Parking Garage of the Week-- August 15th

Five Star Parking 7th and Market

618 Market Street

            What a sad-looking dreary-ass cement dungeon this piece of shit is. This crappy parking garage has been infecting the corner of 7th and Market with its tarnished facade and shitbag storefronts for nearly 50 years. Its time to put this pile of shit out of its misery.
             What kind of thing is this to have in our primary tourist area? You walk half a block past Independence Mall on Market Street and you can already see Market East-level shittyness. What a disaster. Eliminate this shit!! What happened to that zoning bill for large lit-up signage on Market Street buildings from 7th to 13th Street? It was approved in June of last year... this crap garage qualifies for some big obnoxious ads-- DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!
           In 1964, the Redevelopment Authority was sitting on a bunch of old buildings at the corner of 7th and Market... there were the ruins of the theatre, a few unremarkable commercial buildings, and a very very lost Willis G. Hale building.

Willis G. Hale aint nuthin to fuck with.

                     That building was the Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger Publishing Company. William Weightman, super-rich motherfucker extraordinaire, paid for the design and construction of this kick-ass structure just because he was friends with Edmund Claxton and the publishing company needed more space. Weightman got his favorite architect, Willis G. Hale, to design it. By the time the RDA had a hold of it, the building was probably all jacked up and barely recognizable.
                   Three groups of folks were into the available space. The Atwater Kent Museum (now Philadelphia History Museum, still has that shitty logo) next door proposed an expansion that would reach all the way to the corner of 7th and Market, a Society Hill developer wanted the land on which to... well, develop, and the Rohm and Haas International HQ Building under construction next door wanted the land for a parking garage. Guess who won?
                   Ever since, this shitbag garage has made the southeast corner of 7th and Market a pile of orangutan ballsweat. In 2003, in an attempt to de-uglify the side and back of the garage, Rohm & Haas paid for a mural illustrating the tree-named streets. It is known as Tree Walk.

It goes around the back too... you get the idea.

                Rohm & Haas hasn't owned the garage for a long time-- they don't even own themselves anymore, they are now part of Dow Chemical. The current owner of the garage is based in NYC and spent $6,655,000 on it in 1997. I wonder if this owner knows anything about the lit-up advertising bill? Either way, its gonna take one hell of an ad to make this crap garage look good. 
              In short, fuck this garage. This thing is currently zoned C-5, which means its taking up the space that should be used by a tall-ass skyscraper. Under the new zoning code, the site will be zoned Super CMX-5, which means it will be taking the place of an even bigger tall-ass skyscraper. DESTROOOOOYYYYYYYYYY!!