In case you haven’t noticed, its been 80 years since Philadelphians had to take a slow boat to Camden.  Yes, the joint Paul Cret-Ralph Modjeski span is celebrating an important birthday this year.  Tell the Ben Franklin Bridge (nee Delaware River Bridge) how much its existence means to you when you cross it (on foot) to get to Farm Aid.  

Just in case you’ve wondered where your 3 bills go: the DRPA has set up a nice retrospective on the Bridge’s construction.  Be sure to turn up your volume to hear the audio commentary.  

The Fairmount Park Historic Preservation Trust is currently removing nearly a century of overgrown vegetation on the south side of Lemon Hill with the intent of making visible from Kelly Drive Henry Pratt’s Georgian mansion: around which were planted the citrus fruits that gave the hill its name.

Officially, the project is termed a “viewshed” restoration; it’s an attempt to restore the look of the hill to roughly its state in the mid to late 19th century and also to allow those on the hill a clear view of the Schuylkill.  Usually, preservationists working with landscape crews use historic images to pinpoint overgrown areas and remove shrubs, small trees, and undergrowth around important cultural features.  In the Lemon Hill project, two factors prevent preservationist from restoring the hill’s landscaping to before roughly 1870.  Images of the hill prior to 1870 tend to be woodcuts, lithographs, oil paintings, and watercolors of various quality.  Most are extremely stylized and amateurish with perspective and scale fluctuating wildly.  These are helpful in a general sense and give an impression of clearings on the hill.  After 1875, thanks to commercial photographer James Cremer, the photographic record of nearly all of Fairmount Park substantially improves.  His stereoscopes of the park’s statuary, landscaping, and structures were sold widely and are an indispensible tool in recreating historic landscapes.

Perhaps unfairly, Fairmount Park has always suffered in comparison to Central Park, Prospect Park or any other Olmsted project of note.  Recently in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Historian Michael Lewis has tried to champion the “sophisticated” designs and designers of the Park prior to 1867 — the date Lewis contends others begin their analyses.  Lewis appears overly preoccupied with defending Sidney’s 1859 plan for Fairmount against a straw man Olmsted and his estimation of Sidney’s non-moralistic pragmatic design is mired in taste.  In reality, James Clark Sidney (and his partner Adams who, apparently had little to do with the design) were devoted to the image of fussy overcurvaceous parks found throughout A.J. Downing’s unintelligible villa design books.  They had not clearly separated the park from the city, they merely cast “serpentine” paths among the topography, and many of the park’s principal roads seem carriageways and not pedestrian paths.  (Hence, today Lemon Hill to Sedgely down to the Girard Avenue Bridge is the domain of cars and wide open spaces.)  Sidney, a cartographer, was an imitator interested more in the “tactile and useful…than the moral” according to Lewis and did not conceive of moving through a sequence of structured spaces as a kind of pacifying program.  But while Sidney lacked both creative techical vision and a well-developed philosophy of landscape architecture, the flaws of Lemon Hill are not solely rooted in design.  The Park Commission’s notorious financial deterioriation in the 20th c. has allowed overgrowth to swallow up the few interesting features of Sidney’s plan.

Take for instance, the great stone staircase at the very foot of Lemon Hill (very top).  If cleared of growth and opened, this staircase and the network of paths behind it will induce park users to cross Kelly Drive thus linking the vital Lloyd Hall-Waterworks-Boathouse Row complex to Lemon Hill.  These are original to Sidney’s plan.  Consider, too, that Sidney’s carriageways on Lemon Hill were praised by Gardener’s Monthly (1859) for “affording the most exquisite views up and down the river.”  Aside from Fall and Winter, the Schuylkill is completely occluded by the dense stands of trees that have flourished since 1859.  To allow views down the viewshed, the Trust and Commission will remove trees as they did near the future skate park along the river path.  Sidney’s design for the original Fairmount Park is clearly not in the same league as Olmsted’s flagship parks.  Perhaps the most attractive feature of the Fairmount Park System is not its classically well-landscaped rustic sections but its watershed parks (which themselves are manufactured).  However, efforts like this viewshed restoration (which I urge you to follow) will undoubtedly reveal the hidden nuances of Sidney’s plan.

As “workshop of the world” Philadelphia proved vital during the two industrial world wars of the last century. Positioned in the center of what would be termed the east coast megalopolis, Philadelphia became an entrepot for guns, ammunition, tents, uniforms, mosquito nets, lockers, helmets, knives, ships, and other supplies during both World War I and II. The nation’s war effort profited from Philadelphia’a extensive network of commercial finger piers, shipyards, and the sprawling Philadelphia Naval Yard. One such artifact of Philadelphia’s role as a concentration point for war materiel is the Marine Corps Quartermaster Depot (1904), located at the southwest corner of Broad and Washington Ave.

