Wrapping the Art Alliance

Christo and Jeanne-Claude would be very proud of us. 

On July 4, 2025, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, a beloved building that stands next to Rittenhouse Square, suffered a devastating fire that required the attentions of 120 Philadelphia fire fighters and a simply enormous amount of water, which continued to flow gently down the building's front steps for an amazingly long period of time. 

Just walking around the site, I got the sense that the fire may have started at the back of the ground floor, where I believe there was a kitchen. But to this day the general public has no good idea of what happened in this fire. (For what we do know, click here and here and here and here.) 

Garden area at the back of the building.

The fire certainly had a lovely time raging through this old building, which had quite a lot of wood in it. I vividly remember, as a sometime visitor to the upper floors, years ago, the interesting sensation of walking up the squeaky, beautiful wooden stairs.  

We also know that the fire destroyed the roof. Here's a picture of the top story, directly under the roof, with a view of the sky through one of the glassless windows.

After the suppression of the fire, attention naturally turned to stabilizing the structure and securing the premises. And here is where I got a lovely surprise. As I was walking down 18th street one day, I noticed that the Art Alliance building had been largely wrapped in protective plastic sheeting.

I had never seen a building wrapped before. I knew that it was common to wrap smaller things, like boats being stored for the winter. 

And then I immediately thought of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the dynamic duo who wrapped a whole Australian cliff in plastic sheeting in 1969. (For a lot more, click here.)

The only Christo and Jeanne-Claude installation that I got to see with my own eyes was The Gates, which showed up in Manhattan's Central Park in 2005. I actually walked through some of the gates; there were a lot of them. According to the Whitney Museum of American Art, they were inspired by Japanese torii gates. 

And here I was in the present day, staring at an installation of white plastic. I found myself wondering if Christo and Jeanne-Claude had inspired this concept of wrapping buildings. In other words, was it yet another example of life imitating art?

As I was looking at the wrapped Art Institute, I noticed a little sign on the wrapping. You can see it in the picture above. Actually there are several of these signs. Here's a closeup.

The sign says the company's name is Global Wrap, and helpfully adds, "We are the original shrink wrap company since 1980." 

Well, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped an Australian cliff in 1969, so who has priority here?

Then I remembered about the shrink-wrapped boats. I went online and found a Gregg Mansfield on a site called Boatmart, and he told me the shrink-wrap process for boats was patented in 1980.  

It turns out that Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped a Volkswagen Beetle in 1963. 

I thought I was on a roll, but then I hit a bump. I got the funny feeling that there were people who were using plastic to wrap big objects well before the dynamic duo came on the scene. And that's probably true; I just can't prove it. The internet does not appear to be interested in this subject. 

We do know that wrapping small objects with plastic became very popular after World War II, with the introduction of Saran Wrap, aka cling wrap, which can be found in a drawer of the typical American kitchen, along with aluminum foil and wax paper. 

The only other lead I had was the wrapping of pallet loads with plastic sheeting. Before the plastic wrapping, the boxes sitting on a pallet were secured with metal straps. So when did the changeover happen? It turns out the answer is 1972. That was when a company named Lantech introduced something called the "stretch wrapper," a machine which made wrapping pallet loads with plastic pretty easy. 

It was around this time that I became aware that shrink wrapping and stretch wrapping are two different things. I'm still a bit hazy on how they differ. 

And then something else struck me: The wrap on the Volkswagen was not shrink wrap. Ditto for the Australian cliff. The dynamic duo was wrapping, but not with shrink wrap. So maybe Christo and Jeanne-Claude were leaders in wrapping but not in shrink wrapping. 

I think I can live with that. I'll let you in on a secret. Every time I walk by the Art Alliance, which can easily happen several times a day, I find myself thinking of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and the Australian cliff. And it makes me happy.

See also Putting Some Park into Old Parking Lots, Paul P. Cret and Rittenhouse Square, Lighting Rittenhouse, What Came Before the Laurel.