Barnes Part Redux

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I find myself in wholehearted agreement with Steve Ives' assessment--he says it more eloquently than I ever could:

Source:

"Any institution that is located along The Parkway yet fails to prominently present itself along this grand avenue doesn't need to be there. Shy architecture belongs on Ludlow Street...or 202. That was my first reaction to these images...not even the design, the orientation, the ghastly surface parking lot. It was the fact that it doesn't announce itself proudly among the venerable institutions along The Parkway and I genuinely do not care about efforts to recreate the museum's pastoral Merion setting.

The Foundation is not moving to Merion. It is moving to the heart of the city.

I'm having difficulty picturing any such institution hiding in plain sight in other cities. If the idea was to preserve the grove of London Pines along that block, I can understand. I'd still disapprove. The Rodin seems to work quite nicely both being a factor along The Parkway streetscape and as an object amidst a surprisingly tranquil background - particularly once inside the gate.

This project has already duplicated one of the worst aspects of another heartachingly underachieving venue, the Kimmel Center - it's bereft of a grand street entrance. The building is oriented almost exactly like the YSC was - even down to having the main entrance face away from The Parkway which was what I hated most about that building. That block is the gateway to the pastoral, green BFP and Fairmount Park. It's bad enough that the intersection there is totally hostile to pedestrians, is cleft by highway underpasses, is woefully undermanicured and, until earlier this year, bookended by a museum and a prison...an ironic commentary on two things this great city does well.

Why do we as a city keep doing this? Why do we keep accepting such unassuming designs? I know the process is just beginning and what we see here may not - hopefully will not - be the exact final product but we have a long history of understated, unassuming, demure, deferential architecture. It seems to be in our civic DNA. Perhaps it's a product of this city's Quaker roots. Buildings don't need to look like glass abortions to be great or exciting architecture. Not everything has to look like a Greek temple and not everything needs to be built of brick. Philadelphia has great architecture by the ton but, in my honest opinion, few exciting, stirring buildings considering the history and stature of this city. Much of what once was was torn down in the name of modernity which turned out to be soulless shoeboxes more often than not. Other cities have expanded their great art institutions - how many large cities have had the opportunity to build completely new art museums? How often does the opportunity to create a project of legacy such as this come about? This city's two current major art museums are timeless, stunning buildings that, each in their own way, speak of the era in which they were built and were then and remain to this day unmistakably and beautifully Philadelphian - one so much that it's as closely identified with this city as the Liberty Bell.

I've spoken very little about the project here but have heard good things about Williams/Tsien when their names first came up. I've anticipated this building more than any other that has come down the pipeline since I've been following this sort of thing because this is the sort of project that can say a lot about the city that it is in. I wanted to see a building embraces its unique location. I wanted to see a building that adds to the feeling of the street, that becomes part of our collective image and doesn't retreat from hints of grandeur or novelty the way Philadelphia projects so often seem to. A lovely fountain plaza is not enough penance for this iteration of the project to pay for the sin of its existence. Almost every other choice made the architects confounds me and unless I'm missing some larger theme I don't see how Philadelphia should accept this building without starting from scratch."

Barnes on the Parkway

I have never been excited about Todd Williams and Billie Tsien's work. I think that Skircanich (sp.?) Hall's brickwork is vomit-colored (which overwhelms the handlaid character of it) and that Williams-Tsien's other projects have been other such well-intentioned misfirings, at best, and debacles, at worst. So when they were announced as the architects for the new Barnes Museum on the Parkway, I was underwhelmed. How could they mess this up this time?

And so we waited for renders. And waited. And waited. Neither hide nor hair of them had been seen, until the City, via the Freedom of Information Act, was forced to release them some three days prior to what was supposed to be their unveiling. Well, one at least.

What does this render tell us?

That, as usual, there's a major misfiring.

It's not the buildings--the main hall is perfectly proportioned and stated; it integrates well into the Parkway Museums complex. The classroom buildings behind it are made of glass and will relate to, and evoke, the Safdie Central Branch expansion that the Free Library's been raising money for for, like, ever.

Evenly distributing mechanical around the block's non-Parkway sides is a major risk that may or may not pan out, so the major misfiring is not quite there yet--at least.

Where is it, then? Parking. There should be no surface lot whatsoever--and a major one faces Pennsylvania Avenue! (Yes, the Art Museum has surface parking, but...) Rodin has no parking. Eakins Oval's surface lot destroys the City Beautiful Beaux-Arts beauty.

