end ­houses now ­going up around the city. As a developer, Blatstein is notorious for his sometimes kitschy tastes. He once proposed to re-­create Rome’s Spanish Steps on Penn’s Landing. When he was hawking a casino for the former Inquirer and Daily News property on North Broad Street, the design featured a Provençal-­style village on the roof of the old printing plant. His Ritten­house Square mansion is nothing like t­hose historical fantasies. The exterior is respectful in the extreme, a tasteful con­temporary that uses first-­rate materials and graciously defers to its historically certified Victorian companion. For the addition facing the square, Zakin and Litvin created an abstracted, mirror-­image version of the Victorian, using red brick, brownstone, and flamed black granite. The proportions of the addition are identical to the Victorian but rendered in a flatter, con­temporary language. The architects also reversed the voids and solids. Where the Victorian has a recessed vestibule, the addition has a protruding bay. But while the dimensions of the win­dows and walls are the same, the addition feels more cloistered ­because of the im­mense size of its solid granite panels and imposing entrance. Crafted from solid walnut, the front door weighs 750 pounds and pivots open on a single steel rod. Building around the Victorian’s fragile nineteenth-­century facade proved to be a daunting technical feat, requiring the oversight of Bala Consulting Engineers. The Victorian’s old brick walls had to be braced and underpinned to prevent them from toppling over. To make room for the thirty-­six-­by-­ seventy-­eight-­foot tennis court in the basement, Blatstein had to excavate the entire site, ­going down nearly thirty-­five feet below the sidewalk. During construction, passersby often marveled at the size of the pit, which rivaled the one for the new Comcast tower. Indeed, the concrete foundation could easily support a high-­rise. The upper stories are framed in steel. “We always said to Bart, ‘We are building you the shortest skyscraper in the city,’ ” Zakin told me. ­Because the ­house is so open, the number of rooms r­ eally d­ oesn’t give a sense of its scale. The plans show four bedrooms, including what appears to



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be a guest suite along the Manning Street side of the courtyard. By my count, ­there are five kitchen or bar areas and seven bath and powder rooms. That includes a full kitchen in the four-­car garage on Manning Street. “It’s designed so Bart can throw parties and no one sees the caterer,” said Eric Blumenfeld, a developer who has visited the h­ ouse. The two handsome garage doors are crafted of Brazilian ipé and are a major improvement over the cheap doors McIlhenny had installed. Besides the full-­size tennis court, the most striking luxury is prob­ably the swimming pool on the third floor, overlooking the courtyard. On the plans, the pool area contains a bar, lounge area, and two changing rooms. Around the corner, on the east side of the courtyard, a wing of the ­house is reserved for a gym. Built like a small skyscraper, the h­ ouse prob­ably cost as much as one. Based on its size and normal building costs, several contractors estimated that Blatstein’s mansion had to set him back between $8 million and $16 million. The city’s property tax website puts the total value of the property at $3.4 million, but a city spokesman said the h­ ouse would be reassessed next year. B ­ ecause of the city’s construction abatement, Blatstein w ­ ill pay no property taxes on the improvements for a de­cade. Blatstein, sixty-­three, acknowledged that the proj­ect was a ­labor of love ­after a long ­career pursuing development proj­ects. He is giving up a ­house in Montgomery County to move back to the city, where he grew up. “I’m back in the city ­because I believe in the city,” he explained. “It may seem over the top, but this is an impor­tant location, and I wanted to do my best.”

With Soda Tax Done, Let’s Retool Abatement June 17, 2016 No one, least of all ­those battle-­hardened skeptics known as Philadelphians, believed City Council had the stomach to pass Mayor Kenney’s tax on sugary drinks. Amer­i­ca’s power­ful soda lobby has knocked the fizz out of forty-­ five similar proposals since 2008. Yet Council showed its mettle Thursday by approving the nation’s second, and highest, levy on sweetened drinks. So how about taking on a ­really sacred cow? The ten-­year property-­tax abatement.

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The current version of the abatement was introduced in 2000—­a generation ago in the life of the city—as a Hail Mary effort to stanch Philadelphia’s population exodus. The mea­sure exempted all new and renovated homes from taxes on improvements for a de­cade. Officials hoped the incentive might persuade a few brave developers to convert Center City’s aging Class B office buildings into apartments and to renovate its old row­houses. Some thought new homes might even sprout on empty lots downtown. It’s safe to say that no one ­imagined the abatement would lead to ­today’s construction frenzy. At the moment, ­there are about 15,000 exempted homes. The real estate market is so hopped up that developers are writing $800,000 checks for teardowns in Center City, and a pent­house on a dull stretch of  Walnut Street just sold for almost $18 million. Personal story: The other day, a real estate agent knocked on my door in Fitler Square and asked to buy my less-­than-­pristine ­house. While the abatement is an undeniable success, that d­ oesn’t mean it should be untouchable. Champions point to the transformed landscapes of Northern Liberties and Gradu­ate Hospital as proof of the abatement’s magical powers. But the city has changed since 2000. Maybe the abatement should too. I’m not suggesting the abatement should be eliminated. Building in urban areas is more expensive than in a suburban cornfield. That’s why almost ­every big city cuts developers a break for new construction. But few municipalities offer the citywide, no-­strings-­attached, ­free ­ride that Philadelphia does. Pittsburgh ­doesn’t. Baltimore ­doesn’t. ­Those cities target their abatements to promote specific goals. Instead of tax breaks to encourage construction in already desirable neighborhoods, they limit incentives to overlooked sections of the city. ­They’ve crafted abatements to make renovation and affordable housing more attractive options. In Philadelphia, ­because ­every new building gets a tax break, the city c­ an’t fine-­tune its abatement to incentivize policies like historic preservation. Just the opposite. Our abatement effectively encourages developers to tear down intact, older buildings where rents tend to be lower. A recent example is the Wallace Storage building on Twenty-­first Street, the first home of the Please Touch Museum. The handsome ware­house w ­ ill soon be replaced by multimillion-­dollar town­houses. That ­will cost Logan Square some much-­needed architectural and economic diversity.



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Over in West Philadelphia, a row of nineteenth-­century ­houses is being replaced—­mowed down, actually—by apartments aimed at students. Not only are t­ hese new buildings cheaper to operate, but they also dramatically reduce the developer’s tax burden and carry­ing costs. The public, meanwhile, loses the 1850s character that made the neighborhood attractive in the first place. Cities, of course, need to replenish their housing stock with modern buildings. While ­there w ­ ill be trade-­offs, the blanket nature of Philadelphia’s abatement makes the choices more stark. The hardest one involves the schools. The abatement has attracted thousands of millennials, who w ­ ill help grow the city’s tax base, first by their wage and sales tax contributions, and ­later by paying property taxes. Ideally they ­will also raise their families h­ ere. The prob­lem is that the abatement diverts millions from the struggling school district, making it harder for the system to deliver a level of education that w ­ ill persuade ­these homeowners to stay h­ ere. Since 55 ­percent of the property tax is earmarked for schools, the abatement hits the district harder. Lance Haver, a policy adviser to Council, described Philadelphia’s catch22 perfectly: “If we d­ on’t fund the schools, w ­ ill the city have a f­ uture? If we ­don’t have an abatement, ­will young ­people buy h­ ouses?” Since 2014, three special-­interest groups have financed economic studies on the impact of the abatement. Not surprising, each reached a dif­fer­ent conclusion. The Building Industry Association asserts that the city earns two dollars for ­every dollar abated and that the schools lose a mere $3 million annually. Yet the study for the Philadelphia Co­ali­tion Advocating for Public Schools contends that the annual loss of revenue to the schools from all tax abatements, including t­hose on commercial and industrial properties, is more like $50 million a year. To put that figure in perspective, Kenney’s soda tax w ­ ill raise just $40 million for pre-­K . Eliminating the 55 ­percent of the abatement that goes to the schools—or just a fraction of it—­would be a huge boost for education. With a new administration, t­ here may be a new willingness to reexamine the abatement. The city’s new commerce director, Harold T. Epps, a former corporate executive, told me he was open to creating a tiered abatement similar to Pittsburgh’s. That might include caps on very expensive h­ ouses,

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or extended abatements in neighborhoods where ­there has been l­ittle investment. Such changes would be radical. Ever since the abatement was created, the only goal has been to grow the tax base. Using the tool strategically to achieve other aims has never been part of the city’s mind-­set. Recently, Councilman Allan Domb, a Realtor who specializes in luxury condos, introduced a bill that would extend the abatement to fifteen years for ­houses priced at $250,000 or below. It’s an in­ter­est­ing idea that could increase the supply of moderately priced homes. Domb also went against type to vote in f­ avor of the soda tax. In exchange, he told me, Mayor Kenney has agreed to aggressively pursue $500 million in unpaid sewer and w ­ ater bills. At Domb’s urging, the city is now recalculating the value of the land on its 15,000 abated homes. Although the abatement is only for “improvements,” homeowners have gotten away with paying ­little or no property tax on the land ­under their homes. ­Those increased tax collections are long overdue. Together with a more targeted abatement, ­those mea­sures could make the soda tax look like peanuts.

