Christ Church Park Redesign

Here's What I Think

X marks the spot.

Great meeting November 27 at Christ Church's Neighborhood House, on the redesign of Christ Church Park. The design team has been busy - a previous neighborhood meeting in July, also at the Neighborhood House; an open-air design workshop on Church Street, directly next to the park, in August; an online survey; research on other parks both in Philadelphia and elsewhere; and of course observation of the park itself.

At the most recent meeting the team went over all this activity and then presented a series of four design options, each taking a different approach but aiming at the same goals of increasing the park's usage and its usefulness to the community.

The Parking Lot
There was a bit of tip-toeing around what should be done with the elephant in the room - a parking lot that sits discreetly behind a red brick wall at the west side of the park. One of the presenters noted that turning the parking lot into part of the park would increase the size of the park by 50 percent. However, the National Park Service has stated from the beginning - very nicely - that the parking lot is out of scope for this project.

The presenters did discuss expanding the park in a tentative way that I hope didn't offend anyone, and they offered drawings of lesser takings from the parking lot that would improve the sightlines into the center of the block.

I say what I'm about to say with a twinge of regret, because I do think this is a model parking lot - it essentially disappears, in a nice way, behind a red brick wall. I wish every parking lot in Philadelphia looked this good. Very few of them do.

However, having given the matter some thought, I strongly support turning the parking lot into park land, for several reasons. First, this is a small lot in a crucial location that should be devoted to active people and not sleeping cars. Second, these drivers have alternatives in very large garages at the mall and on Second south of Chestnut. Third, turning the lot into parkland would provide a lot more room for people to enjoy themselves outdoors right in the center of Old City. Fourth, it would open up the block in a dramatic way that would let people see, before they stepped into the park from Market or Second, the potential for further walking adventures beyond the park, to the north and the west. Currently the rather complex web of streets within this block is not particularly visible until you get through the park and hit Church Street - the main drag, but hardly the only option for an interesting walk.

I hope the National Park Service will reconsider its position.

Diagonal Walkways
The presenters showed us drawings for four main options. I liked pieces of each of them, and pulled them together into what I suppose we could call option five - the rather clumsy drawing at the top of this story.

First, I think the park needs two strong diagonal paths, from the southwest to the northeast, and from the southeast to the northwest. These will be good for the park itself, and for the whole neighborhood. The survey came up with a figure of 20 percent of respondents who never go to the park. This is a terrible number, and the way to fix it is to allow people walking - residents, workers, tourists - to use the park as a shortcut to their destination.

There seems to be a lingering idea that a park should be solely an oasis for quiet contemplation, and that foot traffic shuffling through would be a distraction for those who have come to meditate. If you look at Washington or Rittenhouse Square, you'll see that they both have strong diagonal paths. And if you stand at the northeast gate of Rittenhouse Square, at 18th and Walnut, around 8:30 on a Tuesday morning, you'll just about get run over by the people walking through the park on their way to the office. This is not a conflict with other uses, it is a complement.

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961, pp. 96-97), Jane Jacobs analyzed Rittenhouse Square in detail and came to the conclusion that the square's secret to its success was the variety of users who appear in the park over the course of the day.

Jeff Speck, in his book Walkable City (2012), likes to talk about the importance of bringing back the useful walk - walking to the office, or walking to pick up groceries, possibly at several different stores (say, in Rittenhouse, coffee at La Colombe, bananas, clementines, and arugula at Sue's, and cheese and maybe soppressata at Di Bruno's).  Walking should not be simply a leisure activity. It can also be a useful way to get around.

I think people - particularly our leaders - have trouble with this idea, just as they seem to have trouble seeing a bicycle as anything other than a leisure-time toy. The pattern of bicycle commuting and utility bicycling throughout the day is firmly established in certain parts of Philadelphia. And certainly it's not a secret at this point. I just think a lot of people have trouble processing the information, let alone acting on it.

And I think I know why. Jarrett Walker, who is consulting on the redesign of Philadelphia's bus network, has an interesting blog post on elite projection. This is simply the idea that the well-to-do and influential people in our society imagine that everyone else is just like them, or wants to be just like them. As he points out, many, many problems flow from this lack of vision.

Anyway, the strong diagonals should be very good at getting people into the park, and they should also encourage people to see how permeable this block is. And this block is only part of a larger, currently unintegrated, circulation pattern that, if it ever gets hooked together, would allow people to get around entirely on byways and, with the exception of crosswalks, avoid the highways. This system of walkways and alleys is prepared to run from the mall on Fifth Street down to Front Street, and from the Arch Street Meeting House to Old St. Joseph's Church, below Walnut.

Opening Up to Market Street
Coming back to the park itself, let's have a look at proposals for the perimeter of the park, starting with the south side, by Market Street. The actual park is at present set well back from Market, with much of the additional space taken up by a planting bed. I personally think the original designers of the park saw this as a mashalling yard for tourists. You can stand at the fence and gaze at Christ Church on the other side of the park's large lawn, maybe take a picture. Then you can walk through one of the park's two gates, which stands inconspicuously at the west edge of the park, next to the brick wall for the parking lot. You can then walk up a brick path to the gate at the north side of the park and, if you want, cross the Belgian block of Church Street and enter the church.

So the whole park, on its most heavily trafficked side, is essentially hiding. Time to open things up a bit. There are a number of interesting proposals about how to do this, but I do think one thing is quite clear. This park needs a gate at the corner of Second and Market. Which by the way is only a few steps from the Second Street stop of the Market-Frankford line, and less than half a block from stops for six different bus routes (5, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48).

Unless you're moving a piano, you really don't need to drive to Old City. But however you get there, the corner of Second and Market is the natural front door for Christ Church park. At present there is no gate on this corner.

Sidewalk Bumpout on Second Street
The design team also suggested bumping out the sidewalk on Second Street, roughly from Church Street down to Market. Engineers have been consulted, and we are assured that this can be done without materially affecting the flow of motor vehicles down Second Street.

Steps for Sitting on the North Side of Church Street
The design team also recommends adding steps to the north side of Church Street. You could use these steps to walk up to the church's grade level, which is a bit higher than the surrounding area, or you could use them to sit on; this happens quite a lot on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. I think the steps the design team proposes would work well.

The team is also proposing a lower wall on the north side of the actual park. These two changes would serve to meld the Church and its yard, Church Street, and the park itself into a more organic whole.

Back to the Parking Lot
Okay, back to the west side of the park. Another advantage of removing the parking lot is that it allows you to move the current north-south walkway further to the west, so it's on line with American Street to the north. There was a lovely rendering of this new walkway, paved now in cobblestones instead of brick, and looking for all the world like an eighteenth century Philadelphia street, shaded by the mature trees that are already present in the parking lot.

This new alignment for the walkway allows people to see from Market Street that the block has an interior north-south street, and from the park they will also be able to see Church Street running east to west, and intersecting at the northwest corner of the park.  That's not the whole internal grid on this block, but I think it's enough to create an invitation to explore. 

About Those Pink Stickers
At the end of the meeting, printouts of the four design options were put on tables, and the members of the audience, who had each previously been provided with several small stickers, some green and some pink, were asked to show their approval of particular design elements by placing a green sticker on things they liked, and a pink sticker on things they didn't like. I placed my stickers, chatted with a number of people, and at the end of the session I walked around and had a look at where the various stickers had descended.

On the plans that still had the parking lot at least partially intact, the lot looked like a leopard with pink spots.

Parking lot gate. Unlock the value.

See also The Invitation, The Future of Christ Church Park, Permeable Blocks.