Lost Bridge of the Week-- February 1st

Callowhill Street Bridge (aka Fairmount Bridge, aka Spring Garden Street Bridge)

Spanning the Schuylkill River at Callowhill and Spring Garden Streets

1890. That's a nice looking bridge right there.

                     This bridge was built to make all previous Schuylkill River bridges look like dead racoon's ass. This beast was designed to be the most badass bridge that people had ever seen, and for awhile, lived up to that requirement.          
                     With the super-awesome Centennial Exhibition approaching, Philadelphia needed cool new shit to show off for the multitude of guests from around the world that would be visiting the city. The iconic Wire Bridge at Fairmount was getting old at this point and the retro look was definitely not in. The Centennial Exhibition was about innovation and the future. Let the shitty-ass Sesquicentennial Exhibition be about the past.
               They took down the kick-ass Wire Bridge at Fairmount and contracted famous bridge engineer J. H. Linville and the Keystone Bridge Company to design a super kickasstastic mega bridge that would stand out as the finest and most high-tech in the union. Linville pulled out all the stops and designed a double-decked rail and pedestrian bridge that connected Callowhill Street AND Spring Garden Street on either side of the river. It would be 48 feet wide, running 1,254 feet, (350 over the river) with 2,730 foot approaches on either side.
                The approaches were designed by Strickland Kneass and pissed Linville the fuck off. Linville didn't want the bridge to have decorated arches because then it would look way too cool, but Kneass went ahead and made the approaches all arched, so Linville was forced to continue the arches through the bridge structure. Just to be an asshole, he created a Whipple Truss wrought iron superstructure and tacked some non-weightbearing cast iron arches along the sides.
                    Construction began in 1874 and the bridge opened in 1875. The pricetag? 1.2 million dollars... a ridiculously high amount for the time.

Under construction.

                       Once complete, people loved this fucking thing. The railroad ran on the upper deck and carriages/pedestrians ran on the lower. Tourist guides from the era actually encouraged visitors to get off their trains, walk across the lower deck, and reboard the train on the other side.

Approach to the lower level. They sure don't make 'em like this anymore.

                The wrought iron framework and the cast iron arches were extremely vulnerable to rust. The bridge rusted right up shortly after it was built. The motherfucker was turning orange and by 1885, big-ass chunks of rust were falling from the upper deck to the lower deck. It got so bad that they had to employ motherfuckers who would clean off the fallen chunks.
                By 1900, people had enough of this shit. The cast iron arches on the bridge were removed and a new metal framework was built for the approaches. For the rest of its existence, the bridge would expose its less-exciting wrought iron Whipple Trusses.

1904 view of De-Arched Callowhill Street Bridge

           By 1917, everyone forgot about the grandeur of the original bridge. They even forgot its name... they started calling it the Spring Garden Bridge instead. Talk of widening or rebuilding the bridge began at about this time, but never happened.

The Lower Deck in 1954.

                  The span stayed in continuous use until Interstate 76 was built and started to get in the way of the lower deck. In the mid 60's, a plan to add a Spring Garden Street exit from the highway was created, and the old girl wasn't up to the task of having that kind of connection. In 1964, the 89 year old bridge was lowered onto a barge and hauled away. A plaque commemorating this bridge is present on the new one, but the illustration on it shows the crappy Whipple Truss version.
                   This bridge shows how something that was cool as fuck in 1875 could be considered a piece of shit only 20-some years later. The next time you go over the modern highway-ramp style version of this bridge, make sure to piss out the window in honor of its great predecessor.

1960 skyline view from the last years of the Callowhill Street Bridge.

               

Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week-- January 31st

Philadelphia River City

Not really a whole city, just a buttload of ugly buildings.

                       Now here's a project that would have definitely changed things in good ol' Philadelphia, but was pretty much doomed from the get-go. This Dead-Ass Proposal was for a 8-acre, 15 million square foot, 15-year-long, 3.5 billion dollar master plan for at least 10 tall buildings that would cover the the Schuylkill Sea and the CSX and Septa rail tracks. Back in the early days of Philaphilia, I blamed NIMBYs for this huge development not going forward, but it ends up that corrupt-ass city officials and developers were just as responsible. Don't think that means NIMBYs didn't go balls-out apeshit over it.
                       Read more at the Philadelphia City Paper's Naked City Blog later today! Here it is!!


