21 April 08: Ennui must go



Go Phillies. Go Sixers. Go Flyers.

Go John Marzano, off to a better place than this.

Go Stamper Square go.

Go Philly Skyline Springtime Skylines 2008, Vol. III.







Go national media, go back to Washington or New York or just far away from this commonwealth you've exploited incessantly for the past month straight.

The primary election tomorrow can't end soon enough. But since it's there and it's necessary and we'll allegedly turn out record numbers, please be sure to check The Committee of Seventy's web site, where you can get a sample ballot of your voting district. Check that out and be ready to roll bright and early tomorrow.

On that political note, let us end with this first YouTube yankin' in a while: a heaping spoonful of cockrock goodness that I'd like to dedicate to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, Ed Rendell, Michael Nutter, John Dougherty, Larry Farnese, Anne Dicker, Bill Keller, Christian DiCicco, Vince Fumo, Lynne Abraham (who is on your ballot as a delegate to Hillary Clinton), John Street (who is also on your ballot as a delegate to Hillary Clinton), other delegates, super delegates, the electoral college, national political conventions, my fellow bitter Pennsylvanians, and the war on drugs -- not the Philly band whose debut album comes out on June 19, but the actual tedious, decades long policy that is an overwhelming failure from unnecessary paperwork, litigation and incarceration, and which inexplicably keeps pot illegal. For you, Big Stupid American Machine, this same old song and dance. If only modern politics were as fun as a pre-rehab 70s Aerosmith show.

–B Love


18 April 08: And now, springtime in University City
Presented without comment









–B Love



17 April 08: Philly Skyline vs Penny Postcards:
Walnut Lane Bridge



Oh, technology. You let us leap and then you laugh at us in hindsight. Citywide wireless internet? Bahahahaha. Better off sitting next to a dumpster in an alley waiting for an iphone.

So proud were we that we were able to span the Wissahickon with an amazing concrete bridge, connecting the Roxborough and Germantown neighborhoods that had barely known each other, when within a few years an even bigger replica was built half a mile downstream, and up in the Poconos, ten replicas were lined end to end to span the Tunkhannock Valley.

But no matter. The Walnut Lane Bridge was a feat of engineering, whether "especially for 1908" or just the fact that the hundred year old bridge is, all things considered, still in pretty great shape. Rising 147' above the Wissahickon Creek and running 610' from end to end, the 233' center span of the bridge made it the largest concrete arch bridge in the world at the time of its completion in 1908. And what a completion it was: it took two tumultuous years to build, a duration that included the collapse of the falsework, the scaffolding erected to support the concrete pours, killing one laborer and injuring several others.

Though it's well used -- it's the only thoroughfare from Roxborough/Manayunk to Germantown/Mount Airy, and Septa's 65 bus crosses it -- and though a popular neighborhood golf course is directly next to it, Walnut Lane Bridge is still largely under-appreciated (except perhaps by graffiti artists). First is just the name issue -- there are two Walnut Street Bridges in Center City: a pedestrian one over I-95, and the quasi-highway overpass across the Schuylkill where the Post Office annex is being demolished to make way for Cira Centre South. There's even a second Walnut Lane Bridge in Germantown/Mount Airy, the circa-1950 modernist bridge across Lincoln Drive and the Monoshone Creek which is recognized in its own right as the first prestressed, pre-tensioned concrete bridge in the world.

Then of course is the Henry Avenue Bridge -- 185' above the water and 915' long -- which is more or less a larger version of Walnut Lane in its appearance, but which has greater recognition from its placement above heavily-used Lincoln Drive. Traffic-wise, Walnut Lane crosses only Forbidden Drive and a hiking trail.

Given these things, as well as the upcoming centennial, director David Young of nearby Cliveden took it upon himself to give Walnut Lane Bridge its due. Why Cliveden, a colonial house and Revolutionary War site that predates the bridge by 140 years? "Well," he says, "we're devoted to historic preservation, and we're within a mile of the bridge." Plus there's a little collection he came across that he wants to share: lantern slides.

A cache of 100 incredible lantern slides of the construction of Walnut Lane Bridge was discovered not in some dusty archive in City Hall, but in a basement in Allentown, from which Young made his purchase on ebay. These slides are the centerpiece of a new exhibit on the bridge beginning May 1st at Cliveden. This evening, he is hosting a preview and introduction to the exhibit at the Atwater Kent Museum (15 S. 7th St). "This is really a great way to raise some awareness to a bridge in need of some TLC," Young says, further noting that it's been an opportunity to bring Fairmount Park, the Streets Department, and neighborhood groups in Roxborough and Germantown together.

Engineered by George S Webster and Henry H Quimby, the bridge was built beginning on July 5, 1906 and officially completed on October 14, 1908, after which pedestrians were permitted to use it. Vehicular traffic was welcomed on December 17 of the same year. Nowadays, Walnut Lane Bridge is nowhere on any "world's largest" lists. The span of the largest concrete arch bridge in the world now, the Wanxian Bridge near Chongqing, China, is over five times Walnut Lane's. West Virginia's New River Gorge Bridge was both the largest arch (1,699' span) and highest bridge (867') at its completion in 1977, but it too has been passed -- Shanghai's Lupu Bridge (completed in 2003) has a 1,804' span, and France's Millau Viaduct (completed in 2004) is 19' higher.

