June 10-16, 2004

cover story

Spend This Season on the Bench Tour

Photo By: Patrick Rapa

by Juliet Fletcher

Pack your own lunch, or pick some up en route: This is a hard-paced walk from West Philly to Northern Liberties. It's for active types, but like any good tour, the best bits are when you get to sit down. Philadelphia has a wealth of public seating spaces, and not all of them are well-known or widely used.

Hill Square (northeast corner of 34th and Walnut): To start, go to this well-maintained city lawn with leafy shrubs and wetland plantings. Along the newly minted path eastward, a neat granite border and line of benches, designed by sculptor Jenny Holzer and unveiled last November, offers inscriptions commemorating the eventual admission to Penn, in 1879, of female students. Sit beside John Harrison Minnick's quotation and catch the view pointing east from the corner of 33rd and Chestnut streets — a straight shot to the city horizon — and then move on.

Rittenhouse Square (18th and Walnut): From Hill Square, walk 13 invisible blocks along Chestnut, over the Schuylkill by bridge, to pick up a hot beverage at Wawa (20th Street intersection). Then head to Rittenhouse Square, and its concentric circles of bench heaven. Each bears a commemorative plaque: Rumors abound about one that in the '90s read, "Have a seat on "Marvelous' Marvin." But every few years, plaque spots are up for purchase again, and Marvin can't be found now. Instead, spend 10 minutes at Jack Malis' bench, which instructs you to "Sit here with your coffee and cigarettes, and enjoy the park." To find Jack's bench, stand facing the bronze goat statue; take the right-hand avenue pointing northeast, and it's the third one down.

Friends Center (15th and Cherry sts.): Pick up a takeout lunch at Berri Blues (19th and Chestnut sts.) and head to 15th Street. Join the lunch-break crowd on the steps of the Friends Center — mostly hospital workers and helicopter enthusiasts, watching takeoffs and landings at Hahnemann's helipad. Facing south, you can share the quiet with the statue of Mary Dyer, a Quaker martyred on Boston Common. In this copy of the work by Sylvia Shaw Judson that stands in Boston, the bench on which Dyer sits famously has only one armrest.

Liberty Lands Park (Third and Poplar sts.): Follow Third Street up, past Spring Garden into Northern Liberties. Stop by the Kind Café for provisions: maybe black bean tapenade wraps? Then continue up Third until you reach Liberty Lands. At the edge of the community garden runs a row of ergonomically curved stone-and-wood benches, installed when the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association claimed back the park and neighbors set about rejuvenating it. On occasional summer nights, the seats offer a sideways view of Liberty Lands' outdoor stage; but until dusk, you can admire Dennis Haugh's bumblebee mural from afar, and start to register the pain of your blisters. Stay until you feel you can stand up.

Alumni Circle (Berks and Park malls) Head to Temple's campus, accessible by SEPTA at the Cecil B. Moore stop, or by cab, to be weirded out by their circular stone bench. At one side on a pedestal sits the 1998 sculpture of the owl, Temple's mascot. Speaking while standing in the middle of the circle induces an echo — all part of the design, apparently. Head back to Center City.