Note: Since writing began more updates came out.
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/homepage/Barnes_on_the_Parkway.html

Why I Think the Drexel Dorm Is The Best Erdy-McHenry Building Yet

Note: This is a rebuttal to Inga Saffron's lackluster review of this building. With pictures, no less.

Of all of Erdy-McHenry's buildings, the new Drexel University 34th Street Dormitory just might be their most impressive. Where the firm has seemed to specialize in building commie block slabs at times in the past (witness Penn's Radian and Temple's Edge) with the Drexel Dorm we get something completely different: a gently twisting, undulating structure on a narrow footprint overlooking fantastic views of Center City and Fairmount Park. Only one other E-M design exhibits the complete package as well as this dorm: Hancock Square--but even there, its low-slung power is its defining characteristic, its clear influence of all it sees: Onion Flats Row along Laurel, and developments along Liberties Walk and by Liberty Lands Park. No: here E-M had to do something it's never done (to my knowledge) before: fit a building into a small footprint in a densely-developed area. The Edge and Avenue North complex had a full block to play with, and the Radian possibly more; Hancock Square is the bottom third of what was once an industrial superblock; E-M simply does not think small.

They didn't think small here, that's for sure. What Drexel wanted was a dorm; what they got was clearly a showpiece and a monument, a building shaming its built Big 5 rivals. At Temple, 1300 is still considered incoming freshman students' dorm of choice, despite the Edge clearly eclipsing it in terms of age; I'm not too sure about the Penn situation, but somehow I would doubt the Radian is choice. But this 34th Street Dorm is. There is no denying that it is the most stunning piece of architecture raised in this city since the Thin Flats, or quite possibly even Hancock Square itself. In this I agree with Inga, but then our views begin to diverge...

Inga says that:

That's very nice for the people on the inside, but there are serious problems with the building at the ground level -- more serious than any of Erdy McHenry's previous projects. While the architects argue that a slender tower is less intrusive than a bulky structure that filled the site, they never found a way to mediate the high-rise's abrupt change in scale from the largely Victorian neighborhood.

And while, yes, there is a neighborhood of Victorian rows heading to the west--Frat Row, in fact--this is not the context of the Drexel dorm. Actually, this building's context is not to be found to the west at all but rather to the south, namely, to Kelly Hall, which by being equally as out of ‘scale from the largely Victorian neighborhood’--about two-thirds as high as Millennium Hall, as apparently it's called, creates two things: precedent and context.

What do I mean by this? Well, consider Rittenhouse Square. 1706 Ritt, in fact. On three sides 1706's neighbors are low-rise structures, along Rittenhouse Square (street) stand townhouses, mansions from the glory old Gilded Age days; to the south rowhomes belonging properly to the South Street neighborhood; to the west a low-rise society structure of some sort. Following Inga's logic, shouldn't 1706 Ritt be embracing the southern, low-rise neighborhood? But it doesn't: instead, 1706 Ritt is contextualized by the Medical Building across the street, and by the other high-rises surrounding Rittenhouse Square proper. The Medical Building, by being the first there, created the precedent allowing 1706 to go so high; the neighborhood 1706 looks to creates the context.

Millennium Hall is no different. Kelly Hall set the precedent; the rest of the Drexel campus, as studded with high-rises as Penn and Temple, creates the context. It's not Frat Row that Millennium Hall needs to refer to at all (and what a joke it would be if it were!); rather, it's the campus grounds. She sees the building as looking westward where it primarily looks to the east and southeast. And as 1706 Ritt shows us this whole paragraph is naught but hot air.

Then you have this:

One rationale for elevating the tower on pilotis was to soften its landing and open a path into Drexel's evolving greenway. But the concessions are undermined by the tower's one-story companion, which houses an apartment for the dorm's adviser and mechanical systems. All three sides are blank walls, including the one facing the greenway. The south-facing wall is worse: With its corrugated metal and a visible cooling tower, it looks like the back end of a refrigerated warehouse.

Can somebody please explain to her what a blank wall is? Or why mechanical systems are important? While there is some truth to her criticism of the east side--which is where the main entrance is--I will argue that neither the north nor the west nor the the south sides are what she makes them out to be.

A blank wall means that there is nothing to look at. No windows to draw the eye in, no murals or sculpturing to provide a diversion. Yet when we look at Millennium Hall's north and west sides, what do we find? The west side has a glass wall letting us see into the rec room--and so no blank wall--and when I walk under the pilotis on the north side (disregarding the wind-tunnel effect), I find them nothing short of awe-inspiring, sculptural. I would hardly call that a blank wall.

