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S.C.R.U.B. managed to weasel their way into a Daily News article on the recent conversation in City Council to finally do something with our city's ailing Main Street, Market East. And big surprise, they don't like it.
What could have come across as a healthy, compromising debate to sturdy the organization's relevance, only solidifies their reputation as a handful of contrarian hipsters with no understanding of economics, urban planning, and what most of our residents and businesses actually want or need.
Market East has always served as Center City's bustling commercial corridor, it's history illuminated in consumerism. With the exception of Reading Terminal, the PSFS Building, and the United States Post Office, Market East's historic infrastructure was entirely eradicated by mid-century development between 8th and 13th Streets.
Instead, Mary Tracy, President of S.C.R.U.B., called improvements to Market East "honky-tonk junk" and pegged Philadelphia a one trick pony by calling history our brand. I'm sorry, but like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, I would hope that one of our nation's biggest cities is more dynamic than that.
Rendering showing improvements to the Girard Trust Block between 11th and 12th. Originally the site of Snellenburg's Department store, the current building was created by chopping off all but two floors of the defunct department store and was intended to serve as a placeholder for future development.
Besides, if history really were our "brand," what history is being preserved by stagnating Market East development between 8th and 13th?
In its third year, Dilworth Plaza's German style Christmas Village is gracing the west side of City Hall. After receiving several complaints from workers and residents about the word "Christmas," Managing Director Richard Negrin asked that the word "Christmas" be replaced with "Holiday."
It's not surprising. In fact, had the sign originally said "Holiday Village" I doubt many would have noticed. While seasonally adorned retail ads aim at shoppers intending to stuff their Christmas stockings, those same retail stores treat the word "Christmas" like a four letter word. Often the most you can expect is the all encompassing "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings."
In a culture of increasing politically correct absurdities, I choose to indulge in "a Festivus for the Rest of Us."
Today's Philly.com poll shows that while 7% were offended by the word, 93% of readers don't give a Christmas about it.
After getting over the initial, disturbing image brought up in the first line of Harold Brubaker's Inquirer article, "Main Line roofers say they are taking it on the chin from Amish competitors" (he really wrote those words), the questions that began to present themselves were, are Amish construction crews inconsiderate of their workers' well being, or are conventional contractors simply lazy and entitled. The answers probably lie somewhere in the middle and the clash in cultures amplify its newsworthiness.
While some call hiring Amish roofers "outsourcing," this isn't completely accurate. There is nothing wrong with shopping around and no one is sending their roof to India for repairs. One conventional contractor found a 38% difference in price between his bid and an Amish competitor. While he may not have the wiggle room to compete with the Amish, in the current economic climate many customers are not finding the wiggle room to keep a roof over their head.
Competition seems to be the name of the game anywhere in the United States except in the Jerseyvania Triangle where gangster style business practices have inadvertently led to the industry's own demise. Philadelphian's have forgotten that the free market also applies to construction and a surprisingly business savvy Amish community has reminded them.
I do however think that if Amish contractors continue to compete on the grid that certain necessary evils need to be addressed. For example, the Amish don't pay Social Security compensation for their employees because their Amish employees don't receive social security benefits. It's understandable that they would take advantage of the loop hole, but regardless of what benefits they choose to avoid, if they are to compete outside of a sheltered community, the playing field needs to be level.
But conventional contractors need to abide by the same rules. Instead of muscling Amish contractors into extorting their customers into spending more on less, customers should be muscling conventional contractors into learning a thing or two from their Amish competitors. Obviously consumers are tired of being ripped off.
The Amish show up on time, care about their work, and do more jobs in less time. True, they're not paying for a pool and don't have to pay a mortgage on a Main Line McMansion. But this is America, and that's the name of the game. The Amish aren't breaking any rules, and when the rules change they'll still be there to compete. Instead of complaining, conventional contractors need to get in and play the game.
A movie chain's early ties to the City of Cinematic Love
Contributed by Mike Gaines
When people think of 20th Century Fox Studios, or simply Fox, the first things that usually come to mind are Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. The company and its founder, however, have a much more colorful history than people actually realize and has very strong ties to Philadelphia’s illustrious theatrical past.
