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.

Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week-- April 24th

Residences at the Rodin

2100 Hamilton Street

See, it even looks dead in the rendering.

                      This is one of those dead proposals like the Aerial Tramway and Parkway22. Like those others, it pretended that it was going to be built but still managed to fail. The Residences at the Rodin was yet another pathetic-ass attempt to cash in on the mid-00s building boom. Had it actually been built, it probably would be sitting there emptier than it looks in the shitty rendering above.
                      Read more at the Philadelphia Citypaper's Naked City Blog!

Mystery Building of the Week-- April 23rd

Sir Richards Tavern Building (aka Hurley's Hall aka Hurley's Hotel)

4400 Lancaster Avenue

Lots of kickass, but very little info. Image from Google.

                         This building is so fucking mysterious that the only reason anyone knows its build date is because it says it in big numbers on the facade. No one seems to know where this motherfucker came from... the history of this building consists of passing mentions and vague references. This one is a TRUE mystery.
                       This beautiful-ass motherfucker has a lot of cool shit going for it. A big tower in the corner, facade details up the ying yang, and demon faces flanking the front door (can't go wrong with that). Alterations over the years have mangled it up some but the original design of the building still shows through in a big way. If only there was some info about this thing...
                       From what I can tell, this ball-busting behemoth was commissioned by Peter E. Hurley, general manager of the Trenton and Mercer County Transit Corporation. References to a Hurley's Hotel or Hurley's Hall at this address are further evidence that he was involved. Hurley's obituary states that he left the trainmongering business for two years to do "contracting". Could this be when this Mystery Building was built?

Peter E. Hurley 1866-1918

                            The architect of the building is assumed to be Thomas Francis Miller, a prolific motherfucker who designed a shitload of buildings in the city and surrounding suburbs. One of Frank Furness's admirer/imitators, the Sir Richards Tavern Building definitely shows that influence. That's it. That's pretty much all the information that's out there about this motherfucker. There aren't even any old pictures of it, besides this one, and its not even that old:

Wow, the bottom section was already mangled in this pic from 1966.

                   More recently, this building has been known as the Building on Lancaster That's Been For Sale FOREVER. There's been a FOR SALE sign on this thing for years. Sometimes the realty company or the price changes, but it stays for sale. At one point in was going for $600K, but eventually got down to $299,000. On January 30th of this year, a Real Estate company running out of a P.O. Box in Dresher, PA bought the place for $64,900. Despite that, there's still an active listing asking for $289,900.
                   Oh, and the property tax for this 5,000 square footer is only $910. So what in the fuck is going on with this place!?!?!? Where the hell did it come from? What was its original purpose? and What the fuck!?!?!?!

Butt-Fugly Building of the Week-- April 19th

First District Plaza

3801 Market Street

 Booooorinnnnnggg

                          Ugh, I've already fallen asleep. This pedestrian piece of horseshit manages to ugly-up a corner that already has two gigantic empty lots. Its just so damn boring. What's worse it is that the architect is unknown... it almost seems that nobody wants to own up to designing this crap.
                          This building was first conceived by Bishop Frank C. Cummings of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1980. He had just been on to eight banquets in the same week and noticed that he only saw one black dude working at them. He also noticed that most of the hotels and conference halls he went to were white-owned and run. Cummings thought that there should be a black-owned, black-managed office/conference/banquet/convention space that could help the community. After 9 years of planning and fundraising, his dream came true and the boring-ass building began construction in 1989. 
                         It was named First District Plaza, being that Philadelphia is the home of the A.M.E.'s First District. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was born in Philadelphia through the Free African Society, formed when Richard Allen and Absalom Jones walked out of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church (on 4th street next to the BFB) to protest the church's racial discrimination. Despite that history, the A.M.E.'s headquarters is now in Nashville, Tennessee. Funny, Supermegatect William Strickland went to Nashville too.
                       The building ended up costing $13 million. It was funded by bank loans, a federal block grant, and Self Help, Inc, an A.M.E. corporation. When it opened in April, 1990, people went fucking nuts over it. It was reported that a woman broke down in tears upon walking inside. Bishop Cummings called it the "Miracle of Market Street". Besides offices for the A.M.E. First District, it also boasted a shitload of banquet space, a cafe, and office spaces for various companies, both white- and black-managed.

