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Also this issue: Home Court Advantage Cadaver Envy |
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August 1- 7, 2002
loose canon
Philadelphia is an old city, its infrastructure decaying, its development in some ways arrested. Which is part of the reason I love it.
Because old cities like Philadelphia usually have great public spaces, commons in which to see and meet people. Places to browse for humanity, distinct from places like a shopping mall, where you’re under constant siege to buy something.
I’ve been asking people about their favorite public spaces in Philadelphia. To my knowledge, such a list has never been compiled. Here are just five of the more interesting.
• Reading Terminal Market. The Market is both literally and figuratively the heart of Philadelphia. It is the original “food court,” to which places like The Bourse, The Bellevue and The Gallery aspire, and against which they pale. Others fail where the Market succeeds for a simple reason: There are virtually no national franchises in the Market. That makes it a unique place that people feel they own, instead of the other way around. A perfect example of pleasantly arrested development, since no sane developer would attempt to profit from such a ragtag bunch of merchants.
• Rittenhouse Square. Truly a field full of folk, Rittenhouse is a comfortable collaboration between the city, the Friends of Rittenhouse Square and the surrounding merchants. But mostly, the Rittenhouse experience comes from the happy mishmash of folks who live, work, bring up kids and troll for lovers in the area. Sitting on a bench there, I wonder why more novels haven’t been set in Rittenhouse -- until I recall that fact is usually more interesting than fiction.
• Kelly Drive. Another ancient wonder, the Drive is the precursor of the Strip -- the Strip being an artifact of automobiles. Sure, there are automobiles aplenty on Kelly Drive. But its dangerous curves remind us that cars don’t really belong here, and the Drive is best when limited to people-powered vehicles, including watercraft. Walking, riding or sculling, you feel like you’re at the center of a wonderful short story.
• Curtis Center. Home of the Maxfield Parrish stained-glass mosaic. Here’s an instance where a private space achieves the status of a public monument by virtue of its sheer beauty. My 12-year-old nephew, on his first time in Philly, fell in love with the scale, the color, the water and especially its stillness. Who says public spaces have to be noisy?
• Kimmel Center. An art park? A music mall? I’ve included this, uh, edifice because it is a Public Space in the Making, without a constituency, because it is so naked and new. I have hopes for it yet.
Please e-mail me at bruce@citypaper.net with your favorite spaces for the public, and I’ll share them publicly, next week.
