The sad new Hilton at Arch Street and Twelfth

[Cro Burnham]

You setup the rules and then let things grow. You don't need to micromanage it all nor do you need every wannabe architect or senior citizen or elected official get to dictate what a building or a space looks like.

Very true.

But incompetent and corrupt politicians thrive with ambiguity and opacity and fear clarity and the loss of behind the scenes power that clarity entails.

Plus, most intellectually insecure politicians' astonishingly diminutive aesthetic sophistication is matched by their severely outsized cases of edifice complex. This is a very bad combination, particularly in a city with such a dominantly doltish political class. It often results in gigantic hideous boondoggles like Penn's Landing.

I am frankly shocked that Levy and Greenberger - and Joe Syrnick too - have managed to make as much progress as they have, given the headwind they face.

I really admire Greenberger as a matter of fact. I hope he manages to stick around after Nutter fades out. What's great about him, as far as I can tell, is that he is all about implementing a rational and self-perpetuating system, rather than being a transaction man and dealmaker. This is almost unheard of in this city. The problem with many people in his type of position is that they all want to be big dealmakers. They all get a big thrill out of that.

If they are good (like Bill Hankowsky generally was), it's OK while it lasts, but then you are back to square one once they leave (I dread what will happen to Center City District when Levy retires, as I don't think anyone remotely his equal has been groomed for a succession); if they are bad, as they usually are, you end up with giant hideous lumps of concrete for the next 60 years.

Perhaps this is most plainly evident in the legacy of the City's quintessential visionless deamaking body, the Redevelopment Authority, whose amazingly inept 60s and 70s blunders (not to mention its ongoing initiatives in futility) still blight huge areas of Center City. For most of the last 50 years, the economic development and planning apparatus of the city has been run by hack deal junkies with aesthetic awareness about as sophisticated as that of Donald Trump or Toll Brothers.

[MNG1324]

I went by the hotel the other day and it's even worse looking than the rendering. It looks like dryvit puzzle blocks haphazardly throw together. the only thing that could save this would be good retail on the first floor which is rare for hotels. The saddest looking bar is the one around the corner in chinatown at 12and race at the Four Points which i hope this doesn't add to.

[MarketStEl]

I'm with you. Paul Levy is great. Alan Greenberger is too. Bill Hankowsky accomplished some good stuff, and Rendell definitely facilitated lots of things.

It's really difficult, however, to name a city "leader" from the past many many decades whose legacy is net positive in terms of urban development. I know some people will say Ed Bacon, but he made unfathomably monumental mistakes. Frank Furness and Paul Cret made systemic positive impacts on the city. Definitely not Venturi. Louis Kahn did great stuff, just not here unfortunately. But there are no Frederick Olmstead, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham equivalents of Philadelphia in the last 150 years.

This is a city that has attained whatever level of beauty it has in spite of its political elite. Lone actors, like John Wanamaker or whoever was running PSFS in 1930, accomplished wonderful things. But these were random occurrences of luck not in any way facilitated by cohesive efforts by political leaders to create a great city. Our planning and development leaders have largely been well-intentioned screw ups at best, otherwise sleepy dimwits, total fools or outright scumbags. For example, anyone remember Auspitz at the zoning board unilaterally demanding, and extolling the beauty of, PVC estate fencing as if it were the key to design nirvana? This guy, who ran a deli and had no business being in urban planning, amazingly was able to make a fairly large and pretty unfortunate impact on the aesthetics of this city.

But I have no false sense of nostalgia about civic leadership in this city - there hasn't really been any unless you're talking about people like Benjamin Franklin, Nicholas Biddle, or Stephen Girard. Rather, I have nostalgia for the vision evident in past leaders of peer cities like Boston, NYC, San Francisco, and Chicago. All of these cities broadly adopted and maintain traditions of better design and aesthetics than Philadelphia. Our civic leaders' idea of good design has basically been drab or cutesy schlock like Penn's Landing, Franklin Towne, Franklin Court, Independence Mall. Generally a total lack of aesthetic sense, which explains why we subsidize Joe Zuritsky's McParking and McHotels.

Glad to know I'm not alone in my lack of total approbation for Edmund Bacon and all his works. (Actually, I think our ranks are larger than some might suspect. At the groundbreaking for the Paine's Park skatepark, I spoke with an architect who publicly credits Bacon's advocacy of the skateboarders' cause as getting him interested in creating a worthy replacement for LOVE Park, but privately noted that Bacon might not have had to glom onto them had JFK Plaza - one of his not-so-urban creations, as it turned out - not been an essentially unused and unloved public space at the time. The skateboarders gave it the element of vitality it lacked, and they in turn captured the fancy of the rest of the public. So you could say here that the skateboarders saved Ed's bacon.)

I'd throw Joe Clark and Richardson Dilworth in with this lot as well; it's only in hindsight that we've come to realize that they were actually presiding over the beginnings of decline. What Penn Center lacks in architectural merit it more than made up for in usefulness, and its creation over the ashes of Broad Street Station (RIP) and the Chinese Wall (good riddance) led directly to everything else that happened along West Market, including the later inadvertent act that allowed this city to construct an honest-to-God skyline.

