Lost Building(s) of the Week-- August 22nd

Young Men's Christian Association

1428 Chestnut Street

Holy fuck!! Pic from the PAB.

                 Just take a good look at this big motherfucker. This thing is unbelievable!! Arched windows all over the place.... mansard roofs, small details everywhere. The 15th and Chestnut YMCA was the SHIT. Unfortunately, it stood for less than 50 years.
                In the late 1800's, NYC's 23rd Street Branch of the YMCA was an experiment in how badass the YMCA locations could be if tons of money were thrown into them. The 23rd Street Branch was a mansard-roofed mega-castle with libraries, auditoriums, and, revolutionary for the period, a gymnasium. As it was constructed and opened in 1868-69, Harper's Weekly, the "Journal of Civilization", featured articles and drawings of every part of the building.

It looks like one side of City Hall.

                    As Harper's Weekly spread knowledge about this building across the world, people became extremely impressed with the idea of a Christian-based organization that could offer all this shit in such a luxurious space. Like the Mercantile Library, but with Jesus!! The articles in the Weekly purposefully neglected to write about the gymnasium because it was considered too bold for the country's sensibilities. Also too bold was the whole motivation behind the building: focus on the secular qualities of the YMCA instead of the religious.
                In the early 1870's, many other cities started to plan their own badass YMCA super-buildings, and Philadelphia was one of them. A competition was held for a design with recommendations from the dudes who designed the NYC version. The winner was Super Arch-megatect Addison Hutton. The YMCA's leadership thought that all the other designs, which had a tower in the corner, looked too much like a church. They chose Addision Hutton's design because it looked more secular (and more badass).
              The gigantic building would make the NYC one look like a grabasstic pile of horsetrash, even though its meant to be a sequel to that design. It would cost $500,000 and take 3 years to build.

An engraving of it from 1875. Image from the PAB.

                   Once the five-story monster opened in 1876 at the southeast corner of 15th and Chestnut, it boasted a 1,300-seat theater, three floors of offices, a gigantic gymnasium with soundproof floors, a big-ass library/reading room, an employment center, and a bowling alley... all sitting on top of retail storefronts. Critics of the time bashed it for being too similar to the NYC one, but fuck them. This building was to that one as Star Trek: The Next Generation is to Star Trek.
                  The new YMCA was a massive success. Its location proved valuable once the Central Business District moved over to the neighborhood, following the construction of City Hall. Unfortunately, the success of that CBD is what killed this building. The YMCA moved a few blocks north in the early 20th Century and the 15th/Chestnut megamonster was converted into a mostly-office building under designs by Hutton and was renamed the Wilson Building.
                 One piece of the interior salvaged from the original design was the theater. It was knocked down to less than half the original size (1300 seats to 600), but stayed in use as the Colonial Theatre.

The theatre entrance in 1913.

                   In 1920/21, the old YMCA was demolished in favor of the also-badass Packard Building that still stands on the spot today. Bummer. Its a shame that we should lose a building as awesome as this... I wonder if it would have lasted past the Ed Bacon era. Oh well... this awesome building is GONE. Get used to it.

              

Empty Lot of the Week-- August 21st

Penn Park Parking Lot

3000 Lower Level Walnut Street

                  Ok, so this empty lot is not THAT big of a deal... or at least it seems like it. I mean, Penn Park is awesome, right? Why should I be mad that it comes with a huge surface parking lot? It reduced a 10+ acre surface lot into this comparatively small one...what's the big deal?
                  Found out at the Philadelphia Citypaper's Naked City Blog!

Old-Ass Building of the Week-- August 20th

Frankford Chocolate Co.

2101 Washington Ave.

               This big motherfucker is a lot older than it looks. Though its been through a rough patch this last 15 years, the big-ass Frankford Chocolate building is about to see some action. Read more at the Hidden City Daily!

