Old-Ass Parking Garage: Aldine Garage

2027-2039 Sansom Street

Photo by Michael Bixler

             Haven't written about a parking garage in awhile and this one is a good example of what parking garages should look like. Read all about it at the Hidden City Daily!

Parking Garage of the Week-- Avenue of the Arts Garage

1501 Spruce Street

               I'm coming back to doing Parking Garage of the Week just for this bitch-bastard of a behemoth right here. This juggernaut of automobile storage isn't the ugliest garage in town but as it ages, its just going to look more and more like trash. What's worse, its called Avenue of the Arts Garage even though its on 15th street!
               It sort of started in 1986 when Parkway Corp bought up an old surface parking lot and cleared even more cool old buildings until it stretched all the way to Latimer Street. Even back then, there were talks of a large public building replacing the shitty lots and buildings at the southwest corner of Broad and Spruce.. some said it would be a new Convention Center, others said it would be a the Regional Performing Arts Center that was promised as far back as 1963.

The old surface lot in 1950. PhillyHistory.org

           In 1999, the Arts Center was the one that finally got built there, and while it was under construction, people started to crow about how this great new place was going to need some supplementary parking, even though an underground garage was planned for it (that underground garage is managed by Parkway). It was estimated that an additional 500-spacer would be needed to accommodate all these new visitors that were supposedly coming.
 

Excerpt from the Extending the Vision for South Broad Street report from 1999. Literally everything else from this plan, save the Kimmel Center that was already under construction at the time, didn't happen. Of course, at least 4 more above-ground parking garages were involved.

               Parkway was ready to roll. In the middle of the year 2000, they proposed a 668-space parking garage with roughly 15,000 to 16,000 square feet of ground floor retail space. The design was by Bower Lewis Thrower, whose work of the period was pretty crappy (I think their new design for East Market is pretty good, so maybe they're getting better).  The working name of the garage was going to be the Shops at Fifteenth and Spruce, kind of like the Shops at Liberty Place.
           After making adjustments for the ZBA and the CCRA, and getting some government cheese with Tax Increment Financing, construction began with a target opening date of January 2002. The place had no problem securing retail tenants... Buca di Beppo signed on for a five year, $31,875/month lease while the thing was still under construction. Fox & Hound and Starbucks were about ready to come in right when the big-ass garage opened.
          13 years later, the Kimmel Center isn't quite the draw people thought it was going to be, but this garage seems to nonetheless be doing shitloads of business. The Buca di Beppo announced that they would close after their lease was up in 2007 but ended up renewing and sticking around until 2012. They've since been replaced by the Philadelphia location of Howl at the Moon, a Chicago-based piano bar chain that finally came here after opening 15 locations in lesser cities.
        The other two original tenants are still going strong. Fox & Hound is still the notorious bro bar that its been for many years and the Starbucks is yet another Starbucks that proves that these places stay open even when there's another location 1-2 blocks away in every direction.
       Ok, so this isn't the worst parking garage I've ever encountered-- it keeps its storefronts filled, it actually has a facade, the glass elevator shaft is kind of cool... but that doesn't mean this is a good thing... the surface lot that was here could have easily supported a real building instead... or better yet, an underground garage. I don't know what kind of structure this thing really has but it would be nice if some kind of tower could be built on top one day-- it would sure make up for fucking up this corner for so long. Oh well, we're going to be stuck with this motherfucker long after other older garages vanish. Guess we should just get used to it.

Parking Garage of the Week-- August 29th

Central Parking System-- 10th and Walnut

923 Walnut Street, 123 South 10th Street

This crappy Google Earth 3D view is the only way to show this thing in its entirety.

