A Larger Story Coming On

Rescuing the West Side of Philadelphia's City Hall

Pedestrians not cowering behind the parapet. No parapet.

I feel a larger story coming on, but let me steal my own thunder and sketch it out here.

People are complaining about the new Love Park, and still complaining about the new Dilworth Park, and not complaining at all about the old plaza around the Municipal Services Building, and its defensive ramparts.

All three of these areas were rebuilt in the years after World War II, and in each case that design was a reaction to the takeover of our streets by motor vehicles. Love Park and Dilworth Park have been rebuilt more recently, and I think the criticisms of these rebuilds may, in certain cases, be overlooking the very serious deficits that have been remedied.

I think the area west of City Hall, in the center of William Penn's 1682 plan for the city, is a Petri dish for what happened to cities after World War II (although things were definitely getting started well before that war).

Basically, planners were trying to figure out how to keep motorists from killing pedestrians. If you think the casualty numbers are bad now, you should have a look at what they were back then, and then remember that the country's population was much smaller than it is now.

So what did planners do west of City Hall? They ceded the streets to motor vehicles. Pedestrians were allowed on sidewalks, and possibly tolerated at crosswalks, as long as they ceded priority to the cars and trucks. Failure to do so could easily result in death, or serious injury.

But what about people gathering in public spaces? This was of course, the civic center of the city of Philadelphia, birthplace of the nation and presumably a place that should value people gathering together and exercising their Constitutional right to free speech. Well, okay, we'll have some places for people to get together, and we'll make sure they won't be run down by an errant drunk in a Ford Model T, or possibly a Mack truck.

So we'll create defensive positions around these public spaces that would make the Wehrmacht proud. Those of you who have seen the movie Saving Private Ryan will probably recall the landing on the beach. Well, those defenses were rather unambitious compared to what we erected on the west side of City Hall, and around Love Park, and up around the Municipal Services Building.

And so that's what they did. And very few motorists seem to have found their way into these spaces (except the north apron of City Hall, which became a parking lot for city officials and frankly, was easy to get into compared to the west side of City Hall).

And the people huddled in their designated gathering areas, presumably grateful that they could do this without getting killed.

As I look at the only remaining piece of this architecture of defense, surrounding the Municipal Services Building, I continue to see what I saw throughout this area - very good machine gun emplacements and rifle pits, and the occasional mortar pit.

I personally don't think that military architecture is a good model for civic architecture, but that's what we had here. And it's going away. And I'm grateful for that.

See also Transportation Should Not Trump Destination.

The Future of Christ Church Park

Looks Like This

Billy the Goat and some friends in Rittenhouse Square.

Steal Billy! No, just steal the kids. They don't have to be these exact kids. They might even live close to Christ Church Park, at Second and Market, instead of over by Rittenhouse Square. But children and their moms and dads are crucial to the future of Christ Church Park.

There was a wonderful design workshop on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 8, on Church Street, between the church and the park. The workshop simply took half a tent in the regular Wednesday farmer's market, and it blended well, people trading in vegetables, handiwork, and ideas.

It was a warm day, but a lot of people found the time to stop by and put stickers on a sheet to show their preferences for various things (it turns out the park's walls and fences are not terribly popular). They could also write a comment on a small slate board and be photographed with their comment. Then the slate board would be erased for the next customer. And they could draw on tracing paper over a plan of the park and its environs, showing where they wanted new gates, new paths, more trees, etc.

All this will be processed and reported by the appropriate authorities. My immediate takeaway is that a lot of people do care about this park and see that it could function better than it currently does.

I spent several hours at the park during the design workshop. I watched and chatted, got an iced latte from Old City Coffee, took pictures, and spent some time with the park's official storyteller, whose bench is very near the grave of Founding Father James Wilson. Wilson signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he served as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and  he became the first professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. Christ Church Park is officially named James Wilson Park.

The official storyteller told me and a couple from Virginia about Benjamin Franklin's wife, and we compared notes on literature. She told me Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City was one of her favorite books. It turned out she is from Delaware, so we also got to talk about Caesar Rodney and his famous ride through a thunderstorm to sign the Declaration of Independence.

All this was in the afternoon. In the morning I went to Sister Cities Park, in Logan Square, to take some pictures of the water features there. I have no idea whether Christ Church Park could pull off something like what's going on at Sister Cities Park, but I sure hope it can.

The wading pool and the rock garden.

The wading pool and rock garden are to the north of the cafe; the sprinkler field is to the south.

Sprinklers. Kids.

One thing that Christ Church Park doesn't need is a cafe. Old City Coffee is happily taking care of business at 221 Church Street. You can crawl there from the park, and that's almost what I did. It was a hot day. They do have air conditioning in addition to latte.

Old City Coffee.

See also The Invitation.

The Invitation

Christ Church Park, An Underperforming Asset

The corner of Second and Market. No gate.

So maybe we should ask people to come into the park. Just a thought. It's a nice park - I've often admired it walking by, on either Market or Second, on my way to somewhere else. I've hardly ever gone inside the park, and when I have I wasn't quite sure what to do there.

Let's face it: I've been coddled by Rittenhouse Square, where there are benches, other people, yadayada. Oh, yes, and there are ways into Rittenhouse Square.

How do you get into Christ Church Park? It's almost a secret. Is there an entrance at or near the corner of Second and Market? No. Think about Rittenhouse Square and the corner of 18th and Walnut, with massive quantities of pedestrian commuters in the morning and evening rush, bike messengers hanging out all day, socializing and waiting for their next call, various solicitors for religious, political, and other causes. The occasional odor of marijuana. Nothing like this happens at Second and Market. There's no gate there, you know.

Gate on Market Street, recessed in midblock.

