Freedom Tower

Break out the Champaign, a panel of architects has officially named New York's Freedom Tower the tallest skyscraper in North America. The Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat made the announcement, determining that the 400+ foot needle atop the building was an architectural element and not simply an antennae, allowing it to surpass Chicago's Willis Tower (which will forever be referred to as the Sears Tower).

Not everyone is thrilled about the decision. Chicago's Sears Tower is 1451 feet tall, while the roof at the Freedom Tower is at just 1368 feet. Determining the Freedom Tower's spire an architectural element is a gray area.

It's not new though. When the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930, it was expected to be the world's second tallest building, second to the Bank of Manhattan Trust building. At the last moment, a 125 foot tall spire was placed atop the Chrysler Building, making it the world's tallest building until it would be topped a year later by the Empire State Building.

Despite hosting a number of "World's Tallest," New York City did not invent the skyscraper. Because the construction technique that allowed buildings to scrape the sky was developed in Chicago, the Windy City is credited as the birthplace of the skyscraper.

Philadelphia, even with the Gentleman's Agreement that didn't allow a building to surpass William Penn's hat, held the honor of the World's Tallest with City Hall for seven years. To this day, Philadelphia City Hall is still the world's tallest masonry building, and given the costly construction, one unlikely to ever be surpassed.

Freedom Tower's position as the nation's tallest is in part symbolic, precisely at 1776 feet, it pays homage to the nation's founding. It also brings along with it an iconic end to the recovery following the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Whether or not Chicago decides to challenge New York City by building an even taller skyscraper remains to be seen. The city is certainly capable. But it won't erase the Freedom Tower's significance which is largely its location and what it represents.

Skyscrapers across the Middle East and Asia have far surpassed anything constructed in America, any while they're symbolic of Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and China's symbolic efforts, they're the product of poor labor conditions and exploitation.

The Freedom Tower represents more than its architects, developers, and builders, it represents an ideal, perseverance, and innovation created here, in the United States, that allowed buildings around the globe to touch the clouds.

Comcast Expansion?

A mythical "source" at CBS Philly leaked the idea that Comcast may be planning to expand its Center City campus, vertically.

The company is now commonly referred to as Xfinity or NBC Universal, because a completely nonsensical moniker or the network that brought us 30 Rock and Seinfeld are more inviting than the name that reinvented the American monopoly.

Comcast once planned an additional midrise mirroring suburban station. Currently, the site of that building is a weed filled garden that no one can walk through.

Despite the company's abysmal reputation, potential additions to our skyline are full of hope. After all, in 2008, Comcast topped our unique skyline with a giant, silver Rubix Cube. I mean Comcast owns television, they could at least run Everybody Love Raymond reruns on that static boob tube 300 meters in the sky.

The lot at 18th and Arch was the site of the grandiose proposal for the American Commerce Center. The ACC, designed by CAD hacks and embraced by no one would have been the nation's tallest building.

Comcast's expansion in Center City is 100% speculation, but I'm having fun with it because I'm tired of talking about Market East. If Comcast does decide to expand in Center City, it likely won't be taller than its signature tower.

However sources from Liberty Property Trust, who manage 18th and Arch have stated that if Comcast expands, Norman Foster could be the architect. Norman Foster designed London's Saint Mary's Axe, or the Gerkin. If Comcast employs Foster for any expansion, it won't be conventional.

China's Manhattan

China's urban planners are certainly ambitious. They've replicated European villages, parts of Venice and Paris. Although they tried and lost when it came to ripping off Disney, they've set their sights on reproducing Manhattan, not just architecturally, but actually making a better Big Apple and taking over Manhattan's role as the world's economic capital.

China's efforts to replicate the world may be more than an homage to internationalism. Historically, architectural reproduction is common in China dating back centuries. It's more than just whimsical fun, rather it symbolizes dominance over the culture being reproduced.