                  Now this is a pitiful pile of shit. A gigantic 50,000+ square foot parking castle that tries to hide behind other buildings but still manages to muck up two different blocks. Around 50 years old, its time to take this motherfucker down.
                 First of all, I hate it when parking garage owners/management companies can't even keep the fucking lights that say "Park Here" lit. This one has gotten worse and worse over the years... only the final "e" in "Here" is lit along with half the little arrow. What a disgrace. Second, this, along with the buildings next to it, are standing in the way of future Jefferson University/Hospital expansion.
                 The site of this garage did have one historical asset. The Racquet Club of Philadelphia's original headquarters once stood in a large row-mansion at this spot. They moved there in 1889 and stuck around until 1906, when the spoiled-ass George Dunton Widener decided that the neighborhood sucked and commissioned Horace Trumbauer to design their current HQ at 16th Street. He went down with the Titanic six years later, so fuck'm.
                The old Racquet Club building was demolished in the early 1930's, becoming a surface parking lot. The building next to it came down later that decade. The two long lots stayed surface parking all the way until 1960, when the land was purchased by the parking garage's current owner for $1. Once the surface lot at 123 and 125 South 10th Street were acquired shortly after that, construction of this parking monster began.

1935. The surface lot on the right is the site of the old Racquet Club. the building in the middle came down shortly after this pic was taken.

1960 view showing the 10th Street side of the surface lot that would become the parking garage. Carver W. Reed still runs out of that same building.

                       50 years later, the garage is still doing the same shit it did when it was built. In 2006, Jefferson created a long-term Master Plan that included the destruction of this parking garage and the buildings next to it in order to create a green space called "Jefferson Square". Other parts of the plan came to fruition (Lubert Plaza), but this part was for farther in the future, and if other local university's master plans from 2006 are any indication, this shit will probably never happen.

2025 view of the site of the garage from that master plan.

                   At this point, this stuff seems highly unrealistic. In the plan, they say that the next step toward this is "site acquisition". Jeff has managed to purchase 3-4 buildings on the 10th Street side of this site, but that's about it. If they still plan to do this, they better get some fucking dough ready. The Carver Reed store has been there since 1956 so I don't think they're going to be so happy about moving (though they've moved plenty since opening in 1860), and the Robert Morris Building is one of only four facilities in the country that prints braille books and magazines.
                  Also, Jefferson Square is supposed to come AFTER the Ambulatory Care Center that they're supposed to build on that gigantic surface parking lot they've been sitting on forever. Oh well... its looks like we're gonna have to get used to this garage because it isn't going anywhere for awhile. Fix the damn lights.       

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!!

Parking Garage of the Week-- August 1st

Patriot Parking's Chancellor Parking

1616 Chancellor Street

                     Hey, Little Pete's is the shit. Don't let the stupid hipster food snobs at Yelp fool you... this is a truly classic greasy spoon-style diner where you go to punish your arteries for future crimes. A relic diner from an ancient past when there was a place like this on every block (and I mean EVERY). Some people actually expect to walk into Little Pete's and get a fair trade free range vegan kelp wrap floating in perfume served in a man's hat. Those people are called morons.
                The only problem with Little Pete's is that it resides in one of the city's worst parking garages. A Castle of Crunchy Concrete that's been uglifying the neighborhood for the last six decades. Though most of it is hidden behind taller buildings, its small countenance on 17th Street is a goddamn disgrace... except for Little Pete's.
              This part of 17th Street was once home to some stately-ass mansion-sized rowhouses. Though many people came and went through those houses since they were built in the 1830's, the most notable was a famous Jewish doctor, Solomon Solis-Cohen, who lived at the corner of 17th and Chancellor. This guy was a ground-breaking physician whose books and papers are still studied by medical students. He was also a Philadelphia School District teacher, professional Hebrew translator, and a professor at Jefferson and one other medical college. Basically, this motherfucker did it all.

His epitaph reads, "Fuck y'all"

                      At some point within Solis-Cohen's lifetime, his house along with a few others on the block were demolished to make way for the J. M. Shock Absorber Company in the early 1910's. That company was one of the first to sell shock absorbers for cars, something we all take for granted today. Their location on 17th would produce, distribute, and even install shock absorbers. A company from Chicago sued them for stealing their patented shock absorber design, but they lost. The corner of 17th and Chancellor would continue to be a garage long after J.M.'s departure.
                  Finally, in the 1950's, the horrible parking garage was built. The 1950's saw the construction of many of the city's worst and longest-lived parking garages-- this would be no exception. The garage itself has very little history. Its 57,000 square foot ass has been parking cars for so long that everyone seems to be accustomed to its damaging presence. The lot it sits on is zoned C-4, therefore a 500 foot skyscraper could replace this thing if anyone cared.