There are two entrances to Christ Church Park, and frankly they're almost hidden. There's one on Market in the midblock, at the southwest corner of the park. The other one is at the northwest corner of the park, near the entrance to Christ Church. The two gates are connected by a brick walkway, the only path in the park.

The Market Street gate and the walkway.

Gate on Church Street.

Urbanist Jan Gehl likes to talk about the invitation. If you want people to come into your park, you need to invite them in. (See Jan Gehl, Cities for People, 2010, pp. 15, 17, 21, 236-237.)

View from Church Street gate, Christ Church across the street.

Okay, so let's assume you're in Christ Church park. What do you do then? Good question.

I'm a simple guy. My main park activity is hanging out. I don't need rope courses or zip lines. A place to sit would be nice. The park currently has five stone benches strung along the walkway. They do not have backs or armrests, but they are backed by a brick wall. Here's a picture.

Four of the five stone benches. The walkway. The brick wall.

Behind the brick wall, by the way, is a parking lot. It is virtually invisible. I wish all the parking lots in Philadelphia were as demure as this.

This parking lot is on line with American Street. 

Given the configuration of the park as essentially a pilgrim's path to the church, it is perhaps not surprising that park utilization leaves something to be desired. Dog-owners walk their dogs here, and even that has its ins and outs. This is a National Park Service park, and the Park Service requires dogs to be on-leash at all times. It's in the Code of Federal Regulations:  36 CFR Chapter 1, Section 2.15(a)(2).

Reimagining the Park
I picked up these tidbits at a July 18 meeting in Christ Church's Neighborhood House, next door to the church itself. On the fourth floor, in an auditorium that used to be a gym (there are still basketball-court markings on the floor), I watched and listened as various speakers discussed various aspects of the park.

All this gabbing was in service of a project sponsored by the Old City District: Reimagining the park at Second and Market Street.

Ideas? Yes, I Have a Few
Here are a couple of ideas off the top of my head.

My top priority. Figure out how to get little kids and their moms and dads into the park. You definitely want them in the mix of park users. They bring a whole new and very positive vibe.

Just look at the statue of Billy the Goat in Rittenhouse Square. The goat is the center of a seating area largely but not exclusively occupied by small children and their parents. This place is so popular with kids that, after a century, a literally worn-down Billy is retiring to a nice pasture across the street in the Philadelphia City Institute Library. He will be replaced by Billy Jr., an exact replica.

Second idea. Plan for a mix of uses. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (pp. 96-97), Jane Jacobs explains the secret of Rittenhouse Square's success. Because it borders a residential district and a commercial district, the park draws different people at different times of day. Aside from small children and their parents, and the old people who like to sit on benches and watch them, you have pale-faced office workers who come to get some sun and exercise while walking on the park's ring path. The benches welcome people eating takeout lunches.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

So here are some physical changes that would undoubtedly make Christ Church Park more popular.

- More gates, better placed.

- Diagonal paths. These would encourage people to shortcut through the park. A valid use to my mind (I certainly do it a lot myself), and some of the people passing through may sit down for a few minutes, rest their feet, and look around.

- A water feature. Philly has lots of great water features, none better in my estimation than the two at Sister Cities Park by Logan Square (talk about child magnets). I personally think the water feature at Christ Church should include a watering trough for horses.

- Interpretive plaques. And here's why we should have a horse trough. Somebody needs to step up and educate tourists and locals about the history of the nineteenth-century city they are standing in the middle of. Explaining to people what a horse trough is could be a good place to start.

Why All the Low-Hanging Fruit?
As I learned at the information session, Christ Church Park is a child of the 1960s. The Park Service wanted to create a view shed for the church, so it pulled down the buildings where the park now is and created a very pretty space that would allow tourists to stand at Market Street, where the sidewalk has been widened and a raised planting bed with low walls appropriate for seating has been provided. (These walls currently sport a don't-sit-on-me rail running along the top.) Tourists could view Christ Church from a distance and then possibly walk on the walkway at the west side of the park to view the church exterior close-up and possibly even go inside the front door, just a few feet from the park's northern gate. Any other uses by pedestrians do not seem to have been in the program.

That's simply how people were thinking then. Take Mies van der Rohe's iconic Seagram Building, on Park Avenue in Manhattan. A product of the 1950s, it stands in magnificent isolation behind a very effective view-shed plaza. Later on, people did get the idea that maybe there should be, you know, people in the plazas, but in the beginning it was definitely look but don't touch. It might be a step too far to say that the only pedestrians welcome were architectural photographers. Or it might not be a step too far.

The view of Christ Church from Market could actually be improved by lowering the fence. New York City's parks department has a program called Parks Without Borders; it does advocate in certain situations for taking down fences entirely. I wouldn't do that here because I think the moms and dads will want some perimeter definition to help keep their little ones from wandering out into the middle of Market Street.

Learning from Love Park
Part of Old City District's reimagining process will be looking at ways to further civilize the streets adjacent to the park.

I watched this mission civilisatrice (as the French would call it) fail at Love Park. I love the new Love Park itself, but nothing was done about the surrounding streets despite promises and hints.

I'm still angry about Love Park, but I'm working resolutely to set that anger aside and focus on the opportunities presented by Christ Church Park. I think, with a little help from well-meaning people, the park could raise its game significantly without spending a lot of money.

There's an open design workshop at the park Wednesday, August 8, from 2 to 7 p.m. The workshop will be at the farmer's market, which is next to the church.

There is naturally a page on the Old City District's website. Linked from the page are a survey and the slide deck from the July 18 presentation. Click here to view.

See Do We Secretly Want Ugly Cities and Dangerous Streets? Also Road Diet by Love Park - a Natural Experiment.