But one thing that's notable about almost all of our greatest leaders? With the exception of Mr. Biddle, none of 'em are natives. (In this essay, I was speaking strictly about the city's mayors, but the observation holds for our most active and engaged civic leaders in general.) And this observation is not original with me: Digby Baltzell made it first and most forcefully in his book Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia.

[mixiboi]

*looks out window* Ok, Ok, I'm jumping on the "its sucks" bandwagon...*pics later*





Tho it looks better with its windows and white cap in

[eldondre]

this jerkoff also owns the old water building on broad

[mixiboi]

which one is that?

[eldondre]

which one is that?

the vacant building

[seand]

Don't know what all the fuss is about. Nothing screams "luxury hotel" like a design apparently modeled on a suburban county hospital.

[mixiboi]

See the Navy Yard is getting the Hotel this should look like:



Well less round.

[MarketStEl]

*looks out window* Ok, Ok, I'm jumping on the "its sucks" bandwagon...*pics later*

So you work in the Stephen Girard Building, then?

[MarketStEl]

the vacant building

Specifically, the building at the NE corner of Broad and Arch whose only tenant now is a Dunkin' Donuts.

The "water" referred to above was the Water Revenue Bureau, which moved to the MSB along with the rest of the Water Department.

Supposedly, this building was saved while the rest of the 100 block of North Broad was demolished because it could serve as a hotel. I note no hotel operator chomping at the bit to renovate it for that purpose.

[MNG1324]

For what it's worth, Realen properties has it on their website that this building will be turned into a 150 room hotel. of course they were to build a hotel earlier than never happened near there as well. So i'll believe it when i see it.

[Cro Burnham]

But one thing that's notable about almost all of our greatest leaders? With the exception of Mr. Biddle, none of 'em are natives.

I was just thinking about this the other day.

Philadelphia seems perpetually to provide great opportunities for more ambitious New Yorkers, Bostonians and others to feel like big fish in a small pond. Few of us "natives" seem to have the nads to break out of the very constricting box we see ourselves living in.

Perhaps with the more recent influx of Latin American or Asian immigrants and their offspring will help us break out of our centuries-old torpor. M. Night Shyamalan comes to mind as an example. But the "Founders Effect" is very powerful. It's incredible, a defining and unique characteristic of this place. I hate it but I'm a part of it. No wonder Philadelphia is so impenetrable to mainstream American culture.

[mixiboi]

So you work in the Stephen Girard Building, then?

Yeah, I got lucky and have a view of the station then Connolly house.

[RainboTeabagger]

If anyone can show me a large prominent EIFS structure in downtown Boston or SF, I'll be surprised. The decision makers in those places seem to have a sophistication, pride, and vision that ours lack almost totally.

Neurons in everyone's head dissolves each time you speak.

[eldondre]

my family was in from out of town, "looks like the same garbage they've been building in the suburbs for the last three decades"
it's a very heavily trafficked corner. this is what politically connected buildings look like I gues, where's that $8 million? not in the building that's for sure.

[RainboTeabagger]

my family was in from out of town, "looks like the same garbage they've been building in the suburbs for the last three decades"
it's a very heavily trafficked corner. this is what politically connected buildings look like I gues, where's that $8 million? not in the building that's for sure.

So your family was out walking around during a hurricane? The building isn't even finished yet and 8 million is nothing for a large mid-rise structure. I'm not saying this is going to end up a great piece of work but compared to other Hilton home2suites this is a Taj Mahal.

[RainboTeabagger]

Reading Cro Bumhurt and Sandy Smith talk about some artificial myth of Quakerism makes me laugh. You're talking about a city in the 1800's that started to name streets after people and planned to build the tallest building in the world. Very un-Quaker. Its all a myth or at least since William Penn died in England in the 1700's as a member of the Anglican church.

Why do these hispanic and asian people have to be the ones to erase this quaker cloud which doesn't exist? Why can't whites and blacks do that too? You think with the loads of hipsters and African/West Indies immigrants moving here they would/will destroy this myth as well.

Anytime anyone anywhere moves somewhere they come with an entrepreneurial spirit. Philly to NYC, NYC to Philly, Europe to USA, blah blah blah.

Cro, those view cities you mentioned that have built "only" impressive structures in the modern era have higher property values. Plus you are absolutely wrong in thinking any of those cities you mentioned don't have a bunch of post-war junk in high profile spots as well. You blast Bacon yet forget about Moses destruction in NYC. Bacon was one of the only American city planners that focused on INCREASING population in the CBD.

I'd know I'm a transplant and all but anytime I talk to anyone under the age of 45 about Philly back home they typically shower praise. Get your mythical Quaker brain of your noggin' and free your mind.

Quakers were mostly Anglicans who rebelled against the system by becoming Quakers. They made money and all converted back as members of the Church of England so they could spend the money THEY WORKED HARD FOR unlike what idiots like Baltzell thought.

Peace yo!

[Burholme06]

my family was in from out of town, "looks like the same garbage they've been building in the suburbs for the last three decades"

You couldn't help yourself and you drug your visitors to the construction site, didn't you?

[kidphilly]

You couldn't help yourself and you drug your visitors to the construction site, didn't you?

And why does every building have to some form of a masterpiece. This is infill and really nothing more. That particular space is not screaming icon. The W will be better served where it will end up.

Philadelphia, PA - Google Maps


Honestly in 10 years this will just look like a street corner and the eye will still be drawn to the PSFS or RTM