How it looked when it was new in 1990.

                             So that all sounds great and I'm glad Bishop Cummings was successful in getting this all together, but why did they have to put it all in such a butt-fugly boring pile of shit building? I've seen suburban office parks that look more exciting. Because of this and the sleepy boxes that make up the University Science Center, the Western portion of business-based Market Street has to be one of the more boring stretches of road in the city... and that's if you're driving!!! Imagine having to walk all the way along those blocks! You'd pass out from lack of brain activity by the time you made it!
                         Now that the building has been up for 22 years, maybe its time for a change. What happened to cornices? Put a big-ass cornice on that thing, add like 5 floors, and clad it with some new facade. Then take out that stupid glass-block piece sticking out the front and replace it with a 80-foot statue of Richard Allen giving the finger towards Market Street so that everyone driving by gets the bird flipped at them. The First District of the A.M.E. represents a shitload of people. If each on contributed $5, all those alterations would be possible. Get to it!!
                      

Lost Building of the Week-- April 18th

The Mammoth Rink

2100 Race Street

That's a big motherfucker for 1869. Image from the Athenaeum of Philadelphia

                  Talk about a lost building... this one is VERY lost. So lost, in fact, that many sources don't know when it was built, when it went down, or if it ever existed in the first place. Well, your good pal GroJLart has the answer. That's right... for the first time ever, a complete history of the Philadelphia Skating Rink, known colloquially as the Mammoth Rink, will be revealed.
                  It all starts in 1863. That's when James M. Plimpton invented the modern four wheel roller skate. Skates existed 100 years before that, but they sucked. Plimpton's skates were easy to learn, making roller skating a fun pastime. As a result, the 1860's became the Age of the Skating Rink. The first opened in Newport, Rhode Island in 1866 and the craze hit the nation so hard that Philadelphia had five rinks open by 1868... but they were all thrown together quickly and were really small.
                In that year, a truly official skating rink for Philadelphia was planned. It would be uncreatively named the Philadelphia Skating Rink. It would be 288' x 189' and have long single arched roof around 100 feet tall. The massive roof used a newly-patented waterproofing technology known as Outcalt's Plastic Joint Iron Roof. A gigantic mansard-roofed tower would stick out of the front, making the building one of the tallest west of Broad Street at the time. The cost was $80,000, 9.3 million in today's scrilla.
              The rink was completed around the beginning of 1869 and made headlines when it opened. It was so fucking big that people didn't call it the Philadelphia Skating Rink, they called it the Mammoth Rink. Then, on April 29th of the same year, it burned the fuck down... a total loss. The motherfucker was under construction longer than it stood. The lot was replaced by a lumber yard for awhile before the rowhomes that stand there now were built around 1890. The rink never even made it on to any city maps and appears in only one city directory. This is why many historians researching it either doubt it ever existed or get it confused with the Addison Hutton-designed mega-sized skating rink that stood at 23rd and Chestnut.
             It makes you wonder... if this Gigantor of Roller Skating Nutsacks had not burned down, would it still be standing today? What fate would have befell it? Similar rinks in other cities became everything from convention centers to field houses. What would have this become? It boggles the mind.

Empty Lot of the Week-- April 17th

Broad and Not-So-Noble

Bounded by North Broad, Noble, Buttonwood Streets and the Lasher Building

                    This lot is pathetic. It hasn't been able to be completely covered in construction for at least 60 years. What's worse, it may NEVER get built on. Its located at the Northeast corner of Broad and Noble Streets, but there's nothing Noble about it. This lot sucks ass.
                    Read more at the Philadelphia Citypaper Naked City blog!!

Old-Ass Building of the Week-- April 16th

Cunningham Piano Building

1312 Chestnut Street

                    This is definitely not your typical building. 57,720 square feet of floor space packed into a 38' x 103' lot. Such a small footprint leaves you with a thin building that appears to touch the sky... despite being only 15 stories. The multiple world-record breaking tower inspires awe to those who discover it. A religious experience, if you will.
                   Read more later today at Hidden City Philadelphia!