---GroJLart, King of Philadelphia and France

Mystery Building of the Week-- January 30th

That New Apartment Building in Season City

211 North Camac Street

What the fuck is this?

                    The mysterious neighborhood between the Convention Center and Vine Street Expressway has a new almost-tall building.... that no one seems to know a damn thing about. This building popped up almost overnight and only started getting noticed when it got tall enough to be seen from 676. Does it have a name? An architect? An owner? An ANYTHING?
                   I'm starting to have a small obsession with this small region of streets bounded by Broad, Race, Vine, and North Marvine Street. What the fuck is up with it? Some might consider it West Chinatown, but that's a bunch of bullshit... so I have the honor of being the one to give this neighborhood its OFFICIAL name. You heard it here first, the neighborhood is called... Season City.   Eat that, real estate agents.
                 Why Season City? Its the only area of Center City where both Spring and Summer Streets can be found in the same block. Winter Street also ran through here, but the Vine Street Expressway took it down. Who wouldn't want to build in a place called Season City? An asshole, that's who.

Season City skyline. Just ignore the awesome tall buildings in the background. The mystery building is blocking the view of City Hall.

                  This eerie new building started out as a regular crappy warehouse/garage that has had owner after owner over the decades since it was built in the 40's or 50's. In 2008, the Fujian Investment Group, which is the same name of like 30 other individual companies, purchased the property for $900,000. On May 13, 2009, they applied for a Zoning Variance to add six stories to the old warehouse and build 24 apartments.
                 No one knew or cared about it until construction began in February of 2011.

It begins. Pic from Philly Bricks.

                  Whomever this Fujian Investment Group is, I'm glad he/she sees the value of Season City. Perhaps this will inspire someone to get a hold of all those empty lots and single-story parking garages that plague this tiny neighborhood.
                 The building doesn't appear to be completed yet and there's no signage or anything on it... usually an apartment building this close to being finished has a big-ass "FOR LEASE" sign on it, but this one doesn't have shit. Its also ugly as fuck... but I don't care, Season City needs all the development it can get. Considering the massive success of all the parking lots nearby, more development ain't happening any time soon, but should. So the questions remain... Where the fuck did this thing come from? Who designed it? How come the multitude of websites that talk about Philadelphia development barely ever mentioned it?      
                Its funny that major developers can propose new projects years in advance and produce rendering after rendering and plan a building down every last detail, then never get it built. Fujian Investment Group, whoever the fuck that is, was able to propose and construct this building with barely anyone noticing. That's the power of Season City, I guess.

Butt-Fugly Building of the Week-- January 26th

James Aloysius Byrne Federal Courthouse

601 Market Street

                    Is this supposed to be a courthouse? I wouldn't want this to be a shithouse. It looks like the Royal Tomb of King Butt. Even worse, this building has been consciously trying (unsuccessfully) to destroy itself.
                     Philadelphia is home to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. In the late 60's, the Robert Nix Federal Courthouse/William Penn Annex Post Office Megalith at 9th and Market wasn't cutting the mustard. A new high tech and gigantic federal court building was needed. The Federal land next to Independence Mall was chosen for the location? Why? The Bicentennial was coming up, motherfucker!!!
                     The land surrounding the Mall must be cursed or something. Butt-fugler after Butt-fugler after Butt-fugler keeps getting built there. This giant bitch-bastard is no exception. Lots of visitors from around the world get their first impression of Philly architecture at the butt-ass Mall. King Kong's Butt-Plug here is the tallest and most prominent of the crappy buildings surrounding it.
                     Once proposed, a design would be needed. Who do you get to do a major Philadelphia building? A New York-based architect, of course. LZA Technology was chosen to design this shameful structure through their manz potz an' panz, Dan Peter Koppel and Associates.
                     The courthouse began construction in 1973 and took two goddamn years to build. The building, somehow aware of its own ugliness, immediately decided to destroy itself by any means necessary. Before it was even completed, it started to sink... burrowing itself underground so it would suffocate. The attempt was unsuccessful and the Fed sued the builder after it was fixed in 1975, jacking up the price of the building to $91 million.
                    After that, the building languished in ugliness for years, then attempted to drown itself. In the winter of 1993, the building froze its pipes until they burst, flooding a $3 million law library that had just opened. Again, the attempt was unsuccessful. After that, the building just said "Fuck it!" and started dropping bricks off of its facade. Five years of this really started to irritate people. In 1998, 25 million dollars of federal funds was thrown away replacing the roof, window seals, and THE ENTIRE BRICK FACADE.

