Roman Catholic Expansion

I was just gushing about the recent improvements and proposals for Vine Street, namely the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' decision to embrace one of the street's least desirable lots for a residential high-rise. 

Others are following suit. What's ever better, the development will replace yet another surface lot that scars the cityscape leaving Vine Street a hostile avenue for pedestrians.

Roman High (quite possibly the most badass named high school in the country, with a building to match) has acquired a neighboring lot, and has released preliminary plans to build a much-needed gymnasium. It also purchased another parking lot on north 13th Street that currently stores U-Haul trucks, for the school's fine arts expansion. A fitting location considering this lot was once home to Eraserhood's own, the renowned creator of Twin Peaks and the neighborhood's namesake, Eraserhead, David Lynch.

I'm not sure how the Catholic church feels about Lynch's creepy and deliberately offsetting creations - or nightmares - but maybe the school could dedicate a dark corner or a janitorial closet for a Lynch Museum. 

Game Changer

Game Changer

1601 Vine Street has spent decades as a surface parking lot, one of many that line the Vine Street Expressway. Despite numerous proposals - some more realistic than others - it seemed that it would forever exist as a reminder of what the expressway's construction did to the surrounding blocks. 

Despite its proximity to Center City, developers are leery of taking a chance on Vine Street.

It's full of traffic. It's loud. It's devoid of pedestrians. It's risky.

The Loft District just north of Vine Street has seen a marginally successful renaissance but it still feels like another town, one a short walk from the center of the city. 

The canyon that separates the north and south is more of a mental barrier than a physical one. Other cities have highways cutting through densely populated areas but they succeed because the surrounding infrastructure allows them to be densely populated. When high-rises and skyscrapers embrace a highway, walking across it is less daunting.

That isn't the case in Philadelphia. Vine Street is lined with surface parking lots and a few structures lingering from the neighborhood's era as a slum. 

But that's changing in a big way. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is building a residential high-rise next to its new temple at 16th and Vine, and it appears prep work has begun. 

So what's the big deal? The vicinity known as Franklintown is chock full of apartment buildings. It's on the better, west-of-broad stretch of Vine. 

Well, it's a big deal because this may be one of the most undesirable lots in Center City. It doesn't just sit above the Vine Street Expressway, it sits next to the highway's exit ramp. It's also a big deal because the Mormon church has the money to build quality, and they usually do. This is a building designed by Robert A. M. Stern's renowned firm, one that could easy find a home on cushy Rittenhouse Square. 

It's changing the game, not just for Franklintown, but also for Vine Street. If it succeeds it tells developers and residents that the Vine Street Expressway isn't the barrier they thought it was, just a short, boring block to walk past. It will also bring more residents, more pedestrians to Vine Street, which means the city will be pressured to address the street's piss-poor pedestrianization, the kind of headaches finally being tackled on Washington Avenue.

In a few years, Vine Street and the neighborhoods just north might be the integrated part of the Center City they should be. 

Can Classic Design Ever be "Good" Design?

Inga Saffron, Philadephia's architecture czar and one of my favorite journalists, has some choice words for the Mormon's developing Vine Street, and she's not holding back. 

Starting with "It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings," I can't help but wonder if she's just having a bad day. This is the critic who can't get enough of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's Cheesecake Cube at 15th and Walnut. If you wince at any building that is more stimulating - for better or worse - than a glass box, should you be critiquing architecture?

I don't know anyone who winced.

The projects along Vine Street being developed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints include the Mormon Temple currently under construction, a small community center, and a highrise apartment building. Saffron referred to the collection as "one of the weirder ensembles produced in 21st-century America outside of Las Vegas."

That just seems uncharacteristically harsh. 

She claimed the meeting house looked like it was "dragged across town" from Society Hill, despite the similarly scaled Quaker Meeting House just three blocks away. She went on to call the church itself is "a snow-white, double-spired, French classical Mormon temple." 

Okay, now I don't think she's having a bad day. I think shes drunk.

Gracefully respecting its surroundings, Philadelphia's Mormon Temple reflects the classical architecture of its neighbors. Should every new building be innovative, groundbreaking, or an "exciting" glass curtain, even our most sacred places?

The apartment tower and community center are designed by Robert A. M. Stern. I appreciate her frustration with Stern's safe designs, but he designs handsome buildings. Saffron cites his Museum of the American Revolution a an example of his flaccid designs. The museum is no exception and it's not an exceptional building, but despite its odd cupola it's a fine building befitting its neighborhood and its collection. 

Saffron almost seems relieved that the Art Commission has criticized the design, yet she has said little of the museum since her first critique in 2012. It's almost as if the commission's decision was her cue to say, "look, I'm not crazy."

Saffron did take time to speak to Tom King who manages real estate investment for the LDS Church, appreciating the urban design of the space and the church's investment in an undesirable part of near-Center City. Parking will be underground and no walls will be blank, even those facing Vine Street and the expressway's cloverleaf.

But when it comes to the design, Saffron has no patience for what she says "belongs in the past." While developers with the LDS Church will likely move forward with the proposed design, it exists solely in two dimensional renderings, yet Philadelphia's top architecture critic has already relegated it to the bowels of the city's worst, with Dranoff's "Nightmare on Broad Street."

