1 post tagged “philadelphia”
One Day a year I wish I wasn't a New Yorker. The trains are over packed and running on a 'Holiday' schedule, which means they're barely running at all. The gutters run with vomit. Every yahoo and dumb tourist in America jam the sidewalks, wandering five abreast in slow moving gaggles that prevent everyone from getting anywhere. People who are normally teetotalers drink too many sweet shots with names like 'Hot Sex' and walk in front of taxis. Non-homeless people take shits on the street. All this can only mean it's that time of year once more - New Year's Eve in The Big Apple.
When I was younger I used to look forward to New Year's Eve. When I was young I used to also wear pants that wear 8 sizes too big for me and pull my hair back in a ponytail, so I think there's something to said for gaining wisdom along with age. For the past five or six years, I've done my best to flee the boroughs on New Years's, and not return until the once a year party crew was safely hung over and out of commission and the city safe for New Yorker's once more. I decided to take advantage of a few work free days to make the trip down to Philadelphia for some Colonial architecture, boozing with friends and a chance to watch grown men wear dresses and play banjos while 9 year olds drink Yuengling on the streets during the world famous Mummer's Parade.
Philadelphia was a booming city when the U.S. was founded, and many of the buildings put up there reflect the economic and social rank of Illadelphia. For a city of just under a million inhabitants, Philadelphia has a disproportionate amount of outstanding Victorian buildings, like this outstanding beauty on the left. I have a soft spot for towers and turrets (maybe it's all that time I spent playing D and D as a kid...). When placed correctly,and in proportion, a tower can add a mysterious and stately air to an otherwise run of the mill home.
I am especially intrigued by the three triangles that make up the facade of this home. There are a handful of homes along these lines in New York, mainly in Victorian Flatbush, but in West Philadelphia they are everywhere. One of New York;s fatal flaws, which can also be seen as one of it's best features, is the obsessive view towards the future. We're so obsessed with looking towards tomorrow that we often level the past, destroying older buildings, for newer, bigger ones. Unfortunately, very little of Victorian New York remains, so we have to travel 90 miles South to get our fix of Victoriana.
I am especially intrigued by the three triangles that make up the facade of this home. There are a handful of homes along these lines in New York, mainly in Victorian Flatbush, but in West Philadelphia they are everywhere. One of New York;s fatal flaws, which can also be seen as one of it's best features, is the obsessive view towards the future. We're so obsessed with looking towards tomorrow that we often level the past, destroying older buildings, for newer, bigger ones. Unfortunately, very little of Victorian New York remains, so we have to travel 90 miles South to get our fix of Victoriana.
Through happenstance, I was staying with friends who live across the street from The Tower House, which offered me the rare opportunity to photography a building during different lighting conditions. This is something I rarely get to do during my architectural picture taking odysseys, so I felt duty bound to take advantage of it. Light can change so much about a building. There are even quite a few architects who've made their name wholly through the play of light on their works.
Some part of Philly have been through hard times. There are entire neighborhoods that have been bombed out since the sixties and show no signs of a speedy recovery. While this is sad in many ways, it also offers the architectural explorer some rewards in the form of abandoned buildings. While most of my architectural ramblings limit me to the outside of a building, I'm a big fan of the maxim 'Hey, if nobody else is using it, what's stopping me?'. It would be a waste to let a building go undocumented, right? The friends I was staying with brought me by this abandoned find on the way to the train station, and I couldn't resist a quick run inside. A building as big and gorgeous as this would have had its' potential recognized and been turned into condo's long ago in New York, so Irarely have these types of opportunities.
The first thing I noticed about this home was the cement wall surrounding the property, with trim painted green to match the home beyond the enclosure. We could go one for months about the ramifications of having a wall around a private home in a city. Endless amounts of theory has been written by architects and sociologists about this topic, along the lines of public versus private space, a persons ability to control the streetscape or even the more mundane issues of privacy and security. It's a good discussion that I'd enjoy having, but here, in order not to derail this discussion of Philly architecture, I'll ignore all that theory, and just say that in this case, the wall around this home is a nice architectural feature that sets this home apart from its' neighbors both physically and aesthetically. It looks good here. After passing through the wide open doorway in the retaining wall, I stumbled onto an overgrown garden that runs right up to an early 20th Century all cement construction with superb detailing. Supporting the roof of the rear porch, are iron lattice columns, constructed in a pattern reminiscent of the vegetation that has taken over he yard. Each of the columns has a similar, but slightly different pattern belying their hand crafted nature. This house has several gables set at odd angles, and their is nicely milled wood trim giving each a strong outline. real lead glass has a certain shimmer to it than the factory made glass
we use today just can't match. The tiny imperfections in each pane give them a certain sparkle, even on an overcast day like the one when I snapped these photos. The thin arch shape of the windows is mirrored in the doors, and both have very thin trim dividing the panes adding quite a bit of unique character. Nothing about this home is cookie cutter, which immediately endeared it to me. It made me sad, as I was riding the train home through Central New Jersey, watching row upon row of identical McMansion's roll bye. In the recent past, there was a thinking human behind each and every building you walked past, and that person was apparent in the little details, like the things that have attracted me to this abandoned West Philly abode. When homes are being cranked out as 'efficiently' as possible, its' the little details that are the first to go. You see very few irregular pieces because they add time and cost to a construction project.
