Butt-Fugly Building of the Week-- May 17th

Parkway House Apartments

2201 Pennsylvania Ave.

Puts the Fuck in Butt-Fuckly. Photo by Phillyphotos.

                    Alright I know I'm gonna piss off some people with this one. Parkway House is a big fucking apartment-filled triangular wall of depression that has been scarring the skyline since 1952. It serves as a big fucking reminder of how architecture went bad post-WWII. It looks like the dirty, boxy, terrace-strewn apartment highrises you see in the Riverdale section of NYC all got crushed together into one stained-up mass of midcentury-modern garbage.
                 You wouldn't believe how much ass gets kissed about this building. One report I read from Architectural Research and Cultural History said "Parkway House makes clever use of "butterfly" wings, that is to say, wings set at a gentle angle from a center core." What a bunch of fracocta baloney. It looks more a giant orange-bricked butterfly crashing-landing into the ground. This building belongs in Fort Lee, New Jersey, not Philafuckingdelphia.
                This Pile of Carnivorous Donkeyshit takes all the good things about designing a building and screws them up. There are roof-decks but they're mishmashed all over the structure and have a bunch of mismatched awnings and add-ons that residents built over the years. There are bay windows but they're all vertically lined up like catapillars crawling up the crashing butterfly.
                  The main entrance faces surface parking and the back has crappy storefronts facing Spring Garden Street. Gallagher's is a nice bar but the outside looks like ass. The other storefronts are just a door and caged-up little windows. On top of all that, this place needs a good cleaning, it's got 59 years of crud caked all over it. Oh, and look at those sidewalks. What the fuck?


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                This Turdcastle has the distinction of being the first highrise in Philly to be designed by a woman. Therefore, any time you learn about Philadelphia architectural history this building will be mentioned and you'll have to look at another shitty picture of it. What a drag.

UPDATE!! April 16, 2013

            Exactly as my simulations predicted!