The LDS Church's apartment building doesn't just offer all residents unique views of the city, it's widest wall faces Vine Street's unsightly cloverleaf, blocking it from those who'd rather forget it's there. Unlike Cira Centre that flanks its western banks with modern design that defines University City's identity as unique, Stern's tower reaches across Vine Street and shakes hands with Center City's history, integrating Vine Street with the rest of the city as if it had always been there.

Its apartment tower offers more than nostalgia. Instead of facing Center City flatly, giving half of its residents a skyscraping view and the others a view of North Philadelphia, its narrow edge faces the city, offering all residents a compromising, angled view of the skyline with half facing the Parkway and the others facing the Ben Franklin Bridge. 

Beyond all the artistic rhetoric and intellectualism that only the schooled understand, it's not a dull building. It's not groundbreaking, but it doesn't need to be. It's crowned with upper floors gracefully tiered like The Drake or Rockefeller Center. Assuming developers don't skimp on materials it will be appreciated by those passing by and the general public, those that really matter.

As for the Mormon Temple and community center, they may appear to echo fanciful fairy tales or princess palaces, but they're not bland historic interpretations that attempt to fade into the shadows. Like the Basillica of Saints Peter and Paul across the street, the temple is bold. What makes the Mormon Temple look like a scene from Wizard of Oz is our local unfamiliarity with Mormon architecture. To an equally unfamiliar eye, Catholic architecture is just as bizarre. 

Developers with the LDS may not be attempting to elevate architectural design or art theory, but unlike Mac cubes and glass curtains that art critics continue to applaud for their absent presence, these projects along Vine Street offer something pleasant, classic, and lasting.

teensy redbrick meetinghouse that looks as if it was dragged across town
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#jfWC6T7wBxtT7HUA.99

teensy redbrick meetinghouse that looks as if it was dragged across town
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#jfWC6T7wBxtT7HUA.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#5TRhdxvGuFUrMWub.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

Mormon On Up

With new proposals north, south, east, and west, Philadelphia is experience a new building boom. And given the economy of 2014, the exciting renderings being passed around the blogosphere seem far more realistic than they did a decade ago.

Move On Up

Today, Mayor Nutter announced two new projects for the 1600 block of Vine Street including a 32 story apartment tower designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects and a Mormon Family History and Community Center. Next to the upcoming Mormon Temple at 17th and Vine, this stretch could easily find itself dubbed Mormon Row. Mormontown? Call it what you want, Property Reserve Inc.'s development stands (tall) to anchor a renewed grand boulevard on Vine Street which, despite the Vine Street Expressway, remains relatively underutilized.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has no shortage of funds and have proven to work extremely well with the city's notoriously difficult unions, so assuming the market for 258 luxury rental units with unparalleled views of the city's skyline remains in tact, this could easily happen. With Tower Place, a potential hotel or residential project at the Inquirer Building, Chinatown's Eastern Tower, and Callowhill's burgeoning Loft District, the urban space north of Vine is going to look dramatically different in the next ten years.

Latter Days

The RDA is pushing back against the proposed Mormon temple on Vine Street. Not because of any prejudice against the Latter Day Saints, but because of a bureaucratic loophole that allows the RDA to pass undeveloped surface lots from potential developer to potential developer, collecting a handsome sum with each transaction. Yet another clue into the blighting surface parking lots that littler Center City and Vine Street in particular. Once a lot becomes a lot, it's doomed to stay one as long as the RDA has its say-so.

Theoretically there is a time limit in which owners must develop these lots, but the RDA routinely denies these requests for one reason or another, ultimately cracking down on these time limits when they need to dip into the kitty, or as in the case of the Mormon temple, when a developer steps forward with cash and neighborhood support in hand. In the latter case, the RDA must hurry to find an excuse, any excuse, to make sure they get their hands on that land again, otherwise there are a few less cookie crumbs to pick up. It's deviously hypocritical because the point of this RDA program is to make sure things actually get built on these parking lots.

And then of course you have your chronic protesters who preach tolerance from a soap box plastered with anti-religious bumper stickers. Say what you want about the Mormon church, but it will bring tourists and even potentially a few residents. Although the church itself might not pay taxes, the residents and tourists it attracts do. I personally don't care for the the narrow-minded teachings of the Mormon church, and that's why I'm not one. However I don't find them any less prejudice than what can be taught by Catholicism or Judaism. Much of any religion is based on intolerant xenophobia based on poorly written fairy tales, but in protesting a religion out of town how is one not worse? Particularly in the city that drafted the idea of religious tolerance. And in that uniquely American creation, is it not fitting to have a home for a uniquely American religion?

Besides, I'm certainly don't want to discriminate against someone who wants to replace an eyesore of a parking lot with a beautiful building that attracts business and people. And to those who want to see a "science center" or a "high-rise condo" on this lot, are you kidding me? Really? There's a reason this lot has sat vacant for so long - the RDA - so unless you want to wait another few decades to see if maybe someone wants to build something, our best shot is to go with the Mormons, and hope it slaps the RDA in the face, and City Council and the Mayors Office will crack down on them the next time they try to pull off this shady move.