However, despite the fact that the nation owns so much of the West's debt, they've recently taken on quite a bit of their own. China may soon face the same realities America and Europe faced during the Great Recession.

China's Manhattan Project uninhabited and under constriction

Don't let the world's biggest construction site fool you. China found a funny way to finance a lot of "World Firsts" and tiny town disasters.

The Chinese government somewhat owns the country's land. When they want something, they take it. Like many major projects in China, Tianjin, or the other Manhattan, began as a nearly worthless piece of land seized by the government.

The government then reassessed the property for far more than it was worth, borrowed against the bloated value, and began to build. It's a gamble, a gamble that makes the American housing bubble blush. In fact, at a construction cost of $200B, it is the American housing bubble.

When Tianjin's Manhattan project is over, if it's ever complete, China will not have surpassed New York's influence as a global presence. New York's presence is not present in its architecture, but two centuries of history that could have yielded the same outcome from suburban Phoenix.

Prominence isn't made from buildings and cities, however grand. It's bred from sweat. Dubai learned this the hard way.

Skyscrapers were invented out of need, a necessity that is only necessary in the world's older cities. They work in Shanghai and Beijing because, like Manhattan, the only direction to build is up.

Many attempts to scrape the sky across the Middle East and Asia are the end result of design competitions leaving behind countless empty skyscrapers. America certainly indulged in its own attempt to reach the clouds, evident in skylines from New York to Los Angeles. But even the Empire State Building, although empty during the Great Depression, was built out of purpose.

Many may argue that America's resistance to compete with the skylines of Mecca and Dubai is the symbolic end of the American Empire, a return to a modest sense of provincial colonialism that Europe succumbed to at the birth of our nation.

That would be more likely if these vastly taller skylines were something new rather than simply taller. By replicating Manhattan, China doesn't usurp or dominate American culture or prominence, particularly to anyone outside China. In fact, to the global stage it does just the opposite. Instead of creating its own architecture, its own cities, or defining something new, it actually bends to tired design, recreating exhausted and congested street grids while America, Europe, and Japan continue to innovate.

By doing nothing more than owning its people and places, these dictatorships, monarchies, communist governments can easily afford to grow taller, but only prove why their governments don't globally work. China may feel it dominates Europe by offering its citizens Swiss villages and the Eiffel Tower, asking its people "why bother traveling to Europe when it's all right here?" But they also remove their people from global culture, which exists in the global populace, not its architecture.

Biking Philadelphia

Philadelphia recently took the top prize from the League of American Bicyclists. Those hipsters zipping along our newly designated bike lanes on fixies are leading the nation in bike commuting, and they're leading the nation by a lot.

Unfortunately the table only considers the nation's ten largest cities. Crunchier cities like Seattle and San Francisco beat us.

But thanks to our flat terrain and more bike lanes than any American city, Philadelphia has made itself the perfect city to bike to work.

We also have a densely packed core and some of the oldest and most compact suburbs in the country, biking through Belmont to the Main Line is a breeze and a comfortable alternative to gridlock.

Welcome to the Black Lodge

Light a cigarette, pour yourself a damn fine cup of coffee, and get ready for a trip to the Black Lodge. Twin Peaks is back.

Unfortunately we're not getting a third season twenty five years later. No, I'm talking fashion. Suckers Apparel has released a line of Twin Peaks inspired fashion. Pricy, Suckers' colorful duds pay homage to everything from the patterned floor of the Black Lodge to Laura Palmer's corpse wrapped in plastic.

It's hard to say if the hipsters have really embraced the early 90s cult classic for anything more than irony, but the line is sold out so someone's wearing it.

Twin Peaks has only a small link to Philadelphia, Agent Dale Cooper was from here. However David Lynch has a profound connection to the city, particularly its gritty, dangerous past.

Lynch studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, living in the Callowhill neighborhood in the late 60s. At a time when the neighborhood was still largely industrial and trains still carried commuters atop the Reading Viaduct, Callowhill was another world, one Lynch blames for his dark and disturbing stories.

