Save Robinson's

When it comes to Philadelphia's architectural heritage, and legacy, our most iconic landmarks tend to elicit both affection and hatred. Many confuse the PSFS Building with midcentury modernism, despite the fact that it was designed at the height of the Roaring 20s. As soon as City Hall opened its doors, residents deplored its chaotic, classical elements. Arguably Frank Furness's greatest work, the Provident Life & Title Company was slated for demolition because city planners felt it didn't blend well with the Colonial recreation they were attempting to establish near Independence Hall. 

The starchitects of the 19th Century - Frank Furness, Willis G. Hale, William Decker, Wilson Eyre - were the Norman + Foster and Zaha Hadid's of their day. Time will likely treat their works with the same lack of regard, only to come to appreciate those that survive once again a century from now.

With Market East's impending rebirth, it's easy to look at the grit and ask that it all be wiped clean. Save the PSFS Building, Reading Terminal's head house, Lit Brothers, and the 9th Street Post Office, it's hard to see anything notable hiding in the urban brambles. What commercial history remains has been significantly altered, haphazardly combined, and skinned for illuminated plastic panels that resulted from marketing teams behind CVS and H&R Block, not architects. 

Meanwhile, the Gallery at Market East's cold, concrete walls serve as the district's white elephant, blinding us from truly looking at much else. But there's at least one worn beauty hiding behind the dust of recent development.

I've mentioned Robinson's Department Store before, but short of a few other small blogs like mine, few have really bothered to look up. Those who do see what it offers. They see blight. They see a Jetsonian nightmare or something from Bladerunner. It is dystopic. 

Like the PSFS Building, it was built earlier than most assume. In 1946, Robinson's was built during a uniquely transitioning era of American architecture. Cities were demolishing Victorian and Gothic buildings synonymous with the corporations that led to the Great Depression. Art Deco schools and post office were being built with federal funds being pumped back into the economy, but the style was synonymous with government bureaucracy. As America was struggling to rebuild its economy from new humble beginnings, companies didn't have the funds to hire the starchitects of the era, but the starchitects also no longer existed. 

Inga Saffron has a great historical perspective on the beleaguered building, and finally brought it to the attention of the general public.

Robinson's Market Street location was designed by Viennese architect Victor Gruen. Known prominently for designing some of the nation's first shopping malls, our Robinson's Department Store may have been one of the first buildings designed specifically to be identified with a brand. 

Prior to the 1940s, architecture was primarily dictated by what was aesthetically en vogue for the time. Art and architecture existed superfluously side by side. With the emergence of the suburban ideal, architecture evolved as a way to set its tenants apart from their competition. If you wanted to find a Howard Johnson's or a Stuckey's, all you needed to look for was the roof. Likewise, Robinson's curved wall clad in thousands of purple tiles and looming over Market Street was unmistakable. The building was synonymous with the brand it housed.

But will it survive the hype surrounding Market East's renaissance? Only if enough people are willing to look up and see more than what's there. Astounding architecture can be lost in the shuffle. Some people don't care, others want something new, still others are more conservative. And although Robinson's is nearly 70 years old, it's anything but traditional. 

Despite the overwhelming amount of undeveloped real estate on Market East, with surface lots at 12th and Market and at the Disney Hole, Robinson's demise might not seem imminent. But NREA chose to demolish the remnants of Snellenberg's department store in lieu of developing on cleared land for a reason. The 1000 block of Market Street could be next on the chopping block. 

Can Preservation Be Proactive?

To look at Philadelphia from the river, we look like any other successful city. Office buildings dominate the skyline, historic steeples complement glassy towers, and from University City to Market East, the city continues to be redefined architecturally. 

But step inside and it's another story. We aren't a city that moves quickly. If New York and Chicago build like the Autobahn, Philadelphia's development climate can be summed up by the Schuylkill at 5PM any time of day.