Preparing for a City Without Cars March 16, 2018 We ­can’t say exactly when it ­will happen, but sometime in the not-­too-­distant ­future, private cars ­will go the way of the dinosaur. For now, however, p­ eople continue to demand, and developers continue to build, h­ ouses and apartments across Philadelphia with substantial space devoted to car storage. So let’s take a moment to applaud the new, darkly handsome apartment building at 1213 Walnut, the first Philadelphia high-­rise designed for the post-­ownership era. Not only is ­there no automobile parking on site, but the 322-­unit building boasts its very own woonerf, a narrow, curbless street that serves pedestrians and vehicles equally. The space allows ride-­hailing vehicles and delivery trucks to do their work without tying up Walnut Street’s already congested bus lane. The open-­air passage, which hugs the tower’s west side like a continuation of Camac Street, also makes a g­ reat pedestrian shortcut.



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It’s unlikely the original proj­ect team, Omar Blaik of U3 Advisors and Enrique Norten of Ten Arquitectos, ­were aware of how radically the world was about to change when they first sketched the contours of the proj­ect in 2007. Uber and Lyft d­ idn’t exist yet. Online shopping was in its infancy. And Philadelphia was still operating ­under a ’60s-­era zoning code that required developers to include seven parking spaces for ­every ten apartments. Blaik admits he was mainly looking for a way to avoid building an expensive garage on a tight Center City site. A de­cade ­later their proposal seems prescient. The year 2007 also saw Apple’s introduction of the iPhone, making all sorts of Internet businesses pos­si­ble. Though no one foresaw how t­hose devices would radically alter our driving and lifestyle habits, the tower design managed to win approval from the Washington Square West Civic Association and ultimately a special bill from City Council to exempt the development from the parking requirement. But then the G ­ reat Recession hit, and the proj­ect was put on hold. By the time it was revived in 2015, the proj­ect had been sold to the Goldenberg Group and Hines Development, and Baltimore’s Design Collective (previously responsible for the Hanover buildings on North Broad) was taken on as the architect. Design Collective wisely kept the building’s form while updating its aesthetics to appeal to millennials. The twenty-­six-­story tower still has a Z-­shape footprint, allowing the base to wrap around Fergie’s Pub, the classic Irish bar on Sansom Street. Officially called 1213 Walnut, many ­people fondly refer to it as “Fergie’s Tower.” The passageway is still t­here too, r­ unning from the m ­ iddle of Walnut’s 1200 block to Sansom, which is turning into a quirky, restaurant-­studded street. But the designers, Michael Goodwin and Luis  C. Bernardo, eliminated the proposed roof, which was intended to give the feel of a Eu­ro­pean arcade. Instead, they exploited the site’s “funk ­factor.” Rather than completely hide the party wall of the nineteenth-­century building next door, they created a perforated screen that allows glimpses of the craggy stucco, fading graffiti, and Lew Blum’s ubiquitous No Parking signs. Hanging plants are coming. B ­ ecause the passage can be closed to cars, the architects envision it as the ultimate block-­party setting for the building’s residents. Painted an earthy orange, the screen also sets the aesthetic, as well as the color scheme, for the entire tower. The perforated panels turn the corner onto Walnut Street, where they form a modern frieze over the retail space.

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In a city where bland, all-­glass skins have sadly become the default, the composition offers some welcome panache. The two-­story base is rimmed with a gray aluminum band, detailed to suggest I-­beams. That purposeful dark line emphasizes the openings in the facade, allowing us to see the void as a continuous ribbon of space. It also turns the second-­floor amenity deck into a modern-­day loggia. Perched atop this delicate, airy base, the tower seems to float above the street. Despite topping out at 280 feet, the building avoids the heaviness of other towers that rise from the ground without any setbacks to lighten the load. Such basic architectural care is something we should expect in all our new buildings, but especially ones inserted into the masonry precincts of Center City. The 1213 tower shares the block with a row of once-­grand nineteenth-­century town­houses and a magnificent Second Empire–­style apartment building by architect Horace Trumbauer. Though the design ­doesn’t rotely imitate ­those regal neighbors, the architects re­spect their proportions, scaling the base so the tower starts at the roofline of the neighboring building. The passageway also helps modulate the tower’s presence. One of the fun touches is the building’s glass-­enclosed fitness center, which spans the opening. The developers deserve props for including a second retail space on Sansom Street, making this a building with street presence both back and front. Though a similar alley w ­ on’t work for e­ very proj­ect, architects are ­going to have to come up with ways to move ride-­hailing ser­vices and deliveries off Philadelphia’s narrow streets. As with the rest of the design, the shaft of the tower is superior to most of Philadelphia’s recent high-­rises. The designers emphasize the unusual Z-­shape by switching up the color and materials. The north and south walls are faced in the dark gray bands that resemble I-­beams, and the midsection is chalky white. The weakest ele­ment is the concrete block on the east and west facades, required as a fire-­protection mea­sure. The vast blank surface makes a harsh impression, particularly when ­you’re approaching from Broad Street. A nicer material would have made the wall less vis­i­ble. Unfortunately, ­there is more concrete next door, in the form of an aging and utilitarian garage. Its presence was what helped persuade the civic association to give 1213 a pass on parking. The developer made a deal with the garage ­owners to lease spaces as needed. Yet out of the 144 apartments rented so far, only nineteen renters have informed the management that



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they have cars—13 ­percent, according to Goldenberg vice president Seth A. Shapiro. ­We’re not quite in the post-­car-­ownership era yet, but ­those numbers should be a wake-up call for other developers, especially t­ hose building in the dense, transit-­rich parts of the city. More than a de­cade into the smartphone era, we need more buildings ready to function for a world without private cars.

Developers Find Their Way to Philadelphia’s Northwest Neighborhoods May 18, 2018 Philadelphia is famously a city of neighborhoods, each with its own cherished set of zoning peculiarities, and the Planning Commission is determined to create a customized growth plan for e­ very one of them. A ­ fter six years of ­going from neighborhood to neighborhood, the commission has now completed seventeen out of eigh­teen district plans. It’s no accident that the last place to undergo this intensive zoning review is the part of the city that includes the leafy, unchanging suburban enclaves of Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy, and Germantown, collectively known as the Northwest. On a map, the area seems to stick out like a big green thumb on the hand of Philadelphia. The Northwest is so culturally and physically distinct that “some ­people forget it’s part of Philadelphia,” says Brad Copeland, who runs Mt. Airy USA, a nonprofit development agency. “Some p­ eople” includes developers. Even as the city’s midsection exploded with new housing construction, the Northwest managed to sit out the boom. The ritzier sections of Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy look pretty much the way they did fifty years ago—­a mixture of attached, porch-­fronted homes and Wissahickon-­stone mansions, surrounded by azalea and hydrangea bushes the size of SUVs. The stores on Germantown Ave­nue may come and go, but the street’s architectural mix has largely remained frozen in amber. ­Until now. With the completion of two mid-­rise apartment buildings on Germantown Ave­nue in Mount Airy, and several more in development, it’s clear that the housing boom’s relentless steamroller has fi­nally reached this quiet corner of Philadelphia.

