Post Brothers Apartments

While a handful of protesters continue to picket the rehabilitation of the infamous "Graffiti Building" at 12th and Wood, Post Brothers has unveiled a sign of their own.


Today, a giant banner hung from one of the top floors of the long neglected warehouse read "Post Brothers Apartments," signifying development is moving full steam ahead unphased by Philadelphia's Union Muscle.


For months, a rotating collection of Colorform laden signage spouted accusations that Post Brothers were "destroying community standards" to commuters along 12th Street.


I'd personally like to say thank you Post Brothers for investing in MY community's standards.

City says Divine Lorraine will not be demolished

A "Repair or Demolish" notification posted by L&I delivered a second punch to preservationists following a fire at the Divine Lorraine, abandoned by investors.


Fear not. Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger stated that the notification was a necessary measure allowing the city to enter the building and intervene.


A bill for all repairs made by the city will be sent to the building's owners, Michael Treacy, Jr. and a Dutch group, on top of the $700,000 in back taxes they currently owe.


Meanwhile the city is working with the New York bank that holds the mortgage to find a new owner ready and willing to develop the property.

Art and Craftsmanship

It's hard to say how many well known artists, if any, are capable of the level of craftsmanship carried out by the Masters, not to mention the tradesmen that worked to adorn our historic architecture.

Art wasn't always open to anyone with an idea or a statement, and while the wealthy have and still define art, the practice and its subsequent respect wasn't limited to "the starving artist."


What happened?


Just a century ago we were graced with a stock or artists and architects so talented that the works of Willis Hale and Philadelphia City Hall were perceived eyesores.


But today we praise glass towers for their lack of presence, automotive design that continues to look like a 1989 Ford Taurus, and visual art that refuses to offer a vision beyond its explanation.


Has our culture gotten so smart that we no longer need something interesting to look at, or have we intellectualized the design right out of design?


Whether a way of expressing spiritual enlightenment or national pride, or simply painting us a fox hunting scene, the one thing art historically required of its artists was skill.


The art community's obsession with its artists' messages has grown so strong that it overshadows the art itself.


Art should attract the eye, followed by an understanding of its inspiration. Instead we look for the story first and neglect to realize that we're analyzing a blank canvas.


If many of our modern day artists are masters of anything, it's marketing. The "trained" eyes of the art experts are so blinded by their own wealth that they'd never suspect their beloved artists of being some of the Free World's greatest capitalists.

Art or Copyright Infringement?

Apologizing for an artist's impoverished upbringing, the Philadelphia Museum of Art displays photographs of nothing in the same building that Renaissance masterpieces call home.


Artists offer our elite art community an insight into their humble beginnings and then capitalize on their guilt, exploiting their audiences as much as their subjects, feeding off the same morbid fascination with the ill, disfigured, and poor that keeps TLC on the air.


Talentless snobs may define this as art to help them sleep at night, but they share an obsession for the plight of the downtrodden with the rest of society.


Sadly the art community has become so tainted with an affinity for crap that the very sight of anything painted or sculpted displaying an ounce of craftsmanship or skill is labeled kitsch.


Have we exhausted new ideas? Are we in a creative rut? Or has an elite society fostered an element where hacks aren't subject to the same standards as the schooled and talented?


As much as we love history, critics will continue to reserve their most harsh critiques for historic recreations demanding artistic interpretations like Venturi's Benjamin Franklin house in lieu of The American Philosophical Society.


The gracefully adorned and architecturally respectful Mormon Temple will be dubbed a monumental shrine to a bygone era while we applaud a new Mac store's glass facade.


And paintings of horses that look like horses will be stored in the basement so the Philadelphia Museum of Art can exhibit another collection of snapshots of your next door neighbor's Walmart grill.

The PMA could find its modern art on Etsy and no one would know the difference.

How Low Can You Go?

The building frenzy in Manhattan isn't slowing down anytime soon. While Callowhill residents use the success of the High Line to justify their own park in the sky, New Yorkers are citing their own success to dig deeper. Literally.


It's being called the LowLine, and designers Dan Barasch and James Ramsey have secured an unprecedented $125,000 in donations.


Using modern technology to redirect sunlight they envision a subterranean park occupying an abandoned subway line, 60,000 square feet in all.

It sounds pretty spectacular, and if Manhattan was the vertical city of moving sidewalks and mile high gardens Hugh Ferriss once predicted, underground parks might sound less like science fiction and more like necessity.