In 1917, William Fox, a Hungarian immigrant, founded the Fox Film Corporation when he merged two separate companies he had established four years prior – the Greater New York Film Rental and Fox (or Box) Office Attractions Company, the former a distribution company and the latter a production company. By consolidating these two entities, Fox was able to control his growing theater chain with greater efficiency.
Pictures were secondary to a man who has always been considered more of an entrepreneur than entertainer and his focus was on acquiring and building theaters as opposed to producing the attractions. His theaters were known for their opulence, grandeur, and seating capacities at well over 1,000 per theater.
In 1927 Fox saw a prime opportunity to expand his cinematic empire through the acquisition of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, one of his biggest rivals. That year the head of MGM, Marcus Loew passed away and within two years Fox had acquired the Loew family’s shares of MGM. Unfortunately for Fox, this outraged the studio bosses of MGM, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, since they were not shareholders and left out of any profits from the merger.
Using his political connections, Mayer urged the Department of Justice to investigate Fox for violating antitrust laws, which tied up the merger for the next several years. A combination of the stock market crash of 1929 and recovering from serious injuries in a car accident wiped out Fox’s financial holdings so severely that even if the Department of Justice had given its eventual blessing to the merger it could not go forth.
The following year Fox lost control of his company and theaters during a hostile takeover, which combined with his other ails, forced him into a six year long battle to stave off bankruptcy. In 1935, the Fox Film Corporation merged with 20th Century Productions, only two years old at the time, to form the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. A year later, Fox was sentenced to six months in prison for attempting to bribe a judge at his bankruptcy hearing. Upon his release, Fox retired from the film business and into seclusion. He died at the age of 73 in 1952, so forgotten that not one single Hollywood producer attended his funeral.
Two examples of Fox’s theatrical opulence existed in Philadelphia, the first thirty years gone and the second still somewhat extant.
The Original Fox Theatre
In January 1922, a permit was issued to the Fox Film Corporation allowing them to build a brand new theater on the southwest corner of Sixteenth and Market Streets at a reported cost of $1.1 million.
The 17-story, steel frame, fireproof building was designed by Thomas W. Lamb, who had already designed six similar theaters in other cities including Atlanta, Brooklyn, and Detroit. The theater's seating capacity topped out at 2,423 seats and featured 15 varieties of imported Italian marble throughout. The box office was hexagonal in shape with a marble base that supported handmade bronze pillars and topped by a brass dome.
Fox Theatre Building seen from City Hall on West Market Street in 1926. The Arcade Building with its bridge to Broad Street Station, and the Harrison Building can be seen in the foreground outside City Hall.
In 1931 a proposal to sell the Fox theaters to Paramount fell through since not one of its theaters were profitable, save for the original at Sixteenth and Market. The following year, Alexander Boyd took over control of the theater, as well as the theater on Locust Street, after having sold his namesake theater on Chestnut Street, and continued to operate them until 1936 when Stanley Warner took control.
As cinematic technologies advanced, so did alterations to the theaters. In 1939 all stage shows ceased production, and when Cinemascope films were introduced in 1950, the staff is said to have taken the original organ console out to the back alley and burned it.
What had been the stage space was carved into a second, smaller theater called the Stage Door Theatre, fronting on Sixteenth Street. With the Fox chain now focused solely on motion pictures, it became home to several world premiers including Knute Rockne All American (1940), Centennial Summer (1946), and The Street with No Name (1948).
In 1959 the Milgrim Theatre chain leased the Fox Theatre and purchased it two years later, making the movie house at Sixteenth and Market their flagship theater. To maintain a reputation of excellence, as well as patronage from the Main Line ladies who frequented the theater, meticulous care was taken with the space.
In addition to boasting the best projection and sound capabilities available, supervisors checked every movie lens with white gloves daily to make sure they were clean and changing rooms were even installed in the basement for ushers. Before long, the Fox Building became Philadelphia’s movie exhibition headquarters where it housed local offices for every movie chain in the country, complete with a screening room on the 17th floor.
