17 July 08: You show me yours
and I'll show you mine



Greetings friends, but especially to the photogs among us -- today's our day! Though the prints have been on the walls for a month or so, tonight marks the official opening of Product Placement, the joint photo exhibition between Philly Skyline and Photolounge in Center City.

The idea behind this particular show is, in addition to the craft and the artwork involved in photography shows, a chance to put on display the services that Photolounge (and its predecessor CBOP) have provided Philadelphia since its earliest days in a small room on 15th Street across from Bally's Fitness. I genuinely, wholeheartedly endorse Photolounge's photography services, or I wouldn't have signed on for this. Especially for DSLR owners, Photolounge does huge prints, at your size (which is to say what you bring them will be printed and not altered or cropped -- unless you ask them to) and specifications. (I recommend full color, full bleed on matte paper.)

The six images in the flyer above are all printed at 20" x 30" and are for sale ($150 each -- I'll have a Paypal option on this site as soon as I can carve out an hour to do that), but we'll also have more accessible small versions (8x12, 5x7) of these, as well as a few others not pictured.

Given that it's a photography store, we'll also be talking a little shop this evening. It won't be a formal powerpoint presentation or anything like that, just a friendly discussion about photography, in my case, building/skyline/architecture heavy since, well, that's probably why you're on this web site in the first place.

It's all good, people. Come say hi tonight (and buy a photo while you're at it!), why don'tcha?

–B Love


15 July 08: Philly Skyline vs Penny Postcards:
Of height, history and precedence



William Penn's "green country towne" (or "greene countrie towne" or "green country town", however you wish to spell it) ceased being a green country towne at just about the moment he left town in 1701. Penn pictured an idyllic town of houses centered on lots surrounded by gardens and trees, but Philadelphia was still very much the (relatively) bustling seat of his colony whose other townships stretched well north, south and west along the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. While many early settlers were like Penn Quakers, Europeans of Presbyterian, Anglican and other denominations from England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands also took Penn up on his holy experiment. As did, of course, those of the entrepreneurial spirit.

Philadelphia was already a bona fide city, the largest in the colonies, when Peter Cooper painted his "South East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia", the oldest existing painting of an American city. (You can view the original at the Library Company, on whose web site the header includes a reproduction of this.) The growing city centered itself around the port on what is now . . . Penn's Landing.

Christ Church's congregation grew faster than the other early colonial churches, enough to warrant the construction of a new church on 2nd Street just above High (Market) Street. Built between 1727 and 1744 on John Kearsley's design (itself modeled on the English style of Sir Christopher Wren), Christ Church was always intended to have a grand steeple, but it took two lotteries -- there was no real fundraising at the time -- led by a congregation member whose wife was a far more active attendee, and this task would do well for his absentee reputation. They called him Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin's second lottery concluded in 1752, and over the next two years, a wooden steeple designed by Robert Smith -- a Scotsman who many consider the foremost architect of colonial America and who is also responsible for Carpenters Hall and St Peter's Church at 3rd & Pine -- was built to a height of 199', where a gilded crown symbolizing the British Empire reigned. Legend has it that the crown was prophetically destroyed by lightning in 1776; the weather vane and bishop's mitre that still adorn the steeple were placed there in 1787. (1)

Speaking of infamous lightning strikes, the Christ Church Preservation Trust's executive director Don Smith has a theory about Franklin's kite experiment. "Franklin had written his lightning rod theory [in 1750] and wanted to test it out on the steeple, but he got bored waiting for it to be built and went out with his son [in 1752, when construction had only begun] with his kite."

"It's just a theory," Smith laughs . . . but it's a good one. He also relates another tale that sees a drunken John Adams climbing the stairs of the steeple to get away from the stank, obnoxious streets below to gaze out over the city.

A more solid fact that he and his Christ Church brethren are quick to share is that building's reign as the tallest in colonial America. From its completion in 1754, through 1810, when a very similar-looking Park Street Church was built in Boston 18 feet taller, Christ Church was the tallest building in America, a period of 56 years. For some modern perspective, no building since has had so long a reign, the Empire State Building coming closest at 41 years from 1931 to 1972, when the World Trade Center eclipsed it, itself only lasting two years before Sears Tower topped it.

The significance of Christ Church's steeple was not lost on artist George Heap, who answered the call of Thomas Penn (William's son) in 1750 to depict a more modern view of Philadelphia than Cooper's thirty years prior. However, as the steeple was not yet finished, he had to use Smith's drawings to include it in his East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia, what might be considered the first ever view of the Philly Skyline. The resulting engraving, which Heap never saw -- he died on the ship to England where it was to be engraved, and his co-publisher Nicholas Scull finished the task -- had several printings, the oldest of which is at the Library of Congress. (2) There are also copies at Christ Church and the Philosophical Society.

