My New Idea

Clearing a Route Through the Heart of the City

We could have been a leader. Instead we will be slow followers, picking our way along the parade route, dodging the horse droppings left by the cavalry in the lead. Philadelphia used to be a leader, back in the days of Dilworth and Bacon. Yes, we made a lot of mistakes, but at least we were attempting to mold the future in a positive direction.

New York City recently announced that it was going to do 100 miles of Open Streets, upping the ante on Oakland, California, which is only doing 74 miles.

We're not doing anything; we're not going to do anything. And City Hall won't even tell us why.

I and many others have politely asked the City for a number of marginal improvements - repurposing the outer lanes of the Ben Franklin Parkway and roads in West Fairmount Park and Roosevelt Park and a few other places. This would involve closing them to cars and opening them to pedestrians and bicyclists.

The small ask didn't work. So, just for the record, I'm going to tell you what I really think. Why should Dilworth and Bacon have all the fun?

This idea got its start with the outer lanes of the Ben Franklin Parkway. Giving these lanes to peds and bikes is a no-brainer. If you'd like a fuller explanation, click here. And then Inga Saffron of the Inquirer suggested repurposing Walnut Street. This isn't quite a no-brainer, but I'll leave struggling with the details to our capable traffic engineers.

So I was staring at these two stretches on a map, and the thought occurred to me that we could connect them, and provide a highway for pedestrians and bicyclists from the heart of Center City to the Art Museum and the wilds of Fairmount Park beyond. Well, at least to Martin Luther King Drive and Kelly Drive. It's pretty bucolic, but no elk or moose or bison. And you can ride a bike to Valley Forge if you're so inclined.

I looked at 20th and 22nd streets, and picked 22nd because it's a bit wider and already has a bike lane. Then I said let's make it two-way; finding a southbound mate for the bike lane on 22nd has been basically impossible. So we'll club up the northbound and southbound traffic on 22nd, and while we're at it make the other pieces two-way as well.

Certain people will immediately say this repurposing of 22nd Street is impossible. Just look at Trader Joe's with its heavy traffic into the parking lot on 22nd. And then of course, there are the entrances and exits to the Vine Street Expressway. To quote the Princess Bride: "Inconceivable!"

Well, here's the thing. We're still letting cars onto 22nd Street. But only for one block or less, and they have to go slow. They're doing this on 14th Street in New York City, and it's working well.

But that won't work here, you say. Yes, people can turn onto 22nd from Market, but when they're done shopping and leave the parking lot, they'll have to go to Arch, and then they can only turn left.

But wait. The street is two-way for cars also. So a customer leaving the Trader Joe's lot can turn left or right and go to Market or Arch. Actually better options for egress than exist currently.

As for the Vine Street Expressway, the eastbound entrance and exit are largely unaffected by these changes. Drivers exiting would still have the option of turning on 23rd or proceeding on Winter. And if they're headed for Park Towne, they can do that because it's less than one block.

As for the westbound exit, drivers could still go to the Parkway and turn, or head up into Fairmount on 22nd. People would have to use the Parkway to access the westbound entrance - no more tromping up 22nd Street at 50 mph. Sorry for the inconvenience.

What does all this give us? The future. I'm not going to rehearse all the arguments in favor of a balanced transportation system, instead of the predominantly automotive system that we currently have. What I will say is that I think this setup would be pretty cool, and like the Schuylkill Banks and the bike lanes, the City could brag about it when they try to attract large corporations like Amazon. And I think it would be extremely popular with the people who live here. And pay taxes. And vote.

Will it happen? No. With Dilworth and Bacon in the saddle, I think we might have had a good shot at actually getting some of this stuff done. With this mayor, and this city council, and this streets department, I just don't see it.

Still, to paraphrase Senator McConnell, I will persist. Why? I am a member of the Vaclav Havel school of optimism. Here's what he said:

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." - Vaclav Havel

See also My Life in Fairmount Park, Transportation Should Not Trump Destination, Do We Secretly Want Ugly Cities and Dangerous Streets? Love Park Redesign: Why Are There Still Five Traffic Lanes on 16th Street? Put Traffic Lights on the Schuylkill Expressway.

Go to the Light

Simple Rules for a Postmodern City

Emerging from the deep at Dilworth Park.