In March of 1980, the Fox Theatre finally closed after its final movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture finished its run. Milgrim claimed that it would cost over $1 million to restore and repair the plaster in the auditorium, most of which had long since been draped over, though a preservation committee, the Committee to Save the Fox, objected to these findings and began protesting its demolition.
One proposal for the site included building a new office building around and above the Fox, but in the end its owner won and the building, along with the rest of the block, was ultimately demolished to make room for a new office building which stands on this site today as home to PNC Bank.
After its demolition, some of the 87,000 tons of Italian marble were sold off, including the marble balcony railing which is now used as the communion railing at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Springfield, Pennsylvania. The Shubert Foundation bought many of the seats, chandeliers were sent to Columbus, Ohio for a theater restoration project, and the ticket book was sent to Los Angeles, California.
The Fox-Locust Theatre
The second Fox theater in Philadelphia opened in 1927 as a part of the Equitable Trust Building at 1401 Locust Street, on the northwest corner of South Broad and Locust Streets, with a seating capacity of 1,580 (Orchestra 1053, Loge 375, Balcony 152).
Designed by renowned architect Horace Trumbauer, the building was built as the Philadelphia headquarters for the Equitable Trust Company of New York. The building’s design was influenced by one of Trumbauer’s most recent projects, the Chateau Crillon Apartment House on nearby Rittenhouse Square.
Equitable Trust Company and Chateau Crillon designed by Horace Trumbauer
It reopened in October of 1931 as the Locust Street Theatre, operated by Alexander Boyd. In 1958 new management took over and renamed it the New Locust Theatre, and installed new chandeliers from the recently demolished Mastbaum Theatre in the lobby, foyer, and under the mezzanine.
The theater's final show was Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1980. Despite objections from the preservation community, a majority of the auditorium was demolished to make room for a parking garage while the remaining space was converted into a restaurant.
Happy Thanksgiving!Be back in a week.
On the Eagles opening day in September of 2011, Lincoln Financial Field could be the greenest stadium in the world. The addition of 100 wind turbines, 2500 solar panels, and a power plant capable of running on bio-diesel will easily power any game. Additionally, any extra power will be fed back into the city's electrical grid.
The Eagles will save $60M in energy costs in the next two decades. Owner Jeffrey Lurie is committed to proving environmental friendliness can can also be a wise financial decision.
Dragon Stadium in Taiwan and Stade de Suisse arena in Bern, Switzerland get 100% of their power from the sun, so The Linc will have some competition if it wants to truly call itself the greenest in the world. NASCAR's Pocono Raceway is currently the world's largest solar powered sporting facility.
100 wind turbines and 2500 solar panels will be added to South Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field fully powering the facility with additional power fed back into the city's electrical grid.
As a city nationally synonymous with its litter and oil refineries, Mayor Nutter is committed to making Philadelphia America's greenest city. Most outside the region probably wouldn't equate Philadelphia with environmental friendliness but it isn't unheard of. Compared to a lot of America's largest cities, we're not doing so bad.
West Coast states tend to set the rules for Going Green, but their headlines are made by retrofitting mass transit systems in cities built for the car. Pennsylvania and the region have an historic reputation as the region's Rust Belt, but the densely populated Northeast has never had enough room to submit to freeways and commuters the way California, Oregon, and Washington have. Inadvertently, we've always been green.
We don't take subways, buses, and trains because we want to, we take them because we have to. Adding a few elements of the green kitsch that West Coasters get off on would easily put an insular city like Philadelphia over the top even as Sunoco's fires continue to burn.
It looks like the Eagles are making Philadelphia green in more ways than one.
Market East has always served as Center City's bustling commercial corridor, it's history illuminated in consumerism. With the exception of Reading Terminal, the PSFS Building, and the United States Post Office, Market East's historic infrastructure was entirely eradicated by mid-century development between 8th and 13th Streets.
Rendering showing improvements to the Girard Trust Block between 11th and 12th. Originally the site of Snellenburg's Department store, the current building was created by chopping off all but two floors of the defunct department store and was intended to serve as a placeholder for future development.