Cooper's and Heap's Philly Skylines must have been inspiration for P. Sanders, whose 'art series' postcards were prevalent in the very early 1900s, including the "Harbor Scene and Sky Line" pictured at the beginning of this post. In it, Christ Church and City Hall dominate the low-lying industrial city.

What an amazing time post-Civil War Philadelphia must have been; industry and art conducted the city. The workshop of the world; Baldwin, Stetson, Eakins, Wanamaker, Furness. The city's growth moved the center of gravity to the Centre Square, the one Penn had set aside long ago for civic buildings. Now able to justify such a civic edifice, the city established a committee for the sole purpose of crafting a new building to occupy Centre Square, moving the city's government from Independence Square. The committee and winning architect John McArthur not only agreed on the complexly flamboyant French Second Empire building (adorned by Alexander Milne Calder's sculpture) we see today, but in their 1871 world of civic pride, they wanted their new city temple to be the tallest in the world -- 511' to the top, with a 37' statue of the Quaker founder on top.

City Hall tour director Greta Greenberger has lived and breathed (in) that building for the better part of two decades. "We were really gutsy . . . not just because it was a height no one had seen, but because of how conservative [in the Quaker sense] Philadelphia was," she says of City Hall's ambitious plans. "Of course," she continues, "by the time it opened, it was old news."

It took thirty years for McArthur's vision to come about, and in that timeframe, both the Washington Monument (1884, 555') and the Eiffel Tower (1889, 984') stole City Hall's thunder. Even in 1901, it begged the question asked of skyscrapers today: what criteria measures height? Structural? Architectural? Roofline? Burj Dubai will -- at least for a little while -- lay to rest any controversy of height measurements, as its completed height in the neighborhood of 2,700' annihilates the figures of Toronto's CN Tower (1,815' structural height), Taipei 101 (1,671' architectural/spire height), and Chicago's Sears Tower (1,454' roof height).

When City Hall ground was broken at Centre Square in 1871, the tallest building in the world was the Houses of Parliament in London, at 335'. (Unless you count the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is fair, and which is 481'.) When City Hall opened in 1901, twenty-two buildings were taller than London's palace. (3)

It's worth noting here that the Centennial Tower, a 1,000' observation deck proposed for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Fairmount Park, was never built. (Perhaps it's also worth noting that Philly Skyline would like to see the World's Tallest Flagpole in its place.)

In spite of being surpassed in 1884 by the 555' Washington Monument and in 1889 by the 984' Eiffel Tower, City Hall's colossal 30 years of construction at very least could award itself the tallest occupiable building in the world . . . for seven years, as New York's Singer Tower bested it at 612'. (An interesting aside about that building: it is the tallest building to ever have been commissioned for demolition -- demolished in the 60s for what is now known as Liberty Plaza -- as opposed to the WTC, whose destruction was obviously a consequence of tragedy/cowardice.) Still today, City Hall is the tallest load bearing masonry building in the world.

In yet another twist around City Hall's 30 year construction, the simultaneous development of the steel structural frame in Chicago and the standardization of elevators effectively guaranteed City Hall's distinction atop that masonry category, as the steel frame accelerated construction, created a lighter building, and increased floor space. When Chicago hosted the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, it was well stocked with skyscrapers and architecture that would be a focal point of the exposition, which was largely about the city. That city's affection for building high has spanned, and continues to span, generations of styles from the Monadnock Building to the Wrigley Building to the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center to the Chicago Spire, the 2,000' twisting tower under construction now.

Philadelphia didn't have reason to build a skyline to mark the center of a region like Chicago, what with that other skyscraper city 90 miles north. But if City Hall is any evidence, we weren't some podunk town, either. A small handful of buildings like the Stephen Girard Building (1896, 12th & Ludlow), North American Building (1900, Broad & Walnut), Land Title Building (1897, by Chicago's Daniel Burnham), and the Franklin Bank (1889) and Betz (1892) Buildings (those two buildings stood adjacently where the PNB Building now stands) were already completed nearby to welcome the completion of City Hall onto Philly's turn of the 20th century skyline.

It was shortly after that turn of the 20th century that P Sanders printed his postcard of the "Harbor Scene and Sky Line". Fast forward a full century, and that familiar riverfront scene looks like this:



Christ Church, once the colonies' tallest building, and City Hall, once the world's tallest occupiable building, are now hemmed in by neighbors new and newer. Perhaps the only one of them that had the same sort of impact either of them had was One Liberty Place, itself now looking up to someone else.