One afternoon recently my wife and I took the train back from New York, and we found ourselves standing in the great hall at 30th Street Station, and neither one of us felt like standing in the cab line. So we walked across 30th Street and down the SEPTA rabbit hole. We'd been intending to take the trolley, but I managed to lead us down the stairs to the track for the Market-Frankford Line.

I have a habit of making wrong turns underground. I don't think I'm alone, but I've lived long enough to know that the occasional wrong turn can be an invitation to discovery. So we decided to take the MFL to 15th Street.

I'm glad we did. We got off at 15th Street right next to the stairs that go up and east to Dilworth Park. And there, still standing on the MFL platform, we looked up the stairs and saw the light. It was reaching down from Dilworth Park, and beckoning to us.

Here's a rule. When people are underground, show them where the light is. It makes them less anxious. And if you can cap it with a grand entrance into a truly fabulous public square, that would be nice.

The designers at Dilworth Park didn't invent the idea of orienting on light, and they didn't invent the grand entrance. But they pulled both ideas off, bigtime. I'm grateful.

One level of circulation? Or two? Or three?
Many Americans prefer to travel on ground level. Is this preference intrinsic to human nature, or is it simply the comfort of the familiar, which opens up the possibility that people can be lured underground with good design and decent maintenance?

I hadn't reviewed my thinking about multi-level circulation around City Hall in a while, so I took a few walks and snapped a few pics. Overall, I'd say I have more good news than bad news, and also I just have news - things I hadn't thought about before.

Claes Oldenburg, Clothespin, 1976.

Clothespin Forever!
Before the new entrances in Dilworth Park, I'm going to guess that everybody's favorite door to the underground was the one that wraps around Claes Oldenburg's clothespin. It's a wonderful piece of sculpture, and the space fits it like a glove. The space is basically a hexagonal pit with a staircase that hugs the perimeter; the bottom of the hexagon functions as a kind of traffic roundabout, sending pedestrians off on a variety of vectors. After the new guys across the street, the space at the foot of the clothespin feels a bit cramped, but I think I may just have to get over it.

Escalator to What?
The clothespin is west of 15th Street, just south of Market. To the north of Market, midway to JFK, lies another entrance that I find more problematic.

To its credit, this is an older example of daylighting the trip upstairs. And there is an escalator.

Yes, but why here?

But why is it here? The midblock location means most people will walk past convenient entrances at the corner of Market or JFK, and when you get downstairs you confront a T intersection. If you walk straight forward you walk into a pretzel shop. To the left and to the right there's quite a lot of transit. There's decent signage, but still it's a midblock location downstairs as well as upstairs. Don't get me wrong; it's functional. But it is a bit clunky.

Desire Lines
Over in Rittenhouse Square a few years back a new footpath was born. Originally it was a dirt path - quite muddy in the wet weather.

As Market Street West kept building new office buildings, the number of people walking from the PATCO train on Locust Street through Rittenhouse Square increased - and guess what? They cut the corner on 18th Street, walking over grass from an east gate to a north gate. I watched this happen on my own walks to and from work.

This is called a desire line. Eventually it was paved.

Do the escalators over on 15th lie on anyone's desire line? I don't think so.

Light Boxes
So why are the escalators there? I think I know. They're located in one of several light boxes (or light wells) that dot the neighborhood. These are big square holes in the ground, with glass walls that let light permeate sideways into the concourse (there are three levels of pedestrian circulation in this area: ground level, concourse, and train platform).

The light they provide is welcome, even though it is insufficient. As I understand the history, these boxes are remnants of Ed Bacon's proposal for this area, which was much more ambitious about connecting the ground level and the underground, both visually and physically.

Time for some history. The redevelopment of Penn Center, or Market Street West, came about when the Pennsylvania Railroad decided to demolish a railroad viaduct that ran through the area. And Ed Bacon decided to kibitz on the redevelopment plans. According to my old friend Ken Halpern, "Conceptually, Bacon thought that rather than just clear the site, the railroad should actually excavate to one level below ground. A sunken garden with flowers and fountains could then let light and air down to commuters using the subway, trolley, and commuter rail complex located below grade at this spot, later to be called Penn Center." Office towers would be oriented north-south to maximize light to the street and the lower level. (Kenneth Halpern, Downtown USA, 1978, p. 107.)

The railroad decided to go in a different direction: "The final solution for Penn Center placed the towers in the east-west direction, with a concrete deck instead of a sunken plaza. Bacon did manage to get the railroad to provide three sunken gardens." (Halpern, p. 107, caption 159.)