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The arrival of construction cranes is a mixed blessing. The two new buildings, which have attracted younger residents and new retail tenants, have brought a jolt of vitality to Mount Airy’s commercial district. The issue is what comes a­ fter them. Although the Planning Commission plans to release a draft of its Northwest District Plan at a June 18 meeting, and then submit a final version to City Council, development in Mount Airy is moving on a much faster schedule. ­Because Mount Airy always thought of itself as a built-­out place, the neighborhood is unprepared for this onslaught of new development. Only a handful of buildings are historically protected, Copeland told me, even though the neighborhood is home to some of Philadelphia’s oldest structures. Part of what makes Mount Airy Mount Airy is that so much of its housing was built around the same time, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and works as a cohesive architectural ensemble. Mount Airy could easily suffer the fate of Spruce Hill or Roxborough, where fine Victorian homes and churches are being ruthlessly cut down for their large buildings lots. ­Until the Westview Apartments opened in 2016, most Mount Airy residents ­hadn’t given preservation much thought, Copeland admits. Germantown Ave­nue h­ adn’t seen a single new building since 2000, when Mt. Airy USA completed its headquarters at the corner of Phil Ellena Street. Then came a second apartment building, 6610 Germantown Ave­nue, which displaced an 1880s funeral home. While the old home ­wasn’t a notable design, plenty of o­ thers on the ave­ nue are. Luckily, the Planning Commission just signed off on a historic district for the Lutheran Theological Seminary, which dates to 1864 and includes several ­houses by architect Frank Furness. But Copeland won­ders ­whether a separate district is needed to protect Germantown Ave­nue’s distinctive mixture of colonial, Victorian, art deco, and modernist commercial buildings. It’s worrisome that at least two teardowns have been proposed on Mount Airy’s residential blocks, including a large stone ­house at 601 East Sedgwick, by developers who want to cram more ­houses in the same space. “What differentiates Mount Airy from other places in Philadelphia that have experienced development pressure is that it’s been a ­couple of generations since it made financial sense to do a teardown,” notes Ian Hegarty, the city planner overseeing the Northwest plan.



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It’s no secret why developers have discovered Mount Airy. The area is a suburb-­in-­the-­city, with two commuter rail lines and several buses within an easy walk of most homes. Twenty minutes ­after leaving Center City by train, you can be walking in the forested glades of the Wissahickon. By the standards of Fishtown or Gradu­ate Hospital, housing is a bargain. The neighborhood is starting to see an influx of millennial-­age families. Among them is Kathleen Woestehoff, a tech worker who moved to Mount Airy from Brooklyn with her husband and two young ­children. Woestehoff was drawn by Mount Airy’s racial diversity, which mirrors the neighborhood where she grew up in Brooklyn. The community was on full display, she says, during a recent Parks-­on-­Tap event at the freshly landscaped Lovett Library Park. Woestehoff is ­eager to see the completion of a new per­for­mance venue, the Art Garage, being constructed by Mt. Airy USA, as well as several pocket parks on Germantown Ave­nue. Yet she feels both “excitement and concern” about the coming housing developments. So far the new buildings are attracting ­people who are already in Mount Airy and the Northwest. While the two completed mid-­rises are rentals, developer Ken Weinstein plans to construct nineteen condos inside the Mount Airy Presbyterian Church’s former office building. Most ­will have two or three bedrooms, making them ideal for families and empty nesters. “­We’re hearing from a lot of ­people in Mount Airy who are ready to downsize and want to stay in the community,” Weinstein says. The church conversion is a model proj­ect. Weinstein even plans to lease back the sanctuary to the congregation. Unfortunately, the same ­can’t be said for the new ­Pipers Glen town­houses next to the Acme on Germantown Ave­nue, on the site of the Thomas Ustick Walter’s fire-­damaged Garrett-­ Dunn ­house. Planned by a developer with the unfortunate name of MEH Investments, the layout is oblivious to the busy commercial street on its doorstep. Several of the development’s thirty-­two town­houses w ­ ill sit right on the ave­nue, yet ­there is no retail space on the ground floor. If the poor design ­wasn’t bad enough, construction has been stalled for at least eight months without explanation. Talk about meh. Mount Airy has higher expectations for an apartment ­house on a surface lot at the intersection with Hortter Street, which is being developed by Glen Falso, who developed 6610. His new proposal calls for a four-­story building with sixty apartments, under­ground parking, and a full-­size urban supermarket. While Falso’s first apartment ­house was just a bland box (albeit

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with a brick facade), he promises that this new proj­ect, by M Architects, w ­ ill bring a higher level of design to the ave­nue. Hegarty, the city planner, told me that the Northwest district plan ­will suggest ways to protect the buildings that give Mount Airy its distinctive character. That’s been the promise of other district plans, of course. But as ­we’ve seen on Jewelers Row, it’s easier to make zoning changes than to put historic protections in place. A ­ fter seventeen district plans, it’s time to get the order of operations right.

Fabric Row Make­over October 18, 2013 This was the week of the DesignPhiladelphia festival, but you would have hardly known it in the granddaddy of design districts, South Fourth Street’s Fabric Row. Foot traffic was light. ­There ­were no pre­sen­ta­tions on big topics, no signs touting glamorous parties with beer-­sipping design types. Instead, the business of cutting and selling cloth continued as usual. At Jack B. Fabrics, two generations of Blumenthals gathered on Friday after­ noon around the shop’s battered worktable, the sole clearing in a thick forest of upright fabric bolts. A lone c­ ouple wandered the aisles of upholstery fabric, methodically fingering the material, but left empty-­handed. Sherie Abrams busied herself by rewinding old bolts, while her f­ather, and the store’s namesake, Jack Blumenthal, dispensed fabric wisdom from his perch on a plastic cafe chair. The ­couple would be back, he predicted. If business is slower than it once was, the Blumenthals and other third-­ and fourth-­generation fabric merchants a­ ren’t complaining. Th ­ ey’re just glad ­there is still a Fabric Row. Like so many distinctive commercial districts in Philadelphia, Fabric Row is morph­ing into something new. For generations, Philadelphians have gone to Fourth Street to acquire raw materials for bridal gowns, prom dresses, and furniture upholstery. But in the last few years, the surrounding area—­once populated by Jewish immigrants who provided both Fabric Row’s customers and workers—­has been transformed by a new generation of middle-­class homeowners. A wide range of new specialty shops have followed, filling storefronts that are still



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e­ tched with the names of old fabric families: Kincus, Friedman, Goldberg, and Spivak. Then in April, a fast-­moving fire swept through the original Jack B. store on the southwest corner of Fitzwater Street, causing the building to collapse and killing a veteran Philadelphia fire captain, Michael Goodwin. Retailers ­were stunned when a second blaze hit the block in August. It started in an upper-­floor apartment but shuttered Anh’s Custom Tailors downstairs on the corner of Catharine Street. The Blumenthals immediately reopened Jack  B. across the street and began making plans to rebuild on their damaged lot. Anh’s also is expected to return. Yet it is reasonable to won­der how much longer Fourth Street ­will be able to call itself Fabric Row. Even before the one-­two punch of the fires, which ­were both determined to be accidental, the industry’s dominance was clearly waning. Since 2009, the percentage of stores between Bainbridge and Queen Streets—­the bound­aries of Fabric Row—­that sell textiles and notions has dropped from 45 ­percent of the total to 28 ­percent, according to a new study by the Community Design Collaborative undertaken on behalf of the South Street Head­house District. T ­ oday it’s just as easy to buy organic vegetables or a bike helmet on Fourth Street as a yard of good chenille. All neighborhoods go through cycles, even if many lament the changes. “They used to call this South Philadelphia. Now it’s Queen Village,” marveled Rose Blumenthal, the third-­generation owner of Jack B. and a cousin to the ­owners of B. Wilk and Maxie’s ­Daughter, two of the street’s most prominent retailers. “You hate to see a bicycle shop come in, but it’s so much better than an empty storefront,” she said. The evolution of Fourth Street i­ sn’t much dif­fer­ent from what is happening now to the city’s other distinctive enclaves—­from the Italian Market to the Gayborhood—­where the conditions that once bound specific groups of ­people and businesses together no longer exist. Of course, it’s how change gets managed that ­matters. In an effort to preserve Fabric Row’s essential character, the Design Collaborative is putting the final touches on a plan for the street. It’s a balancing act, aimed at stabilizing its traditional businesses while also encouraging new ones to continue locating in the district. ­Those recommendations follow many of the familiar approaches for treating ailing commercial corridors: sidewalk extensions at the corners,

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better lighting, and strategic greening. But each idea has been crafted with the aim of “holding on to the Fabric Row brand,” said Robin Kohles, who is overseeing the plan, which still requires funding from the city Commerce Department. What that means is playing up the street’s fabric heritage. The corner extensions would be paved in a “fabric pattern.” Merchants are being encouraged to take down their security gates and install bright fabric awnings. Of course, t­ here would be cloth banners announcing Fabric Row. They would hang from the street’s old trolley poles, another vestige of its past. Kohler acknowledges that “­there is something ironic in branding the street as Fabric Row when ­there is less and less fabric.” But she and ­others still see a value in emphasizing the street’s past. Even if the newcomers ­don’t sell fabric, they often deal in related products, such as vintage clothing, noted Elena Brennan, a London transplant who founded Bus Stop, a shoe store. ­There also has been a mini-­influx of tailor shops and upholsterers, including several owned by recent immigrants from Asia and Africa. Judy Bucksbaum, whose grandparents founded Marmelstein’s, also hopes that by improving the street’s physical conditions, more fabric store ­owners ­will be inspired to modernize their businesses. That’s already happening. She s­topped selling small stuff, like buttons and thread, to concentrate on high-­end upholstery and drapery fabric. At Maxie’s ­Daughter, Eric Trobman has created a side business providing upholstered banquettes to the city’s restaurants. Among the cluttered aisles of Jack B. Fabric, it might look like nothing has changed since the Blumenthals’ grandparents started the business a ­century ago. But t­ here is one innovation that i­sn’t vis­i­ble: they now have a webpage.

