Come for the Sights

Stay for the Walkable City

Love Park on left. Moravian at 20th on right.

Center City Philadelphia comes in two pieces. First is the monumental city that draws office workers, shoppers, suburbanites looking for a decent restaurant, museum lovers, and general-purpose tourists. The monumental city is surrounded by another, more intimate city. This largely low-rise area flings a necklace of neighborhoods around the often very tall buildings in the downtown core.

One Liberty Place.

People who live in the inner parts of this necklace can walk fifteen minutes to a job in a monumental office tower - a commute that is inconceivable in many American cities. Thanks to the proliferation of bike lanes, people who live a bit further out in the necklace can readily commute by bicycle to work in the core.

Whose Streets? Our Streets!

A damp day on Addison Street.

Odd things happen in this doughnut of neighborhoods. People walk down the middle of the street. They walk their dogs down the middle of the street. This is something that is simply inconceivable in most of America.

In 2012, Jeff Speck came out with a book called Walkable City, in which he suggested that a good walking street is useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting for pedestrians. I think he would like this stretch of Addison Street.

And I think it's time to raise the bar. We need, not just a walkable city, but a walking city. Like, you know, putting the farmer's market in the middle of the street instead of up on the sidewalk.

18th at Walnut.

Although this farmer's market, in Rittenhouse Square, does do just fine when it's pushed back on the sidewalk. 

On the Walnut sidewalk.

And things do get pushed back a lot in Philadelphia. Is it two steps forward and one step back, or one step forward, and two steps back? I'm often unsure. I do know that almost all of our political class views the city through a windshield.

But pedestrians and their allies, such as bicyclists and restaurateurs, have shown themselves to be a tenacious lot, and they're ingenious about inserting little pieces of civilization where they can. 

Spruce at 11th.

This cafe, with its sidewalk tables, is a favorite of mine. It's also an emotional place for me. Just to the right of this picture is the spot where, on the morning of November 28, 2017, Emily Fredricks was riding a bicycle to work when she was run down and killed by the driver of a garbage truck. There's still a memorial ghost bike on the other side of 11th street.

Despite political malpractice on a truly gargantuan scale, bicycling has become an integral part of the life of the city. Even people who hate bicyclists benefit from this development, because bikes are one way we are slowly civilizing our streets.

Here we have a picture of a bicyclist using the streetwall as a theatrical backdrop. There's a quiet intimacy in this photograph that I find attractive - can we say peaceful?

1500 block of Pine.

Speaking of peaceful, how about sitting on your stoop and reading a book on a warm sunny day, with a little help from a nearby shade tree? 

S. Carlisle street from Waverly.

I can't resist one more. Let's hear it for the contribution that shade trees can make to the mood on a street.

24th and Naudain.

Color

In 1908, Philadelphian S. Weir Mitchell came out with a novel entitled The Red City, which was a historical romance set in Philadelphia immediately after the American Revolution. The moniker has stuck because, even today, we do have a lot of red buildings.

There is a risk of stereotype, however. I've written before about the surprising variety of color available in the neighborhoods of Center City. (See Which Side Are You On?) Here's a relatively recent addition, mixing black, white, and red very nicely.

Locust at 20th.

I wrote a whole story about the 2400 block of Cypress back in 2017. I felt moved to go back and take a new picture. These facades had all been a uniform white, somewhat grayish from age. The homeowners banded together and came up with - I think - a better idea. And one that is aging very well.

Mediterranean colors on Cypress street.

Clouds and Corridors

Rittenhouse Square has recently had quite a few hawk sightings. Generally the hawks hang out in the trees, but I'm reliably informed that they will occasionally come down and perch on the back of an unoccupied bench. This is just one more reminder that, despite superficial appearances, Mother Nature is never very far away in Center City Philadelphia.

This is particularly true of the sky. The built environment may block the last stages of a sunset, but if you stand in the right places, there are often symphonies playing out above us. The Schuylkill River provides an open corridor that can be quite entertaining on a cloudy day. 

Aramark building.

The natural view corridor formed by the Schuylkill also provides excellent views of the buildings that border the river. 

FMC tower.

Let's go back to the area around City Hall and have a look at Dilworth Park, which abuts the west front of City Hall. With some clouds, of course, and Vincent Kling's Municipal Services Building.

Dilworth Park, an urban oasis.

And let's close with a man-made view corridor, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, with the Love statue in the foreground and a hint of the Art Museum in the distance. Although I confess I was more interested in the unusual cloud formation when I was taking the picture.

Love to Art on the B.F. Parkway.

See also A Few Deft Touches for Back Streets, A Tale of Three Alleys, Gordon Cullen and the Outdoor Floor, Quo Vadis, Philadelphia?