Butt-Fugly Building of the Week-- June 7th

Ridgeway Library of the Library Company of Philadelphia

1320 Locust Street

What the balls?

                       Whoa-ho-ho-holy shit. Look at this unfortunate piece of 60's puke. Didn't anyone realize what bare cement walls would look like when they aged? Or when it rains? This building is so ugly that people barely notice it. Two windows like a foot wide on each floor? What the fuck is that thing at the top supposed to be? This building inspires more What the Fuck Were They Thinking moments than any other.
                      Yeah that's right, I'm talking about the Library Company of Philadelphia again. Around the 30's and 40's the Library Company was in financial ruin. It built a parking garage on it's old real estate and moved back into a corner of yesterday's Old-ass Building, letting the Free Library run it. They started making some good dough off their shit-ass parking garage and they re-catalogued their collection, finding all kinds of crazy artifacts they didn't even know they had. They decided to become a Research Library and move into a smaller building back in their old neighborhood.
                     The Company approached some dumbasses named Carroll, Grisdale, and van Allen and told them, "We, the Library Company, are sick of cool-ass buildings. Design us the worst piece of garbage you can think of. Shit, you could make the facade bare concrete for all we care. Make sure it will look dirty and dated in the shortest possible amount of time." The dumbasses came up with this:

Umm..

                  Who looks at this rendering and hopes they build it? Did someone actually approve this? "Big blank concrete walls? What can go wrong? Build that shit!". Wasn't anyone like, "Hey, wait a minute! This looks like ASS! You're fired, you fuckbags!"
                   If I saw a building like this being built today I would jump in front of the dozers and shit. Do you know what this building replaced? Just a bunch of custom-built Victorian-era homes representing a brief period in the city's history when the Nouveau riche lived on the 1200 and 1300 blocks of Locust:

3 Houses on the Left = GONE in favor of the Concretewallodrome. The one all the way on the right mutilated beyond recognition. 2nd one from the right got attached and semi-restored.

                  The Library Company moved in by 1965 and decided to add insult to injury. They used some leftover James Rush funds to build this Great Wall of Concrete Playing Cards and then MOVED HIS FUCKING CORPSE THERE. James Rush and his wife are buried under this piece of dogshit. Then they named it the "Ridgeway Library", just as one final berating-ass insult to James Rush and to confuse the fuck out of people.
                  Look at the pics in yesterday's article and look at the pics in this one. How can you call this building "Ridgeway" like it in any way honor's Rush's last wishes? That's like me naming my shoe the Barnes Foundation and throwing it out the window. I hope the corpse of James Rush and Pheobe Ann Ridgeway Rush rise from the grave and crumble this building.