When One Liberty Place opened in 1987, it was the 12th tallest building in the world. The more notable, and notorious, achievement though, was of course its height of 945' (or 960', depending on which printed figure you choose to go by), shattering the long lived reign of William Penn atop City Hall and atop Philadelphia.

When the gentleman's agreement came to be is anyone's guess. I've not seen it documented and my search to find it has proven fruitless. Ed Bacon is usually credited -- blamed? -- for enforcing such a thing when 1950s urban renewal gave the city its first growth spurt since the PSFS Building capped off the 20s & 30s with its own signature. (Bacon was definitely opposed to One Liberty Place, going as far as writing editorials stating as much in the Inquirer.) The 50s, 60s and 70s saw a lot of flat top boxes dull out the skyline. The once majestic view from the Art Museum was dumbed down by four dominating Park Towne Place towers and leveled off in the distance by modernist and brutalist buildings which, on their own, are deserving of merit, but banded together did nothing more for the skyline than create a Pennsylvania Flat Top Box.



One Liberty Place, now the 51st tallest building in the world, helped -- insisted -- this city emerge from this gentleman's agreement silliness in the 1980s. While there is no accounting for taste -- some people absolutely love One Liberty and what it represents, others cast it off as nothing more than an ersatz Chrysler Building -- there's no denying that it and its peers of the 80s and 90s redefined the Philly Skyline, and in turn rejuvenated our interpretations of everything that skylines do: make first impressions when entering a city, mark the center of the region they represent, provide material for photographers and graphic designers to identify place.

After a decade or so in the circa-'92 mold, Cira Centre updated that update by bringing the skyline across the Schuylkill, and modest, mid-sized towers like the St James, Symphony House and Murano have added a little more bulk. Comcast Center, whose construction this web site covered obsessively, is an impressive 975' -- colossal by Philly standards and 43rd tallest in the world -- but as the skyline goes, it did little more than to fill a gap between the Bell Atlantic Tower and Mellon Bank Center, stately though it may be. Comcast did not have the impact One Liberty Place clearly did two decades earlier. The biggest buzz Comcast has generated, appropriately enough, comes from the massive HDTV in its lobby. The tower, as Inga Saffron illustrated in her review, honors Brian Roberts' wishes to keep it modest and elegant. And while it's clearly the tallest thing on the skyline, as seen from familiar places like the eastbound Schuylkill Expressway coming around the turn at Girard Ave, or the Belmont Plateau, or the stadium complex, it doesn't pack the wow factor something like, oh, this thing would:



Since yr Philly Skyline broke the ACC story, a whirlwind of information, right and wrong, has permeated the local media. With it, the predictable opposition and typical pessimistic reaction have mounted. But, ACC has also gained quite a bit of support, not just from Mayor Nutter and Deputy Mayor Altman, but also via generally warm receptions from the Logan Square Neighborhood Association and the Planning Commission, who today is holding their first official hearing on the project. May's presentation was an information-only icebreaker, a step encouraged by the Mayor's push for Planning strength and a commitment by the developer, Walnut Street Capital, to transparency.

Really, to this point, the only opposition that's gotten any attention is that by a small group of tenants at the Kennedy House who claim the building is out of scale . . . at 18th & Arch . . . in the very heart of the city's business district . . . across the street from the city's tallest building. And from lame duck state senator Vince Fumo, who . . . I'm not really sure what his beef is, but I'll bet it has something to do with the 125' height restriction overlay he got Councilman Darrell Clarke to write in response to the Barnes Tower / Parkway 22, which so far has been nothing more than minor demolition on Spring Garden Street and some Flash ads on philly.com. Councilman Clarke was so beholden to his own legislation that he introduced legislation that would change the ACC site -- currently a surface parking lot -- zoning to allow for ACC's construction at 12 times the height limit he set only a year ago.

Morton Silverman, president of the Kennedy House's resident association, circulated a letter to fellow tenants and neighbors hoping to "organize opposition to the 'tallest building in the world' as soon as possible." It's not the tallest building in the world, nor even the US. The letter issues to "protect ourselves from being permanently draped in shadows and swamped with traffic associated with filling its outlandish 63 floors." Considering Kennedy House is a block southwest of ACC and that the sun shines from the south for most of the year, Kennedy House will be in shadows for at most an hour in the very early morning, for a couple weeks around the summer solstice.

