Short Memories, Big Shovels

What do you think your city will look like 32 years from now?

by Duane Swierczynski

If you're a history junkie, Temple University Press has a brand-new bag o' smack for you.

I spent much of the weekend devouring Thomas H. Keels' excellent Forgotten Philadelphia: Lost Architecture of the Quaker City (to be published Oct. 15). It's a guided tour through the various structures that have been built, then torn down, over 400 years of Philadelphia history — beginning with the little caves and huts that used to line the Delaware River right up through the recently dismantled Liberty Bell Pavilion.

I intended to review Forgotten Philadelphia for our Book Quarterly next week, but the book has been haunting me.

In fact, it's hard to walk or drive around town without seeing the ghosts that Keels' book masterfully summons from the past.

I cross Roosevelt Boulevard at Tyson Avenue and see the shadows of old Boulevard Pools, where sweaty rowhouse kids cooled their bodies when they couldn't make it down the shore. Now it's a Mercury-Lincoln dealership and a motley assortment of professional offices.

I walk up Market Street and can almost see the hulking outline of the old Gimbels building, and I can almost imagine Santa Claus ascending that ladder one last time on Thanksgiving Day. Now, of course, it's a parking lot, and has been ever since they tore down Gimbels.

I drive up Route 1 and can still see the shape of the Sears Building and its clock tower on the horizon — the place that employed thousands of neighborhood residents (including my grandmother). Now it's a big-box shopping center, just like you find everywhere else in America.

And it's not just buildings from my own, limited 35-year-old memory. Keels' book has me nostalgic for things I've never laid eyes on before.

Now I look at the Comcast Tower and, at its base, see the swank Sheraton Hotel that used to be there.

I look at 20th and Market and see the French Renaissance splendor of the Mastbaum Theater.

I look at JFK Boulevard and can see the hulking outline of Broad Street Station.

I don't necessarily want these things back; the Victorian mess that was Broad Street Station pretty much tops the list of "Things I'm Glad We Got Rid Of."

What I would like back is the narrative that runs throughout Keels' book — the running conversation that guides decisions, be they forward-thinking or short-sighted.

See, the best part of Forgotten Philadelphia isn't the photos. It's the running drama, spanning the city's history, that Keels captures in the accompanying essays. The central question is: What's the best we can do with the space in this city? And throughout the book's 320 pages, smart, dedicated people grapple with that question. Sometimes it works out great (Market West). Sometimes, not so great (um, remember "newmarket"?).

At least it's a conversation.

Just a few weeks ago, not too far from where I live, the AMC Orleans 8 closed its doors. It's not an architectural wonder; in fact, it's been a dive for a long time. (Last thing I watched there, appropriately enough, was Grindhouse.) Word is that they're going to raze the entire thing — along with a mini strip mall — and build a Target there.

I don't mind Targets. We shop at them often.

But hearing this news right after reading Forgotten Philadelphia made me think about how much our imaginations have shrunk, how our central question, What's the best we can do with the space in this city? has morphed into What kind of buck can we turn with this chunk of land?

So yeah, I mourn the things we knocked down throughout 400 years. But I also miss the visionaries we used to have in this city.

Back in 1948, Ed Bacon and other city planners set up a model exhibit of Philadelphia as it might appear in 1980. The model was set up at Wanamaker's, and hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians crowded in to see the kind of city their children and grandchildren would inherit someday. And Bacon's vision was fairly close to what came to pass in 1980.

That's the last time this happened. We should do it again.

Otherwise, what do you think your city will look like 32 years from now?

(duane@citypaper.net)