At any rate, the escalators are located in one of the light boxes, and another one has an elevator. Why not? The light boxes were already doomed to failure. Why not get some moving stairs and even an elevator in there and claim a victory for modern technology, if not for modern architecture?

The Big Fail
The escalators aren't terrible. Here's what is. Readers of this blog may recall a previous discussion of the underground entrance to the Love Park garage.

This is an extremely convenient underground connection between an 810-car parking garage and City Hall, the Municipal Services Building - basically the entire City Hall district. Say it's raining and you're late for lunch at the Bellevue. No problem. Take the concourse down South Broad to Walnut. Exit at the famous hotel's front door.

I do think the design and current physical state of this garage entrance leave something to be desired. It's not like the Love Park designers don't know how to do a garage entrance. Here's what they did up on the surface.

One Win, One Question Mark
Further west there are two newer buildings that have done interesting things with their connections to the concourse.

The Mellon Bank building, which runs from Market to JFK along 18th Street, has a nice, fairly understated doorway that connects to the Suburban Station concourse. A nondescript corridor leads from the door to the building elevators.

As you're walking to the elevators, if you look to your left, you will see this.

This is a really pretty space. What is it for? I don't know. The stairs do lead to doors that take you to the outside world. As you can see, there doesn't seem to be a lot of through traffic.

I called the building manager, CBRE, and spoke with Tom Flach, who told me the space was originally intended to be a restaurant. That concept didn't gain traction, so now it's used from time to time for tenant events. I told him how much I loved the structure, and he mentioned the child's toy K'NEX. I think he's right. I'm channeling my inner child when I gaze at this wonderful little glass house, homesteading among a gaggle of truly enormous office towers.

The entrance way to the Comcast building, across the street, is similarly understated, but even before you go in you can see people at the cafe tables in the food court. Upstairs from the food court, at ground level, there is a large plaza in front of the building, populated by an outdoor cafe and lots of bicycle parking. Every time I go there it seems they've added more racks. In the large lobby there is the famous 87-foot video wall that has become a significant tourist attraction.

As Inga Saffron wrote shortly before the building officially opened in 2008, "It's still early, but Comcast's plaza cafe and concourse mall promise to become a bustling urban nexus." And that's what happened.

But that's not all that happened. The concourse mall leads to a large, pleasant corridor that takes the visitor all the way to Arch Street, where (gasp) there is a midblock crossing (installed in 2015) that takes you on a lovely midblock ramble through a plaza next to a large fountain and delivers you to Logan Square. You can also go to the Wawa on the north side of Arch Street.

Recently my friend John Friedman and I were exploring and we found the corridor that leads to the new Comcast building. It's open to the public and very nice, but long and serpentine. We asked a young man who was walking near us if we were headed the right way, and he said yes and then made sure we got to the escalator that takes you up through the lobby to a very nice coffee shop on the mezzanine. After you do this once, the navigation is easy. Another win, in my opinion, supplemented by yet another midblock crossing on 18th if you prefer being outside.

So it does seem that we're getting better at this underground circulation stuff. From Dilworth Park to the Comcast building, we have good examples of cutting edge urban design. In between we have some older efforts that fall short. I'm hoping that somewhere there is a constituency for going back and fixing some of the mistakes. I'd start with the underground door to the Love Park garage.

Remember the rules: use daylight to reduce anxiety and provide orientation; find the desire lines and use them; and build entrances that are an invitation and not a threat.

See also Road Diet by Love Park - a Natural Experiment; Love Park Garage: Close the 15th Street Exit.

Transportation Should Not Trump Destination

New city to the left, old city to the right.

Of the original five squares in Philadelphia, only one of them is not a square today. Instead, Centre Square (also known as Penn Square) is occupied by City Hall. There are a bunch of smaller open spaces to the west of City Hall, including Dilworth Park and two plazas on the far side of 15th Street, one of which houses Claes Oldenburg's Clothespin (1976).

I think we should unite these shards of land to the west of City Hall to create a true square in Centre Square. St. Peter's in Rome has its square. City Hall should have a square.

We do this by closing 15th Street from JFK Boulevard to South Penn Square. To do this we will need to rework traffic patterns across a fairly large area, but before I get into the traffic weeds, let's have a look at how we got to where we are.