But again, Walnut Lane Bridge. If you can't make the Atwater Kent this evening, you have all summer to visit the "Building Bridges, Linking Lives" exhibit at Cliveden (6401 Germantown Ave). Cliveden has built a web site celebrating the bridge's centennial birthday at walnutlanebridge.org.

To compare the Walnut Lane Bridge penny postcard with a contemporary photo, please click HERE.

As an added bonus, there is a mini-essay of 20 photos of a springtime Walnut Lane Bridge from both above and below, which you can launch
HERE.

NOTES & SOURCES:
• "Walnut Bridge Span Over the Wissahickon" postcard published by Photo & Art P.C. Co., N.Y.
• Postmarked April 20, 1912.
• Contemporary photo taken by B Love, 15 April 08

PREVIOUSLY ON PHILLY SKYLINE VS PENNY POSTCARDS:

18 March 08: The Parkway & the Skyline
10 March 08: 1800 Arch Street
27 February 08: New Market
7 March 07: Letitia Street House

Finally, a little wallpaper to bring it on home.



–B Love


16 April 08: Lights . . . camera . . .



And that right there is action: Comcast Center's evening lighting scheme.

This photo was taken during the Phillies' four-run ninth inning against the Astros last night, so perhaps the first lighting of the crown was red as a show of support for Pat Burrell's clutch homer and Geoff Jenkins' defiance of third base coach Steve Smith.

Comcast Center's night lights have been progressively rolled out and tested over the past six months, effectively an evening version of the daytime's transparent glass. By that I mean: the portions of the tower which are illuminated -- the atrium, the winter garden, the corners, the cutouts and the crown -- are the same ones sheathed in the clear, transparent glass that break up the long walls of reflective, mirrored glass.

Eric Nelson from Winona Lighting, who produced the LED product that's been installed, explains: "The lighting in the corner spandrel panels and five floors of the 'ice cube' at the top of the building are white only. The very top row of lighting on the building will be color changing." The corners, the cutouts and the crown are all subtly lined with boxes of low-energy LED lights -- 4,100K in color temperature, or a bluish white -- while the top row of the crown has a row of continuous LEDs that are color-programmable, i.e. red for the Phillies, pink for breast cancer awareness month, and so forth. The top row is aimed downward, so as to 'wash' the white crown with color.

Quentin Thomas, the namesake of Quentin Thomas Associates, who designed the lighting, illustrates the idea behind it: "The interior lighting of the building at the corners is specified as 4100K compact fluorescent so as to be sympathetic to and support the illuminated LED spandrel panels. These corner condition compact fluorescent downlights are controlled separately from the typical tenant lighting and can be switched on or off together."

Typical tenant lighting is indeed a concern, if Cira Centre is anything to go off of. While Cira's "Lite-Brite" system of LED dots is either loved or hated, its potential has never been fully realized, thanks to interior office lights remaining on all night long (4/20, A Time for Fishtown). There were even eight floors of office lights left on for the grand unveiling during a Monday Night Football game in November 2005. These interior lights drown out any "wow" effect the lights ought to possess.

Visarc is a Massachusetts-based company which produces renderings for builders prior to and during construction. They produced a simulation of Comcast Center's lighting for Radiance, an online clearinghouse for people interested in the physics of light. The simulation took this interior office lighting into account, and the results comparing bare accent lighting vs the reality of office lighting and nearby ambient light are fascinating -- a 22-page PDF explaining the process is archived HERE.

Like Mellon Bank Center's brightly lit pyramid, it's going to take some maneuvering (bracketing, or this HDR everyone keeps talking about) on photographers' parts to get the exposure right. Comcast's internally-based lighting is a vast difference from City Hall's spotlights mounted on nearby roofs, described recently by Inga as a "Gothic horror house" and a "giant crime scene". It's true, those lights, not exactly LEED-friendly, are distracting from miles away, giving Hollywood-spotlight treatment to the Quaker who'd have run from it. What's the internet saying? A idea, C execution.

But back to Comcast Center at night: white corners, white cutouts (five spandrel 'stripes' on the south and one on the north), and a white cube with a colored top. There it is. What do you think?



* * *

Finally today, on yr calendar of events, is a little love for the Schuylkill River and our friends in East Falls. Nathaniel Popkin is hosting a reading from Flow: the Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River by its author Beth Kephart, who will also be discussing her experiences as a writer and her thoughts on modern literature. It's from 6:30 to 8 this evening, at the Falls of the Schuylkill Branch of the Free Library, on Midvale Ave at Warden Drive.