The last--the south side--is at once the most insidious and inane criticism; buildings of this size need their mechanical outhouses to regulate things such as temperature and electricity, and to house the offices of essential personnel, i.e. the superintendent or RAs' boss. Where to put it? Surely you don't want it mucking up the top, especially after you got the whole thing to sinewy twist like a muscle throwing a hammer? Shouldn't you then put it by the other dorm building not twenty feet away? ...What do you think Erdy-McHenry did?

Nobody's going to notice, or care, about the south façade for the rather simple reason that hardly anybody's going to see it in the first place: it's positioned across from the maintenance strip for Kelly Hall! All we're going to see is a few scraps of corrugation at a distance, and as the designers at Budd knew well, corrugation adds its own sort of interest. Why would we want to look down that service alley at the dumpsters unless we really need to?

In fact, Millennium Hall responds excellently to its site: it supplies a view in and out towards 34th St.; its pilotis create a marvelous gigantic architectural sculpture on the north side; its maintenance wing on the south side abuts Kelly's on the north side. The only change I would make would be that the main entrance (on the east side) seems somewhat too sparse, too minimalist.

Inga's final issue, though, is spot-on: the emergency stairs' insulation board really shouldn't be there. They block the view--for what? Surely you can create sun-drenched emergency stairs people actually want to take in a building with as many windows as this one? And yet, that that's my biggest concern with this building says something wholly positive on how well, all in all, it was executed. Millenium Hall stands tall, no matter where you are looking at it.
.
Source: http://archrecord.construction.com/yb/ar/article.aspx?story_id=135714594.

The 15

The 15 is Philadelphia’s only active fully surface trolley route. It runs from the Port Richmond loop, along Port Richmond Avenue about a quarter mile inland of the Tioga Marine Terminal down aforesaid avenue to I-95’s Girard Avenue exit, where it then turns onto Girard and crosses 95; it runs down Girard through Fishtown, the Northern Liberties, Ludlow, past the old Allen homes, and on into Francisville and Fairmount before it crosses the Schuylkill and thence past the Zoo into Parkside towards Mantua on into the no-man’s-land of far West Philly (or: my excuse as to why I haven’t taken it west beyond Parkside and Girard.) Along this route it crosses the (inactive) 23’s trolley tracks (at 11^th and 12^th), an inactive route running along 40^th, another one heading up Parkside, the 10 at Lancaster, and IIRC another one elsewhere in West Philly.

When trolley service along the 15 was restored, it was done in the most inept way possible. There are portions of the route (e.g. Port Richmond Avenue) which are so narrow as to make roadway and trolleyway right-of-way (or ROW from now on) separation impossible; this is a major issue with the 23, where Germantown Avenue only has two travel lanes frequented by six lanes’ worth of traffic and has been one of several impediments to service restoration there; however, along Girard between 95 and Broad, Girard (and consequently the 15) enjoys some of the most generous right-of-way in the city. Yet even here the roadway impinges, as left-turn lanes and inner lanes commonly share space with trolley ROW. From Broad west to the Schuylkill, Girard narrows again; west of it, it becomes (again) a wide road at least so far as Parkside Avenue; it is in this portion that the 15 enjoys its most total ROW separation, as no traffic is allowed in the trolley lanes between Parkside and 34^th and there are no traffic markings in them to vindicate drivers. This should be the case along all of Girard where there is space for a traffic lane without impinging on trolley ROW.

From 34^th to Broad things get tricky. The road narrows into two traffic-trolley lanes and two parking lanes throughout. Where speed is enjoyed crossing the Schuylkill delay is the most common experience here. West of Girard, along the business corridor, this is no big deal, as the delay is accompanied by the beneficial experience of window-shopping, but east of it, in the more residential Francisville district, this delay can become wholly irritating. Worse, here it is unwarranted. The sidewalks along this part of Girard are exceedingly wide for the traffic generated, and a great deal of traffic winds up being rerouted onto Poplar due to the confusing traffic layout just west of Girard College. Thus neither Girard nor Poplar in Francisville take the full brunt of arterial traffic load, but instead both take about half the load—at least until drivers figure out they’re on the wrong street.