A Rare Opportunity
The area west of City Hall didn't always look the way it does now. Until the early 1950s there was an elevated train viaduct called the Chinese Wall, which ran from the Schuylkill River to a terminal facing City Hall (see map below). The terminal (designed by Frank Furness) and the Chinese Wall came down in 1953, and the City had a rare opportunity to redesign a large vacant space in the heart of a city that was already 250 years old.

The Chinese Wall, 1913.

I think it's fair to say that things didn't go as well as many people had hoped. There are a number of issues, but I'd like to focus on two things that I think underlie the traffic problems in the area - the street grid and the demands of the automobile.

The Street Grid
William Penn's 1682 plan for Philadelphia, with its rectangular street grid, recalls the layout of Roman military camps. The grid is a durable concept because it's useful, but we should remember that it was invented primarily with pedestrians in mind. Most Roman soldiers got around by walking. A few had horses; it helped to have a good seat, because stirrups hadn't been invented yet.

We should remember how good the Romans were at squeezing remarkable achievements out of very limited technical resources. For instance, how would you, as a Roman engineer, go about building a military camp, or castrum, on a rectangular grid? You used the Roman version of a surveyor's transit, which was called a groma.

The groma was a pair of straight sticks joined at right angles and mounted on a staff. Looking down one stick allowed you to shoot a straight line. Then, if you walked around and looked down the other stick, you could shoot a right angle. You could only shoot 90 degree angles with a groma. If I were an engineer, I would find that a pretty good argument for laying out an army camp in a rectangular grid.

The Roman castrum always came with two large streets that divided the camp into quarters. Where these big streets met, in the middle of the camp, there was a large open area. This was the parade ground, and the unit commander's headquarters was located on this square.

In Philadelphia we call these big streets Broad and Market; the central square is the home of City Hall.

I suspect that the grid worked pretty well for the Romans. At each end of the big streets, there were gates. A commander could readily mass troops along those streets and in the central square and then sally forth through any of the gates.

The main shortcoming of the grid plan is the lack of diagonal movement. In early modern times this issue was addressed by adding diagonal boulevards to the grid. Major L'Enfant did this in his plan for Washington, D.C., and Baron Haussmann employed them extensively in his reconstruction of Paris in the mid-nineteenth century.

Haussmann did not build the most famous Parisian boulevard, the Champs Elysees, which has roots extending back to the late seventeenth century. And it is the Champs Elysees which provides the inspiration for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia.

It's important to remember that the boulevard concept, like the grid concept, was born in a world without cars. These streets were for pedestrians and also people who liked to ride around in horse-drawn carriages.

Cars Change Everything
And then came the cars. It's tempting to blame the beginning of our traffic woes around City Hall on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (built between 1917 and 1926). Or you can blame City Hall (built between 1871 and 1901). Or I suppose you could go back to the original William Penn plan and say that the two big streets meeting in the middle was a good idea for a Roman military camp, but that the intersection in the central square would clearly become a choke point when the concept was applied to a larger settlement.

Here's a map showing the central part of Philadelphia in 1859. Notice that the central square is already unlike the other four squares. In the outlying squares, the streets skirt the perimeter. In the central square they plow right through the middle, dividing the square into four pieces. A little over a decade later, City Hall started to arrive in the central square, at which point traffic was pushed to the periphery.

Market and Broad intersecting in Centre Square, 1859.

What would have happened to the central square if City Hall had not arrived? I suspect that it would have become a very large traffic circle, similar to Logan Square. We can only hope that the middle of the square would have an equally attractive water feature.

The street system is not the source of our problems. The problems came with the cars, and the problems came from the cars. After the introduction of the Model T Ford in 1908, cars hit cities like a tidal wave.  Cars are big and heavy and fast. They needed more space to move than the streets had, and they needed places to park. Starting in the 1920's, cities began to rebuild themselves to accommodate cars.

Peter D. Norton, in his Fighting Traffic (2011), goes through what happened in magisterial fashion. (I have reprised some of his arguments in Cars and Bikes - The Back Story.)

The reconstruction was managed by members of the new profession of traffic engineering, many of whom had gotten their start in municipal water departments. They effectively reported to the American car manufacturers and their allies. There were two key goals - a bigger pipe, and faster throughput.  The engineers knew how to move water, and they knew they needed a big pipe and high speeds to satisfy a demand that skyrocketed every year.

From this basic situation you get the Interstate Highway System, based on limited access, many lanes, and high speeds. This system actually works well out in the cornfields of Iowa. Drop it into a city that was designed in the seventeenth century, and there are problems.

