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.       

Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week-- August 28th

Old City 205

205 Race Street

                  This dead-ass proposal isn't even properly dead. It still exists, but not in this form. Old City 205 was just a victim of bad timing. Though fully-approved, this kickass-looking condo set for the 200 block of Race Street was just too damn good in too bad of a time. Too bad this sucker couldn't get out of the ground.
                   Read more at the Philadelphia Citypaper's Naked City Blog!
             

Mystery Building of the Week-- August 27th

Piece of the A.F. Bornot French Dyer and Scourer

1642 Fairmount Ave.

               This right here looks like it was once a pretty nice-looking building... but definitely not anymore. Sitting at the corner of 17th and Fairmount for a long-ass time, this curvy bird looks like it would pretty fucking cool if was converted to residences with a nice row of retail/restaurants on both sides. Just imagine if those bricked-up windows came alive.
               Old maps label the property as a Steam Dye House, but that doesn't really tell us anything. It looks like it was once connected to the property next to it. That property may be part of the same building, but today they are two separate entities.

Your mom's a Steam Dye Ho.

                  Eventually, I figured out that the dye company was A.F. Bornot, French Dyer and Scourer. Bornot had been operating at that corner in some form or another since the 1830's. The A.F. Bornot company had stores all over the city and had branches in both Wilmington and D.C. The company even had a hotel on 10th Street called the Bornot... I'll go into more detail about that in a future Lost Building of the Week article. It ends up the building at the corner WAS connected to the property next door, but that's not all... the Bornot factory complex took up the entire block of Melon Street behind it.

Low-res pic of the Bornot factory. The Mystery Building is in the lower middle.

                 The section of the old dye works that is the Mystery Building MIGHT HAVE been built in 1906, a year from which I've found some very non-specific construction records. This is a Mystery Building that's a lot less mysterious than previous ones. In any event, the architect is completely unknown.
                 This building was purchased in 2002 for $700,000 by the non-profit Spring Garden Community Development Corporation from a grant they received in November, 1999. They bought up a shitload of properties from this and other grants... some have been redeveloped, others have been sitting vacant. There's more to this story, but I'll have to save the details for a future Empty Lot of the Week article.
                 Needless to say, they haven't done shit with building, aside from recently replacing a few of those crappy windows. Anyone know who the architect was or what, if any, plans exist for the rehab or sale of this building?

Butt-Fugly Building of the Week-- August 23rd

Sonesta Hotel Philadelphia

1800 Market Street

                   Yay, a big dirty concrete wall on Market Street. Its looks like they built a huge parking garage by accident and converted the top into a hotel. Wait a minute... this is a hotel? This thing makes the Doubletree look like the Hotel Walton! What an ugly pile of shit.
                  As far as history goes, the site of this building isn't all that special. It once held the Fuller Bread and Cracker factory, which had its main entrance on the 18th and Ludlow corner of the site with a small entrance facing Market Street that was probably better looking than this ass-rectangle.

18th Street side, 1899. Image from the PAB.

                     This shitty concrete box of assfucks was built in 1972 as the Holiday Inn Penn Center. When it first opened, it featured 250 rooms, a swimming pool, three restaurants, and a movie theater, all sitting on top of a gigantic 600-car parking garage. 250 rooms, 600 car parking garage. I'm no math genius but it looks like the parking garage was built to be the money-maker here.
                   Wait a minute... movie theater? There sure as shit isn't a movie theater there now... I wonder what happened to it? The hotel later became the 4-star Holiday Inn Select Center City, then, more recently, a Crowne Plaza. This last year, Sonesta Hotels took over, did some renovations, and re-opened as the Sonesta Hotel Philadelphia on June 18th.
                   As sure as I am that the inside of the building must be pretty nice, the outside looks worse than ever. The concrete is browned-up and disgusting. The rest of the building is in the suburban office park style. What a pile of junk. I can't find any sources indicating who the architect was, but that person should be ashamed. I know it was 1972, but that's no fucking excuse. Hotels are supposed to be impressive-- not crap!! This is probably the worst-looking hotel in the city's history.
                 There's not much else to say about this piece of dung. A 280-foot turd. You know you're a shitty building when the single-story Jetson's-looking restaurant/ballroom space on top of the parking garage is the most interesting piece of your structure. This thing sucks.

Feh.

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!