Inga Saffron is the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. While I find that on a whole that the quality of reportage, particularly international reportage has plummetted after the Inky was taken over by Philadelphia Media Holdings and its dark lord, Brian Tierney, Ms. Saffron's star remains undimmed. Ms. Saffron through her Changing Skylines column does what a big city daily should do, shed light and occasional heat on issues that affect urban life. Now as far as architecture goes, the closest thing to an education that I ever got was to hang out and get wasted with architect friends. That is until I made Ms. Saffron's article a weekly "must read" and began to take a proprietary interest in the skyline of my adopted City of Brotherly Love.
Even more inexplicable and you can see it from Mr. Bryant’s photo, are the uneven flashing, the ladder and rag, (if that’s what these are) sticking up from the top. Walking up 25th St. one eerie moonlight night, the glint of the ladder and the rag flapping in the wind caught my eye and sent a chill down my spine. I had to stop and stare down this grim trompe-l'œil for several minutes because it looked for all the world like the malevolent scarecrow in Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective. (It was a lot darker and creepier then, trust me.)
I can’t claim to always understand art, but I sometimes wonder if I understand architecture even less.
This particular piece of skyline is right out my front door and if proximity confers some sense of entitlement or ownership, then her most recent review, Art Palace is Right Fit with Philadelphia is a perfect fit for me.
My architect friends agree that in Ms. Saffron, that Philly has a worldclass observer of public spaces. As people who have lived with the Fidelity/Reliance cum Perelman for 23 years, Mrs. W and I have some history with the building and on the whole are thrilled with what it has become. Given that this structure is the second home of one of the nation’s premiere museums, it is right to hold it to a higher standard.
I must admit that when I first saw the concrete block of the new addition, I was dismayed. I imagined that somewhere, a building materials order got flummoxed and a suburban Walmart got our Perelman order and we got theirs. (Note the liberal use possessives.) But humble concrete can be a tabula rasa and when I saw the metal grid on the 25th street side with the climbing flowering vines, I had a little aha moment and walked away with a smile on my face.
I had another even more intense aesthetic experience after the construction barriers, trailers and fencing were cleared away to reveal a broadened gleaming pedestrian expanse along the Fairmount-PA Ave intersection. Because of its scale and lighting it is serving as a lively, impromptu community hot spot, where on one particular mid-summer evening, while chatting up the museum’s director of housekeeping, a neighbor, I observed Art Museum Director Anne d'Harnoncourt and a neighborhood mom confer on dog training strategies. This is a nexus where we neighbors regularly connect in little Jane Jacobian moments on our way to and from our errands and walks.
There is one sore spot on this lovely walkway and perhaps it takes a neighbor with a couple decades of walkby experience to point it out. Our new neighbors should know that in my 20+ years of observing, nothing has ever flourished in the little strip of earth that parallels the “moat” wall. The previous owners planted boxwoods which, try as they might, through multiple replantings, always withered after a couple of seasons. The same pretty vines that seem so happy on the 25th Street side are dying wretched deaths in that parched little strip of cursed earth along PA Avenue.
Most folks I talk to agree that the work of the landscapers has fallen far short of expectations. Even the streetside lot on 26th, which is a quantum improvement in terms of eye appeal, was poorly executed when it came to laying down an appropriate soil base and proper planting. One day it was a bare construction trash strewn network of pits and trenches. The next day it was planted. The plants there now struggle and show the ill-effects of rushed, slipshod planting techniques. Several cute little rhododendrons have already succumbed. We’re also a bit perplexed that the lovely honey locust and black locusts that were planted along 25th, Fairmount and PA Ave were not extended back along the Meredith St. expanse of the Perelman. What, just because it doesn’t face the more trafficked avenues, it isn’t worthy of modest finishing touches? The museum needs to call its landscapers on the carpet to remedy these oversights. What they’ve done, or more to the point, what they haven’t done, is unworthy of this public space.
The most glaring oversight is the “temporary” PECO pole that furnished power to the construction machines, but now stands, an ugly sore digit, disconnected from the grid and ready to be extracted. But it hasn’t been and nobody can tell me when it will be. I buttonholed the project manager and he asked me if I had any pull with PECO and we both laughed at the irony in his question. Perhaps Ms. d'Harnoncourt herself should get on the phone and work her way up the electric utility’s chain until this sore tooth is yanked. If you google my address, you’ll see why this particular piece of unfinished business is most galling to us. Before the construction, we had a beautiful, unobstructed view of the northwest face of the museum proper and its sycamores. The lot used to be a blacktop sea of cars, parked two or three to the space. We now have a lovely view of the locust trees and shrubbery of the lot. On the whole, a vast improvement. Then standing smack in the middle of our transom window is this bare ugly projection which resembles nothing so much as a rudely upthrust Brobdingnagian middle finger. It is a visual insult that we endured while it was needed and as it no longer serves any purpose, it has to go.
