So Many Cranes in the Sky!

If you enjoyed last week's weather by wandering outside, you might have noticed quite a few construction cranes in the sky. That's because Philadelphia is currently experience a building boom, one that stands to put 2005 to shame. The city's skyline is about to change forever, and the growth isn't just taking place where you'd expect it. Developers are building high in the sky in University City and for the first time ever, one of our tallest skyscrapers will soon be west of the Schuylkill River.

Large-scale residential and retail projects are developing along Market East and north of Vine Street and, like the dense development taking place in West Philadelphia, challenging our notion of "downtown." 

Here's a quick rundown of what's taking place, and what we have to look forward to.

Under Construction

Comcast Innovation and Technology Center
1121 feet
A few years ago Comcast altered the skyline with Comcast Center, its national headquarters. The wildly growing company hadn't had enough, and employed the world renowned starchitects at Norman + Foster to deliver some serious panache. Once completed, the CITC will be the tallest skyscraper in the United States outside New York and Chicago. 

FMC Tower at Cira Centre South
730 feet
When Cesar Pelli's design for the first phase of the Cira Centre made headlines, some were appalled, some cheered, but many were certain it would never be built. Once we got used to its crystalline and asymmetrical presence along the Schuylkill River, we were sure the master plan had been abandoned. Then Campus Crest and Erdy-McHenry delivered the Evo, the tallest student housing in the country. Before Campus Crest could fill its infinity pool with sweeping views of the Center City skyline, the unthinkable happened: Brandywine Realty Trust found a tenant right here in the city, allowing them to complete Cira Centre South. Will we soon see a proposed Cira Centre North? There's certainly room to keep building.

500 Walnut
380 feet
Building in Society Hill is tricky, just ask John Turchi. At the height of the last building boom he attempted to convert the debatably historic Dilworth House into his private residence before being shot down by stubborn community associations. The mansion remains vacant. But building tall within earshot of some of the nation's most sacred history has been unheard-of for a long time. 500 Walnut is bringing the amenities, and the height, of Rittenhouse Square back to the city's first premier address and will forever alter photographs of Independence Hall.

1601 Vine Street
370 feet
The Mormons don't mess around. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' has the money to build big, build fast, and build quality. For decades, Vine Street has been a wasteland of surface parking lots discouraging developers from bridging the gap between Center City and neighborhoods eager to thrive just north of the Expressway. The city's first Mormon Temple is nearing completion and will handsomely compliment the city's Basilica, Free Library, and cultural institutions. Risking logic - or perhaps understanding how ridiculous the Expressway is as a barrier - the Mormons have hired Robert A. M. Stern to build a high-rise befitting Rittenhouse Square just north of the highway canyon. 

Welcome to Little Salt Lake City.

1919 Market Street
337 feet
Who ever thought this would happen? Once intended for a carbon copy of the skyscraper just to its east, this lot has been vacant for as long as many can remember. For decades it's been the site of proposals destined to flop. Nearby residential development has begged us to ask if Philadelphia's West Market Street is a neighborhood that shuts down at five on Friday, or something that deserves more. 1919 Market might just be giving us more Murano, but that means more feet on the ground. Philadelphia has forever been a densely packed and pedestrian friendly city, and our cornerstone of skyscrapers has been our ironically situated black-eye since the demolition of Broad Street Station. The final realization of 1919 Market Street is proof that West Market Street is finally ready to be more than a one-trick pony.

The Summit
279 feet
Go look at this building in person. It is far more astonishing, and tall, than it looks in renderings. In fact, from some angles, it looks like something straight out of a Middle Eastern power city. It's pretty wild and it's redefining what we think of the University City skyline. 

3737 Chestnut
278 feet
It's not nearly as exciting as the Summit, but it is challenging the University City skyline. 

What we have to look forward to...
If the construction cranes aren't enough to satisfy your thirst for a new Philadelphia, get ready for more, because they're coming. Below are some of the most likely skyline altering proposals in and around Center City. 

SLS International Hotel and Residences
590 feet

W Hotel and Residences
582 feet

MIC Tower
429 feet

CHoP on Schuylkill Avenue
375 feet

1900 Chestnut Street
295 feet

East Market
281 feet

One Riverside
260 feet

Pig in a Prom Dress?

Whether or not you like Erdy-McHenry Architecture, one thing that can't be denied is that the firm designs interesting buildings and doesn't try to hide their experimental presence.

Their parking garage near Broad and Arch is nearing completion and popular opinion is mixed. With the building's unusual metal curtains draped across the façade, is it a pig in a prom dress or the best way to address a necessary evil?

The architectural merits of parking garages is rarely discussed, and the discussion is a little silly because they typically all look the same. The best thing we usually hope for is some sensible ground floor retail. With construction costs making subterranean parking cost prohibitive, parking garages are everywhere and try their best to hide.

Erdy-McHenry's parking garage won't win any awards, but it's industrial, funky, and weird, and it works just fine amongst several centuries of Center City's eclectic architecture. Often, Erdy-McHenry's designs mix Brutalism and Bauhaus movements, using concrete, metal, and various raw materials with swatches of basic colors thrown in.

Their parking garage easily reflects this signature style, but with the graceful metal curtains signaling their harsh characteristics evolving. More interesting than the parking garage itself is certainly how Erdy-McHenry intends to incorporate their new design experiments into future projects.

Erdy-McHenry Garage Gets Zoning Approval

Around the corner from a soon to be bustling North Broad Street is a small surface parking lot. Well, actually there are two, but the unused eyesore with the busted fence will probably remain in the hands of the city forever.