You can see it on the center-right in this picture from 1959.

                      Too small a lot for a skyscraper, eh? No one would ever propose one here, eh? Well in 2006 or so, a tall and thin-ass condominium tower was proposed for this location. The architect was Daroff Design and looks like something one would expect of such a swanky address. Its actually pretty cool and has a pointy top, something missing from buildings constructed around here in the last few years.

You can't see the spire from this angle, but trust me, its there. 

Little Pete's would be eliminated.

                    Needless to say, the project never happened. I don't even know if it was a serious proposal or just a fantasy building.
                   All that is not even the worst part about this piece of shit. The parking garage's current owners, some folks under the name Philadelphia Chancellor Limited Partnership (and with a mailing address at the Radisson Hotel in Trevose, PA) bought the place from the Equity Office Property Trust in December of 2004 for $11,433,240. Whomever this group of people/businesses is (probably something having to do with the Carlson Hotels company who own the Radisson Plaza Warwick Hotel across the street), they owe $559,337.82 in property taxes. They were on the "biggest tax cheats" list back when they owed 200 grand less. Maybe my ninja down at Philadelinquency.com can get on the case.
                  In short, this garage sucks radioactive monkey nuts through a kryptonite straw. Hopefully someone will come along and put this motherfucker out of its misery-- just demolish the whole thing except Little Pete's.

Parking Garage of the Week-- July 18th

Convention Center Parking

142 North Broad Street

                  Now here's one of the oldest surviving parking garages in the city. The Convention Center Parking Garage was built by and for the automobile industry. This bitch-bastard has been doing car-related shit for the last 102 years and will probably continue doing so for another 102. Funny how a century-old parking garage is better designed than 99% of all built thereafter. Bollocks.
               This parking garage exists because of one badass car-selling motherfucker-- Percy L. Neel. Neel was the Chop of the late Gilded Age. Not the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, but King of Cars Josh Towbin. Spanish-American War hero Neel got into the relatively new motor car technology field after getting sick of being a high school science teacher. He started a Cadillac dealership called the Quaker City Auto Company in a time when hundreds of burgeoning car companies would start and fail every other year. Quaker City would later become a double-dealership called the Philadelphia Automobile Sales Corporation, selling both Cadillacs and Peerlesses.
             Neel wanted his dealership to be the best in the city, so he leased the building his company's own treasurer commissioned... an $80,000 six-story building on a then-lowrise part of North Broad Street. This building would be a massive car-holding skyscraper with a beautiful facade and luxurious street-level showroom (the mangled-up columns of it still stand). Its opening in the Summer of 1910 was heralded with a gigantic auto show complete with an orchestra and souvenir flower bouquets for the ladies.

When it was first built.

                   The Automobile Sales Corporation did so well that Neel purchased the building in 1913 and then was ready to move out only one year later. Neel sold the garage for $100,000 to the Franklin National Bank in 1914. Another Cadillac dealer leased the space and had the fifth and sixth floors converted to offices (designs by Horace Trumbauer!), renting them out to the Emergency Fleet Corporation, a government agency that was charged with getting the Merchant Marine fleet built. They occupied numerous buildings in the city and was so desperate for more office space that they moved into the top two floors of this parking garage.
           Eventually, the whole Automobile Sales Corp. thing didn't work out and Neel's multiple dealerships became known as Neel-Cadillac. Neel would put his Philadelphia HQ right back into the great building he helped get built. Even though it had only been a decade, scores of much nicer auto-selling garages had been built on North Broad... his was now a dinky piece of shit. After only about a year, Neel moved out and leased the garage to the Pittsburgh Standard Steel Car Company.
           Neel's successor, Scott Smith (his Camden dealership's manager), would sell the company to the Cadillac Corp. in 1925 and start his own legendary dealership on North Broad that would last in some form all the way into the 1970's. The old garage would go on to serve on and off as various car dealerships and parking garages in the following decades.

There it is on the left in 1959. Check out the Scottish Rite Temple.

Here it is in 1983.

