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Back in 2004, when funky little firms like CREI were using up and coming urban neighborhoods as their architectural playground for experimental and pricy designs, Brown-Hill proposed its own avant-garde condo development for a forlorn bucolic meadow at 2nd and Race.
It didn't happen, but the sign promising the redevelopment of this inexplicably vacant lot remained for years, reminding pedestrians that a small group of idiots with nothing but idle time and the arrogance to dictate their irrational opinions really can make a difference.
At a sensibly scaled 9 to 10 stories and respectful ground floor relationship, it was good design; and adjacent to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, a noisy interstate, and a high speed rail line, it was a good opportunity to develop an unlikely location for residences. But in the heyday of financial optimism, it wasn't good enough for the Old City Civic Association and they managed to keep their beloved vacant lot vacant for another eight years.
Well Brown-Hill is back and, in the wake of the financial crisis and a more realistic outlook on construction opportunities, hoping that the OCCA has a new outlook of their own.
Brown-Hill's new design keeps the same interaction with the sidewalk that it did in it's 2004 design, but proposes and additional six floors. At 198 feet tall it would be the tallest building in Old City. Not that height in any Center City neighborhood is a rational deterrent to development given precedents have been set in much more historically picturesque locations across the city, including Society Hill and Independence Mall. One could even argue that a high rise's presence next to a busy highway insulates the existing real estate from noisy traffic.
We'll find out the fate of the lot tomorrow at the Zoning Board of Adjustment's Hearing.
As a new attraction opens on our Independence Mall to mixed reviews, some more hateful than others, the Mall's history, and the potential its real estate once had, has found its way under the critics' magnifying glasses.
One can't deny that the Mall separates Center City from Old City anymore than one can deny that Old City's relatively new Renaissance has yet to find a way to attach itself to the city's core. Whether you view the Mall as a mistake or a success, the 50 year old park is not solely responsible for dividing the urban landscape of the city.
The Gallery and a suburbanized Market East, the asphalt prairies and cold windowless government buildings between Chinatown and the Constitution Center, and the Vine Street Expressway all serve to sever the newly bustling streets of Old City from what is conventionally perceived to be Center City. Even if the Mall was a mistake, it was one of a number of mistakes inspired by a mid-century vision of suburbanization. It would be short sighted to blame all of Market East's civic woes and Old City's urban detachment on what was perhaps the most successful - or at least the most aesthetically pleasing - mistake.
Even throughout the Mall's various incarnations, it has been dealt with better than the concrete canyons that separate Center City from the waterfront and the blocks north of Vine Street.
The Mall is there and isn't going anywhere. How it progresses will depend on the surrounding cityscape, not on the patches of grass between 5th and 6th Streets.
Public parks are supplemental. Rittenhouse succeeds due to its proximity to shopping and resources, while apartment buildings fight for a view. The Mall is not Central Park and I don't think it ever should be. We have Washington and Rittenhouse squares to service the needs of our residents.
Independence Mall is our answer to the National Mall. People don't go to DC to visit the Mall. Even if they say they do, they go to visit the museums that line the Mall and the monuments on it.
A lot was torn down to create the Mall and a lot of potential was lost. But we can't move forward by getting people worked up over what could have been 50 years ago. In the last decade Independence Mall has become significantly more popular, with 3M visitors up from just over 600,000 in the 1990s, in large part due to attractions surrounding the mall and an improved cityscape in the neighborhoods surrounding the historic area.
Focusing on further improvements to the vicinity between City Hall and 6th Street, the bridge between our hotels and our tourist attractions, will enable our Mall to become even more popular. We're never going to see Philadelphians sunbathing on Independence Mall and that is fine. But as a tourist destination to supplement the surrounding attractions, it is beginning to thrive, and perhaps with an increased focus on what could be, instead of what could have been, we may see even more fanny packs and cameras dropping their Euros around our quaint Colonial Green.
With all the unexpected controversy surrounding the development of a Presidential House Memorial on Independence Mall, it will be interesting to see how its history has been enhanced, or compromised. The thing about history is it's rarely black and white. There are many truths surrounding George Washington and the Founding Fathers. Some historical truths uphold these men as nation building inventors of freedoms, while other truths reveal them as slave owning aristocrats. The truth is they are both.
Good or bad, icons of history never live up to the legends that their reputations create. In the case of George Washington, some want to preserve an ideology while others want to demonize an extinct culture based on modern day morality. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, and that goes for the good and the bad. History is already subjective enough on its own, and whatever the angle, history becomes distorted when the modern prejudices of political correctness are applied to a different place and time.
Part of understanding history is understanding another world. Slavery is an ugly part of American history, but it is part of our history nonetheless. Bending historical fact to service modern day activism does nothing for anyone.
History has passed. Understand it, learn it, and teach it for what it is. Let's not neglect the fact that George Washington owned slaves simply because he helped found our country, but at the same time don't ignore the great man that led the Colonies from tyranny and helped build the nation that allows us the freedom to demonize him for his mistakes.
Above all, George Washington was human. There is not one American today who honestly knows what they would do in the face of history if they were raised as a part of it. No one can truly subjectify the cultures of our past. You can't take something that happened 234 years ago personally. The only way to truly understand history is to let it be what it is: History.
Reopening a House That's Still Divided
Philadelphia lost three city blocks for the creation of the Independence Mall, and subsequently several adjacent neighborhoods filled with architectural gems and colonial history in the neighborhoods of Franklin Square, Society Hill, and Penn's Landing. Most of the initial construction was with good intention considering the leveled neighborhoods were blighted and crime ridden, unfortunately much of the neighborhoods today (with the exception of Society Hill) are filled with surface parking lots, unfriendly windowless government buildings, and unappealing indoor retail.
Just a little of what's been lost:
The three blocks of buildings behind Independence Hall (the horizon of the photo) now make up Independence Mall National Park.
Completely unrecognizable today, every building here on Dock Street is gone.
Here you can see four blocks neighboring Dock Street after they were leveled for the construction of I-95 which still serves as a barrier between Society Hill and the river. Note the hill at Front Street which used to lead down to the Penn's Landing neighborhood, now completely nonexistent. The hill is responsible for the difference in height between the west and east side of I-95, accommodated by the large staircases at South Street and Market Street.
Just north of Independence Mall the Vine Street Expressway wiped out a large portion of Franklin Square and Chinatown in the 1980s, and even more recently in the 1990s the Pennsylvania Convention Center consumed three city blocks of dense urban real estate, and in the past two years has expanded east to Broad Street taking with it two more blocks and an historic firehouse, a townhouse built in the early 1800s, the massive stone Odd Fellows Building, and illegally destroyed two designated historic landmarks on Broad Street it had agreed to preserve.
Obviously Philadelphia hasn't learned too many lessons it should have learned from the 50s. Particularly since we have a tendency to bulldoze in anticipation of projects that never come and wind up with surface lots that never seem to go away.