Covered in scaffolding. For years.

                        The renovation took fucking forever and the building has stood silent ever since. In 2010, another $22 million dollars was burned "greening" it and the rest of the Byrne-Green Federal Complex. There's barely an original piece of this thing left. 
                        The building has an unusual facade feature. A giant quote saying "Justice, the Guardian of Liberty" on it. It should say "Here come some bricks... ASSHOLE!!" This building has been called "the last of the luxury federal courthouses". There's nothing luxurious about this Stinking Monolith of Monkey Butts. I'd hate to see the ones that aren't considered luxurious. I don't know much about who James A. Byrne is but he must have been a dick if they named this Brick Bunghole after him. Fuck.

Lost Building of the Week-- January 25th

Edison Building I

912 Sansom Street

You know you've got an old picture when you see those gigantic telegraph poles. There's got to be a surviving telegraph mega-pole still standing in this city somewhere.

                             After talking about the Edison Building II for this week's Old-Ass Building, I couldn't resist talking about the first one. This thing was a goddamn monster. Considering how long ago it was built, this literal Tower of Power must have seemed like a supertall skyscraper.
                             The primary reason that this Edison Building is different from the second one is that the first building wasn't just offices, it was a power plant too. In fact, it was mostly power plant:

                    In the 1880's, electric lighting had become all the rage, and as a result, power plants couldn't keep up. A semi-corrupt trust of electric companies had a stranglehold on the industry, but couldn't keep all their customers happy. The Edison Electric Light Company came along jumped on the opportunity to take them out.  In 1888, they quickly commissioned a HUMONGOUS power plant would have to be built just west of the city's Central Business District of the time.
                   Edison got the Super Mario Brothers of Badassery, the Wilson Brothers, to quickly design a massive structure that could house electrical generating needs for generations. They hit back with an Imperial Castle of Power-Generating Cock-slaps the likes of which no Philadelphian had ever seen.

It looks like Bowser's castle.

                      By the time it was hastily constructed, the plant that was supposed to fill needs for generations was already forced to run at 100% capacity. It was such a success, that only 4 years after being built, the Edison company was making the same amount of profits as the Electric Trust. Then came gasmonger and generalized badass Martin Maloney.
                        This rich motherfucker was tired of seeing multiple electric companies compete with each other, so he started his own that would rule them all. He created the Philadelphia Heat, Light, and Power Company in 1895 and immediately started to buy out competitors. Maloney's company merged with Edison Electric in 1896. A few massive mergers later, the Philadelphia Electric Company was formed in 1903.
                   PECO held their offices in the Edison Building, probably because it was near the Central Business District. At this point, the company was so huge that there wasn't enough space inside to keep them all. Offices spilled out into an annex building built nearby at 10th and Chestnut in 1907. After twenty years, even that building (which was pretty big) wasn't enough. PECO built Edison Building II in 1927 and stayed in both buildings until 1973.
                 The old Edison Plant stayed in operation until 1935, since it was one of the last places that generated direct current. It sat as a beautiful but useless hulk for seven years after that, being demolished in 1942. The Philadelphia Thermal Company put up the small power plant that still runs there today in the late 1950's.

The Edison Building next to its successor shortly before demolition.

                         After it was gone, everyone seemed to forget about it... finding details and pictures of this building is a huge pain in the ass. The next time you see that ugly-ass power plant on the 900 block of Sansom Street, pay homage to the Castle of Power that once stood there.

Empty Lot of the Week-- January 24th

Hahnemann Mural Lot

Northwest Corner of Broad and Race Streets

                        This right here is an empty lot that didn't start getting much attention until fairly recently. This undeveloped hole used to be able to hide and be unnoticed before the Convention Center Expansion, but now has come back into full fucking exposure.
                     Read more at the Philadelphia City Paper's Naked City Blog... click here!

Old-ass Building of the Week-- January 23rd

Edison Building II

900 Sansom Street

The only thing Empty Lots are good for-- getting pictures of a building.

                     This building has always been a favorite of mine. Now taken for granted, this monster was once a famous Philadelphia landmark and tourist attraction. After decades of obscurity, the Edison Building is starting to get noticed once again. I'd tell you more, but Earth's Greatest Blog is now doing Old-Ass Buildings at Hidden City Philadelphia!!!
                     Here it is!!! Check it out.