                 The garage continues to this day, now officially called Convention Center Parking, now that the Pennsylvania Convention Center's new Broad Street entrance is across the street. What happened to building garages like this? Why must we suffer the ugliness of modern parking garages when one from 1910 has it all figured out? A new parking garage is being built around the corner from this... it will supposedly have an "architectural scrim" covering the facade, electric car charging stations, and a green roof. So far it's just a dark grey skeleton.

Meh.

                   Pretty pathetic that a brand new parking garage can't outdo a 102-year-old one's design.

Parking Garage of the Week-- July 4th

Philadelphia Parking Authority Olde City Autopark

125 South 2nd Street

Its long!

                       Where were the NIMBYs and historic preservation nerds when this dirty motherfucker was built? Despite holding a movie theater and some restaurants, this ugly pile of fuck should've never been constructed. This 695-car parkzilla has spent the last 33 years fucking over one of the oldest blocks in the city. Fuck!
                      The site that this garage sits on was first plotted by Thomas Holme on November 29th, 1682... one month and two days after the founding of the city. The first occupant was the grand estate of some guy named Christopher Taylor, whose property filled the area between Front, 2nd, Walnut and Chestnut Streets. Later folks would split the block with small alleys...Laylor's Alley (now Ionic Street), Gray's Alley (later Gatzmer Street), and Norris's Alley (later Gothic Street, now Sansom Street). Citizens would build out the entire area with small commercial buildings and small houses. After a big fire in 1840, most of the property was replaced with commercial buildings.
                     The majority of the old commercial buildings facing 2nd Street would survive all the way into the 1970's.

The site of the parking garage in 1970 as seen from 2nd Street. The cool building to the right is the old Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, now the site of the unfortunate Welcome Park.

                     In 1976, the National Park Service demanded that more parking get built in the streets surrounding the Independence Historical Grass Lot Collection.,. specifically in this area, which the Park Service called Area F (Area Fuck?). The openly corrupt Philadelphia Parking Authority answered the call and demolished the shit out of everything between Ionic, Sansom, Front, and 2nd Streets. To be fair, there were only 7 buildings left within that area at that point. The new garage would eliminate Gatzmer Street and have large retail fronts facing Sansom. The frontage on both 2nd and Front would be purely ugly-ass parking garage. 
                     One archeological dig was done by Temple University in 1976/77, locating old privy pits and building foundations. One of the more interesting items from the dig was that only nine privy pits were found on the whole block from a time period when way more than nine families were living there... meaning these literal shitholes were being shared by many people at a time.
                     A second dig was done by the UPenn Museum in 1979 while the parking garage was being built. They were only able to dig in areas that were dug out for the garage's support structure. One of those areas was the site of a privy pit. Thousands of ceramic shards, beer bottle pieces, seeds from 18th Century feces, and remains from the 1840 fire were found. They were also able to uncover an old cartway and a wooden phone line conduit from 1900. The dig was rushed because the garage was being constructed while they worked, so plenty of other shit could have been found if they had the time.
                 Once built, the parking garage became (and still is) one of the most successful ones in its area... which means it will NEVER go away. People are probably gonna be parking bio-engineered hovercarriages in this thing in the 29th Century. This garage has a huge amount of exposure due to the popular Ritz Theatre at its base. I call that one the Ritz Pagoda because of how the signs line up on the top of the shitty garage.
                The Master Plan for the Central Delaware modifies almost everything around this garage but not the garage itself. The crappy Front street frontage of the garage will be visible from the river... if this plan ever comes to fruition, which is a slim possibility.

The waterfront in an alternate future that'll probably never happen.

                      Again, where were all the NIMBYs and preservationists when this was being built? I know this area wasn't quite the nice spot it is now when this shit went up, but who thought a big-ass brick-cladding parking garage was appropriate on one of the city's oldest blocks? Oh well... fuck this garage.
                 
                

Parking Garage of the Week-- June 6th

LAZ Parking at Jefferson Hospital

107 South 10th Street

That's fucking gigantic!!