But as crowded as New York is, it is just another big city. It has some of the most beautiful parks in the world, one of the biggest system of urban parks in the country, and dozens of neighborhoods lit by the sun that the streets of Bladerunner and The Fifth Element lacked.


Kudos on an exciting concept but that's what it is. If New York is blessed with enough wealthy eccentrics and a tax surplus large enough to ignore schools and services, more power to them. But most urbanites don't even like shopping indoors, and the LowLine is little more than a mall's concourse without stores. At best it's a nice quasi outdoor reprieve for joggers on a rainy day.

Financing a Vision

GroJLart at Philaphilia is quickly becoming my favorite "architectural nonsense" blogger in Philadelphia. His latest rant about the dead Bridgeman's View proposal for the waterfront got me reminiscing about a time long ago when we were still building houses we couldn't afford, buying gas guzzling SUVs we didn't need, and openly challenging the country's 1% to transform city skylines around the globe. The year was 2007, a distant memory filled with shopping sprees, cosmopolitans at the latest Steven Starr incarnations, and nights full of unapologetic laughter.

Oh, how I miss the laughter.

Perhaps that's what's so refreshing about GroJLart. Sure, his snarky rants probably trigger your kid's parental controls, but his dark humor applauds our wealthy developers for their inspired visions while berating them when they sell out. No nonsense, no politics, and when a building is just plain ugly, he says it's just plain ugly.

In the enlightened era before smart phones and a pantheon of reality television dedicated to the children spawned by the Jersey Shore, Bridgeman's View went beyond the conventional skyscraper and attempted to maximize what could be done with a glass curtain. In fact, it's unique coiled design might have been better suited to the shores of Dubai than the banks of the Delaware.

Bridgeman's View was more than another skyscraper. Had it been proposed for West Market Street we might be looking at it right now. But Bridgeman's View was an concept and offered a vision beyond occupying another vacant lot.

While it would have housed million dollar condos, it also sought to anchor a new neighborhood. Surrounded by projects that undoubtedly relied on the confidence of Bridgeman's View to turn a forlorn stretch of Delaware Avenue into its own urban core, it was surrounded by shopping, restaurants, bars, and may have encouraged SugarHouse to be more than an uninspired slot barn. 

In a way, the opposing community organizations were correct in their assumptions that Bridgeman's View wasn't concerned with their neighborhoods. It wasn't designed to complement Northern Liberties, but to liberate it from itself. Developers may have underestimated our community organization's relentless reaction to change. In an area arguably even assigned to any neighborhood, developers were forced to rationalize a skyscraper that rationally didn't belong.

In a city full of artists and creativity, we limit the right to be a visionary to those who can't afford it. While many in the surrounding communities might like to claim defeat over Bridgeman's View, the economy was its most vocal opposition. Had the contingent development surrounding the tower been afforded the ability to play out, Bridgeman's View might be pointing its middle finger at the neighbors that tried to squash it.

Temples of Learning

The crown jewel of the University of Pittsburgh's main campus is the 535 foot tall Cathedral of Learning. Begun in 1926 at the height of the country's architectural opulence, the Cathedral of Learning still stands as the tallest education facility in the western hemisphere, and for the time being, the second in the world.

Designed by Philadelphia architect Charles Klauder, the 34 story Gothic Revival high rise towers over Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood offering views of downtown and the Allegheny Mountains.

Although the campuses differ dramatically, and it's not clear if the Cathedral of Learning was its inspiration, but in 1930 Temple University broke ground on a similar endeavor, the Temple of Learning.

Temple's urban campus on Philadelphia's dense North Broad Street core left little room for its students when not in the classroom. Part of the tower was constructed by way of "Unit 2," now known as Carnell Hall which was opened in 1929. It's hard to say if the economy played a role, but had it been proposed a few years earlier Temple may have had it's own Cathedral of Learning.

Philaphilia wrote about this back in October.

Philadelphia Houses of Moderate Cost

The homes comprising the 4200 block of Spruce Street, designed by Kimball, Hewitt, and Hewitt Architects in the late 1800s, were describes as "Philadelphia Houses of Moderate Cost." Built at the height of America's Gilded Age, it's hard to say if that label was used to sell Philadelphia as a place where those with moderate means could live in the lap of luxury, or if at that time, these homes were truly considered "moderate" by comparison. West Philadelphia's streetcar suburbs are some of the country's most complete and preserved examples of American Victorian architecture, and the 4200 block of Spruce is no exception.