As for traffic? Considering ACC is at 18th & Arch, it has easy access to every regional rail and trolley line in the city, as well as the el and subway. Considering ACC is aiming for LEED gold-or-higher certification, using transit is strongly encouraged, not to mention the bike racks that will be installed, not to mention gas prices and where they will be by ACC's completion.

So there's your primary opposition . . . from an outgoing senator who's awaiting trial for 139 counts of corruption and who called a colleague a "faggot" on the senate floor, and from a group of people living in a highrise in an "urban village" that coincides with the central business district. It's not much opposition at all, really. So little, in fact, that support for ACC ought to get as much a shake as the usual Negadelphian squeaky wheels, if not more.

For example? If the amount of email I've received following ACC is not enough indication, take LSN4ACC, or, Logan Square Neighbors for American Commerce Center. Started by Mark Flood and Chris Paliani, who happen to live on the north side of the street where ACC is planned, which is to say they will be in its shadows, LSN4ACC is a grass roots organization who "appreciate[s] good design, good architecture, good urban planning, and historic preservation. We recognize that world class cities need jobs and great buildings -- not surface parking."

Flood elaborates, "it's going to be LEED Gold certified, which is the kind of responsible and sustainable development we need to be supporting. The neighborhood is looking for more retail and the building responds with amenities like restaurants, a supermarket and a theater. Plus, it's designed by a world-class architect and it's beautiful. This is a real asset to our neighborhood and our city."

And I agree, wholeheartedly. If it hasn't come through in previous writings, I firmly support the concept of American Commerce Center. So does Nathaniel Popkin. So does Steve Ives. So do Michelle Schmitt and Matt Johnson. It stands to reason that a Philly Skyline is pro-something that would alter the skyline.

But, ACC does much more than add a new building to the skyline. It sets the green building benchmark I think the city needs if it truly wishes to embrace sustainability, much more so than Comcast Center, and where the Convention Center dropped the ball. Ever importantly, it welcomes its place on the street, along 18th with a roomy café, along Arch with retail, at 19th with a chamfered corner for office workers, and on multiple levels with public park space. It packs the wow factor that One Liberty Place did, and which City Hall and Christ Church once did.

The height precedent is there. Christ Church and City Hall were the tallest buildings in the US in their day -- ACC would only be third, and height dimensions are simply arbitrary given the technology of our day. It's like I said on CBS3: Philadelphia rightfully celebrates its history and always should. But, that doesn't mean we should be stuck in it. We need to keep creating history, setting and reaching goals that years from now we'll consider 21st century history. By then, something bigger and better could be here, but it could very well thank ACC for its chance to be there.

ACC can take the torch of Philadelphia's landmarks: Christ Church, monument to faith, once the tallest building in the US. City Hall, monument to civic pride and civic rule, once the tallest (habitable) building in the US. Even King of Prussia Mall, monument to retail and the suburban lifestyle, once the largest mall in the US. Now, American Commerce Center: monument to sustainability and technology, tallest building in the city and one of the tallest in the country. Why not?





To compare the 'before' and 'after' of the Philly Skyline as seen from the Delaware Riverfront, please click
HERE.

–B Love

* * *

NOTES & SOURCES:
1. The Building of Christ Church, by Charles E. Peterson, 1981, referenced at christchurchphila.org.
2. Legacies of Genius: A Celebration of Philadelphia Libraries, edited by Edwin Wolf, 1988.
3. Skyscraperpage Diagrams
4. Renderings of American Commerce Center courtesy of Kohn Pederson Fox.

Additional info:
Philadelphia Architecture: A Guide to the City, edited by John Andrew Gallery and published by the Foundation for Architecture, 1994.
• "An East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia", by George Heap from the Camden riverfront, under the direction of Nicholas Scull, surveyor general of the province of Pennsylvania. Engraved and published according to an act of British Parliament by Gerard Vandergucht: 1753, 1756, 1768.
• "Continental Bank" ad accessed at Philadelphia Central Library's print department, originally run in 1984.
• Christ Church steeple illustration courtesy of Don Smith, Christ Church Preservation Trust
• "Harbor Scene and Sky Line" postcard published by P. Sander, Philadelphia & Atlantic City, for Sander's Art Series
• Postcard was not mailed
• Contemporary photo taken by B Love, 5 May 08

PREVIOUSLY ON PHILLY SKYLINE VS PENNY POSTCARDS:

6 May 08: The FDR Park Gazebo
17 April 08: Walnut Lane Bridge
18 March 08: The Parkway & the Skyline
10 March 08: 1800 Arch Street
27 February 08: New Market
7 March 07: Letitia Street House