                    What a piece of shit. I appreciate that they tried to make it look like a building, but they could have done a better job. The one time that a large piece of construction happens despite tons of NIMBYism and bad press, and its this. A gigantic pile of donkey testicle souffle.
                    I already talked a little bit about this shitpeanut in the post about the empty lot that surrounds it. In the 1990's, Jefferson University/Hospital had their eye on the block bounded by 9th, 10th, Chestnut, and Sansom streets. They started buying up properties in the block here and there while a Chicago company called Urban Growth Property Trust, knowing that Jeff wanted the space, bought other parcels. Eventually, it all got knocked the fuck down, creating one humongous empty lot that lasted for four years.

SE corner of 10th and Chestnut, 1993. This is all parking garage now.

                  In 2003, InterPark, a parking subsidiary of Urban Growth, struck up a special deal with Jefferson. The two companies would swap independent ownership of the parcels, and InterPark would invest the $35 million necessary to get this big bastard built. InterPark would then own the place while Jefferson would provide the guaranteed customers.
                Once plans were announced, people went fucking apeshit against it. What was previously an awesome 19th Century commercial row would become a shitty parking garage with crappy retail. Numerous individual groups of NIMBYs came out against the plan and the press skewered the idea. Jefferson made concessions, allowing the garage to be a bit smaller than originally planned (700 cars instead of 920) and guaranteed that they would open up the storefronts along the 1000 block of Chestnut from the ground floor of the Gibbon Building (they only ended up doing it on the one corner).
                They went to Bower Lewis Thrower, the same shitbirds behind the Dockside Apartments, for the design, which would be adjusted to look less like a garage and more like a building. After many delays for zoning variances and NIMBY-assuage, construction began in June of 2005 and the garage opened on May 22, 2006, three years behind schedule.


The garage under confucktion.

                    9,400 cubic yards of concrete was thrown together to create the 228,000 square foot monster. The whole thing ended up being 7 stories of fuck on top of 1 story of retail that still isn't fully occupied to this day. The only cool thing about the project is the iconic pedestrian bridge that leads to the hospital. I just love a good pedestrian bridge.
                   To be fair, before this was built, Jefferson's parking needs were dire. They were shuttle-busing employees in from surface parking lots around the city. Nonetheless, there's no reason why they couldn't do this one underground like they did with their Hamilton Garage, built around the same time. Hopefully, this monumental carbox will be the last one they'll need to build for awhile.   
                   Jefferson does intend to build up the rest of the superblock that remains empty, but don't expect to see any cranes in the air any time soon. One day, it will all be filled in and this stupid garage will look a lot less ostentatious... in the meantime (decades, probably), this crappy garage will be sitting there, annoying the fuck out of everyone. FUCK IT!!!

Pictured: A big IF.

Parking Garage of the Week-- May 23rd

The Lift

101 South Juniper Street

               Now this is what should be done with all parking garages. Though its probably gonna look ridiculous in 20 years, for the time being, this is way better than your typical shitty parking garage. Though almost 50 years old, the Lift's makeover in recent years makes it one of the most advanced above-ground garages in the region.
                The site this carbox sits on was home to a VERY lost building. The Drury Building stood for six decades at 101 South Juniper but no one ever took a picture of it or added it to any record of ANYTHING. The only picture of it is a grainy aerial photo where you can only see the roof. Carbon Paper was produced there for years until it became home to Edgar V. Seeler's architecture firm. Its storefront held the second-ever Horn and Hardart's location.
                In 1961, Philadelphia Penny-Park, Inc. proposed what they used to call a "pigeonhole parking" structure for the site. The ugly-ass one on Broad Street had just been completed and this new one would improve upon its design. It would have a more advanced automated parking system and, unlike the Broad Street one, provide storefronts along Juniper Street.

Rendering of the garage in 1961.

                   The beast cost $1.2 million and was designed to hold 245 cars. After being completed in the mid-60's, no one gave a shit about it anymore. It fell into obscurity almost immediately. Flash forward to the early 21st Century. By this point, the garage was no longer in use and was solely dedicated to its crappy Juniper Street storefronts. Among its last tenants were a cafe/donut shop called Lil' Spot and a graffiti supply store called Rarebreed.

Remember this? Image by Charles Hess.