Twin Peaks was clearly his most tame and most structured work. Usually consisting of short scenes and bizarre images loosely woven together, Lynch's films are more art than movie.

If you like Lynch, you're not sure why. No one can deny he's interesting.

Lynch left Philadelphia for Los Angeles in 1970. He didn't return to the city that haunted his dreams and his artwork for four decades. In March of 2012, Lynch was in town to assist the PAFA with an upcoming David Lynch exhibit and a documentary.

Homecomings can be bittersweet for many reasons. When you're a kid, places feel bigger, wilder, scarier. But those places also change. Of today's Philadelphia Lynch said, "it’s all bright and shiny just like every other city....I preferred it the way it was."

Lynch, quiet and composed, still shies from publicity. With many dubbing his Callowhill neighborhood "Eraserhood," an homage to his first major film, Eraserhead, it's hard to say how he'd feel about the recognition, particularly considering the posh lofts that have erased the character that once inspired him.

As for a Twin Peaks homecoming, not a chance. Rumors have buzzed for years, rumors Lynch repeatedly denies. Perhaps ABC can turn to Twin Peaks' co-creator Mark Frost. After all Lynch didn't direct every episode, but admittedly the best episodes.

Many shows have drawn inspiration from Twin Peaks, such as the cancelled Happy Town and the successful The Killing. Though it's going to be a while before a vision as unique as Lynch's is going to find its way to network television. Perhaps a movie?

Philadelphia's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Philadelphia seems to have more parades than anywhere I've ever lived. Okay, that's not a lot. DC, Portland, a small town in Virginia no one's ever heard of. But Philadelphia does a fine job commemorating holidays, even unconventional holidays, with great reverence. And we do it well.

Traditionally the Thanksgiving Day Parade doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving so much as it kicks off the Christmas season, and particularly the shopping season.

Although the national Thanksgiving Day Parade has its roots in Philadelphia, it was embraced by Macy's in New York as a means to push its wares for the month before Christmas.

Obviously no parade can rival Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but Philadelphia doesn't rest on its laurels when it comes to parading down the Parkway.

However any Thanksgiving Day Parade is more than a collection of high school bands culminating in a fat white guy sitting on top of a chimney. It's a moving billboard telling people to start shopping.

That's why America's oldest Thanksgiving parade was started in 1920 by Gimbels, and paraded past its flagship store at 8th and Market. Crowds would  gather to watch the parade, then turn to extravagant display windows along Market East aglow with toys eagerly anticipated by brats on their fathers' shoulders.

It was like a scene out of A Christmas Story. It was A Christmas Story.

Of course the (official title) "6ABC - Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade" doesn't have the same capitalistic allure of the Macy's or Gimbels Thanksgiving Day Parade, nor does 6ABC or Dunkin' Donuts share the motivation. On the Parkway, our Thanksgiving parade does little more than publically celebrate one of the year's more introverted holidays.

Honestly, a Halloween parade would be more interesting.

What makes a Thanksgiving parade interesting, or even serve a purpose, is kicking off Christmas. Let's face it, unless it's full of floats decorated with pilgrims and Indians, it's not celebrating one night of gluttony. It's celebrating Christmas.

That's exactly why it belongs on Market East. Although our commercial core continues to struggle, it's home to Macy's and the city's only shopping mall. While Kmart and Old Navy refuse to appropriately decorate their display windows for the holiday season, imagine what those windows would look like if they knew thousands of potential customers would be spending Thanksgiving morning right outside their doors.

It would remind Philadelphians what Market East is, was, and will be. It would tell cynics the corridor is still very relevant. It would force the Gallery to clean up its act, at least for a month.

Scientology, Philadelphia, and one astounding New Yorker who had enough

Six years after the Church of Scientology bought the Cunningham Piano building near 12th and Chestnut promising to restore the fifteen story building as Scientology's tallest location, it remains empty.

