[MARKER TO THE 'MADDEST OF GOOD MEN']

For Nick Bucci rationality has its limits. Far from a sleight, this is an adequate description of his epistomological way. “Are you interested in the magic?” he asked me last week at the Tercentennial of the settlement of the 17th century mystic and Pietist botanist, astronomer, poet, agriculturalist, and sometime composer, Johannes Kelpius. Bucci, a polymath himself, approaches the human, natural and supernatural occurrences in these steep shady declivities of the Wissahickon with the kind of holistic, analytical mode that would would have endeared him to Kelpius’s band. A woodworker and stonemason who restores old homes, Bucci sees no artificial division between the watershed’s past inhabitants and the seekers of today. The magic, or holiness, preceded Kelpius — but evidence of its presence is still plainly visible — or sensible.

In his rambles through the Park, Bucci has witnessed the magic. He has noted the appearance of large well-built cairns of rock at various locations. “This isn’t a bunch of kids drinking root beer and looking at nudy mags,” he says. Asked if he’s looked into locating the alchemy stone Kelpius reputedly threw into the confluence of the Schuylkill and the Wissahickon, Bucci told us he knew a guy with underwater detection gear. And that was only half of it. While some know that when the box containing the stone slipped beneath and lightning rent the sky and thunder pealed for hours — very few know that Kelpius was also given the staff of the band’s first founder. This, too, remains to be found.

[NICK BUCCI]

Other members of the Kelpius Society of Philadelphia, a fiesty band of Kelpius enthusiasts dedicated to the investigation of the man and his short-lived commune, want to solidify the sacred link between the place and the memory of the Community. For architect and vice president of the society’s site reclamation committee, Alvin Holm, their very choice to situate the community in a glen some five miles outside the New World city of Philadelphia was freighted with symbolism. Reading scripture with immense trust and deference, Kelpius and his followers were captivated by the Biblical Philadelphia: that blameless city spared by God in the Book of Revelation.

As a Pietist band, they wanted to escape the supposed decadence of Lutheranism and create a community dedicated to the improvement of the individual Christian. But despite their presumption of human perfectibility, Kelpius and his band were pessimistic about the continued existence of a savage world. Kelpius, an academic from Transylvania who received a doctorate in philosophy at the age of 16, became obsessed with preparing for the eschaton. Learned in astronomy, botany, mathematics, and the rites of Rosicrucianism, Kelpius believed the natural world revealed and reinforced the essential truths of scripture. Thus, he had constructed a forty foot ark along the fortieth parallel to bring scripture and natural truth into better correspondence. While most of Europe began detaching the mechanics of the natural world from the received truths of religion and tradition, Kelpius and the German mystics like Jakob Bohme and Johann Jacob Zimmerman, (first leader of Kelpius’s band) used modern science to confirm their devotion and better understand God’s disposition toward mankind.

[MYSTIC PRACTICING SORCERY]

For Kelpius and his band, operating within a heady matrix of signs, symbols, spirit, and scripture, the world was constantly revealing the way of Christian rectitude. By positioning yourself properly within nature, one could find God’s favor. Far from strict Lutheranism which branded them heretical, Kelpius and his band could adopt a more liberal approach to truth in the wilds of Pennsylvania. According to Holm, with their knowledge of astronomy and their toleration of pagan worship, Kelpius and his community immediately paid honor to the summer solstice on the “fire hill” at Faire mount upon arriving in 1694. Though the dour Quakers probably shunned the roguish spectacle, Holm argues that the Swedes — with their rich rural tradition — probably performed a syncretic solstice festival, borrowing heavily from the Lenape. It was not unknown to Kelpius and his followers that approximately six months from the summer solstice, Jesus was reported to have been born.

Architect Alvin Holm wants physically represent Kelpius’s preoccupation with seeing typologies of scripture in nature. As head of the site reclamation committee, Holm looks to restore the communal complex, at the center of which will be the True North plinth. Every summer, the faithful will gather around the plinth and by marking the sun’s shadow 20 minutes before and after the summer solstice, they will know true north.