It's not that you can't do interstates in the big city. Look at the Vine Street Expressway. I wish it were covered, and I wish the traffic volumes and number of crashes were lower, but you can do this. We could actually live with automobiles, if the car lobby were reasonable.

But what doesn't work is trying to turn local Philadelphia streets into fake interstates. And that's what's happening on 15th Street by City Hall.

The Nitty Gritty
Okay. I told you I would get to this, and here we are. Let's have a look at 15th Street by City Hall. The traffic engineers took one look at 15th Street, and they said "big pipe." I won't go through the history, but here's what's going on today.

Here are the feeders for the big pipe on 15th Street, which for out-of-town readers runs south past the west front of City Hall.

Let's start at the north, with the Vine Street Expressway. Both the eastbound and the westbound exits land you on 15th.

The Ben Franklin Parkway comes in by way of a little two-way section of Arch between 16th and 15th, just north of Love Park.

Arch Street between Broad and 15th, by the Municipal Services Building, is one-way westbound (we'll come back to that) and it also feeds 15th Street.

Just south of Arch, the 810-car garage under Love Park has an exit onto 15th.

At John F. Kennedy Boulevard, just south of the Municipal Services Building, Broad Street feeds into 15th by running around the northwest shoulder of City Hall.

And then Market Street butts into 15th on the west side of City Hall.

All this takes place in the space of five blocks.

I've written a bit about 15th Street by Love Park (for instance, Crossing 15th Street), so I'm going to limit myself to a comment on the intersection of 15th and Market.

Who thought it would be a good idea to have five lanes of traffic merge at a T intersection with another four lanes of traffic and then immediately split into three separate streams, flowing to 15th Street (south), Broad Street (south), and Market Street (east)?

The Furness Plan
This was a conscious decision. Previously there were two separate streets here - the street by the west side of City Hall, and then 15th Street. When Frank Furness designed the Broad Street Station, he preserved 15th Street by having it flow through the building. Here's his plan.

From James F. O'Gorman, The Architecture of Frank Furness (1973) p. 183.

The later arrival of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway created further issues, which I think have never been satisfactorily resolved. However, traffic on the Parkway has decreased since the construction of the Vine Street Expressway, and I think it should be possible to make things better in this area, provided people are open to new thinking.

A Different Approach
What happens if, instead of concentration and high speeds, we ask our street designers to look at diffusion and low speeds? In other words, let the grid do something it's good at.

Let's start with two easy ones.

Make the 1400 block of Arch two-way. The Benjamin Franklin Parkway ends at 16th and Arch. You can continue on to the 1500 block of Arch, north of Love Park, but then you are required to turn south on to 15th. Why can't you keep going east on Arch? Because it's one-way westbound from 15th east.

I think we should make Arch two-way down to Independence Mall at least. Then it could effectively serve as a distributor for the Ben Franklin Parkway east of Broad. But for now I'm happy to concentrate on the 1400 block, where we have some work to do.

I'm actually a fan of Vincent Kling's Municipal Services Building, but it does have some problems, not least of which is the remarkably self-indulgent porte-cochere on Arch Street, which takes up two traffic lanes and spawns a wide sidewalk that almost nobody uses.

Sidewalk and porte-cochere at Municipal Services Building.

I'd demolish this porte-cochere - it's actually a free-standing structure - and narrow the sidewalk and let motorists go both east and west on this block.

Close the Love Park garage exit on 15th. These exiting vehicles cause a lot of craziness as they try to move left - the lane they exit onto is a right-turn only lane. This block is currently hell on wheels for pedestrians and motorists alike. I'm amazed that people actually ride bicycles on this block, but they do. There's another perfectly adequate garage exit on Cherry Street.

Okay. Now for the heavy lifting.

Close 15th Street from JFK Boulevard to South Penn Square. In Vietnam there was a road that French soldiers called la rue sans joie, or the street without joy. Greta Garbo starred in a film of the same name in 1925.

Fifteenth Street west of City Hall is a street without joy. There's no fixing it, in my opinion. So we should close it and allow Dilworth Park to expand and occupy the whole space from City Hall to the Clothespin.

How you do this is a little complicated, so please bear with me.

Make Market Street two-way from 20th to 15th. It's already two-way west of 20th and east of City Hall. I don't know why it's one-way on this stretch. Make a nice turnaround circle at 15th Street.