                    Lil' Spot had some kick-ass homemade donuts. Back when I worked on Market East, I would stop there every morning for coffee and a shitload of those little fresh donuts that were only seconds old when consumed. At some point in time, someone left the garage's stairway door open, causing the guys from Rarebreed to go up the rickety broken stairs of the place and tag the shit out of all the floors, turning the old Penny-Park into a Graffiti Art Gallery. I once had the privilege of climbing those broken stairs in pitch black darkness to check out floor after floor of graffiti murality. It was pretty cool once you got over the trauma of almost falling through the stairs like eight times.
                         With the Tony Goldman Renaissance of nearby 13th Street, the neighborhood's parking needs went way up (despite having a shitload of pre-existing garages in every direction). On March 18th, 2006, Brandywine Realty Trust purchased the ol' Penny-Park for $2.25 million and kicked the tenants the fuck out. Rarebreed was the only survivor, lasting a few more years near South Street. Brandywine then spent the next few years gutting and renovating the garage. It took fucking FOREVER, blocking Juniper Street for months at a time.

Toward the end of construction in January, 2010 with street blocked. Pic by Skyscraperpage.com member Muji.

                     The cool thing about this renovation is that they took a fucked-up old parking garage and made it almost look like a building. They added polycarbonate and glass panels to pretty up the place and renamed it The Lift. Not only does it park 240 cars with super-fast retrieval time, its one of only 11 of its kind in the nation. And for all you environment nerds out there, this place is actually eco-friendly! Whoda thunk it? The only problem I have with the place is that the storefronts are lost.
                     When the renovation was first being done, rumors swirled around stating that if this thing was successful, other parking garages would be redone in the same way. Well... The Lift has been open for awhile now... hopefully Brandywine will be inspired to start on some other garages. I suggest the butt-fugly Pigeonhole Parking building on Broad Street. Get to it, Brandyfucks!!
 

Just a reminder of what it looked like for decades. Photo by Tim McFarlane

Parking Garage of the Week-- May 9th

Interpark Parking Garage

1327 Locust Street

Craptonious.

                   This parking garage is a disgrace for numerous reasons. Its ugly, its big, its in a location that should have something better, and it replaced a goddamn Furness masterpiece. This is shit!!!
                 You read it right... this shitbird parking garage replaced one of Furness' greatest structures, his version of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Completed in 1880, it was a Megacastle of Librarian Cockcurls that graced the corner of Juniper and Locust for 60 years while the neighborhood was known as Library Row.

Imperial Fortress of Chancellor Kickass in 1899. Pic from the PAB.

                     In the 1930's, the Library Company was hurting for cash. They begrudgingly built their new HQ at 900 South Broad and everyone hated it. The organization started to go broke from lack of membership and gross mismanagement of finances. The Librarian of the period was an Englishman named Austin Gray. This dumbass barely knew what could be found in the library's collection and thought publishing a badly written history of the organization would garner support and raise funds. The idea failed.
                      In 1940, the money problems grew exponentially. Gray's new bright idea would get two birds stoned at once... knock down the money-draining but awesome Furness library and install a money-making surface parking lot.

The surface lot in 1948.

                   The lot became the third Luckless Lot of Library Row and was a smashing success. The Library Company had a Percentage Lease deal with the lot operator, so they collected a rent that was proportional to the lot's profits, which were HUGE. In 1949, profits were so good that the Library Company decided to build a massive parking garage on the site that could hold 541 cars. This, then, is the birth of this awful parking garage.
                  By 1952, the parking garage had paid for itself and the Library Company had more money than it could handle. A new Librarian who quit the Rosenbach, Edwin Wolf, took over Library Company and revamped the fuck out of it using the newly acquired riches. Eventually, they sold off the parking garage.

The garage is visible in the center of this image from 1959.

