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Also this issue: Who? Us? 'Lude Behavior Holding Down the Fort Charismatic Visionary or Naked Power Wielder? Market Volatility Soundbites The Bell Curve |
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October 3- 9, 2002
city beat
 Historical commission: Dee Rosado, here with her controversial mural, is pleased that is safe for another four years. Dual Murality Photo By: Michael T. Regan |
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To some, it's fantastic. To others, an eyesore. No matter, the mural at 15th and Waverly stays for now.
A mural painted on a historically significant building at 15th and Waverly streets in Center City can stay for four years, the Historical Commission ruled recently in a seven to five vote. It is the first time in the city’s history that the commission has approved a mural on a historically exposed wall with significant architectural details. Of the four-year permission, Chair Michael Sklaroff says, “It is absolutely unique, in my experience.”
The work, by transgender artist Dee Rosado, features over a dozen provocatively clad, drag-inspired figures. It's been a hot topic in its vicinity for the past several months.
Michael Sher -- who commissioned the mural, manages the building it is on and "speaks for" building owner Philip Steinfeld -- even developed something of a correspondence on the issue with Michael J. Lewis, architectural preservation columnist for The New York Times. Lewis apparently spends time in Philadelphia; in an e-mail sent to Sher in July, he calls the mural "lively" and offers his assistance in the effort to keep it up.
Of the four-year permission, Sher says, "I'm satisfied with it. In four years, if it's still in shape, we'll ask for a continuance." Rosado says, "I think that's awesome. It's better than nothing, you know?"
Peirce College has been the mural's biggest, and perhaps only significant, opponent. Jim Mergiotti, senior vice president and chief operating officer of the college, says, "We certainly accept the decision." But when asked if he'll appeal it, he admits, "At this point we're not sure what we're going to do."
The issue's been the subject of much debate among Historical Commission members. They've had to consider the preservation of the historic features of the wall (namely ornate brickwork and support) featuring the mural and the fact that the work was put up illegally, that is, without the permission of the commission to begin with. They've listened to the passionate testimony of neighbors.
One of those neighbors, architect Hugh Zimmers, calls the work "an improvement over what was there before," referring to graffiti.
Sklaroff, newly installed commission chair, has been a vocal opponent of the mural. He recused himself from the vote, a decision based on the idea that statements he made might have unduly influenced the voting of commission members. Sklaroff wouldn't comment further on the "squall of political correctness" he earlier this year deemed responsible for commission support for the work.
"It got a full, fair hearing before the commission," he says of the case.
Peirce officials have been challenging the mural's existence since 2001, when it was completed by Rosado, then known as Wesley Chhin.
Mergiotti said this past April that Peirce objects to the fact that Sher "didn't follow the [zoning] process."
He also pointed out that the college had followed the commission's requirements when it embarked on its own extensive renovations. At the hearing a few weeks ago, Peirce attorney Thomas P. Witt said overall, "Peirce spent $42,000 unwillingly, because of the commission's insistence on certain work. We did it expecting that the commission will protect historic districts."
Sher contends, however, that Peirce's motivation is based on "a content objection, nothing else."
At issue, at least for the commission's purposes, has been whether the mural is compatible with the requirements of the Rittenhouse/Fitler Residential Historic District, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since the late '90s. Witt, the attorney for Peirce, and Margaret Westfield, a historic architect who testified at the hearing, say the mural is not compatible, due to its representational nature and vivid color. They insist specific content is not at issue.
Several commission members who voted in favor of Rosado's work say that because the work doesn't touch the significant architectural details of the wall, but rather is limited to the bottom portion (stuccoed before the district was certified historic), it is "safe." At the hearing, Hugh and Liz Zimmers, architects
and neighbors of the mural, stated that the work didn’t detract from the historic details.
Not according to Westfield and several commission members.
Westfield points to the fact that murals are usually done on “party walls” -- the plain walls left visible after adjoining buildings are torn down -- not façades. She also says, “It doesn’t really matter what had been painted; it could be a 19th-century street scene. It’s the use of [several] colors in a representational form. It’s visually intrusive.”
Westfield says that speaking from a preservation perspective, “solid-colored red brick is the unifying element” in the district and that “any mural on a street façade is going to be incompatible with a historic district.”
Commission member Harris Steinberg says the board’s preservation duties don’t necessarily prohibit change, though. He explains, “Cities are alive and evolving and we have to allow for new history to be made.”
Of overarching interest, point out Steinberg and Gary Hack, also on the commission, is that the city really has no policy on murals, outside of what the commission requires of murals in historic districts. The Mural Arts Program, of which this mural is not a part, does not face special zoning requirements.
Hack, who says “we have more murals here than possibly any other city in the country,” sees the four years as a time for the city to “come to some set of policies to deal with them.”
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