Reinventing South Philadelphia’s Last Catholic School December 22, 2017 When p­ eople want to disparage the design of a school building, they say it looks like a prison. For Saints John Neumann and Maria Goretti High School in South Philadelphia, that description had been unfortunately all



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too accurate. A forbidding chain-­link fence topped with a coil of barbed wire sealed off the beige, ’50s building from the surrounding row­house neighborhood. The entrance was impossible to find, and inside ­there was no lobby. If you managed to breach the school’s front doors in 2015, you would have found yourself standing in a dark cinder-­block stairwell, uncertain ­whether to go up or down or abandon hope entirely. Neumann-­Goretti is a far friendlier place ­today, with a bushy rain garden sprouting on its front lawn and a brightly painted entrance hall. The barbed wire has come down, and PSAT scores have gone up. For the first time in de­cades, freshman enrollment increased this year, by a substantial 18 ­percent. That Neumann-­Goretti was able to make so much pro­gress so fast is a story that runs ­counter to the dire predictions made a­ fter the Archdiocese of Philadelphia shuttered nearly forty schools in 2012. Though a new emphasis on academics has helped it survive, the Catholic high school—­the last one standing in South Philadelphia—­also owes its pro­gress to innovative design ideas borrowed from millennial office culture. That includes every­ thing from Ikea furniture in the library to cornhole games and AstroTurf in the cafeteria. Neumann-­Goretti was built at a time when regimentation and discipline ­were prized. The notion that students should feel welcome seems to have been overlooked by its architects (whose identity has long since been forgotten). Its harsh appearance might not have mattered in the days when South Philadelphia Catholics automatically sent their ­children to the nearest church school. But with Catholic education facing intense competition from Philadelphia’s invigorated (and tuition-­free) public schools and charters, Neumann-­Goretti’s menacing look had become a big liability. Even ­after Neumann-­Goretti succeeded in raising its academic per­for­ mance in 2016, enrollment continued to plummet. At one point the student body fell below 500, down from a high of 3,000 in the glory days of the ’70s, when it was an all-­girls acad­emy called Saint Maria Goretti. You could feel the footsteps reverberate through the empty halls. “­There was no energy,” says Bruce Robinson, a corporate executive who was recruited in 2015 to run the school. In desperation, he made a phone call to the Community Design Collaborative, a nonprofit run by the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects. That conversation began a partnership that has helped

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the cash-­strapped institution make informed decisions about its building and access grants to pay for a series of small but power­ful renovations. “We like to say we provide the first 5 ­percent,” says Mayva Donnon of KSS Architects, who led the collaborative’s pro bono design team. Tearing down the barbed-­wire fence turned out to be the easy part. “I knew I wanted to rip it out the minute I saw it,” says Robinson, who was succeeded this year by Joseph M. McColgan. But Robinson soon realized that removing the barrier was just the first step to improving Neumann-­ Goretti’s image with prospective students and the fast-­gentrifying Passyunk Square and Wharton neighborhoods. Although Neumann-­Goretti is no longer the go-to high school for South Philadelphia Catholics, Robinson still sees its mission as providing a quality education “to aspirational families trying to break out of poverty.” Even by the standards of Philadelphia’s legacy schools, Neumann-­Goretti is a handful of a building, sprawling across four acres on South Tenth Street, between Watkins and Mifflin. B ­ ecause the compound includes convents, dormitories, and other structures, it was fenced in de­cades ago to deter vandals. That pretty much ruined the school’s curb appeal with prospective students. Yet ­because Neumann-­Goretti was barely making ends meet, it had few resources to pay for improvements. With help from the collaborative’s architects, Neumann-­Goretti was able to devise a renovation strategy without laying out scarce funds upfront. “We walked the property and pointed out the ­things that would have maximum impact visually,” explains Donnon. Over several meetings, they mapped out a series of low-­cost improvements that could be completed in phases. The initial bud­get was a modest $250,000. When that proved beyond Neumann-­Goretti’s fund­-­rais­ing abilities, the school had to use its wits. Fortunately, it had just hired an operations man­ag­er who was a whiz with a paintbrush. Jennifer Cooper scoured the empty classrooms for t­ables and chairs and painted them bright colors. The rest came from Ikea. All in all, the interior improvements cost $50,000. At the architects’ suggestion, Neumann-­Goretti concentrated on the two main social spaces: the library and the cafeteria. Neither had been renovated since the school opened in 1956, and they ­were still furnished with hard chairs and ­tables arranged in straight rows. In the library, floor-­to-­ ceiling bookcases blocked the natu­ral light.



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That space is now called the Knowledge Lab, and it could be mistaken for the common area of one of Philadelphia’s hip coworking spaces. Soft chairs and sofas can be pulled into a circle for drama classes. But ­there are also ­tables and chairs where students can do schoolwork. B ­ ecause every­one at Neumann-­Goretti gets a laptop, Cooper and Robinson de­cided to reduce the amount of space devoted to shelving, following a trend in some city libraries. The cafeteria was given a similar treatment to make it feel cozier and less formal. Although standard lunch ­tables are still used, students can choose to sit at high tops, lounge on sofas, or spread out on a small amphitheater fitted with outlets to charge computers. The new black, yellow, and acid-­ green color scheme gives the large room a jolt of visual caffeine. Outside, where the barbed-­wire fence once stood, a trench is now being seeded for a lush rain garden, paid for with a $50,000 grant from the Philadelphia ­Water Department. The off-­putting solid doors that served as the school’s main entrance have been replaced with glass ones, letting natu­ral light into the entry stairwell for the first time. Neumann-­Goretti still ­doesn’t have a real lobby. But a new supergraphic mural in the stairwell makes clear to visitors that ­they’ve arrived. The word “welcome” is spelled out in ­giant letters.

Premium Old City Park Space Goes to the Dogs—­Literally August 3, 2018 Dogs of Philadelphia! The park at Second and Market is the place to hang. ­There’s a huge uninterrupted lawn where we can scratch, sniff, and do our business in a luxurious private setting, with the beautifully crafted, Georgian-­style Christ Church as our backdrop. It’s true you must keep your handler on a leash, but y­ ou’re unlikely to be both­ered by small ­humans grabbing at your just-­groomed tail, since ­we’ve thoroughly mined the grass with stink bombs. Anyway, the lawn’s faux, colonial-­style fence and high brick walls keep most of them out. The two-­legged types who do manage to find the hidden entrance usually keep to the edges, where they lap from ­bottles in brown paper bags. So enjoy! Thanks to the National Park Ser­vice, this prime piece of Old City parkland belongs to the four-­legged.