Provide similar treatments for the stubs of 15th Street and South Penn Square that would provide access to the buildings on the southwest corner of this new plaza.

My brother points out that you could marry up South Penn Square, 15th Street, and Ranstead, which extends from 15th to 16th. I think this is a nice solution, although I prefer mine.

Market Street will no longer be a through street in Center City. However, if you think about it, neither Market nor Broad have really been through streets in Center City since at least 1871. We've just been pretending.

Make JFK Boulevard two-way for its full length. Currently it is two-way from 30th Street Station across the bridge to 20th Street, and then one-way westbound between 20th and City Hall. We need to reroute Market Street's eastbound through traffic to JFK Boulevard. Motorists could make this move out by 30th Street Station, or on the east side of the Schuylkill at 20th, 18th, or 16th.

With no traffic on the west side of City Hall, the streets on the north, east, and south sides of City Hall all need to become two-way.

Here's some of the upside. A motorist coming from 30th Street Station can run straight down JFK to the east side of City Hall, make a quick right and a quick left, and then continue on Market Street to the Arden Theater for a reprise of Sweeney Todd.

Similarly, a motorist coming down Broad Street to City Hall can make a few quick turns and again be on east Market headed to Christ Church, one of George Washington's hangouts in Old City.

Currently, a motorist coming down Broad who wants to go east on Market has to go around three-quarters of City Hall and brave some of the nastiest traffic in the city.

Use Roundabouts. I think a number of the intersections under discussion - for instance, the intersection of Broad with JFK on the north side of City Hall - would benefit from the addition of roundabouts. These are basically very small traffic circles. I've seen them in action. In my experience they slow traffic, encourage polite driving, and in general work very well.

It's a Lot of Work. What's the Payoff?
A walkable city. As the headline of this story says, transportation should not trump destination. We need to have a there there, when people get out of their cars or off the train or bus, or when they dismount from their bikes or just show up by walking, which is what I usually do. And the there should not just be inside. We need outdoor public spaces, and frankly Philadelphia does them very well. It just needs to do more.

Things seem to be headed in this direction. Recently there have been suggestions in New York City that it is finally time to close Times Square to cars. We'll see how that goes. So much depends on elections.

But I think the Schuylkill Banks in Philly show that it is possible to blend hard-core transportation with bucolic recreation in a way that is highly successful for both. The early plans for the Schuylkill Banks called for the rail lines by the river to go away, but they didn't. And so we have a riverbank park that is easily accessible across rail lines that carry volatile petroleum and smelly garbage, and after years of settling in, and many, many snarky conversations, and the construction of some pretty amazing blast walls, things seem to be going reasonably well.

I'm not saying it's nirvana, but I am saying this is the way of the future.

The two most successful Center City parks, aside from the Schuylkill Banks, are probably Rittenhouse Square and Fitler Square. Although they don't have the industrial challenges of the Banks, they do have to deal with cars, which is the issue up by City Hall. And the answer is, if you have a nice park with greenery and a water feature and benches and maybe a few statues that kids can climb on, and the park is accessible across streets that are not terrifying, and if the din of the car traffic is low enough to meld with other background noises, and if maybe you have a certain amount of programming, then you've probably got yourself a successful park.

I think we could have a very successful park filling the open space on the west side of City Hall. People will say, if you build it they won't come. This is Philadelphia, and of course people are going to say that. But I don't believe them.

Plaque located in the northern arcade of the Municipal Services Building. It commemorates the Reyburn Plaza Bandstand, which was demolished in 1962.

The maps reproduced in this story are from the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network.

See also Fixing Arch Street at Love Park; Gordon Cullen and the Outdoor Floor; Love Park Redesign: Why Are There Still Five Traffic Lanes on 16th Street; Richardson Dilworth, an Urbanist for the Ages; Road Diet by Love Park - a Natural Experiment.

Richardson Dilworth, an Urbanist for the Ages

I was born and grew up in New York City. I didn't move to Philadelphia until I was in my thirties. Aside from Benjamin Franklin and Grace Kelly, I think the first Philadelphian I heard of was Edmund Bacon (father of Kevin). And the second was Richardson Dilworth.

But I confess I didn't know very much about Dilworth until I sat down and read Peter Binzen's excellent 2014 biography, Richardson Dilworth, Last of the Bare-Knuckled Aristocrats. I didn't know he'd been a 19-year-old Marine rifleman at the battle of Belleau Wood in World War I, or that he'd won the Silver Star on Guadalcanal in World War II, or that he'd struggled with alcohol for most of his life.