                     For six decades, the shitbird-ass mega-garage would continue to operate, all the way to here in the present. It has stood three years longer than the Furness Library Company building did. The lights in the word "PARK" out front barely work and the rear is a bum bathroom. Being that the facade was recently painted beige, it appears that this giant piece of dung is not going anywhere. The current owner, a Delaware-based company with a Scottsdale, Arizona address, bought the garage in May of 2000 for $10 and has been sitting on it ever since.
                    What a shitty garage. The location is zoned C-5, so a fucking skyscraper could go here if the owner had the balls to sell-off this parking goldmine to a developer with a Scrotum of Steel. I remember seeing a plan where this shitgarage and the Pigeonhole Parking building would be demolished and replaced with a skyscraper, but that was probably just a fantasy. One day, this 63 year old parking garage will meet its fucking maker and we'll get a nice building here. Don't get your fucking hopes up. 

Its just keeps going and going and going. I'd rather have a Furness.

Parking Garage of the Week-- April 25th

Wood Street Garage

320 North Broad Street

Fuck Youuuuuuuuuuuuu!

                    Goddammit, why did they have to do this? This shitty parking garage is the ONLY structure on the West side of North Broad Street between Vine and Callowhill Streets. This! The worst part of the existence of this Parking Box is the fact that it replaced a great building. Fuck it fuck it fuck it!!
                   That's right, this parking garage replaced a perfectly good, somewhat historically significant building that was much taller than the crappy Wood Street Garage. Built 1922-1924, the Benevolent Paternal Order of Elks Lodge #2 was built as a FUBU hotel for members. It was designed by the Ballinger firm featuring Andrew J. Sauer, Lord of the Cunningham Building. After changes in city demographics and the Great Depression came along, Elk membership got so light that they moved back into their old building at Arch and Juniper.

Old ad for the hotel when it was still Elk-run.

                        After that, the building became the Broadwood Hotel, featuring the Philadelphia Playhouse Theatre. They called it the Broadwood Hotel because it was located at the corner of Broad and Wood Streets... not such a bad idea. The Broadwood became one of the city's most popular and successful hotels of the 20th Century. Not only was the theater inside an attraction, but the ballroom on the third floor was considered one of the best in America.

As the Broadwood Hotel. Pic from the PAB.

                        The Broadwood stayed open all the way up into the 1970's. Then it was converted into the Philadelphia Athletic Club. At this point, this stretch of North Broad was even shittier than it is today. The building got historically registered in 1984, but we all know that doesn't mean dick.

The Broadwood as the Philadelphia Athletic Club in 1980.

                       In the early 90's, Hahnemann Hospital decided that all the empty lots and other parking garages near their campus weren't enough. They demolished the fuck out of the old Broadwood and built the Wood Street Garage in its place, fucking up the street way more than the blighted old building ever could. Instead of keeping a beautiful historically registered building standing, they opted to screw up the block forever... what ass.
                     What's worse... they made the Wood Street garage UGLY as FUCK. At street level, instead of retail, there are prison bars. A weird 90s-ish stone-like facade was put on, but doesn't cover the whole front! Just the bottom floors and the Northern corner. That's just dumb.

Prison bar frontage on Broad Street. Image from Google.

                   Hopefully one day the surface lots adjacent to this mess will get filled in with buildings that distract away from the presence of this dirty motherfucker and we'll all joke about how this crappy parking garage was once the only thing on this part of the North Broad corridor. Don't fucking count on it.

Parking Garage of the Week-- April 11th

Central Parking 11th and Race Street (aka Kinney Systems Chinatown Garage)

1030 Race Street

Garbage.

                      Is it a building or is it a parking garage? Well, in this case, its both! Here we have the decaying skeleton of an old building that has been converted into a parking garage. This Brittle Behemoth of Dickbones sure knows how to ugly-up a street corner. As big as it is, it only holds 225 cars.
                      Back in the early 20th Century, Harrison Cicero Rea was the shit. His construction company was well-known far and wide. He was so successful that he would be asked to be on the boards of banks and consult city agencies. In 1915 he joined forces with the Manufacturers Realty Company to built a speculative factory building at 11th and Race.
                     The Ballinger and Perrot firm, responsible for many industrial buildings in the city, was called in for a design. They gave Rea & friends a pretty standard design for the time, a six story super-reinforced megabox. United Electric Construction Company installed the electrical equipment. Construction was complete by 1917.

Industry!!!