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You should be aware, however, that forces are now conspiring to take our land from us. The Old City District, the business improvement group for the neighborhood, has hired a bunch of con­sul­tants to study ways to make our territory—­ which the Park Ser­ vice calls Wilson Park—­ easier for ­humans to enter and use. ­Because the park is at the epicenter of Old City, near restaurants and shops, and next to the Market-­Frankford train entrance, they think it should function more like a town square, rather than a cloistered club for canines. ­These consultants—­Jonas Maciunas’s JVM Studio, Ground Reconsidered landscape architects, and Think.Urban—­are holding meetings and ­will be sending out survey-­takers on Wednesday, August 8, between 2 and 7 p.m., to talk to p­ eople at the weekly farmers market in front of Christ Church. ­There have been whispers about removing the fence around Wilson Park, which would utterly destroy our privacy. They want an entrance at Second and Market so any two-­legged person who happens to wander by can find his way in. ­They’re also demanding chairs and benches for the lawn too. Our lawn! Next ­thing you know, ­they’ll try to confine us to an enclosure, or get rid of us entirely. Fortunately, the Park Ser­vice ­people who run In­de­pen­dence National Historic Park are completely on our side. ­They’re preparing to get the fence and lawn listed on the National Historic Register. That would mean that Wilson Park, which was designed in 1951 by Charles E. Peterson and opened in 1963, could never, ever be changed. Like us dogs, they think it’s fine just the way it is: weedy, run-­down, inaccessible, with generous patches of dirt just right for digging. Our interests align. The Park Ser­vice, which controls fifty-­five acres in Old City, has always been good at discouraging two-­legged folk from using its archipelago of green spaces. Although some of ­these parks are very pretty and provide a quiet refuge from the noisy city, none offers anything that ­humans might recognize as an amenity, other than the occasional bench and tree. Most have enclosures that get locked at night. And since the Park Ser­vice is perennially underfunded, the parks have become scruffy places. As Doris Fanelli, who has been ­running the Division of Cultural Resources Management since 1973—­three years before the Bicentennial—­ told Inquirer reporter Inga Saffron, the park is meant to be passive. Despite being fenced in, often by brick walls, “we think ­these parks are very welcoming and accessible,” she says. Maciunas, who has conducted extensive user



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surveys at Wilson Park, disagrees: “It’s become the Dog Park at Christ Church.” You might not know how our beloved lawn at Wilson Park came to be. In the ’50s and ’60s, Philadelphia went on a massive urban renewal spree, demolishing ­whole blocks of nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century buildings in Old City to create a national park celebrating Amer­i­ca’s founding. Only eighteenth-­century buildings ­were spared. The parks ­were laid out to serve as forecourts for colonial monuments like Carpenters Hall and the Second Bank. This created lots of open space for us. It’s true that the original vision for the national park called for leveling only a block or two near In­de­pen­dence Hall to protect that hallowed building from fire. But the urban renewalists kept g­ oing. In­de­pen­dence Mall expanded from one block to three. The buildings in front of Christ Church, Old Saint Joseph’s, and Saint George’s United Methodist w ­ ere all leveled for small parks that gave passersby picturesque views of the structures. (Dogs, be sure to check out Old Saint Joseph’s park. Absolutely no ­humans ever step inside the fence, and t­ here is a big abandoned vegetable bed that is just right for excavation.) ­Because the parks ­were ­really about the views, the landscaping was minimal, basically just a plot of green ringed with a colonial-­style fence and outfitted with brick paths. Such blank expanses of lawn w ­ ere very popu­lar in the ’50s, when Amer­i­ca was falling in love with low-­density suburbs. ­People ­were convinced they ­were realizing William Penn’s vision of a “greene country town” and creating a more au­then­tic version of Colonial Williamsburg. In fact, this collection of freestanding colonial buildings surrounded by lawn was always a big fiction. By the mid-1700s, colonial Philadelphia had become a dense j­umble of town­houses, ware­houses, small factories, shops, bars, and churches. T ­ oday a typical tourist would never know that In­de­pen­ dence Park was once the bustling heart of Philadelphia’s original downtown. One reason the national park was able to gobble up so much real estate is that Old City had pretty much emptied out by the ’50s, when planning for In­de­pen­dence Park began. As recently as 1980, only 854 ­people ­were living ­there (and very few dogs). But that has changed, which is why the ­humans are now gunning for control of  Wilson Park. So many old ware­houses have been converted to apartments that the ­human population now stands at 5,224. Over a thousand new apartments are ­under construction, according to Job Itzkowitz, head of Old City

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District. Initially, Old City was seen as a nightlife district. But ­after conducting a planning study in 2016, the district realized Old City had evolved into a living, breathing residential neighborhood again. Yet b­ ecause it had been abandoned for so long, “­there’s no playground, no rec center, and very ­little green space,” Itzkowitz said. The ­humans think that Wilson Park has the potential to become the Fitler Square or Cianfrani Park of Old City, a neighborhood park where kids play ­after school and residents gather for Christmas tree lightings and movie nights. It’s almost identical in size to t­ hose two examples. Old City District would raise the money to upgrade the landscape design and maintain the grounds. The dogs ­don’t like that, and neither does the Park Ser­vice. Even though the design of  Wilson Park is just fifty-­five years old, and a colonial pastiche, Fanelli argues that it is historic b­ ecause it reflects the ideas that led to In­de­ pen­dence Park’s creation. “We would consider it an adverse effect if it ­were modified,” she said. In other words, she wants the park to remain a monument to the misguided ideas of urban renewal. This is what an architecture critic would say: cities have clawed their way back since the ’60s, partly by transforming their precious public spaces into outdoor living rooms where residents can socialize and enjoy themselves. Wilson Park is a legacy of a time when parks ­were intended as static stage sets for architectural monuments. Even Christ Church’s pastor, the Reverend Timothy Safford, is keen on seeing a redesign to serve the neighborhood. But right now, he says, the Park Ser­vice is so devoted to maintaining the purity of the current landscape that it forbids the church’s farmers market from straying onto its sidewalk. So ­here’s an idea that might help the Park Ser­vice get used to a changing city: Do a trial run. Scatter some colorful t­ ables and chairs that ­will be vis­i­ ble to p­ eople on Market Street. Let them bring a snack or beer from the farmers market into the park. To help them find the entrance, hang a big sign pointing to the gates. If the Park Ser­vice thinks ­these changes are too radical, include a picture of Benjamin Franklin, who was a member of Christ Church. If he ­were around, he would surely be telling them that parks are by the p­ eople, for the ­people.



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Who’s ­Really in Charge of Philadelphia’s Planning Policy October 19, 2018 Who makes planning policy in this town? Hint: It’s not the Philadelphia Planning Commission. Sure, the commission just wrapped up a citywide master plan, a proj­ect that took six long years and includes eigh­teen individualized neighborhood plans. It’s busy redrawing the city’s zoning maps to reflect a new commitment to density and walkability. Only last week it issued an impor­tant new housing report that calls for beefing up density around transit stations. But none of that m ­ atters to the Zoning Board of Adjustment, the agency that, thanks to the peculiarities of the city’s Home Rule Charter, has the last word on Philadelphia’s land-­use issues. The current zoning board, chaired by the lobbyist and former councilman Frank DiCicco, routinely tosses the commission’s detailed reports in the trash with a wink and a smirk and then goes about making planning policy on the fly. The board did it again October  3 when it voted 5-0 to allow Michael Grasso’s Metro Development to install a self-­storage fa­cil­it­y at Broad and Spring Garden Streets. ­Because t­ hose storage operations generate no foot traffic, they create a dead zone in the m ­ iddle of urban neighborhoods. His would have a retail tenant on the ground floor, but that’s not enough to bring life to the proj­ect. No self-­respecting city allows storage units downtown, and happily, they are prohibited in most of Center City. Grasso’s property at 1314-32 Spring Garden occupies the far edge of the central core, in an area that should be a thriving commercial and residential district. In case ­you’re having trou­ble picturing it, the site is fifty paces from the Broad Street Line, a ten-­minute stroll from City Hall, three short blocks from the new Rail Park—­you know, the $10 million showpiece that is supposed to help jump-­start development in the former industrial quadrant north of Vine Street. ­Under the current zoning, Grasso could legally build just about anything on this piece of ground: an apartment tower, an office building, row­houses. When the 2,000-­square-­foot surface parking lot was remapped in 2015, it was assigned one of the city’s densest zoning classifications, CMX-4. Grasso also has more financial wiggle room than many developers. Unlike his colleagues, who have to pay a king’s ransom to get their hands on a well-­located