In Francisville, this can be exploited to both a) fully grade-separate the 15 and b) spur development along Poplar east of Ridge. By redirecting through traffic down Poplar—since most through traffic here is through to Broad and not 95, as Broad is the traffic pump into and out of Center City in this area—and local traffic down Girard, we reduce Girard’s traffic load. By removing about a third of the current sidewalk for parking (not traffic) lanes, we can separate the trolley ROW from the roadway. And lastly, by condensing the trolley stops to just three—at Ridge, at St. Joe’s Hospital, and orienting them in the same way the Zoo stop already is, we can fit two carstops into an area where street width only apparently offers one (and even then that is gained by eliminating the parking lanes by the stops). Where Girard meets broad the built environment disallows any modification on the current eastbound lanes by sidewalk removal, but in this block an advantageous built environment (the Checkers) on the northbound side makes for some very interesting options. My suggestion in this debate would be to—realign the eastbound tracks to make the curb the carstop (that is, move them about ten feet south), make the current roadway/ROW roadway only (and the trolley tracks ROW only), and provide two grade crossings were the trolley literally physically bumps out to provide a stop.

East of Broad, the ROW needs to be fully grade-separated through to Fishtown. Largely unused parking lanes can be eliminated, and a possible 15-Regional Rail connection could be built at 9^th and Girard. This grade-separation would entail the conversion of several cross-streets into double T’s, namely those not hosting bus routes en toto since those that do are more important than those that don’t. Left-hand turns would not be made in the trolleyway, since of course there would be no place to do it, and this of course eliminates the need for crash bumpers on the back of the carstops.

One other major issue is waiting at the carstops: there is a lack of protection from the elements at most of them. Installing bus shelters (more in the mold the current RR waiting shelters rather than the fugly old bus ones already in place) along the carstops would be exceedingly useful.

And of course, this is not the optimum route for a historic trolley. The 23 through Germantown is. When SEPTA replaces the Kawasaki LRVs currently operating along the Subway-Surface network, it should order enough for the 15 to be a permanent trolleyway—and eliminate the concrete asphalt from the trolleyway whenever possible.

Here is the alignment I’m proposing.

Gettysburg

This weekend I went camping at Gettysburg. We camped in Caledonia State Park, in the gap between South Mountain and the Blue Ridge, and spent most of Saturday and part of Sunday at the park proper.

The park is such an unusual place. You feel like you're going back in time when you're in it--the forest and field boundaries in the main battlefield are still where they were in 1863, when the battle was going on. Old wooden fences crowd the field--in the same state they were in before its start. And the monuments! You can't walk twenty feet in some places without bumping into a monument. Every regiment, every general, has its own monument, has his own monument. Marble adorns the field, with ceremonial cannon for the artillery units. Just by tracing the monuments, you can get a sense of where Pickett was, where Longstreet was, where Meade's lieutenant generals were. And the field extends for more than a mile--all the way from Little Round Top and the Devil's Den opposite Plum Run north to the town itself. Following the path of Pickett's Charge, to the High Water Mark, you can see the buildings in town! Only autos instead of carriages, asphalt on the roads instead of dirt, mar the view that has otherwise remained unchanged since Civil War times.

Gettysburg is such an odd place. In one sense it lives intensely, but only because large parts of it have died--died not the way people do, but the way languages do. The whole park, the whole town, is one giant historic district, stifled in its own pomp and circumstance, continually recreating the modes and mores of nineteenth-century life, outdated the same way Williamsburg is. It is a living museum and a tourist trap--a dead place. And yet, peculiarly, this death has given Gettysburg a life it would never have otherwise had, for the place is now a powerful national draw. It is crowded, stuffed to the gills with visitors, visitors which propel and drive Gettysburg and make it look a certain way, not just in one place, but throughout the town. The park limits the town's growth in nearly every direction, and so it remains a compact, small burgh in the traditional mode; between the tourist traps the main street survives; there is little sprawl until one has skipped town by a goodly distance, mostly to the north, south, and east, and hardly any to the west.

Ghosts haunt this place, yes, but not the ghosts of ghost tours. Rather, the ghosts of the past pervade the present here, shape its reality, for the whole place is, after all, a giant museum and a national shrine. It is stilted but for what it is it could be nothing else.

When you go to Gettysburg, make sure you see the sparkly new visitors center. Pay respects to Neutra's cyclorama before it falls apart. Follow Pickett's Charge's path. Play in the Devil's Den and on Little Round Top; hike the Big Round Top. Milk the place for all its worth. And bring a friend.

Upper Francisville

The neighborhood between Broad, Fairmount, Girard, and Corinthian is known as Francisville due to the fact that it encompasses an old village once named Francisville. In fact, this old village creates the interesting situation where there is a secondary inner grid--the grid pattern of Francisville village--tucked into the main Philadelphia grid. Unsurprisingly, Francisville's grid is aligned to Ridge, which at that time was a key interurban highway; it is this grid, surrounded by the broader citywide grid, which gives Francisville its character.

