phillyskyline.com | WAYNE JUNCTION

Ahh, the good ol' days. Remember when gas was $3.05 a gallon? That must've been fifty cents a gallon, five months or another Exxon Mobil record profit ago, whichever one was longest. According to the timestamp on the photo, it was November 16, the day yr Philly Skyline Wayne Junction fixation officially switched on.

Nathaniel, whose essay yesterday brought us up to date on goings on at that most vital of Septa train stations, and I met at Market East Station that morning and caught the first train outbound. I don't remember which line we took, but it doesn't matter since six of the seven go through Wayne Junction.

We'd heard about Septa's plans to give the station twenty million dollars worth of severely needed renovation (PDF, page 23), which will improve the inbound and outbound platforms, add two elevators, improve safety . . . and demolish the Wayne Junction headhouse, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Patrick Moran, president of the Germantown Historical Society, had an excellent editorial about why this is unnecessary, and wrong, last week in the Germantown Courier.

We also knew about the Planning Commission's Germantown and Wayne Junction Transit-Oriented Neighborhood Plan, the planning process expected to be completed this summer. The neighborhood master plan is seeking to bridge the divides between North Philly and lower Germantown with development emphasizing the five extant rail stations -- Queen Lane, Wister, Germantown, Chelten and Wayne Junction -- within the district.

That's the back story. Now here are the back photos. Nathaniel and I took a good three hour walk around the circumference of Wayne Junction station, and photos are arranged thusly:

• GERMANTOWN: the old, old neighborhood of history and hard times. The photo essay from 29 May 2004 was the first real neighborhood tour on a burgeoning Philly Skyline. In this small slice of it, we find amazing rowhomes on streets with names like Pulaski and Zeralda, Fairmount Park's Loudoun Mansion, and the heart of Germantown Avenue.

• NICETOWN: You rarely hear it without a "Tioga" suffix. Those two adjacent North Philly neighborhoods were part of an October 2004 tour, but for this visit we stayed along the main Germantown Avenue corridor and underneath . . .

• ROOSEVELT BOULEVARD: The Boulevard/Route 1/Roosevelt Expressway flies overhead through Wayne Junction and surroundings like so many interstates. Nicetown's CDC is looking to turn the unused areas underneath the Expressway into green space.

• ROBERTS AVENUE: Meanwhile, on the other side of the railroad viaduct from Nicetown, Roberts Avenue runs an interesting, short path from an 1885 mill, skirting a heavy residential area with lots of developable areas, overlooking a Septa stock yard to an intersection with Wissahickon Avenue at . . .

• FERN HILL PARK: Your typical park of the hidden gem variety. Straddling -- nay, passing under -- the expressway, Fern Hill Park is your standard neighborhood park with baseball fields and woods and picnic areas and Bob Will Reign.

• STATION NEIGHBORS: This deserved its own sub-category just on the old stock of buildings alone. This is what you'll find on Berkley Street, running between Germantown Ave and Wayne Ave on the north/west side of the station and platform.

• WAYNE JUNCTION STATION: Finally, and most obviously, the station itself. Have a look at the endangered headhouse, the states of the multiple platforms (it's easy to see why it needs renovation), and keep in mind all the connections this single station has.

Matter of fact, I'd recommend starting the tour of these November 16, 2007, fall foliage crazy photos there, found by clicking HERE. Don't forget to check out Nathaniel Popkin's accompanying Possible City pieces:

• A Junction that ought to be (4 December 07)
• This is not pie-in-the-sky (29 April 08).

–B Love