14 July 08: All this is mine



by Nathaniel Popkin
July 14, 2008

Here on Namanock Island the river is silent. All around, hardwood forest rises from the river's edge and below the feet, smooth river rock covers the sandy ground. Vervain and monkey flower grow between the rocks, along with Joe Pye weed and St. John's wort. Milkweed makes the scent of lurid jasmine and grape vines draped over the branches of pygmy sycamore trees -- the leaves of the two plants near-identical -- evoke a dense mangrove forest. Though appearing on a map as a tiny tear drop of land detached from the New Jersey side of the narrow upper Delaware, this feels like a lost sea island. Trees are stunted and vegetation is low and thick and bones and branches seem calcified. And we, the other members of my family and I, are the only human inhabitants.

It is shamelessly beautiful. As dusk beckons, birds fill the high sky and bats swerve over the water. Tiny frogs jump and tadpoles circle. A beaver splashes. Then, with darkness, comes stillness and clatter. Fire flies and stars flicker in near seamless accord. A single bird wails. The sound is dreadful and finally, when it stops, the long heavy night begins.

The publisher Paul Dry once described to me the feeling he had walking into the National Gallery in Washington, DC. As all the museums on the National Mall are, this one is free and the feeling of being able to walk right in like you own the place, this sense of accessibility, and more, of collective ownership, swelled powerfully inside him, lending aesthetic meaning to citizenship, heritage, and nation.

There in the middle of our river, with a slow current on either side, I came to recognize this expansive feeling.



This is my river; I have lived along it all my life. It is mine and ours; it belongs to me just as I seem to belong to it. This makes me feel rich. Not only do I have my own small possessions, personal holdings, but here on public land (Namanock is part of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area), all this too, all this is mine.

To reach Namanock, we turned off the Old Mine Road at Penn Street, a rutted mud and dirt road that cuts a straight line through farm fields to the river. There, according to the map and following the usual script, the road ends at Front Street. Our car waited at the corner of Front and Penn while we spent the night in the warm belly of the river.

Just two days before, biking on the Old Mine Road, we had turned down the dirt path a quarter-mile north of Penn Street, at the marker for the Westbrook-Bell house, constructed in 1701, the oldest standing house in Sussex County, New Jersey. Westbrook-Bell is one of dozens of unused old houses and other buildings, like barns and camps and hotels, which the National Park Service has boarded up. Nevertheless, the lawn has been cut and there's a picnic table. We stop to pick berries and eat our sandwiches.

That's when Jen appears. "Don't I know you?" she asks.

We've probably run into Jen, a tall, retired school teacher with a broad smile and brown hair, a half a dozen times since 2001, when our car got stuck in the mud and we knocked on her door. Having restored an old camp building, Jen is one of the few residents along Old Mine Road and she's active in the local historic preservation society and involved with the Friends of the National Recreation Area.

The last two times I've seen her, including this one at the Westbrook-Bell house, she hasn't looked her usual cheerful self. When I spoke to her last winter she was in near tears because of the gates a farm family placed across the Old Mine Road, closing it through the length of their property. (Installation of the gates was an act of revenge against the federal government for the way private landholders were treated during the process of eminent domain to create the Tocks Island Dam, the failed engineering project that became the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Local families like this one still carry a grudge, 40 years or more on, because they feel like their way of life was destroyed for public gain. I wrote about the closure of the Old Mine Road, the nation's oldest commercial highway, on this web site in January.) Jen's house is just to the south of the gates, cutting her off from the farm family, the Hulls, her nearest neighbor, and forcing her to go out of her way to drive north. She felt sabotaged, but was hopeful then that the Park Service would sue to remove the gates.

"No one's lived here for three years," she tells me now, referring to the Westbrook-Bell house, and she's brought someone to have a look. "The Park Service bureaucracy makes it nearly impossible [to rent the place]." Jen explains that it's not just this one -- the most historic vacant structure in the recreation area -- but many others along the Delaware that are in a state of near-collapse. She lists a few others she's concerned about. "They're not doing anything about it," she says.

"It won't change until there's a change in Washington," says her companion hopefully, imagining an Obama presidency that takes these sort of domestic issues seriously.

"And the gates," I ask with trepidation, "are they still up?"

"Yes," she responds, coming closer, "and it seems like they're always going to be. The Park Service hasn't done a thing about it."

The National Park Service is the single federal agency uniquely charged with protecting and promoting the nation's patrimony. But it isn't doing so -- not in the Delaware Water Gap, nor downstream at Independence National Historic Park, where gates still block open access to Independence Hall.

