Earlier in the winter, Philly Skyline and I wandered around the 24th Ward/George’s Hill Reservoir, taking in the workings of the res, the derelict Tonka toys, the mouse body surgically sliced in two. Recently, Skyline mentioned (at my prompting) that not using the reservoir land was a missed opportunity for the city; though not having the tallest flagpole in the world at Belmont Plateau is probably a more grievous oversight.

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When the Schuylkill river was a conduit for coal, lumber, refined petroleum products, stone, and other finished goods, nearly every crossing south of the mound dam at Fairmount was of sufficient height to allow barge traffic. Some like the University Ave Bridge, the South Street Bridge, the CSX rail bridge (that carries our vaunted trash trains to us), and a tiny one track ex-PRR railroad swing bridge south of the Grays Ferry Bridge had mechanical appurtenances enabling them to open, swing, and elevate around river traffic.

The PRR swing bridge locked in the open position and the currently-used railroad bridge just south have the distinction of being the only two swing bridges in the city of Philadelphia. During the heyday of civil engineering, swing bridges were some of the most innovative — and trickiest — bridges to execute. Unlike a drawbridge or a bascule bridge, swing bridges were almost exclusively dependent on their central pivot point which is situated within the ship channel. Barges striking the central pier could damage either the central span or its pivot or bring the entire structure out of true with its approaches. The central pivot also had to be maintained, cleaned, and lubricated. New York City’s Third Avenue Swing Bridge, the only in that city, still requires consistent upkeep.

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Philadelphia has always quietly scoffed at the Youth Study Center: a strange modernist (near brutalist) structure located on the parallelogram of space between 20th and 21st Sts. and Pennsylvania Avenue and the Parkway. There behind a screen of trees it squats shabby and toothless, its bare horizontal face offering scant clues as to its function. The open field fronting the Parkway: a kind of private space in limbo — owned by no one but the discommoded and dispossessed. Yet the structure’s dilapidation, its tent cities, and its ominous silence does not jive with the touristy “museum mile” where everything is made navigable and self-evident by signs and guides. Soon, though, the YSC will be no more (moved to West Philly) and on its site will sit the newly-designed home of Albert Barnes’ 2 billion dollar art trove. With the Barnes move, the great uneasiness caused by the YSC’s presence will be lifted and the Parkway restored to a kind of original intent.

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