Our Thriving Independence Mall

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.

Merry Christmas from Philly Bricks!

Philly Bricks will be closed from now until next Wednesday. Merry Christmas, and happy holidays!

Nightmares at 13th and Wood

Those who know me know of my fascination with the Philadelphia before my time. I don't mean Ben Franklin's quaint, Colonial Philadelphia, or the Industrial Revolution's Workshop of the World.

I mean the bleak and dreary Philadelphia that can be caught in the background of Rocky. It's the weird Philadelphia that hatched after suburban flight and before the urban renaissance. This is the Philadelphia I remember visiting as a child.

In a way, the city almost felt more alive. The streets were bustling with people, but not with boutique shoppers and dog walkers. They were bustling with harried employees in a thriving business district, and strange apocalyptic characters prophesying the end of the world.

I'm sure it felt this way because my experience with Philadelphia in the 80's was as a daytime tourist. And I'm sure my farm raised upbringing made every city feel like Manhattan.

Still, there was something unique about Philadelphia. There was a darker side of the city. The city I'd love to relive for just one night.

In 1970, writer and director David Lynch lived on the southeast corner of 13th and Wood, in what is often now pegged as The Loft District, while attending the Academy of the Arts.

13th and Wood, the site of David Lynch's home in 1970 during his time at the Academy of the Arts in Philadelphia.

The site is now a parking lot for the adjacent U-Haul facility, but twenty years ago it was the fantastic nightmare of the writer and director of Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, and Blue Velvet, and served as the inspiration for his first film, Eraserhead.

His former presence in what Lynch has described as "a very sick, twisted, violent, fear-ridden, decadent, decaying place" has led a number of residents to brand the neighborhood, The Eraserhood.

The Roman Catholic High School's annex was designed as the City Morgue by Philip Johnson in the 1920s. In the 1970's the morgue operated diagonally across from Lynch's home at 13th and Wood.

Although that name is as marketable to a realtor as The Gayborhood, it's also as uniquely Philadelphian. While Lynch, originally from Montana, has mostly negative things to say about Philadelphia and his former neighborhood, anyone who is familiar with his work knows that he finds beauty in the most disturbing images.

"It's decaying but it's fantastically beautiful, filled with violence, hate and filth," he has said of Philadelphia. He found an opening to another world in our city's decay, "it was fear...so magical, like a magnet, that your imagination was always sparking."

With the closure of the Reading Viaduct and the construction of the Vine Street Expressway, I'm sure the corner of 13th and Wood would now be a disappointment to a director known for his dark, sepia toned images of tortured souls and broken windows.

The Eraserhood is now gritty in a 21st Century way. Its soot stained masonry and small alleys are quickly becoming its charm, and it abandonment has become its parking. We may never see that world again, and perhaps that is a good thing.

While the unusual pocket between Broad and the Reading Viaduct, and Vine and Spring Garden may never again be part of Lynch's "sickest, most corrupt, decaying city filled with fear," its legacy will always find its place in his bizarre, dark, and beautiful films.

Risky Design Business

While critics encourage better design and community activists lobby for responsible development, many times the compromises yield bland results or stagnant progress. In a culture once ruled by the commercial media, an explosion of personal technologies has given everyone an immediate voice.

Blogs rival traditional news sources with opinionated diatribes. Activists protest multiple causes from their iPhones. The audience is overstimulated with what ultimately amounts to little more than white noise. These technologies aren't bad, we just haven't learned how to deal with them yet.

Operating under antiquated expectations (and by antiquated, I mean the world before the web), City Council receives arguments presented by critics and activists as if they were an angry mob standing outside City Hall in 1980.

The rules of campaigning tell politicians that these loud voices are all potential votes, but these rules haven't compensated for the white noise and the internet mayhem. Essentially, politicians haven't figured out that most of today's vocal opposition isn't as dedicated as the picketers in the last century.

One day they're protesting billboards on Market East, the next they're blogging against horse-drawn carriages in Society Hill, and the next week they're at a Prop 8 rally in California. We have it so good we'll protest anything, and our elected officials need to know how to weed out the legitimate constituents from the hot air.

Willis Hale's macabre Lorraine Hotel, known now as the Divine Lorraine, has captured the imagination of each passerby for a century.

Unfortunately, in a city once known for its exciting, experimental architecture, City Hall's inability to deal with public opinion has left us with a lot of vacant lots and boring buildings. 10 Rittenhouse, Symphony House, and even the Comcast Tower don't come close to living up to the reputation handed down to us by Willis Hale and Frank Furness.