Forget the ironies -- barricades blocking our nation's greatest symbol of liberty, gates privatizing America's first commercial highway -- the Park Service fails us because in both cases their inaction severs that expansive feeling of collective ownership. No longer can I, as a Philadelphian, walk through Independence Square, under the arcades and down to Chestnut Street. (The proposed and as of yet unbuilt "solution" of replacing the barricades with more pleasant looking bollards does not amend this.) A part of my patrimony has been robbed (leaving the tourists behind the barricades looking like animals in the zoo). No longer can Jen, whose life revolves around the river and its environs, the natural and man-made history, walk from her house up the ancient road to watch the birds gather on the far pond in early spring (truly a delight), not without being told she is trespassing.

It's a terrible, deflating feeling.

–Nathaniel Popkin
nathaniel.popkin@gmail.com

For Nathaniel Popkin archives, please see HERE, or visit his web site HERE.
For The Possible City, please see HERE.




14 July 08: Summer of le fleuve St-Laurent?


Before the wife and I took off for our honeymoon in the city we didn't move to four years ago, Skinny mastermind Michelle Schmitt, who studied at McGill University, told us, "I miss Montréal deeply and think that it shares some cosmic tie with Philadelphia that I don't fully understand." I've thought that it's there too, and I too don't understand it. There's the occasional funny coincidence where you pass a place called La Colombe that's down the street from a place called The Khyber, but the similarity is pretty abundant. Except, well, for the awful reality of our murder rate ten times that of Montréal's, their lack of litter (which is met with such zealousness in some of Montréal's boroughs (similar to our councilmanic districts) that it's a point of contention) and their overall feeling of laid back positivity that shines through here on the occasional perfect day.

In my somewhat limited world travels, I've found Philly, Montréal and Manchester, England to be on the same level of city. I've heard Barcelona is a fourth in this tier. Each city is overshadowed by a bigger or more powerful city (or both) a short train ride away in its country. Philly and Montréal especially pair up well . . . each has around a million and a half people, each has tons of rowhomes (though theirs are often, by code, set back from the street), each has a monumental park in the heart of the city, each pays massive tribute to its founder who had good relations with the natives (Jacques Cartier is sort of their William Penn, only 147 years prior), each has amazingly delicious/unhealthy local cuisine, and each has a jacked up riverfront. Again, it's really the violent crime and litter that are the major differences. Well, and the Frenchness.

Barack Obama was -- shockingly -- criticized by the conservative right last week when he suggested that our children were not getting enough foreign language education. He was speaking from embarrassing experience. And how -- I had five years of French in high school and another my freshman year of college. Fourteen years ago. A whole lot of good it all did . . . Fortunately, Montréal is very bilingual, unlike the rest of Québec, which is staunchly French-only. Most signs in Montréal are French-only, but everyone speaks English -- or another language, be it Hebrew or Indian or Chinese or Greek. «Je parle un peu français.» But a little is not enough to sustain a conversation with any shop owner, bartender or cab driver beyond "bonjour," and I gotta tell you, it's frustrating. My greatest problem in Montréal was not knowing enough French, so as to not stick out as an American in a dirty old Expos hat. But I did. C'est la.

I asked Chris DeWolf, who runs Urbanphoto.net, more or less the Philly Skyline of Montréal, what the biggest problems there were, and if murder gets the front page, if-it-bleeds-it-leads treatment it does here. He said that most of the low number of murders (42 in 2005, 35 in 2006 -- these are the most recent figures I could find) are gang and drug related and as such don't garner top story billing. Rather, Montréal's leading current events involve things like the relationship between the boroughs and the city (as well as the province of Québec), such as trash pickup and recycling, and the ever-present sovereignty and language discussion.

Montréal is about eight hours by car (give or take Customs), or 11 hours by Amtrak, available for as little as $58 one-way. Both routes are picture perfect, nestled between the Adirondacks on the west and Lake Champlain on the east. Following is a sampling of photos from Canada's second largest city, also the second largest French speaking city in the world (behind Paris, of course).


Mile End, a typical Montréal neighborhood. For comparison's sake, Mile End and the Plateau are sort of their Fishtown and Northern Liberties, at least in their relation to the centre-ville (downtown) and their quotient of young, creative people. Rowhomes like this with stairways leading to apartments on upper levels are common, as are bicycles locked to the front gate, which usually surrounds a nice garden. By contrast, though, most of the homes in this area are stacked apartments, rather than single family rowhomes.