                    After that, barely anyone wanted to move in. Entire floors stayed empty for years after the building was complete. Finally, a variety of companies started filling the building... everything from clothing to greeting cards would be produced there for the next few decades. In 1945, the building was the subject of a often-cited court case (Goldstein Co. v. Greenberg Inc.) that established that in any joint business venture, all the people involved need to tell each other the truth regarding said venture (I'm not a lawyer but that's what I got out of it).

In the upper right of this picture from 1955.

                        After that, records are spotty. Its not clear exactly when the building was converted to a parking garage or when the ground floor retail was added, but based on the condition of the storefronts, it was a long fucking time ago. The facade of the upper floors appears to be so dirty, that one could guess that its never been cleaned. A few replacement bricks appear here and there, but other than that, I think we're looking at 95 years worth of shmutz covering this thing.
                       This last December, a company based in the building next door on 11th Street purchased the building for $1 (nothing underhanded about that lol), ensuring more decades of dirty-ass factory building skeleton gracing this corner. This right here is a garage in need of a makeover. If the facade was cleaned and windows added, it would look like a perfectly normal loft building. Get to it, you bastards!!!

Dirty-ass facade.

Parking Garage of the Week-- March 28th

Central Parking of Philadelphia- 12th and Sansom Garage

123 South 12th Street

Blecchh

                     This garage right here is a grabasstic piece of horsetrash. What a useless pile of shit. Even though this garage is one of many in a neighborhood of much larger parking behemoths, it has a way of annoying the fuck out of anyone walking down 12th or Sansom Streets.
                       The address this 600-car-parking motherfucker lives on was once the site of the Borie Mansion, a large and fanciful house that was somewhat famous in its own time, but not famous enough that someone would take a good picture of it. You can only find views of it in the background of pictures of the S.S. White Building.

The Borie Mansion as seen from 12th and Chestnut.

                          The Borie Mansion was demolished around 1922 to create one of the city's earliest surface parking lots. It was pretty small, since the house next door still stood, but by the mid 1940's, had grown to about half the size the garage is now.

This photo is labeled as 1940 but I think its from 1949. The Surface Lot that would become the garage is on far left.

                         Its not clear when exactly the garage was built, but the front portion of it was put up some time between 1949 and 1959.

You can see the garage on the middle right here in 1959.

                      On June 20, 1978, the 12th and Sansom garage was sold for $1 to  Samuel Rappaport. This Rappaport guy was the king of the many 20th Century Center City Slumlords. At one point, he owned more properties in Center City than anyone else. This shitbird would buy properties cheap, sit on them, make small improvements, then sell them off for exorbitant prices. He was responsible for the blightiest times for Center City and also caused some of the NIMBYism we experience today. His death in 1994 was directly responsible for much of Center City East's renaissance.
                   The Twelfth and Sansom garage is one of the many shitty properties that still list him as an owner. Today, its managed by Central Parking Systems and has an Enterprise Rent-a-Car storefront location in it. The rear half of the garage is an addition, but there seems to be no record of when it was built. This ugly pile of trash is a like a Great Wall of Sphincters along the 1100 block of Sansom Street and is the ugliest thing on the 100 block of South 12th Street. Its even worse than the gigantic Parkway Corp garage across the street and that's saying something.
                  In the tax records, the owner is listed as Rappaport but the address given for the owner is LGI Energy Solutions of Wayzata, Minnesota. Why the fuck does a shitty little energy company in Minnesota own a parking garage in Philadelphia? The lot is zoned C5, so a two-story parking garage is a massive under-utilization of the space. Any rich developers reading this? Someone needs to buy up this thing and put it out of its misery in favor of a new building with an underground garage that has just as many spaces. Get Tony Goldman on the phone. He made 13th Street out of some of Rappaport's other remains, maybe he can help here.
                 Oh well.. we're just gonna have to live with this thing for awhile. The facade appears to be recently repainted but it still makes a long-ass boring wall down Sansom Street. Hopefully, someone in my lifetime will have the guts to wipe this motherfucker out.

Here's the Sansom Street wall. The Midtown II blocks it from crashing into Kling's crappy-ass Foederer Pavilion or whatever the fuck its called.