We are a culture that caters to bureaucracy and neighborhood organizations that miss the mark, and it scars the landscape. As a city home to perhaps the nation's largest portfolio of architectural history and heritage, the fight to save our most beleaguered landmarks is often lost to decades of squabbles. What's worse, some of the most careless developers know this and use it to their advantage.

If you want to tear down a crumbling church for a parking lot or suburban strip mall, all you have to do is wait it out. No site in Center City knows this better than the historic Church of the Assumption on Spring Garden Street.

After years of on-again off-again bickering between developers, owners, the Historical Commission, and advocacy groups, a demolition permit has been issued to the building's current owner, John Wei. Considering all of the city's historical losses in the past forty or fifty years, placing a site on the city's Register of Historic Places almost seems like it ensures a building's inevitable demolition.

The current state of the church means it will almost certainly be demolished despite any appeals. It's just too costly to repair, at least in terms with what you could actually get out of such a space. Were it habitable, it would make a nice gym, theater, or nightclub. But its condition is not a technicality. It's falling apart.

The Church of the Assumption is unique. What happened to it, unfortunately is not. And I'm not just referring to the loss of a landmark. I'm talking about how it was lost. Call it what you want, but what happened to the Church of the Assumption boils down to a dysfunctional dinner table argument full of family members only tethered to each other by blood. While Grandpa was complaining about cell phones, the parents announced their divorce, and the daughter Tweeted the whole ordeal...the dinner rotted and ended up in the dog's bowl.

But this is a lesson Philadelphia's historical advocates are routinely offered but never learn. And it's going to happen again. The Spruce Parker Hotel was recently shut down after a small fire. It's not a historically designated building, nor should it be, but it's a beefy building on a prime corner. Without an eager buyer willing to upgrade the modest hotel, it will begin to deteriorate and we'll wind up with another surface parking lot in Center City.

Around the corner, the renovation of the Lincoln Apartments appears to have stalled. It may simply be that the logistics of rebuilding an aging structure from the inside out is too complex to show quick signs of progress. But it may also be that the effort has proven more complicated and costly than first thought. Old City recently learned the cost of letting a building drift into disrepair. As the Shirt Corner closed and promised a handsome 3rd and Market, it's twin burned leaving the corner with a vacant lot and a prime corner looking worse than ever.

So what's the point of this rambling rant? Well, for starters, true advocates need to be proactive, not reactive. It's understandable amongst community organizations. Members don't have time to be on top of every effort. They have jobs. But those charged with protecting history, being on top of the effort is the job. Fighting a fight at the eleventh hour rarely works, and this has been made painfully apparently time and time again. 

The Church of the Assumption will be torn down whether or not anyone wants to admit it. It's unfortunate, and I'm not being negative. I'm suggesting we looking for the next Church of the Assumption: Robinson's Department Store, The Roundhouse, The Health District Center. Start the fight before it's a fight. Proactively seek tenants not just with the means to preserve these landmarks, but with the desire for landmark properties. 

Robinson's on Market East

Robinson's Luggage is closing its doors. I don't know why that's news. Who buys luggage at a specialty store? I still throw my chonies in a Jansport backpack.

This isn't about overpriced handbags. It's about Market East's Robinson's Department Store and the need to declare it historic and begin the campaign to restore its façade is now. Yes, this very minute.

Historic communities have a knack for calling history buffs to action at the eleventh hour. The historic Boyd Theater is likely doomed, as is Kenny Gamble's Philadelphia International Music. As much as I'd love to see both saved, historic preservation is a job for thousands of people, and part of that job is admitting you've lost.

But more importantly, it's anticipating future loss.

With NREA's planned expansion of the Girard Trust Block, the Gallery's proposed renovations, and rumors flying around Bloomingdale's interest as an anchor, it's quite possible that we will be looking at a whole new Market East by 2015.