At this facility the Marine Corps employed civilian workers to fabricate a wide array of goods during both wars. According to Maj. Edwin McClellan, USMC’s The United States Marine Corps in the World War (1920):

“During the period of the war the depot outfitted and equipped 36 expeditionary units for service in France and the West Indies, and over 31,000,000 pounds of various kinds of supplies were shipped on Government bills of lading. The depot departments were so organized that it was only necessary to expand each division of the office forces and increase the number of employees and machines in the manufacturing departments in order to meet the increased demands during the war. The personnel of the depot on June 30, 1919, was as follows: Thirteen commissioned officers, 7 warrant officers, 2 civilians, 102 enlisted men of the regular service, 21 reservists, and 1,095 other employees of all classes, making a total personnel of 1,240.”

During World War II, stilettos used by the famed Marine Raider units were stored at the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot and distributed to Marines preparing to launch an amphibious attack on Tulagi in 1942. This map from the same year shows the blockwide Quartermaster Depot. Material produced inside the Depot could be sent along the double railroad tracks of wide Washington Ave. or via loading docks. The USMC drew from the city’s deep textile experience, and the Depot produced varied patterns of uniforms: from dress attire to the wear of the WAACS. Philadelphia textile fabricators within the facility were also notorious for their thrift. Former Marine Corps Commandant Charles Krulak tells an anecdotal story in his autobiography, First to Fight, about how during the 1930s Depot personnel chose to make underwear with two buttons instead of two—unlike the Army and Navy versions which sported three buttons—because it was a penny cheaper.

Presumably the facility continued to provide the accoutrements of war during the Korean War and perhaps during Vietnam. A 1962 land use map of Philadelphia shows the addition of government parcels northward across Washington Ave. abutting the former PRR freight facility and just west of 15th Street along Washington. An additional parcel existed between 18th and 19th Sts. along Washington as well. I don’t know when the facility ceased operation but I imagine it was decommissioned in the 1970s-80s.

The Quartermaster Depot is an excellent specimen of early 20th century industrial architecture: its red brick institutional façade signaling to pedestrians on Broad Street the buttoned-up formality befitting a government facility. At the main entrance along Broad, a wrought iron “U.S. Marine Corps,” and an Eagle, Globe, and Anchor motif in the foyer suggest the building’s original role. But behind the brick cladding and beyond public eyes, the building dispenses with costly brick and shows typical government frugality in its reinforced concrete construction. The various portals along Washington Ave. indicate the need to expeditiously move materiel out of the facility and onto railcars, ships, and trucks.

The USMCQD was protected by a preservation easement pushed through by the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia and has become a condominium complex, Marine Club. I am unaware of the current occupancy levels of the Marine Club, or if it is enjoyed by its residents but I am generally pleased by the adaptive reuse of an overlooked industrial site of national significance.

Special thanks to Inga Saffron for placing Ruins on her links list.  Visit her Skyline Online.

When the Pennsylvania Railroad enlisted Philadelphia photographer William H. Rau to market the quality of the Railroad’s system by photographing its trackage, stations, and other facilities, photography was moving from the amateurist’s province to becoming an appendage of capitalism.  Photography, a medium that offered unpretentious and precise depiction of reality, was an ideal way to generate respect for the Railroad’s engineering expertise.  While some of Rau’s photos have recently fetched outrageous sums at New York auction; (four well-ballasted tracks converging at the horizon) creating in an artistic vein was secondary to Rau’s intent.  As Traveling the Pennsylvania Railroad argues, Rau’s use of large format glass negatives and the staff and resources provided by the Railroad made his successes technical and managerial. He considered himself a dutiful marketing agent of the Railroad and less a professional artist.  More importantly as documentary pieces his body of work represents the finest and fullest vision of the Pennsylvania Railroad at its height.

One of Rau’s more interesting photographs (a glass lantern slide in the possession of the National Canal Museum in Easton, Pa.) shows the immaculate interior of the Wilson Brothers’ and Frank Furness’ Broad Street Station.  For those who have wandered around 30th Street Station and observed Karl Bitter’s romantic allegory of American restlessness, Spirit of Transportation (1895) stashed ignominously in a vestibule, that relief is visible in the righthand portion of Rau’s photo.  The general view of the the crennelated interior is suggestive of the Railroad’s unwavering attention to detail as well as its national significance.  No trash is visible on the well-swept floors and the rail map of Pennsylvania seems less practical guide than an indulgent gesture of the Railroad’s self-importance.  The map in Philadelphia’s marquee terminal also alerts riders to their position within a major node in the Pennsy’s transnational system.

Karl Bitter’s connection of the average trip to Pittsburgh or Altoona to the greater American drama of manifest destiny would not resonate with passengers of today: many of whom would view train travel as plodding and tiresome.  That travel is sometimes arduous, and passengers sometimes need aesthetic uplift makes the case for moving the relief to a prominent place within 30th Street all that more compelling.