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- August 16th

Unnamed 9/11 Memorial

Schuylkill Banks just south of Chestnut Street Bridge

              Well, we all knew something like this was coming. For the last 10 years, pieces of the World Trade Center have been sold by the NY/NJ Port Authority for use as memorials in cities, towns, and villages across America. Supposedly, over 400 memorials have been created from the structural steel of the WTC. This doesn't really make any single piece of WTC steel special-- yet here we are, a brand new not-yet-dedicated 9/11 memorial using structural steel in Philadelphia in 2012.
             Worse yet, its in the Schuylkill River Park/Trail, one of the city's best amenities. The first time I saw this thing, I didn't know it was a 9/11 memorial.. I had seen it from the Chestnut Street Bridge and that little flag wasn't there. From that vantage-point, it just looks the pedestal for some unfinished piece of public art.

From the Chestnut Street Bridge.

               Only when you get close to it do you know what the fuck its for. Its a sad piece... a short girder of steel sinking into a granite slab with the names of some locals who died in the incident. That's pretty much it.
              Look, I'm not saying that a 9/11 Memorial should be this big bombastic ostentatious thing with penises everywhere, but anything's gotta be better than this.. especially since there's so many similar memorials elsewhere. On their website, the Schuylkill River Development Corp says that they had acquired the steel and had the memorial designed by the Wells Appel firm.

Pics from the Schuylkill Banks website showing construction of the memorial.

                   But that's not all... there's ANOTHER 9/11 Memorial in the works for Philly, and yet AGAIN it will be using structural steel from the WTC. This one will take up the southeast corner of Franklin Square and will be a great clash of two cliches-- steel from the WTC and yet another depiction of the Liberty Bell.

Rendering from the Philly 9/11 website.

                    In this one, the pedestal will be a giant Pennsylvania keystone shape with steel from the WTC, limestone from the Pentagon, and soil/stone from the PA crash site. The towers will be depicted in stone. In the middle will be a half-size replica of the Liberty Bell. The crack of the bell will be filled with WTC Steel. A non-profit called Philly 9/11 is in the midst of collecting donations for the memorial, calling the concept "Mending Liberty". I don't know how long they've been trying to get this built, but their website looks like it was made on 9/12.
                 As corny as the Philly 9/11 version of a memorial seems, its leaps and bounds more interesting than that single short piece of steel on a granite pedestal at the Schuylkill Banks. The Philly 9/11 website also says that the piece's design is subject to change-- so hopefully it changes alot. The victims of 9/11 deserve a proper memorial in Philadelphia, lets hope we get a better one some time soon. 

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!!

Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week-- August 14th

First Version of Station Square

2900 block of Market Street

                     This proposal isn't exactly dead-- it was just executed in a very shoddy and half-assed way. The little area between 30th Street station and the old post office/current IRS Building has always been a pile of shit. There's not much that could be done with it-- the entire section is a gigantic bridge deck with railroads running underneath. Though the Porch isn't half bad, its not 1/10th of the original plan.
                      Read more at the Philadelphia Citypaper's Naked City Blog!

Mystery Building of the Week-- August 13th

!!!??!?!?!?!? Building

132 North 10th Street

This pic is from a few months ago-- a new storefront is now on the 10th Street side.

                     Chinatown is chock full of mystery buildings and this one is no different. While other matching buildings from the same neighborhood are lost but known, this one still stands and is unknown. What a pain in the ass.
                    The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has nothing about this building except that it was once a factory and it MIGHT HAVE been built in 1885. Other than that, nothing-- nobody else ever mentions this thing, other than some of the old storefront tentants. The design looks right for that time period but no architect linked with this address can be found. The building looks more or less unaltered (except for having storefronts running down all sides) but the cornice looks muted as if there was once something up there.

Pretty much the only old pic of the !?!?!?!? Building, behind that parking kiosk in this pic from 1954.

                The ?!?!!?!?!?!?! Building has had the same owner since 1971, who bought the place for $1. The place looks like it might have apartments up top but I think they might actually be commercial offices, at least on the second floor. The architect did a pretty good job for a building of this type... too bad we'll never know who the fuck it was!!!
             Seriously, I have nothing else to say about this motherfucker. Its so much of a mystery that I have pretty much nothing else to offer in the way of info. Does ANYONE know where the fuck this building came from? What it was for? Who designed it? and What the fuck!?!?!?!?