Frank Furness challenged conventional Victorian style with exaggerated elements and colors. Shown here is the National Bank of the Republic on Chestnut Street.

William Lescaze and George Howe challenged convention and the city's skyline with the PSFS Building, the world's first skyscraper built in the International Style. Even the mid-century additions of I.M. Pei's Society Hill Towers, Ed Bacon's Dilworth Plaza, and the State Office Building on North Broad Street employed a high standard of quality in their designs that were both strong and risky.

At a time when Philadelphia's skyline was dominated by City Hall and church steeples and New York's by Art Deco spires, the PSFS Building changed the face of urban American cities.

Built in a time when professionals knew their place and a community was respectful of their vision, architects were allowed to wow us, and occasionally disturb us. But like a bad haircut, it grows back or you get used to it.

In what would seem like a complete disregard for the quaint Colonialism of Society Hill, I.M. Pei's towers gently compliment the surrounding brick row homes and parks. The towers were part of a massive, mid-century plan that turned the worst slums in Center City into some of the regions most desirable addresses.

Instead of bending over for every action group with a website or assuming every critic is a professional at architecture and history, city planners and private developers need to know where to draw a line when it comes to the influence of public opinion. Given the attention span of most of the opposition, in the end it rarely matters.

Focus groups lead to boring, formulaic television programs, and the same goes for art and design. Renderings are shopped around the newspapers, blogosphere, and community meetings, shuffled through several self-proclaimed "expert" organizations, and sent back to the drawing board to be stripped of all character.

While our voices are often important, we don't know better than the professionals. Sometimes those with a vision need to stand their ground and shock us.

The Race Street Pier

The Race Street Pier in August, 1901, prior to construction of the Ben Franklin Bridge

The dilapidated Race Street Pier prior to reconstruction in February of 1931.

The Race Street Pier park, designed by James Corner Field Operations, Coming Spring 2011

Race Street Connector

As construction progresses on the Race Street Pier, designs for a better way to get people to the site continue. Designers of the park, James Corner Field Operations, are designing a better path from 2nd Street to the waterfront.

A section of the fence and lighting that will be provided along the route to the Race Street Pier.

Problems that need to be addressed by James Corner Field Operations and the project managers, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, include sidewalks, landscape, and the Interstate 95 underpass. The James Corner Field Operations design includes painted bike lanes, new landscaping, better lighting, and a metal screen that will line Race Street under the interstate.

The illuminated fence will span the width of 95.

Public art will also be included as part of this extension. It is anticipated that the Race Street Connector will be complete for the Race Street Pier's grand opening this spring.

Additionally, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has suggested that the nearby on-ramp may eventually be eliminated.

Brownstoner: Full Steam Ahead: Plans for the Race St Connector

Outing Scouts

In what has become a mess of red tape and legal fees, the potential settlement between the Boy Scouts of America and the city of Philadelphia has resulted in the potential sale of the property to the private organization for $500,000. In exchange for the low ticket price, the Scouts would drop their law suit against the city in which they obligate the tax payers to shell out nearly a million dollars in legal fees.

Well, a local real estate mogul may have offered another solution. Mel Heifetz has offered the city $1.5M, which would cover both the Scout's offer for the building and their law suit. Heifetz does not want to develop the property, but donate it to an organization that does not discriminate. Heifetz also paid off the mortgage on the William Way Center, a nonprofit resource for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.

The Boy Scouts of America local headquarters, the Cradle of Liberty branch, at 22nd and Winter.

Mayor Nutter has previously supported the initial settlement saying that it will put an end to a nasty legal battle that drew national support for both sides of the case. Unfortunately the settlement also acknowledges the administration's disregard for the city's own ban on discrimination that includes sexual orientation.

The scenario's legal complications come from the fact that a private organization that operates under it's own rules, which include discriminating based on sexual orientation, has been allowed to operate in a government owned facility for nearly a century. The city attempted to demand rent from the Scouts, which resulted in the Scout's lawsuit against the city.

In the end, the building will either belong to the Boy Scouts or to Mr. Heifetz. In either scenario it will be owned privately and no longer subject to the city's anti-discrimination policies. The city now has the choice, to either pay a settlement to the Scouts and uphold its own policy, or to practically give away this historic building so that the administration may absolve itself from its own responsibilities.