On the far right of the rear of the house, is a room that is made of mostly very large windows, and appears that it was some type of extra large party room. The double height ceilings and open glass wall look perfect for hosting enormous wild parties, which I imagine had to be the original architect's sole intention in constructing a room like this. There was a dumpster out front on the street here, so i can only assume someone else sees the potential in this walled in corner lot. Next time I'm in Philly I'll be sure to swing through that block and take a look.
Another nice architectural feature of West Philly is the rows and rows of good looking brick apartment buildings. Nearly every apartment building boasts at least one or two features that separate it from the standard brick box that most apartment buildings are. A cupola here, some dormers with nice verdigris encrusted copper molding or noble equestrian headed hitching posts out front. Philly does the little things extremely well. For instance, a few years ago I was strolling around Queen Village with my little brother, a long time resident of Philly, and he pointed out a fountain set into the wall in front of a house. The fountain had a plaque attached that said it was put there so that carriage drivers would be reminded to take a break on hot days and give their horses a drink.
Queen Village is a Philly neighborhood that has recently gone through a serious period of gentrification. It's a quiet nabe, filled with oak trees, narrow streets, fantastic Colonial and Faux-Colonial buildings, and my personal favorite feature in cities: alleys. My brother lived in Queen Village a few years back, before it went and got all fancy, and since I began visiting him in that neighborhood, I have always enjoyed walking around there because the buildings have so much character. On New Year's Eve, I had the opportunity to hang out on the roof deck of a friends apartment in QV to watch the
we use today just can't match. The tiny imperfections in each pane give them a certain sparkle, even on an overcast day like the one when I snapped these photos. The thin arch shape of the windows is mirrored in the doors, and both have very thin trim dividing the panes adding quite a bit of unique character. Nothing about this home is cookie cutter, which immediately endeared it to me. It made me sad, as I was riding the train home through Central New Jersey, watching row upon row of identical McMansion's roll bye. In the recent past, there was a thinking human behind each and every building you walked past, and that person was apparent in the little details, like the things that have attracted me to this abandoned West Philly abode. When homes are being cranked out as 'efficiently' as possible, its' the little details that are the first to go. You see very few irregular pieces because they add time and cost to a construction project.
Another nice architectural feature of West Philly is the rows and rows of good looking brick apartment buildings. Nearly every apartment building boasts at least one or two features that separate it from the standard brick box that most apartment buildings are. A cupola here, some dormers with nice verdigris encrusted copper molding or noble equestrian headed hitching posts out front. Philly does the little things extremely well. For instance, a few years ago I was strolling around Queen Village with my little brother, a long time resident of Philly, and he pointed out a fountain set into the wall in front of a house. The fountain had a plaque attached that said it was put there so that carriage drivers would be reminded to take a break on hot days and give their horses a drink.
fireworks in the rain. Being four stories up in a city where most of the buildings aren't much higher than that, I was treated to a 270 degree view stretching all the way across the river into New Jersey. The most dominant object in view is the 142 foot tower you see in photo #1162. This tower, officially 'The Old Sparks Tower' is quite an interesting piece of Americana, and is the oldest surviving Shot Tower in the United States. A shot tower? Before the days when everything was made in a factory in China, early Americans needed to produce oodles of shot to keep their weapons at the ready; I'll leave it up to you to decide if this is a good or a bad thing. Shot was made by puring melted lead through a tube at the top of the tower, and by letting it drop through the distance of the tower, gravity would form it into a sphere, then it would land in a vat of water and cool down, becoming shot. That's a very ingenious use of gravity to get the job done.
In the end I decided to offer a beer up the camera gods and just fire away, swapping settings willy-nilly on the fly, and to my delight some of the shots came out much better than I had hoped for.
The City of Philadelphia really went all out with their fireworks display. There was a solid fifteen minutes of the really good stuff coming in every shape and color conceivable. I have to make special note of the grand finale, which actually was terribly grand. Most times, the grand finale of a fireworks display is a let down, but Philadelphia saved the best for last and the entire sky began to edge over to day light as the New Year began. There is something both hokey and heartwarming celebrating a New Year four stories off the ground with a sexy kiss asthe night sky explodes behind you.
I began 2007 with a proper miracle the next morning. I woke up without a hangover.My plan was to wake up early, which I managed against all odds, and travel from West Philly, to South Philly to meet up with my brother and catch the Mummer's Parade. My brother has been regaling me with stories about the Mummer's Parade for a long, long time, and I've never actually , made the effort to have myself awake and in Philadelphia at 9:00 AM on New Year's Day. That's a big set of tasks to complete. This, I made the commitment, and my first order of business was to be in Philly, and awake at 8:00 AM. Done! When I stepped outside to call my brother to find out where to meet him, I was heart broken to learn that the parade was canceled due to rain. $#@!%$ I'll admit, the chances of me performing this New Year's Day magic trick in Philadelphia a second time, are slim. I may go to my grave without ever having the pleasure of seeing Froggy Carr or the Two Street Strutters live and in person. It seems if I want to see grown men wearing dresses I'll have to go to Christopher Street, and if I want to see 9 year olds drinking Bud pounders I'll have to make my way over to Coney Island this summer.
Next time. Philly is a great city, and I find myself there often enough, so I'll be sure to fill you in on my next visit to gape at buildings. Be sure to check back in the next few days for my tour of Brooklyn Victoriana in Green Wood cemetery. Until then...Bikes, Books and Buildings is what it's all about yo.