And what a life it was. Born to wealth, educated at Yale and Yale Law School, a successful law career, then four jobs with the City of Philadelphia -- treasurer, district attorney, mayor, and president of the Philadelphia Board of Education.

And what a cast of characters. Moses Annenberg, one of Dilworth's most important law clients. Jack Kelly, Olympic oarsman and father of Grace. Albert M. Greenfield, Gus Amsterdam, Bernard Watson.

Sam Dash, later famous as counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, worked for Dilworth. So did William T. Coleman, later U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., later chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

A bold and innovative reformer with a calculated temper and a remarkably disarming sense of humor, Dilworth's breakthrough moment came in 1951, when he teamed with Joe Clark to oust a Republican political machine that had run Philadelphia for 67 years. Clark became mayor; Dilworth became district attorney, and then succeeded Clark as mayor.

As district attorney, Dilworth did something that would be worthy of note even today. He insisted on fair trials. As one observer put it, "He wanted to make sure justice was done and if mistakes were made to admit them." (P. 116.)

U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy tangled with Dilworth in 1953. McCarthy was busy hunting for communists in the government, and Alger Hiss had been convicted of perjury. Dilworth reportedly said that 1,000 Alger Hisses hurt less than one McCarthy. McCarthy challenged Dilworth to a televised debate, and at the debate Dilworth defended his statement. "We can put traitors in jail," Dilworth said to McCarthy, "but demagogues remain too long above and beyond the processes of the law." (P. 119.)

Elected mayor in 1955, Dilworth turned out to be an urbanist for the ages. His work with Ed Bacon -- particularly the revival of Society Hill -- is well known. Other stories, less well known, place him at the center of debates that are going on today.

Parking in South Philly was a problem even in 1961, when, as Binzen puts it, "the mayor proposed requiring residents to pay for overnight parking spaces in front of their houses. The proceeds of the $40-a-year licenses" -- about $320 in today's dollars -- "were to be earmarked for building off-street parking lots.  Such a plan worked in Milwaukee, but Dilworth's scheme got nowhere. When he confronted his critics at a stormy public meeting, rock throwers targeted the building. A city councilman, Tom Foglietta, was cut by flying glass." (P. 140.)

Dilworth also wanted to ban cars in the center of the city. Writes Binzen, "His concept was to create a restricted area that would comprise some 400 blocks, from 8th Street west to the Schuylkill River and from Spring Garden Street south to Lombard and South Streets." (P. 151.)

After leaving the mayor's office, Dilworth became involved in a project to develop high-speed rail service between Boston and Washington. President Kennedy encouraged his work, but Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, was an entirely different proposition. When he finally got to meet with Johnson, Dilworth says, "It was very clear that he just couldn't be less interested. He just sat there wondering what the hell we were talking about. All he could envision was where he lived. And he would either get a helicopter or an airplane or else get in that enormous Lincoln and drive on a straight road to Austin at 95 miles an hour. So who needed or wanted a train?" (Pp. 155-156.)

Well, we do.

Love Park Underground

I finally found the connection from the Love Park garage to the Suburban Station concourse.  This involved me walking down into the garage and then finding my way back out.  I don't think I'd have ever found it looking from the Suburban Station side.

It's actually not a bad connection, and if adequately supported by wayfaring signage might become a significant competitive advantage for the Love Park garage.  After all, access to the concourse gets you to 18th and JFK, Locust and Broad (and several blocks in each direction on Locust, thanks to the PATCO line), and, I'm told, Market and 8th, all protected from the weather.

The concourse has been looking better lately, although I would be the first to say that it has a way to go. 

Aside from housekeeping, I see two basic problems in the concourse:  It is very difficult to maintain orientation, and the sense of being cut off from the outside world can be oppressive. 

Ed Bacon's proposal, as I understand it, punctured the carapace and gave people underground frequent glimpses of light, air, and the upper world, while showing the upper world glimpses of the activity below and serving to unite the two levels.  Unfortunately, this vision was not realized.  

I think a lot can be done with what we have.  First, current wayfaring signage leaves something to be desired, including a reference to JKF Boulevard.