Finally, I chatted up Inky staff shutterbug Michael Bryant when he was taking his photos in preparation for Inga's article. His 7th picture (on the philly.com site) shows the interior view of the ventilation stack and I agree with Ms. Saffron's assertion that it is butt ugly and inexcusable. Imagine in its absence, the light and the view of that pretty brick, tree and sun-dappled piece of 25th St. looking out or the lovely view of the museum’s atrium looking in. It could have been a lively and enduring visual comment on how a cultural landmark and its resident neighbors interact and
instead it looks like an architectural mooning (and I’m not talking astronomy) to the genial neighborhood that has for the most part, endured the three years of construction with patience and good grace. The architect had the Perelman's huge interior space to work with that would have been invisible from the street. What WAS he thinking?
I must admit that when I first saw the concrete block of the new addition, I was dismayed. I imagined that somewhere, a building materials order got flummoxed and a suburban Walmart got our Perelman order and we got theirs. (Note the liberal use possessives.) But humble concrete can be a tabula rasa and when I saw the metal grid on the 25th street side with the climbing flowering vines, I had a little aha moment and walked away with a smile on my face.
I had another even more intense aesthetic experience after the construction barriers, trailers and fencing were cleared away to reveal a broadened gleaming pedestrian expanse along the Fairmount-PA Ave intersection. Because of its scale and lighting it is serving as a lively, impromptu community hot spot, where on one particular mid-summer evening, while chatting up the museum’s director of housekeeping, a neighbor, I observed Art Museum Director Anne d'Harnoncourt and a neighborhood mom confer on dog training strategies. This is a nexus where we neighbors regularly connect in little Jane Jacobian moments on our way to and from our errands and walks.
There is one sore spot on this lovely walkway and perhaps it takes a neighbor with a couple decades of walkby experience to point it out. Our new neighbors should know that in my 20+ years of observing, nothing has ever flourished in the little strip of earth that parallels the “moat” wall. The previous owners planted boxwoods which, try as they might, through multiple replantings, always withered after a couple of seasons. The same pretty vines that seem so happy on the 25th Street side are dying wretched deaths in that parched little strip of cursed earth along PA Avenue.
Most folks I talk to agree that the work of the landscapers has fallen far short of expectations. Even the streetside lot on 26th, which is a quantum improvement in terms of eye appeal, was poorly executed when it came to laying down an appropriate soil base and proper planting. One day it was a bare construction trash strewn network of pits and trenches. The next day it was planted. The plants there now struggle and show the ill-effects of rushed, slipshod planting techniques. Several cute little rhododendrons have already succumbed. We’re also a bit perplexed that the lovely honey locust and black locusts that were planted along 25th, Fairmount and PA Ave were not extended back along the Meredith St. expanse of the Perelman. What, just because it doesn’t face the more trafficked avenues, it isn’t worthy of modest finishing touches? The museum needs to call its landscapers on the carpet to remedy these oversights. What they’ve done, or more to the point, what they haven’t done, is unworthy of this public space.
The most glaring oversight is the “temporary” PECO pole that furnished power to the construction machines, but now stands, an ugly sore digit, disconnected from the grid and ready to be extracted. But it hasn’t been and nobody can tell me when it will be. I buttonholed the project manager and he asked me if I had any pull with PECO and we both laughed at the irony in his question. Perhaps Ms. d'Harnoncourt herself should get on the phone and work her way up the electric utility’s chain until this sore tooth is yanked. If you google my address, you’ll see why this particular piece of unfinished business is most galling to us. Before the construction, we had a beautiful, unobstructed view of the northwest face of the museum proper and its sycamores. The lot used to be a blacktop sea of cars, parked two or three to the space. We now have a lovely view of the locust trees and shrubbery of the lot. On the whole, a vast improvement. Then standing smack in the middle of our transom window is this bare ugly projection which resembles nothing so much as a rudely upthrust Brobdingnagian middle finger. It is a visual insult that we endured while it was needed and as it no longer serves any purpose, it has to go.
Finally, I chatted up Inky staff shutterbug Michael Bryant when he was taking his photos in preparation for Inga's article. His 7th picture (on the philly.com site) shows the interior view of the ventilation stack and I agree with Ms. Saffron's assertion that it is butt ugly and inexcusable. Imagine in its absence, the light and the view of that pretty brick, tree and sun-dappled piece of 25th St. looking out or the lovely view of the museum’s atrium looking in. It could have been a lively and enduring visual comment on how a cultural landmark and its resident neighbors interact and
instead it looks like an architectural mooning (and I’m not talking astronomy) to the genial neighborhood that has for the most part, endured the three years of construction with patience and good grace. The architect had the Perelman's huge interior space to work with that would have been invisible from the street. What WAS he thinking?Even more inexplicable and you can see it from Mr. Bryant’s photo, are the uneven flashing, the ladder and rag, (if that’s what these are) sticking up from the top. Walking up 25th St. one eerie moonlight night, the glint of the ladder and the rag flapping in the wind caught my eye and sent a chill down my spine. I had to stop and stare down this grim trompe-l'œil for several minutes because it looked for all the world like the malevolent scarecrow in Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective. (It was a lot darker and creepier then, trust me.)
I can’t claim to always understand art, but I sometimes wonder if I understand architecture even less.