[TRUE NORTH]

[THE HOLM PLAN FOR THE KELPIUS COMMUNITY'S COMPLEX]

As the ceremony on the fire hill waned, Kelpius and his some 40 followers probably made their way up the Ridge Road or by the Schuylkill and Wissahickon to an area between two toes of land on the west side of the Wissahickon, now just south of the Henry Ave. Bridge. The commune’s dwellings were spatially segregated according to function — communal and utilitarian buildings were placed on the ridge of the hill while individual caves for personal reflection spread all along the small horseshoe-shaped depression. While the community attempted to establish crops, orchards, and gardens in the schisty soil on the ridge, followers met in the main church or meetinghouse to share in song or, perhaps, hear Kelpius speak on his soul’s transcendence after death, or the immanent destruction of the sinful world. While little remains of the original site, Kelpius’s passionate and moving songs do remain. Some like I Love My Jesus Quite Alone reveal the mystic’s reliance on the symbolism of astronomy — “The magnet needle erring goes / When from, when from the pole distracted,” while others personify the soul’s seeking of God as a lusty, romantic pursuit.

After showing us tables filled with herb jars, “potions,” Catholic religious figures, 18th century woodworking implements and replicas of weapons used in the battle of Germantown, Nick, Alvin, some Society members descended the steep hill off Hermit Lane. Nick had thoughtfully brought rope, though none of our party needed it. Nick is down near the cave often, cleaning the marker of its near-perpetual patina of graffiti. Arriving at the marker, one is overwhelmed with the sheer implausibility that this is it. It looks like a 20th century structure, maybe a springhouse converted into the shrine. Incredulous, I ask Holm if this is the real cave. Coming into the blackness, Holm looks distractedly, almost annoyedly, up the hill to our right. “This is where The Cave is. It’s probably up the hill.” In this world where Kelpius practiced “Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid” where seen and unseen so happily coexist, Holm’s answer seemed appropriate.

Posters on this site have left comments about idyllic days spent in pre-redevelopment Eastwick. These are some concrete remains of this anomalously interracial community: a church known recently as the St. Paul AME and a two story single-family home on the opposite sides of now-defunct 86th St. and Bartram Ave. Much of the grid system of pre-1950s Eastwick has been obliterated, the untended roads end abruptly or continue into abandoned lowland fields as rutted paths.

Both are located here:

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[St. Paul AME Church -- in 1942 known as the Eastwick Church, built in 1928 by S.J. Jones]

[Builder's stone, St. Paul's AME]

[8608 Bartram Ave.]

More to come.

[H.P.F.S. PUMPING STATION -- DELAWARE AVE. AND RACE ST.]

On March 17, 1900 Philadelphia’s center city business elites balked at the news that two New York fire insurance companies, the Home Insurance Company of New York and the Williamsburg City Insurance Company were instructing their underwriters to stop issuing fire insurance policies to Philadelphia businesses situated in an ominously named “conflagration district”: the area from Broad to the Delaware, Arch to Chestnut Sts. It was usual for late nineteenth century fire insurance companies trying to limit unnecessary exposure and most firms acted collaboratively and shared information about known risk while setting rigid rates which were seldom undersold. Thus, the Home Insurance and Williamsburg City Insurance companies were emboldened by the Weed and Kennedy Company’s attempt to discontinue policies in the “conflagration district.” But its Philadelphia agents mutinied, refused to cut off its clients, and severed ties to the New York office.