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site, Grasso picked up this one in 1994 for $350,000. That’s peanuts in t­ oday’s market. The Planning Commission vigorously objected when Grasso put forward his proposal for the ­giant public closet on Spring Garden’s eclectic boulevard. So did the Callowhill Neighborhood Association. Councilman Mark Squilla also weighed in, urging the zoning board to reject Grasso’s variance request. Yet members ignored them, even the district councilperson, and handed Grasso his variance on a silver platter. (Hey, d­ oesn’t councilmanic prerogative mean anything anymore?) It’s not the first time since Mayor Kenney took office that the board has handed down a decision that runs contrary to the rules of good planning. To the astonishment of just about every­one, its members last year tried to block the Post B ­ rothers com­pany—­considered public ­enemy number one by Philadelphia’s power­ful construction unions—­from turning an empty ware­house at Ninth and Poplar Streets into apartments, even though dozens of similar buildings in Philadelphia have been converted to residential use. The zoning board’s ruling was ­later overturned by the courts. This one could be too. The city has elected to appeal the decision of its own agency, according to a statement provided by Anne Fadullon, who runs the Department of Planning and Development. While this ­isn’t the first time the city has sued itself, it’s not exactly a regular occurrence. Does that mean the zoning board has gone rogue? All its members w ­ ere appointed by Kenney. While they are meant to operate f­ ree of po­liti­cal interference, one would presume the mayor would select members who subscribe to his administration’s policy goals. Fadullon, also a Kenney appointee, has been an advocate for density, good urbanism, and affordable housing. Listen to her view on the board’s vote, which came in a statement: “Spring Garden should be part of a vibrant, mixed-­use corridor. It is zoned to accomplish that goal. A storage fa­cil­i­ty, however, would create a dead spot in what should be a thriving neighborhood.” The ­thing about variances is that they are not automatic. Developers have to earn them by proving the existing zoning rules are impossible to sustain without incurring financial hardship. What was Grasso’s hardship? The operator of the proposed self-­storage fa­cil­i­ty, Johnson Development Associates, pointed to the drug rehab center next door. But the presence of Gaudenzia ­hasn’t ­stopped other developers—­



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Eric Blumenfeld, Bart Blatstein, Arts & Crafts Holdings—­from bringing in housing and offices. Just this week, Blumenfeld announced his desire to construct a thirty-­ story skyscraper across the street from Grasso’s parking lot and next to his Mural Lofts apartments. Blatstein installed 200 apartments in the former State Office Building at the corner of Broad. Why even Grasso himself has developed a condo tower on the block. He also played down the presence of Gaudenzia, despite the operator’s claims of hardship. “Gaudenzia is a ­great neighbor,” he told me. “With all t­hese new apartments coming on board, ­there’s a need for self-­storage.” That’s his view, but t­ here is no reason the zoning board should buy into it. The board’s decision has implications that go far beyond this one proj­ect. Grasso, who has been working as a developer since the ’70s, owns, by his count, forty properties on Spring Garden. This summer he proposed a proj­ ect for a huge surface parking lot at Front Street that violates a de­cade of waterfront planning: a combination Wawa gas station and 320-­car parking garage. Of course, he needs a variance for that. Grasso’s main interest seems to be in bagging retail tenants. The six-­story self-­storage fa­cil­i­ty provides him with a 10,000-­square-­foot retail space. While that’s better than just a blank-­faced self-­storage building, it still ­doesn’t justify the proj­ect. If we keep giving out variances, the Spring Garden Street corridor would be turned into a suburban strip, lined with drive-in con­ve­nience stores. The Planning Commission has spent years refining its zoning code to ensure that Philadelphia remains the dense, lively, urban place it was meant to be. Thousands of citizens helped create ­those policies by attending public hearings. Radical change s­ houldn’t be made by one developer. Mayor Kenney, whom do you want making policy—­the experts, or an out-­of-­control zoning board?

Comcast’s New Skyscraper Syncs Its Architecture to the Rhythm of the City January 13, 2019 As Philadelphia’s tallest skyscraper, the new Comcast Technology Center at Eigh­teenth and Arch ­will inevitably be judged by how it looks among the

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clouds. ­People ­will debate w ­ hether its telescoping, art deco–­inspired mast resembles a vulgar hand gesture or looks more like a cigarette being extracted from its box. That’s what happens when you aim for the heavens; your skyscraper becomes a Rorschach test for the public imagination. What I see when I look at the new Norman Foster–­designed tower is a dynamic, elegant building that has visibly dragged the Center City skyline westward. On a foggy night, shrouded in clouds, its signature switchblade mast looks like something out of Batman’s Gotham, mysterious and brooding. (The daytime views are another ­matter.) The 1,121-­foot building has a slim, almost Gothic profile that pleasingly echoes but, sadly, does not surpass Foster’s most impor­tant skyscraper design, the HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong. I also see a ­giant zipper cinching a stylized corset. When we talk about skyscrapers, it’s almost impossible not to become obsessed with a building’s exterior imagery. The ­thing is, the skyline view is prob­ably the least newsworthy t­hing about Comcast’s tower, its second downtown building since 2008. Sure, the sixty-­story glass-­and-­steel tower has cracked the top-­ten list of Amer­i­ca’s tallest skyscrapers (for now, anyway) and ­will form the peak of Center City’s architectural cardiogram for a long time. But Comcast had to resort to some serious sleight of hand to reach that pinnacle. Without its 210-­foot mast, Comcast’s Technology Center would be only a single story taller than its first skyscraper, the 975-­foot Comcast Center by Robert A. M. Stern. What the new Comcast tower offers Philadelphia is something far more meaningful and lasting than a mere height rec­ord. The new tower is the rare, globally produced, corporate behemoth that speaks directly to its hometown, intimately, with affection. You can almost hear the c’mon and the jawn echo from the lobby’s end-­grain wood tiles, reclaimed from old factories. Where Comcast soars is on the ground and in the numerous public spaces that weave through the building, syncing the tower to the rhythms of Philadelphia. The Comcast Technology Center has been a long time coming. Originally expected in 2017, the $1.5 billion skyscraper is a year ­behind schedule and potentially $67 million over bud­get. Strips of protective blue tape still shield the facade’s metal trim, and the contractor has yet to remove the construction barriers from Arch Street. A Four Seasons h­ otel, which w ­ ill occupy the glass wafer that rests on top of the corset, ­won’t be ready for



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guests u­ ntil sometime this spring. They include Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who has taken an entire floor for a private apartment. Despite the tower’s prolonged gestation, Comcast’s 4,000 engineers and software designers w ­ ere able to move into their open-­plan work spaces last month. The building, which is jointly owned by Comcast (80 ­percent) and the developer Liberty Property Trust, is effectively open for business—­and ready for review. To access the office floors, employees and visitors enter on Eigh­teenth Street through a latticelike canopy that leads into a soaring bird’s nest of a lobby. Fitted out with floor-­to-­ceiling wooden scrim and planted with a forest of twisting ficus trees, that capacious glass room is a knock-­your-­ socks-­off way of saying hello. On the ceiling, a Jenny Holzer digital ticker energizes the space with a constant stream of words about Philadelphia, while a mirrored, multifaceted kite sculpture by Conrad Shawcross grounds the massive room and provides a central visual focus. Best of all, the seventy-­foot-­high lobby is entirely public. Although the furniture has yet to arrive, y­ ou’re ­free to wander around. Take the escalator to the mezzanine and order a gourmet pretzel at the Vernick Coffee bar or a sit-­down meal at the restaurant. It ­will set you back a few bucks, but it’s worth it to bask in the luxury of light and space. If you hang around long enough, you might even be able to figure out what Comcast has planned for the enormous white sphere that remains ­under wraps in the mezzanine’s south corner. Even more than the winter garden at the first Comcast tower, this lobby feels like a public living room. Comcast plans to set up a farmers market on the ramp leading to the SEPTA concourse. Once the Four Seasons opens, the high-­speed glass elevators on Nineteenth Street are likely to become the greatest carnival ­ride in town. In less than a minute, t­ hey’ll speed visitors to the h­ otel’s forty-­foot-­high lounge and restaurant, another spectacular glass room where the public is welcome. But if you want to understand what makes this such a deeply Philadelphia design, you’ll have to walk outside to Arch Street. ­Because the site is long and narrow, Foster conceived of the proj­ect as two separate pieces—­one horizontal, the other vertical. The horizontal piece—­a shoebox-­shaped podium—­runs the length of the block between Eigh­teenth and Nineteenth Streets. Comcast’s slim new tower rises from the ­middle of this long podium, hoisted up on massive columns.

