Halt! Frieze!

CONCRETE BUNGLE: Should parts of Convention Hall have been on eBay?

Historical Convention Hall artifacts land on eBay.

by Hannah Yi

Want to get a piece of historic Convention Hall before it disappears from the face of University City? It's going to cost you, if a recent offer on eBay is any indication.

Last week, Jay Farrell, chairman of the Committee to Save Convention Hall group, was surfing the Web when he noticed a decorative frieze was up for grabs on the online auction site with a $74,999.99 price tag. Farrell was irked since he and other preservationists thought the University of Pennsylvania, which is replacing the hall with a cancer center, would preserve artifacts from the site. The 75-year-old frieze (a decorative horizontal concrete band) was composed of seven pieces that ran 48 feet across the top of Convention Hall; it has an ornately sculptured transportation theme that begins with primitive Egyptians and ends with depictions of modern-day vehicles.

"It was a real letdown," said Farrell, who posted a link to the eBay offer on the committee's Web site.

Farrell's attorney Hal Schirmer maintains that the preservationists were "led to believe that salvaged decorative art would be reused. Part of the judge's ruling was to save some property for posterity but also to soften the blow of destroying everything."

The preservationists maintain that the National Historic Preservation Act orders Penn to "develop and implement a plan for interpreting the history of the building."

"How," Schirmer asks, "are pieces of Philadelphia's history ending up on eBay?"

It turns out that excavators Olde Good Things (OGT), which is based in New York City and Scranton, was contacted by demolition company Mazzocchi. (Penn initially called Mazzocchi to raze the building and Second Chance to salvage artifacts; the contract between the various companies working at the site required that antique artwork be saved. A university spokeswoman was unavailable for comment.)

"I was told that in the contract to save one" frieze, which was transported to a Penn warehouse, said Kevin Browne of OGT. OGT purchased the remaining seven for an undisclosed sum that was calculated by figuring in how much it would cost to reproduce the friezes, overhead expenses and labor charges for their removal.

"We pretty much gave it to them because they were broken and cracked up," says Mazzocchi superintendent Norman Russo, noting that the artifacts could have easily ended up at a landfill had OGT not taken them to a warehouse. Still, Browne doesn't know who put the item up for auction. (The eBay listing has been removed.)

"A few people who work at the company take pictures and put them on eBay and this case was misdirected. ... I don't even know if it was a fair price. It seems high," says Browne. He says the frieze will remain at OGT's Scranton warehouse until further notice from Penn. "We do intend to sell it if it's not reused."

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