The church has a reputation for restoring historic properties, and then submitting visitors to tedious propaganda in exchange for a tour.

Currently, L&I is planning to take the church to Blight Court over the property. While much of Chestnut Street could certainly qualify as blight, the church's tax exemption leaves the empty building contributing absolutely nothing to the neighborhood.

Of course the Church of Scientology is no stranger to the courtroom, but often as a plaintiff. Funded by some extremely wealthy people, the church certainly has access to more money than L&I is willing to spend on a blight case. It's not hard to imagine a counter suit backfiring against the city.

That's not to say the church shouldn't be challenged. Counter suing L&I won't win the church any favors when it comes time to apply for permits either on Chestnut Street or their current Race Street site.

The controversial denomination has always been a source of conversation, and being charged by L&I is by far the most benign.

Philly.com

The church's founder L. Ron Hubbard who died in the 80s, lived his last years in exile, largely on a cruise ship owned by the church. Throughout the 70s and 80s the church received significant criticism from major politicians and media outlets denouncing their tactics, beliefs, and secrecy.

Three decades removed from its prophet's death with support from hundreds of famous celebrities, both members and not, has managed to improve the church's reputation. Once popularly considered a dangerous cult, few today know enough about the church to regard it as anything more than strange.

Protests are still common and one would certainly follow a renovation at the Chestnut Street site. Their rigid stance against psychology and psychopharmacology has inadvertently led to many depression related suicides. 

Despite the fact that its current leader, David Miscavige grew up near Philadelphia, the church's local presence has never been profound. Funding their day to day operations comes from performing "free stress tests" at Market East Station and their Race Street site.

These stress tests typically yield negative results which the church then claims can be resolved by paying for more "auditing."

Membership in the church is not free, and their dues are not comprised of donations but required, a common source of criticism.

King of Queen's star Leah Remini recently caused a media stir by leaving Scientology. Leaving Scientology is purportedly difficult but not unheard of, and members who leave, leave quietly. However Remini, being a Brooklyn native, left with a bang.

When Remini left the church she didn't leave a D on Miscavige's desk, she took it several steps further, indirectly accusing him of murder. Miscavige's wife hasn't been seen in public for years and Remini filed a missing persons claim.



Miscavige wishes.


Miscavige and Scientology's golden boy, Tom Cruise, attempted to diffuse public outrage by claiming Remini was a low ranking member, which did more to make the church look like a bunch of weirdos than end speculation.

Los Angeles Police Chief Christopher Dorner originally dismissed Remini's claim. Following public pressure the LAPD ultimately claimed that Michele was in fact alive and well, however the Hollywood rumor circuit is still whispering. It's not surprising considering Dorner's speculated ties to Scientology.

To date, Michele Miscavige hasn't been seen in public.

Meanwhile Remini is working on her memoirs which will likely focus largely on her experience in Scientology. She might not seem like the candidate for an autobiography. Like most Dancing with the Stars contestants, her fame has waxed and waned. But considering her stint in Scientology and her grit as an opinionated and true Northeaster, the book will undoubtedly be an interesting read, one that could potentially bring popular criticism to Scientology's front door.

For us, the Cunningham Piano building is just another Chestnut Street lady in wait. If the church was ready to build, they'd build. L&I's charge likely won't do more than force the Miscavige to relinquish the property, leaving it as it is, another vacant storefront on Chestnut Street.

Perhaps in the long run that outcome is the best. With Chestnut Street slowing following in Walnut's footsteps, a blank storefront capped with a church and fronted with free pamphlets campaigning against our city's own pharmaceutical industry might not quite be what Chestnut Street is becoming.

It all remains to be seen. As someone who loves architecture, the Cunningham Piano building, and native New Yorkers railing against Hollywood nonsense, I want a front row seat to the show.