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The aesthetic treatment is so dif­fer­ent, you might think the two pieces had dif­fer­ent architects. The tower is light and airy, faced mainly in glass that has been crisply detailed with thin metal bands and the distinctive, zigzagging corset. Its facade sparkles in the sunshine. The podium, on the other hand, is virtually opaque. The seventy-­foot-­ high shoebox has been so tightly wrapped in strips of corrugated metal that ­there are only narrow slits for win­dows above the ground floor. What gives? As it turns out, ­those corrugated bands ­were inspired by the steel train cars manufactured at the old Budd plant in North Philadelphia. Like racing stripes on a sports car, they infuse the podium with a sense of motion. The corrugated bands transform the podium into a speeding locomotive, shooting through the legs of Foster’s supermodern tower. Taken as meta­phor, the design suggests that the tower housing Comcast’s media and tech empire rests on the legacy of Philadelphia’s industrial past. This ­isn’t a mere design conceit. Foster grew up in Manchester, E ­ ngland, a city that, like Philadelphia, suffered the ravages of deindustrialization and is only now finding its way back through new industries like tech. The tower’s architects—­Foster & Partners, Gensler, Daroff Design, and Kendall Heaton Associates—­carry the theme of a resurgent industrial city through the entire building. You can see it reflected in the main work spaces, which have been left a bit rough to evoke Philadelphia’s many repurposed factory lofts. Gensler, which designed the interiors, fills the office and social spaces with wood ele­ ments—­ rough-­ hewn planks, smooth midcentury furniture, old-­ timey bookcases—to offset Foster’s slick, machine-­age sensibility. Rather than painting over markings made by contractor LF Driscoll during construction, ­those crude calculations have been left exposed to emphasize that even a building of this size and complexity is the work of ­human beings. That aesthetic is a long way from the marble-­slathered corporate office towers that defined American cities in the ’90s. Comcast is, of course, a major corporate power that exerts enormous influence over our daily lives, but Foster uses his im­mense skills to pre­sent the com­pany in a softer light. The irony, of course, is that Foster has become the go-to architect for the world’s biggest media-­tech conglomerates. Just in the last year, he rolled out new headquarters for Apple in California and for Bloomberg in London’s financial district. Both buildings are even more deluxe and bespoke than Comcast.



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Of ­those three proj­ects, Comcast’s is the most committed to forging connections with the larger world. While the Bloomberg headquarters includes restaurants on the ground floor, its lobby and interior spaces are as fortified as Fort Knox. Apple is many times worse. It sits in splendid isolation b­ ehind a security perimeter on a 175-­acre suburban campus. Both are ­temples where the engineer-­gods cook up new ways to keep us connected to our devices. In contrast, Comcast weaves its building directly into the fabric of the city—­through a pristine, art-­filled SEPTA concourse; through a new, midblock crosswalk on Eigh­teenth Street; through its restaurant, theaters, and ballroom. By making its new tower accessible to the public, Comcast offers a dif­fer­ent, and far preferable, model for the architecture of tech. None of ­those innovations is apparent when you gaze at the new tower from afar. Comcast’s strength is not its form, which is essentially a two-­tier slab. It is not a sculptural tower, like Foster’s offices for Hearst in New York, although it does share a similar visual ele­ment: the diagonal trusses that zigzag up the sides of the tower. ­Those are a kind of exoskeleton, supporting the structure so it can stand upright. The trusses ­were necessary b­ ecause of the tower’s asymmetrical organ­ization, which placed the elevator core off to the side rather than in the center. John Gattuso, the Liberty Property executive who oversaw the tower’s creation, describes the diagonal braces as “bones” and says they are meant to contrast with the slick “skin” of Comcast’s first tower. That first Comcast tower was often criticized (unfairly) for lacking a spire. While the new tower satisfies the popu­lar demand for a crowning ornament, the mast’s design falls flat in the cruel light of day. As it telescopes up, the metal panels change color, from light gray to dark gray and back again. The mismatch was apparently caused by the louvers embedded in the mast to allow steam to exhaust from the building. Their openings make the gray metal appear darker than it is. For such a refined work of architecture, the effect is surprisingly cheesy. It’s a significant flaw, but not a fatal one. As a work of Philadelphia architecture, this tower offers the most fully realized aesthetic vision for a skyscraper since the PSFS tower was completed in 1932. That’s not to say it rises to the same level of historical significance. It prob­ably ­can’t even match the importance of Liberty Place, which gave Philadelphia a new way of thinking about itself as a city. But by integrating the new tower in the life and history

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of Philadelphia, Foster and Comcast have shown that it is pos­si­ble to reconcile the needs of a big tech com­pany with our demo­cratic values.

Why Philly Should Be Amazon East September 14, 2017 Dear Amazon,

That ­little package you delivered last week to Amer­i­ca’s biggest cities was pure marketing genius, on par with your announcement about cutting prices at Whole Foods. Now ­you’ve got hundreds of municipal officials elbow-­deep in the research necessary to find you a home for your second headquarters. ­You’ve launched the equivalent of Survivor: The Urban Edition, except in this version, the winner pays you. The nation’s urbanist pundits ­haven’t wasted any time in handicapping the contestants. Before the first day’s news cycle was over, the New York Times’ “Upshot” column had declared Denver the winner. The Brookings Institute’s transportation guy likes Charlotte, North Carolina. Creative-­ class guru Richard Florida believes Washington, D.C., is the natu­ral choice. Bloomberg reported that Boston has a lock on the contest. ­These are all fine, lively places where I w ­ ouldn’t mind spending a long weekend. But ­because you want a city where you can grow your com­pany to 50,000 employees over the next twenty years, you need a home base that can hold your interest over the long term. It has to have a strong sense of place, a rich cultural life, ­great transit connections, and lots of infrastructure-­ ready land that is close to both the business center and top universities. Let me suggest a location that has all ­these qualities and also has proven its appeal for 300-­plus years: Philadelphia. Although you ­didn’t say this in your request for proposals, I’m guessing that you want a location that offers a dif­fer­ent point of view from your current home in Seattle. The East Coast would provide that corollary, as well as a jumping-­off point to colonize Eu­rope. Denver is ­really a high-­altitude version of Seattle, but with a more incon­ve­niently located airport. Your proposal smartly expressed a desire for the trinity of ­great urbanism: density, walkability, diversity. Of all the metropolises on the Northeast Corridor, none offers a better version of that mix, at a more affordable price,



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than Philadelphia. Where e­ lse can you have all the fruits of density and still live in a single-­family home? Any home buyers you bring in from Seattle are ­going to have reverse sticker shock. We’ve got some ­great, transit-­accessible suburbs too. I realize I’m biased, having migrated to Philadelphia three de­cades ago from a large-­ish city ninety miles to the north. But this gritty-­around-­the-­ edges former manufacturing town is ­really a place where you can dig in, make a life, and be anything you want to be. It’s an old city that is authentically au­then­tic yet crackles with youthful vigor. Our median age, 34.1, is among the lowest of American cities. We’ve got millennials and makers coming out of the woodwork, which ensures a deep pool of talent to staff your headquarters. To be honest, ­we’re not turning out quite as many software engineers as some of our competition, such as Pittsburgh. Historically w ­ e’ve been more of a medical research and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal town. But our marquee tech com­pany, Comcast, ­hasn’t had any trou­ble pulling in engineers or executives. Besides, like Comcast, ­you’re about so much more than tech ­these days, judging by your own­er’s forays into the journalism, film, and grocery businesses. Right now, Philadelphia’s two top business promoters, Department of Commerce director Harold Epps and Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. president John Grady, are hunkered down, working full-­time to prepare a pitch laying out all the details so they can make your October  19 deadline. ­They’ve got a scouting trip to Seattle planned l­ ater this month. Dozens of other cities are d­ oing the same. But this exercise in self-­ promotion is something new for us in Philadelphia. Two de­cades ago, when the city was on the ropes and its very survival in question, no one ­here would have dared to engage in this sort of public chest-­thumping. It’s not that Philadelphia ­didn’t have its charms; it’s just that the layers of neglect made them hard to see. But as the city has boomed with new construction and regained population and jobs—­outpacing New York in the rate of growth, by the way—it has shed that inferiority complex. “­We’re ­really excited to tell that story now,” Grady told me. The city knows the competition is stiff. ­There ­isn’t an American city ­these days that ­hasn’t rediscovered its core and populated it with millennial precincts and high-­design cafés selling four-­dollar lattes. What’s nice about Philadelphia, though, is that our downtown was never destroyed. It’s the

