MIC Tower

Philadelphia Real Estate Blog

After Stantec Architecture was asked to improve its MIC Tower behind Lit Brothers, the firm came back to the Historical Commission with a slightly better design. The tower still adheres to its premise of blending into the historic Lit Brothers building rather than attempting to add anything significant.

Along with NREA's East Market proposal for the Girard Trust Block, the MIC tower will bring the residents and shoppers that Market East has been begging for. While the MIC Tower will remain largely unnoticed from Market Street, the Filbert Street apartment building will add 29 floors to the city's relatively shallow eastside skyline.

Stantec's Tower Back to the Drawing Board

Brickstone Realty Corp's proposed residential tower behind Lit Brothers was sent back to the drawing board by the city's Historical Commission. While Stantec's design was deliberately bland, not to take attention from Lit Brothers' historic façade, it was too bland for the Historic Commission.

While Brickstone's tower is deliberately boring, it's hard to know what the commission expects. The commission is notorious for green lighting the demolition of Philadelphia's historic landmarks despite its namesake. It may be sophomorically attempting to diffuse blowback from decisions at the Church of the Assumption and the Boyd Theater, hoping for a tower behind Lit Brothers that echoes its aged façade.

Fortunately the commission has no issue with the height considering Market East's lagging development. As one of the area's few historic landmarks, Lit Brothers deserves the utmost historical consideration, but Brickstone's bland tower may have been its most respectful.

The Historical Commission's unfamiliarity with the architectural history it's charged with protecting may be reflected in this decision, in that this tower is behind Lit Brothers, not on top of the historic landmark.

MIC Tower

Philly Bricks usually breaks out in song anytime a developer dares exceed 200 feet. But the proposed Mellon Independence Center Tower near Market East barely elicits a "meh." The 429 foot mixed use tower designed by Stantec Architecture will be reviewed by the city's Historical Commission next week. You know, the guys who green-lit the demolition of the historic Church of the Assumption and Boyd Theater.

Let's step back though. I'm not mongering fear. Despite the fact that this is being wildly described as a tower above Lit Brothers, it's anything but. The Lit Brothers isn't a building, but a block of buildings tethered together by a century of bureaucracy. What we commonly refer to as "Lit Brothers," its iconic iron facade, will remain untouched however the commission rules.
 
In fact, Stantec's design is deliberate. Setback from both 7th and Market streets, it will remain largely unseen to pedestrians.

Renderings show the MIC Tower from an angle most can't access. To pedestrians on the sidewalk, the tower will only be visible on Filbert Street.

It's absent presence is evident in the tower's design as well, devoid of detail and color it is intended to fade into the shadows of better buildings. What makes the MIC Tower great is the fact that it isn't. Reminiscent of some of the latter Penn Center towers, it could set a precedent for new highrises in a desolate part of Center City. But hopefully it will also bring with it the adjacent - and better - architecture that masked how awful Penn Center really looks.

Of course Captain Obvious would point to the eight surface parking lots within a block of this site as a better location to build...anything. Unfortunately the politics of parking in Philadelphia is so complicated it has its own TV show.