These are ruins of an industrial complex once owned by the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company south of Bartram’s Garden in the vicinity of 56th street. The area is described as Gibson’s Point on a 1923 nautical map in the NOAA archives. The facility was designed to supply tank trucks oil and gas for distribution around Philadelphia. It is unknown whether the fueling station was connected to the Atlantic Refining Company across the river but chances are good that the Socony-Vacuum facility made use of its location within the South Schuylkill refining district that developed in the early 20th century is still a presence today.

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Just north of the ex-Reading Railroad/SEPTA Spring Garden St. Station on the Reading Viaduct.

The consensus is against this piece — I’ve heard it described by the more representationally-inclined as looking like “something that’s fallen off the Comcast Center” and, alternatively, “Ground Zero.” I’m a fan of it for very insufficient and inchoate (read subjective) reasons: I enjoy the use of industrial materials, the temporary juxtaposition of it to the Comcast is cool for a time, and I think it is an homage to that iconic image of di Suvero’s San Francisco: the Golden Gate Bridge. But these are just conjectural justifications in the face of hostile criticism.

But I think there’s a more convincing defense of this piece in probing the dissonance in using I-beams to represent the sinewy, organic form of a Iroquois or in exploring the almost tongue-in-cheek tone of the red man tint to the whole complex. In a kind of learning-from-Las Vegas-way, Iroquois’ unsubtle scale also makes it digestible in a car moving 45 mph around Eakins Oval — something that can’t be said for some of the Parkway’s more intricate pieces. And changing perspective creates a sense of motion in the piece: as we move we throw on our own anthropomorphic expectations and continue to ask “what is it doing?”

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