Second, Bacon's idea of piercing the veil between the two levels -- terrestrial and subterranean -- could be a significant part of the Love Park redesign.  I've never understood why the parking garage is so hidden away, almost as if we were ashamed of it.  The entrances could be portals of light for the underground and also give the park dwellers a sense of the amazingly complex transportation nexus that is flowing beneath their feet.

(See also Extend the Diagonal  and Turning JFK Boulevard into an Extension of Love Park.)

Turning JFK Boulevard into an Extension of Love Park

Last Saturday -- a lovely day -- I found myself in Love Park chatting with a very pleasant and diplomatic young woman from PennPraxis.  As I understand it, the parking lot under Love Park is being rebuilt, and the City has decided to take the opportunity and rethink the design of Love Park.

As usual, my idea was outside the box.  John F.  Kennedy Boulevard has been a pet peeve of mine for quite a while.  It doesn't help that I work up there. 

Some of JFK's Many Design Flaws.  
We can thank the defunct Pennsylvania Railroad for many of JFK Boulevard's shortcomings.  Back when the Chinese Wall was coming down, Ed Bacon pleaded that the planned new buildings be oriented north-south, instead of east-west, to allow sunlight to reach the sidewalks with some regularity.  (For this history, I rely on Kenneth Halpern's Downtown USA, Whitney Library of Design, 1978.  An old book, but still I think a good one.)

My personal thought is that the railroad guys couldn't process the idea.  The trains had run east-west, and so of course should the buildings.  It was the natural order of things.

Anyway, if you've ever wondered why JFK Boulevard suffers from darkness at noon, it's because the buildings are oriented east-west instead of north-south.

Another huge issue for me is the width of JFK Boulevard.  It's six lanes wide -- four for traffic and two for parking -- and it's effectively an automotive version of the old Chinese Wall (which, for those of you who don't know, was a railroad viaduct that ran from the Schuylkill to City Hall.)

There has never been enough traffic to justify four lanes for moving cars on JFK Boulevard.  The designers had to know they were making it too big.

JFK is a short straw that is corked at both ends -- by Reading Terminal Market on the east and by 30th Street Station on the west.  What traffic there is seems generally to come down 15th Street from the Vine Street Expressway, turn right onto JFK, and then left onto 19th Street, where it queues on both Market and 19th before disappearing into the many parking garages there.

These garages should be closer to Vine Street.  This is not my idea; it's Louis Kahn's.  But that's another story.

If we closed a lane or two of traffic on JFK, it wouldn't hurt the traffic flow, and the street would be a lot easier for pedestrians to cross.

More than You Want to Know about Traffic
Upon reflection, I'm going to take this a step further.  One of the gnarliest intersections in the city is at 20th and JFK.  JFK is one-way from Love Park up to 20th.  Then it becomes two-way as it travels up the viaduct (parts of the old Chinese Wall can be seen here) and across the bridge to 30th Street Station.

Cars headed west at 20th can go straight, turn right, or turn left.  Cars headed east must turn right or left.  Cars headed north on 20th can go straight or turn left.  Cars headed south can go straight or turn right.

There's a whole lot of turning going on, and the streets are very wide, and it's not a good place to be a pedestrian, and it's clearly often confusing for motorists.

Down at 20th and Market the situation is, if possible, worse.  20th south of Market is one-way north, so all southbound traffic must turn on Market, which is one-way east of 20th and two-way west of 20th.  Got that?

Back to JFK.  I suggest we make JFK a two-way street, with one lane going in each direction.  I'm sure many of the motorists coming from 30th Street (including me) would be very happy to continue down JFK instead of dog-legging onto Market through two nasty turns.

Westbound, having one lane of traffic would eliminate a primary source of fender-benders, which is turning vehicles that fail to stay in their lanes.

Back to Love Park
Enough about traffic.  What do we do with the space we just got?  How about expanding Love Park to the south.  (You could also do this to the west, but that's once again another story.)

Then Love Park could flow up the north side of JFK to 20th Street.  It could be the Ben Franklin Parkway's mini-me.  (And maybe we could borrow the idea of a planted median from Park Avenue in New York City.)

I'll leave the design and programming of this space to others with more talent, but I do hope they'll consider adding a cycle track for bicyclists.  This part of Philly has some of the most intimidating traffic in town.  I'm sure the bicycle messengers would be grateful, and if someone could figure out connections to the evolving north-south bicycle routes -- and to the Schuylkill Banks -- I think you'd see a lot of bikes here.