This photo illustrates Montréal's bikeways, which are different than our bike lanes in that they're physically separated, dedicated streetways for bikes. This is Rue Rachel (awww), a commercial street in the Plateau. In the background is Mont Royal, the 764' mountain in the center of the St Lawrence River island on which Montréal resides. It is home to a well used park (designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed NYC's Central Park and our own FDR Park with his brother), an observation area with amazing views of the city and the River, and a 103' cross to mark the city's Catholic heritage. The mountain also besets Montréal with a height limit disallowing buildings to surpass its peak.


Here's another bikeway, this one Rue Clark, a typical residential street in Mile End. Note the cars parked along the other side of the bikeway's barriers. Perhaps our early-action Delaware Riverfront bikeway will feature something similar?


One of the views from Mont Royal follows the avenue named for it toward Stade Olympique, the much-loathed and over-budget home to the 1976 Olympics and former home of the Expos. (My panorama of the stadium's interior, during a 5-2 Expos win over the Phillies in 2004, is HERE.) The tower portion is the tallest slanted tower in the world (in your face, Pisa!).


Carte postale touristique: The Notre Dame Basilica's gothic architecture is absolutely stunning. The church, in Old Montréal (their historic part of town, like our Old City), was incidentally designed by an Irish Protestant named James O'Donnell and built part by part over the course of 40+ years.


Poutine, straight from the source. French fries, topped with cheese curds and gravy. The dish is a dime a dozen in Montréal, but this particular serving comes from Restaurant au Pied de Cochon ("the pig's foot"), which is so obscenely decadent it has a foie gras menu. For this meal, I have personally to thank one Nathaniel Popkin. Monsieur Popkin will be along shortly with his first thoughts on the Summer of the Delaware.


Finally, a Philly Skyline Montréal Skyline. This view of the Montréal skyline, with Mont Royal in the background, is from the Tour de l'Horloge -- Clock Tower -- at the Old Port along the riverfront and paints a familiar picture with surface parking in a prime riverfront location. The Old Port and its proximity to the tourist attractions in Old Montréal are, for all intents and purposes, their Penn's Landing and Old City. Where our attempt at riverfront entertainment features a seaport museum, fun annual events like Jam on the River and fireworks, and views of Camden, the Delaware River and the Ben Franklin Bridge, theirs features a science museum, Cirque du Soleil's biannual hometown show premiere, and views of the island parks in the St Lawrence River and the Jacques Cartier Bridge.

Montréal, qu'une ville.

But never mind all that. It's good to be home, Philly. A very special thank you to everyone who sent kind words and well wishes to me and Rachel, we're very grateful.

Did I miss anything here? Elton Brand? Is that anything like an Elton John? The Census says our population is still receding? I don't buy it. The Phils are still in first place? Barely. Let's see what the Gillick-Amaro-Arbuckle monster can do now that Sabathia and Harden have already been moved. I've been saying it since the day he signed here: Adam Eaton sucks. Two new restaurants in Fishtown -- Ekta and Sketch? SWEET. American Commerce Center goes to the Planning Commission tomorrow? Hot diggitty.

Philly Philly Philly. How y'all feeling out there?

–B Love

PS: On a much, much sadder note: my sincerest sympathies and condolences to my friends in the LoPiccolo family, who lost their son Matt suddenly yesterday. Matt was a Philly Skyline fan since our earliest days, always talked photography and new places to check out the skyline with me, and was, in his own words, Jill's little brother and knower of tons of sexy bitches. RIP, Matty.


3 July 08: Beef with Ben, or,
Let's get married

Can you believe this Franklin guy? The writer printer scientist activist inventor diplomat got a girrrrrrlfriennnnnnd. And she makes flaaaaags. Ben and Betsyyyyyyyyy. Well that's nice. But jeez Ben, did you have to go and get married the same day I'm getting married?


Brotherly love: Bee Love and Ben, in new Mayor Mike Nutter's reception room. Photo by HughE Dillon.

The mighty Dan Gross speaks truth: I'm getting married. Today. At City Hall.

Yes, at approximately 4:20pm, Philadelphia's newest couple will be R. Bradley Maule and Rachel L. Breeden, as we tie the knot Quaker style under the supervision (and feet) of that original Quaker, William Penn. Rachel and I figured that it would only be appropriate that we get married in Philadelphia, since it's where we met, it's where we live, and honestly, it's what we do. We also figured that a marriage at City Hall, on Fourth of July weekend, in the cradle of liberty, is the most Philadelphian wedding we could possibly have. EXCEPT MAYBE IF WE WERE BEN FRANKLIN AND BETSY ROSS.