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real deal, open to serendipitous juxtapositions of high and low, old and modern, soaring glass high-­rises and toylike Colonial row­houses. Philadelphia ­isn’t one of t­ hose cities with one or two hot neighborhoods; it has dozens, each with its own distinctive identity and populated by committed old-­timers and passionate newcomers. They may disagree about certain ­things, but they always end the discussion with a block party. And speaking of parties, you ­won’t find a more hospitable city. In the last three years, ­we’ve hosted the Demo­cratic Party’s national convention, the pope, and the NFL draft. All ­those millennials pack our downtown sidewalks and waterfront trails and sometimes make it annoyingly difficult to get last-­minute restaurant reservations on Saturday night. Of course, Washington, Boston, and New York have similarly eclectic centers, but t­hey’re pricey places b­ ecause ­they’re already chock-­a-­block with tech companies. I can imagine you might be tempted by Baltimore and Newark, New Jersey, which are more affordable and similarly connected by Amtrak. But Philadelphia’s got the superior location, midway between Washington and New York, the nation’s po­liti­cal and financial capitals. It’s one reason why Forbes thinks ­we’re the city to beat. Better still, Philadelphia has a huge chunk of land next to Thirtieth Street Station with more property than you could ever hope to absorb. That fledgling innovation district, called Schuylkill Yards, is walking distance to both Center City and the universities. And the land is controlled by a single real estate entity, which means no bidding war for property as your headquarters grows. ­Because ­we’re upriver from the ocean, we can fairly confidently predict that the city ­won’t be inundated by sea-­level rise. More than any of our competition, Philadelphia has size—­twice as many ­people as Denver, Charlotte, D.C., or Boston, not to mention Seattle. Bigness brings a thrilling diversity. The “City of Brotherly Love” i­sn’t merely a quaint old phrase we like to trot out. The mix has made us attuned to difference in a way that is crucial to the success of modern companies such as Amazon. No one is passing laws ­here telling you which bathroom you can use. We know we have some weaknesses. No one likes the wage tax, and the city has been slow to cut it down to size. Philadelphia may be rich in architecture and culture but strug­gles to make ends meet. Our schools are underfunded, as with many places. We w ­ ill never be able to offer you $1 million a head to locate your headquarters h­ ere, the way Governor Christie did with Subaru in Camden. Anyway, cities that pay more than $50,000 an employee



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­ ill never break even, according to Greg LeRoy, at Good Jobs First, a think w tank that studies corporate subsidies. But ­you’re Amazon. You d­ on’t need the money. What you do need is a dynamic, well-­connected, up-­and-­coming home. What­ever happens, the ­future belongs to this dense old East Coast city. OK. So now that we have that settled, can we talk about that all-­cotton duvet cover I just ordered?

ACKNOWL­E DGMENTS

Over the two de­cades that I’ve had the honor of being the Philadelphia Inquirer’s architecture critic, I’ve often thought that the pro­cesses of designing buildings and of writing a column about buildings are more alike than meets the eye. A good column, like a good work of architecture, is an expression of a singular vision, as well as a very public demonstration of ego. But while one person always seems to reap the accolades or the blame for the results in both professions, the truth is that the finished work is the product of many hands and minds. I have been extremely fortunate during my tenure as critic to have been supported, encouraged, and, for better or worse, left to my own devices by many talented editors at the Inquirer. My “Changing Skyline” column took shape ­under the tutelage of Jeff  Weinstein. A veteran of the Village Voice and the culture wars of the 1980s, he taught me that taking sides is the single most impor­tant act of a columnist, and he pushed me to stiffen my spine when I wavered. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. ­After my column migrated from the Inquirer’s arts section to Home & Design, I was served by the insights of many editors, including Joanne McLaughlin, Jill Kirschenbaum, Deirdre Childress Hopkins, Cathy Rubin, and Sandra Clark. All gave me wide latitude to sneak my wonky ideas and urbanist themes into a section better known for its ­house porn and soft features, and all tolerated my tendency to stretch deadlines with grace and humor. When the newsroom was reor­ga­nized again in 2017 as part of the Inquirer’s new digital-­first strategy, my column was warmly embraced by the editors of the new Newsfeatures team: Cynthia Henry, Dan Rubin, and Kathy Hacker. I have no doubt that it was Kathy’s own persuasive writing skills, which w ­ ere enlisted for the Inquirer’s letter to the Pulitzer Prize jury in 2014, that put my entry over the top. My column came into being at the exact moment when the newspaper industry was undergoing a profound upheaval and the print revenues w ­ ere nose-­diving. While e­ very subject area has suffered cuts in the last twenty years, none ­were hit harder than the arts and culture sections. T ­ oday you can prob­ably count on one hand the number of full-­time architecture critics working for American newspapers. It is a tribute to the Inquirer’s commitment 257

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to the Philadelphia region that the paper has continued to maintain a staff critic during t­hese painful years of contraction, buyouts and layoffs. Not only have the top editors kept me on the job, but they have given me complete freedom to cover my subject as I see fit. Apart from the demands imposed by the web and a more intense focus on local news, my job is remarkably unchanged from when I started writing my column in 1999. If anything, I feel my work is more valued ­today than ever. For this, I have to thank a series of Inquirer executive editors, starting with Bob Rosenthal, who allowed me the opportunity to stumble about in public view as I learned my craft. Amanda Bennett and Anne Gordon fiercely protected my right to express my opinions at a time when opinionated columnists ­were less welcome than they are t­ oday. Through a series of trying owner­ship ­battles, Bill Marimow, Stan Wischnowski, Gabe Escobar, and Patrick Kerkstra have been steadfast champions of my work. I am enormously grateful to our publisher, Terry Egger, and to the Lenfest Institute for steadying the ship and ensuring that the Inquirer continues to come out 365 days a year. None of this would be pos­si­ble without the generosity, foresight, and wisdom of our late owner and publisher, Gerry Lenfest, who is sure to go down in history as one of Philadelphia’s greatest philanthropists. My columns generally average about a thousand words, but they get double the mileage from the photog­raphers who provide the images that accompany my text. Since it would have been impossible to include a photo with ­every column in this collection, I selected a dozen that I hope ­will evoke a sense of the enormous changes that Philadelphia has under­gone. I am grateful to Inquirer photog­raphers Michael Bryant and Tim Tai for letting me reproduce their photos in this book. I am also thrilled to be able to include photos taken by my friends Brad Maule, Jim Fennell, and Howard Haas, devout preservationists all and partners in urbanism. Images provided by the ­Temple University Urban Archives, Halkin Mason Photo­ graphy, WRT Planning & Design, and Hass & Haan also enriched this collection. In one big re­spect, the experience of making architecture and journalism are very dif­fer­ent. While buildings can last for centuries, the lifespan of a newspaper column is barely longer than that of a fruit fly. It would never have occurred to me to preserve ­these writings had it not been for Micah Kleit, director of Rutgers University Press. Thank you for believing that my words are more than tomorrow’s fish wrap, and for extending their shelf life.



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Their existence between two covers would not have been pos­si­ble without the efforts of the Inquirer’s ­lawyer, Suzanne Mitchell Parillo. ­Every critic needs a critic, and my greatest critic—in the positive, constructive sense of that word—­has been my husband, Ken Kalfus. His insights and passion for streets, buildings, and urban life have enriched my columns beyond mea­sure. Both Ken and our d­ aughter, Sky, have patiently endured entire dinnertime conversations devoted to the minutiae of planning and zoning policy. Sky may not know this, but not e­ very ­family constructs their summer vacation around visits to far-­flung works of architecture. They have lived ­every column in this book. Without their love and support, it would not exist.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Inga Saffron, one of the leading voices on architecture and urbanism in

the United States, has been the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1999. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, and spent a year as a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Gradu­ate School of Design in 2012. In recognition of her advocacy for the built environment, the National Building Museum awarded her the Vincent Scully Prize in 2018, named in honor of the celebrated Yale University architectural historian. Before assuming her current position, Saffron spent five years as a correspondent for the Inquirer in Eastern Eu­rope and the former Soviet Union. She covered wars in the former Yugo­slavia and in Chechnya, and witnessed the destruction of Sarajevo and Grozny. It was in part ­because of ­those experiences that she became interested in the fate of cities and began writing about architecture. She is the author of Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain ­Future of the World’s Most Coveted Delicacy. She lives with her ­family in Philadelphia.