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[excerpted from "A New Look at Public Housing": A Summary of the Report of the Committee on Public Housing Policy, Basic Policies for Public Housing for Low Income Families in Philadelphia, 1957, p. 2]

“New projects should be primarily of row houses rather than elevator buildings in order to provide children with yard space, prepare families for eventual home ownership, and provide more of the four and five bedroom units needed by Philadelphia’s families.  While accepting elevator apartments for single persons and families with no children, the Committee notes that ‘experience in Philadelphia has been that elevator apartments have been used to achieve high densities without undue land coverage but with resulting project and neighborhood congestion’ and goes on to say that ‘it would be preferable to build no public housing projects at all rather than to construct project that increase the density of an already congested area.’ The Committee advocates more flexibility in federal regulations regarding the ratio of land cost to total project to make low density, row house developments possible in cleared areas.” (emphasis added)

[excerpted from Twenty Years of Service: The Story of Public Housing in Philadelphia, 1937-1957, p. 26]

“The large developments made possible a new kind of neighborhood planning, better adapted to the automobile age than the gridiron street system–that is, better for the person living or walking in the neighborhood.  Among the most attractive blocks in Philadelphia are those with almost no through traffic. Large block planning also attempts to have convenient service roads going into the neighborhood.  Through traffic, however, is encouraged to pass by on the outside.  The resulting increase in livability is obvious.  Automobiles are often described as one of the chief villains of blight. As traffic increases, there is a sharp increase in problems of danger, noise and irritation and lack of parking space.  The planning of large blocks, such as at Schuylkill Falls, Wilson Park and Mill Creek all show what can be done to return neighborhoods to their residents.

Medium sized developments have been built on one to several existing city blocks.  It is economical not to change existing street and utility patterns, at least in the short run. Such housing developments have added attractive open space, interior parking, safe small play yards within the existing blocks, and the usual accompaniments of improved housing, safety, adequate light and air, good room sizes and the prevention of overcrowding.  Harrison Plaza, Mill Creek and Hawthorne Square are good examples of fitting the medium sized development into existing street patterns.”

The geometries of the service station island and the Art Deco styling of Dave’s Auto Repair at the intersection of 49th and 50th and Haverford Ave. suggest that it was active 20s-30s, while the tires stacked tenderly, the “Cash Only” warning and the hand painted sign tell of recent activity. Dave even saw that the roof was tarred, but by guys on the cheap — maybe a buddy’s side job or guys from the neighborhood — based on the stalactites of asphalt oozing from the parapet.

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The above is from from the mock funeral for the Pennsylvania Life Insurance Company (PLICO) Buildings on North Broad St. organized by the Design Advocacy Group and the Preservation Alliance held today between 12-1.  With tongue firmly planted in cheek, well wishers placed flowers and condolence cards at the fenced-in site of the two buildings being demolished by the Pennsylvania Department of General Services (DGS).

The DGS, on shadowy orders, gutted the power of its sister agency, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and flaunted a 2004 agreement between the Convention Center Authority and the the PHMC to preserve the PLICO complex in exchange for the demolition of the Philadelphia Historical Register-listed Race Street Firhouse and 19 other buildings.

Lawyers for the Convention Authority claim not to know what the other bureaucratic hand is doing and have argued that the Authority is just a measly authority and it is actually the DGS that has any power to contract demolitions, hire workers, and construct the new center.  Oh, and as for the agreement between the Convention Center Authority and the PHMC and other preservation groups, the DGS didn’t sign that.  Oh, and it wasn’t an agreement–it was just a “statement of intent.”

I have all the faith in the world that the state will preserve the gargoyles from the Race Street Firehouse.

Sanitarium Playground, better known in the hearts of thousands of Philadelphians and South Jerseyans as Soupy Island, appeared at the end of Red Bank Ave. with its mirth subdued by barbed wire. The compound’s shabbiness belied its significance to scores of young Philadelphians whose lives were spent in the stifling airlessness of Philadelphia’s red brick canyons. Founded in 1877 by an organization called the Sanitarium Association of Philadelphia, the compound is a specimen of the late nineteenth century social hygeine movement bound up in well-meaning upper/middle class paternalism. Though the social philosophy that gave rise to Soupy Island implied that poor immigrants were constitutionally unable to care for their own health, by all accounts Soupy Island was — and continues to be — a much needed outlet for the region’s kids.

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