Francisville is considered to be the same type of neighborhood as Sharswood--that is, in early gentrification. It is bordered by Fairmount to the west and Sharswood itself to the north, both bearing strong gentrification pressures. Fairmount is organized around Fairmount Avenue, its main corridor being the section that runs between the Eastern State Penitentiary and the Perelman Annex to the Art Museum, a prime tourist gateway; as Francisville's southern border, Fairmount has the possibility of channeling this energy eastwards all the way to Broad. The same runs along Girard.

In fact, one of the things I noticed most quickly was that the artefacts of gentrification--sale signs (instead of rent) and renovation--are clustered around Girard Avenue; this is a pattern that meshes well with what is so on Fairmount (another subject for another day). A major lack of businesses of any sort, though, can be noted, although Ridge ought to be one of the strongest commercial corridors in the city. What happened?--the Schuylkill Expressway diverted traffic that supplied these businesses, making them go bankrupt one by one, and if that weren't enough, widespread neighborhood disinvestment occurred throughout this corridor, bringing about a characteristically weak, slummy district: from Callowhill through Ludlow and Francisville, Sharswood and Strawberry Mansion the Ridge Avenue corridor is in severe distress; it only begins to improve again in East Falls. What this tells us is that a healthy commercial corridor requires a healthy (middle-class) degree of neighborhood investment: disinvested neighborhoods, by their very nature, produce disinvested commercial districts.

What, then, constitutes a disinvested neighborhood? Blight is the most obvious factor, blight Francisville has in spades. Along Poplar there is no small amount of vacancies. The Met at it and Broad is in a state of half-ruin; they have been trying to raise funds for its renovation, but the process has been slow; lots abound, particularly between 15th and 16th where one feels almost one is walking through a fallow field bisected by asphalt and concrete; vacancies--abandoned houses--abound. Signs are For Rent instead of For Sale. There is less sidewalk traffic; those who do dare traverse display hopelessness. This part of Francisville is severely blighted; this blight is related (this is no expert's opinion) to the disinvestment and blight along the Ridge corridor.

Yet west, in the off-kilter grid, along Wylie, a different situation emerges. Looking down the cross-streets blight again re-emerges, yet along Wylie itself houses are in good repair and still there; along Perkiomen houses are still there, in good repair. Occasional vacancies crop up, but here the living conditions are better, here there is life, the sidewalk, while not bursting, has a decent amount of people using it. This neighborhood, then, has some health, but not enough: it, too, is tied into Ridge, and without the Ridge corridor's function as a central neighborhood market, this neighborhood is much too weak: how it's so healthy is a worthy question to ask all by itself. Do these denizens shop where Fairmounters do? Is the mean income of these people higher than their counterparts on Ridge's other side? But life is here and so, therefore, opportunity.

Construction work is being done at 19th and Poplar; there is some ongoing in other parts of the neighborhood, but here it seems stronger. Between Girard and Poplar lies the gentrification lane; in the off grid lies the healthiest (though by no means vibrant) neighborhoods. Temple students seem to occupy a large portion of those apartments in the gentrification corridor; this form of gentrification is greatly limiting (look at Templetown).

A church lies at Girard and Ridge, at the end of an intact row of semi-brownstones, mansions for the industrial nouveau riche. Once it was a bank: Northwestern, the sign, still etched into the lintel, tells me. It is a late Victorian design: Furness? The degree of richness and eclecticism, the tomb-of-stone feel it emanates seems to indicates it was he. If so, the importance of this row, besides its inherent physical beauty, is amplified: few verified Furnesses still exist. Many of the best were completely demolished in some revitalization program or another.

A Google Map.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good:
The Phillies beat the Mets and the Eagles routed the Panthers! Huzzah!

Sean McDermott has emerged as a worthy successor to Jim Johnson; the Eagles 'D' had a career day today, allowing only three points after the middle of the first quarter; and DeSean Jackson had a punt return for a touchdown today, too.

The Bad:
Lidge still cannot save a game for beans. He was 'fresh' and should have had a 1-2-3 lights-out inning, but instead the Mets scored two runs on him and had a runner on base even as he got the final out. Brad Lidge is not the Phillies closer anymore, but neither is Madson, and so far I haven't had a chance to assess Myers.

Also, the Eagles O-line still hasn't got it all together. There were a few too many times that McNabb (and later Kolb, get to him soon) were hurried, even though (so far as I know) they weren't sacked. Kolb had a fumble because Carolina's D penetrated our O at least once. This issue, though, ought to be resolved as the season wears on.

The Ugly:
Donovan McNabb was injured; he cracked three ribs when he ran that touchdown in. He is expected to miss three-to-five weeks.