The People's Court(yard)

It's time for residents to enjoy City Hall.

by Nathaniel Popkin

Since 1993, when John Morris Rifkin, the popcorn vendor who paid no rent, was removed from the east portico, the only thing that's been available for sale inside City Hall has been the politicians themselves. Rifkin's popcorn and flower stands were removed during the test phase of the preservation of Philadelphia's most important piece of architecture. Unfortunately, since Rifkin was tossed and the sculpture and archways cleaned, the east portico, with its sculpture symbolic of enlightened government, has become an enormous municipal trash receptacle, something akin to using the nation's original Supreme Court for security screening.

Assuming the rest of the exterior renovation will be completed within the next few years, it's time to consider the courtyard — and the other public spaces that comprise Center Square — and, in so doing, buck the paradigm that Rifkin himself once flouted. That is, the sterilizing, anti-urban tradition of keeping commercial enterprises out of our public spaces and squares.

The recent reinvention of Franklin Square, with its hot dog and ice cream vendors and gift shop and amusements, does this already with some success, but one can't help but think (as he trips over the vendors' extension cords) that, at least as it's currently configured, vending there is both halfhearted and derived purely from a theme-park notion. Suffice it to say that having virtually no ice cream stands or pretzel vendors or newsstands or performers or balloon men or tables to sit with a sandwich anywhere but Franklin Square (or at Valley Green, in a much more organic and urbane form) is a detriment to city life.

In the case of City Hall's courtyard, having virtually no comfortable place to sit, look around, absorb the architecture, sculpture, watch others and listen to the sounds of the city represents a colossal missed opportunity to bind us (local and visitor alike) to Philadelphia's beating heart. It's time to make City Hall a place you want to visit, dwell, meet friends, have a drink.

The courtyard is one of the only large, enclosed, protected public spaces in America; you ought to feel as if you're inside the palace walls and yet there's nothing there now to entice you stay. It's essentially an overdecorated pass-through with underutilized subway entrances and dated planting beds that leave your butt cold. Despite that, we use the courtyard almost ritualistically. We come by the hundreds every hour, from Oxford Circle, from Kingsessing, from Grays Ferry, in the form of secretaries and engineers and laborers, dealmakers and the dispossessed, to take shelter under those high parapets for just a moment before emerging again in the harsh and frantic world.

My plan is to heighten and enhance that sense of protection, warmth, otherworldliness; the sense of separation. To soften things, I would lay brick underfoot; remove the planting beds, which despite being large have almost no visual impact; and replace the painted compass with a ring of out-facing benches in the shade of one of John Bartram's flowering Franklinia trees. Under the two southern minitowers and inside the two northern corners, we should place restaurants and cafes, with a semipermanent installation of tables, sidewalk heaters and, perhaps, retractable awnings to keep off the rain.

The restaurant and cafe installations, by necessity and purpose, would be filled by locally-owned leisure-time institutions and in each possible category, there are several to choose from. (To see my choices and the entire plan to transform City Hall courtyard, as well as photos, details and implementation strategy, go to www.phillyskyline.com/popkin.)

Let's exit the warm, intimate courtyard, leave the clatter and noise of people living in public. We emerge through the west portal, then head into the massive expanse of the northern skirt, which connects City Hall to the Parkway and to North Broad, visually and symbolically to Philadelphia's ever-expanding cultural amalgamation. Our senses crave action, stimulation, but today we encounter no more than the (lovely) City Toilet.

Nathaniel Popkin is the author of Song of the City (Four Walls Eight Windows).