Market East doesn't host a bevy of historic properties. With ample real estate at the Disney Hole and lackluster, craptastic architecture begging to be redeveloped, the gems of Market East are likely secure. No one will ever tear down Reading Terminal or the PSFS Building and the post office is probably safe.

But there's one icon on Market East that is largely ignored by historians and completely ignored by shoppers that choose to endure Kmart.

Victor Gruen's Robinson's Department Store still stands at 1020 Market Street. Its neon lights broken and large signature long gone, few people know it's there and why it's significant.

At first glance, Robinson's is a Brutalist nightmare, a product of midcentury design many would rather forget. Stained and cracked, the five story Robinson's looks like a murky, concrete wave prepared to envelope what's left of Market East.

But it's more than that. The façade is actually comprised of thousands of small, indigo tiles that once sparkled as a beacon to Market East's thriving enterprises.

Of all of California's Grayson - Robinson's eleven unique department stores, Philadelphia's is one of the few that remain. Although Robinson's tends to get lumped into worn midcentury design, it's anything but.

Its graceful curves harken earlier experiments with Art Nuveau and Art Deco while the sterility and simplicity of its face carried architects to their modern interpretation of International Style: Brutalism. It was built at an odd period of European influence during America's rebirth that followed the Great Depression. Many peg it for basic 1960s retail design, but it was built in 1946 and it's so much more interesting.

While Robinson's peddled affordable womensware much like Burlington Coat Factory and Marshall's, it predated low budget architecture by a solid two decades while catering to the diversity that was Market East.

In its heyday, Robinson's dazzling façade was illuminated by five large lights, its signature, and two smaller neon demarcations. Although its beauty is hard to see today, the building is largely underutilized. Some Scrubbing Bubble and a Sham Wow could easily bring out its luster.

But now is the time. Market East has positioned itself as a clean slate and Robinson's simply blends into the background of disposable real estate. Philadelphian's preservationists need to recognize Robinson's worth, as it was, is, and can be.

Robinson's Department Store

While I'm completely in favor of illuminating Market East as a catalyst to return the corridor to its rightful place as Philadelphia's historic center of all things capitalism, I won't deny that this once fine stretch of Center City is still home to a few significant landmarks.

Unfortunately, I think activists and historians miss the mark touting it as a place of quaint Colonial charm. It never was and never will be. Additionally, the introduction of the "distraction debate" is a political tactic worthy of little discussion.

After all, one of an architect's primary goals is to make us look, and in a city like Philadelphia, to look up. Buildings are advertisements. Comcast could have easily built an office park in King of Prussia but they wanted to be seen.

A lot can and has been said about Market East's white elephant, The Gallery. It's easy to criticise and hard to avoid. It's so hard to avoid that most people don't bother to look across the street. And that isn't necessarily because The Gallery is inviting, but because the dilapidated mix of retail across the street is even less hospitable.

But look up. At first glance the south side of the 1000 block of Market Street is a mess. But a tile-clad diamond of architectural significance stands above the the weeds. Built in 1946, the former Robinson's Department Store, which I like to call The Barbarella Building, was decades ahead of its time. Like the International Style icon, the PSFS Building at 12th and Market, many don't realize just how old this bizarre building really is.

Both helped establish a trend of boring, easily built, cost effective modern architecture, but as early examples, did so with well crafted quality design.

While it's not indicative of traditional Philadelphia architecture, our building stock is far more diverse than many national historians are willing to give us credit for. I think the Colonial ideal is more accurately applied to New England cities than Philadelphia.

Internationally renowned architects repeatedly used Philadelphia as a playground for their early experiments. Considering our eclectic portfolio - Willis Hale, Frank Furness, Wilson Eyre, I.M. Pei - I find Robinson's very Philadelphian.

Whether or not it finds itself on the Historic Register, were it cleaned up I think it could establish the same cultural following as some of our other quirky landmarks like the Divine Lorraine and the Hale Building.

More information on the history of Robinson's Department Store can be found here: Unlisted: Robinson's