But the one cornered by Arch and Juniper, wedged between the historic Masonic Temple and the United Methodist Church has received zoning approval, and will be developed by Raelen Properties of Berwyn, PA...with a handful of neighborly caveats.

Months ago neighbors were stomping their feet at this proposal in a town meeting (I live here and still can't fathom who these neighbors are), but with concessions made to provide the church with an elevator shaft among other promises to the church and the temple, the naysayers seemed to have settled down.

President of Raelen, Dennis Maloomian is also involved in the conversion of the Liberty Title Building, the historic tower across the street solely occupied by Dunkin' Donuts, into a hotel.

While not officially part of the convention center, the to-be hotel is seen as part of the whole by most. Being the lone private project on the three blocks the Convention Center occupies, if left vacant it would undoubtedly give conventioneers a bad first impression, no matter how bright they light up the facade.

Not too many things are creepier than an abandoned skyscraper, and I'm sure the Philadelphia Planning Commission doesn't want to make things too difficult for Maloomian, especially if word got back that their stubbornness was responsible for the white elephant attached to the PCC.

Nonetheless, Maloomian seemed to have made a very valid case, and seems eager to appease neighbors and build the best garage ever. I'm not a fan of parking garages. Not too many urbanites are. But they're better than surface lots, and Maloomian has chosen to employ local architects Erdy-McHenry to design the building.

Responsible for the Radian at Penn and Avenue North at Temple, their quasi-futuristic approach will be a unique juxtaposition to the masonic structures around City Hall. Initial renderings show a setback accordion style, reflective screen. If implemented, it will be interesting to see how it reflects the new lighting scheme on Broad Street down the Arch Street corridor.

McDonalds and Starbucks and Subway, Oh My!

PlanPhilly reported on a meeting to discuss Dennis Maloomian's parking garage and retail space proposed for Arch Street across from the Pennsylvania Convention Center's expansion. The building, which would be designed by the local architecture firm Erdy-McHenry and would replace a surface parking lot, was blasted by community activists who spent the meeting spouting cliches about McDonalds, Starbucks, and Subway.

As someone who can personally speak on behalf of this neighborhood and proudly call it my own, I have to wonder where most of these rabble-rousers were coming from.

I'm usually not in favor of more parking, especially when it's so close to public transportation, but when it comes to the Convention Center, most people aren't coming in on SEPTA.

This center will require more parking, and this angry mob has done nothing but ensure more surface parking in the surrounding area. This neighborhood has proven repeatedly that it is a lot easier to tear down a handful of row homes for five parking spaces than it is to erect anything.

As for McDonalds, Starbucks, and Subway, what are these people smoking? It's a Convention Center, that is the kind of business that thrives in these types of areas and they do astonishingly well. We want more Starbucks and fast food joints around our convention spaces. Not everything has to cater to bike messaging hipsters and Rittenhouse foodies. Some of us want Fuddruckers.

This vocal minority has nothing better to do but go to town meetings and stomp their feet. They are dictating life in this town for the majority of us who are too busy to do much more than air our grievances on message boards and blogs.

I live in the shadow of this hulk and I've not heard any local opposition to this garage or any business projected to be brought by the Convention Center.

These are the same professional protesters who come into every neighborhood to stifle development, then they turn their back on us when the same developers decide to level my house for a surface lot because they drove out a parking garage just because it might come with a Burger King.

Erdy-McHenry

New ideas in architecture often enjoy several years of praise and then spend about twenty years in purgatory. If works survive that period of time as backdrops for newer movements, they undoubtedly receive a revival of appreciation. Frank Furness spent decades in architectural purgatory as his few fans watched example after example make way to a culture that wasn't ready to appreciate his vision. Recently we have seen a revived interest in International Style and even Brutalism, designs that spanned the early to mid-20th century; designs we have spent the past 20 years ruing.

Throughout it all of course we see the blatant reinterpretation of past styles. Toll Brothers and mass market developers continuously crank out colonial interpretations that sacrifice style for luxury. In a culture increasingly concerned with quantity in lieu of quality, fewer and fewer architects can exercise an experimental style on an audience with a declining eye for aesthetics.

We can name a period for most of America's art and architectural history: Colonial, Victorian, Art Deco, Brutalist; but what will we call the turn of the century? The late 90's is a collage of past styles, diluted and reinterpreted. While I'm a firm believer that all style is a reinterpretation of the past, these people didn't even try. Venturi, Graves, and Gehry, idols of our time, are pop culture hacks, "artists" that rely on marketing gimmicks rather than talent to secure a place in history.

Fortunately there still remains an audience for experimental architecture and a badly needed reinvention of style. While the Toll Brothers and the Venturis may dominate the mass market and the one-in-every-city venues (just so Los Angeles can say "We have a Gehry!"), there are a number of refreshingly new designs outside the overrated big league being implemented in city governments, hospitals, and universities.

Erdy-McHenry has reinvented the idea of large scale American architecture. The Radian in particular, one of University City's latest student housing projects, takes a comically out of scale approach to communal housing. It conjures up images of Soviet block housing satirically twisted with artistic cues and a randomly balanced placement of architectural elements. It's juxtaposition to historic West Philadelphia and its towering presence over Walnut Street make this imposing structure seem to hover above the sidewalk like a quasi-futuristic space station - and it works.

With more and more examples being displayed across the city, from North Philadelphia's Avenue North serving as a gateway to Temple University, to the reinvention of the public square in Northern Liberties' Hancock Square, to a simple coffee house adjacent to the Constitution Center, Erdy-McHenry's unorthodox approach to just about everything could fast secure a place in history as the 21st century's Frank Furness.