I kid. I wish Ralph Archbold and Linda Wilde all the best. Ralph, give me a yell -- the four of us can have a night on the town when we're all home from our honeymoons. Us? We're heading north of the border for poutine and smoked meat and bagels. (It's worth noting here that the last time I was in Montréal, I watched the Expos defeat the Phillies by racking up five runs off of Lehigh Valley's it boy Brett Myers in five and two-thirds innings.) Québec City's even throwing us a party.

So: yr Philly Skyline is going on holiday until Monday the 14th. I've got a wedding and honeymoon to tend to, I hope you unnastan. Until we meet again, have a killer Fourth, go Phillies (beat those Mets), and if you see ol' B Free Franklin, tell him I'd like a word with him. Nah, tell him I said congrats.

–B Love & Rachel B



2 July 08: Additional coming attractions:



To all the folks who've emailed recently inquiring about purchasing photos: it's finally happening.

The last time I ran a search for JPG files on the server, there were over 27,000 listed under the phillyskyline.com folder. That figure doesn't include what's been posted in the month or so since, nor does it include any GIF or PNG files. There are roughly 30,000 images on and in yr Skyline, so it's often difficult to field requests for prints. An online store where you can order them has been on the to-do list for a long time, but so have a million other things like a photo essay of Olney and an in depth look at the architecture of Rittenhouse Square. What can ya do.

I'll tell ya what ya can do: stop by Photolounge! Since its early days as CBOP on 15th Street to the large, shiny space they occupy now on Chestnut Street, Photolounge has been the only place I have printed my photos in the digital age. There's something to be said for spending time inhaling chemicals in the darkroom and the rewarding prints you can produce . . . but who has time for that in 2008? Everyone has a digital camera. You can print them on some little inkjet job at home, or you can take your memory card to Walgreens or Ritz, but if you really want something sharp, a keepsake you can proudly display (and not bury it in a shoebox) in a frame on your walls, you have to go to Photolounge.

I've been printing my photos there exclusively for several years, and now we're teaming up to finally make some of these photos available to everyone who's been requesting them -- and to promote some of the services that Photolounge offers to photographers (thus the name of the show), particularly those with DSLR cameras.

The six photos above are each printed at 20" x 30" and are currently on display in the Photolounge showroom at 1909 Chestnut Street. Beginning the week of July 14th, prints of these, as well as a few others to be determined (if you have a request, drop me a line), will be available at 20" x 30", 11" x 14", and 8" x 10". "But Bee Love, those dimensions don't jibe." That's a good point, and one we'll address . . . at the opening night and discussion!

On Thursday, July 17th, Photolounge owner Pete Witcosky and myself will host an opening night for the exhibition, doubled as a talk about photography, particularly that geared toward architecture and buildings. We hope you'll join us for Philly Skyline: Product Placement.

Stay tuned for more info on purchasing prints, both in store and online. Visit Photolounge at 1909 Chestnut Street, or online HERE.

–B Love


1 July 08: Coming attractions:
Quaker Odes



Sorry for the shakiness yesterday, y'all -- sometimes you just need to take a Louisville Slugger to the servers to make 'em hum. This morning's Philly Skyline Billy Skyline is a preview of the first feature in our Summer of the Delaware. Stay tuned for that, but meantime clickin' the younger, more svelte Penn will bring a piece of his Buxco estate to your desktop, if you so desire.

* * *

Very quickly, then, some news you can use:

• For those of me wondering exactly what is up with Yards -- Why can't I find cases of Philly Pale Ale at any beer distributors? Shouldn't the brewery already be open? -- Joe Sixpack comes through with some answers. Yards Brewpub on Del Ave? Check. First beer brewed in Northern Liberties since Schmidt's shuttered 20+ years ago? Check check.

• Mad props to Linda Loyd, who got her figures right in an interesting, well done piece on American Commerce Center in yesterday's Inquirer. Five pros and five cons, and the cons aren't exactly things that can't be overcome. City Council is at summer recess, but ACC holds no recess. Where the developers and architects held a special meeting for the Planning Commission last month, two regularly scheduled PCPC hearings are scheduled, on July 15th and July 29th, each at 1pm at PCPC, 1515 Arch, 18th floor.

• Finally, a cup of coffee to two of my favorite blogs who've awoken from their slumber. How you doin', Changing Skyline? What's happenin', Necessity for Ruins?

* * *

And how 'bout you? You feelin' all right out there? Anyone up for some Donnie Iris, kielbossy & pierogies and cold ahrns tonight, n'at? Two Stargell Stars go to Memphis Taproom for their Pittsburgh ex-pat happy hour!

It's Pennsylvania Love, people. Pennsylvania LOVE.



–B Love








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