–B Love



15 April 08: Can you dig it?



This past Saturday, Nathaniel and I were members of a six-person jury to determine the winners of this year's Canstruction, the competition-cum-fundraiser in which teams of architects, engineers and/or contractors must make something out of cans of food. This is the second Philadelphia edition of the competition held from Montreal to Melbourne, and like those cities, it benefits charity involved in addressing hunger. The local event is sponsored by the Philly chapter of AIA and is staged in the rotunda at Liberty Place.

With rules constraining them to a 10' x 10' x 8' space, ten teams began their build at 8pm on Friday night, working overnight on their compositions toward the grand prize, Jurors Favorite. These are some of their results . . .


This is Operation: End Hunger, a fantastically executed take on the classic board game. This project, by Cubellis (who has worked locally on Franklin Institute's Future Center and Community College of Philadelphia), won in Best Use of Labels by not only mixing colors just right, but also cleverly incorporating products like black eyed peas for the eyes, elbow macaroni for the elbows, kidney beans for the kidneys and a bottle of water for the "water on the knee" place on the board. Plus they even crafted the electric tweezers, out of Twizzlers and sardine cans.



Here we see a familiar, beloved, Philadelphia institution with a swagger. Beside him is the Phillie Phanatic. Monsieur Popkin stands beside this year's winner of Structural Ingenuity, Phight Hunger, a canned-Phanatic built by Gilbane Building Company, who's worked on the Airport's Terminal D & E expansion, CHOP and the Microsoft School of the Future. This team used cantilevered plexiglas to give the Phanatic a precarious appearance of lean, appropriate enough for that big green fellow.



Moving on to the finalists for the blue ribbon, we start at iCan, an obvious nod to the ubiquitous Apple product by Venturi Scott Brown & Associates, the legendary Manayunk-based firm who needs no introduction. This Honorable Mention had the cleanest design of any entries, making great use of the white canned potatoes and the smaller tomato paste cans turned on their side for a silvery screen display. The back side of the project was made to resemble a Campbell's soup can -- a can-can, if you will. (You probably won't.)


This is Linda, Sara and Bridget, representing Francis Cauffman, who's done a lot of healthcare and pharmaceutical design in Camden and the suburbs. They were the team behind (or, in this case, in front of) Can You Do the Twist, an interpretation of the pretzel with, uh, a twist/homage to South Philadelphian Chubby Checker.

This pretzel was actually my favorite of the bunch, both structurally creative and pleasant in appearance. Where it perhaps lost the majority vote of the jury was the fact that it was not a traditional, flat-figure-8 Philly pretzel, but instead a standard, bagged "Snyder's of Hanover" pretzel. Pitting Del Monte's yellow cans of peaches against the brown of Bush's baked beans, they even slabbed mustard on the side of the pretzel best seen from the Market Street plaza entrance.

Not pictured here but winning Best Meal, for a well-rounded stock of food that included Campbell's Chunky Soup and the already chunky Progresso Soup, was Fluor Corporation's Canzilla, who tore through a can-city with Hershey's Kiss teeth.

Other participants included Burt Hill's Canerpillar, JKR Partners' interpretation of Hungry Hungry Hippos, O'Donnell & Naccarato's Cantinuous, and a globe with a metaphorical percentage missing by a team called Canspiracy (no relation to our Conspiracy girls).

The Twist was overall my favorite concept, but the jury, which in addition to myself and Nathaniel included Warren Muller from Bahdeebahdu, Hilary Jay from Philadelphia University, and Walter Palmer and Lisa Godlewski from the General Building Contractors Association, deliberated fairly and an overall favorite was agreed upon:


Solve Hunger is the 2008 Canstruction Jurors' Favorite. The project, an interpretation of the Rubik's Cube (which, incidentally, was invented in Hungary) spelling out "H-U-N-G-E-R" on its six sides, was performed by Ewing Cole, the Philly-based firm we can thank for Citizens Bank Park and blame for 1818 Market. The Rubik's Cube form was perhaps the neatest delivery of any of the can sculptures -- the use of black olive cans as borders was especially sharp -- leading at least four of the six jurors to peg it as best in show.

So ends the commentary from a single juror. It's good fun, but it's for a better cause. Canstruction will remain on display in the rotunda at Liberty Place through this Sunday (4/20). In the center of the floor is an even larger can to collect further donations of canned goods to benefit Philabundance, the region's leading hunger relief organization, so why not grab a can of tuna on your way to Liberty Place?

For further reading . . .
Philabundance
Canstruction.org
AIA Philadelphia
–B Love



15 April 08: Liberty Place can



Consider this the intro to a post coming later today. Clicking it enlarges it, natch, so do so if you please and enjoy the sky blue sky on the sky blue skyscrapers, One and Two Liberty Place in the springtime. Do note that there is NOT a bright red, 58' x 11' sign affixed two-thirds of the way up the shaft of either building, advertising some company that just moved into it.

Two Liberty Place has never had signage because it doesn't need signage. ACE and especially Cigna have been Two Liberty tenants for years, and they've had subtle signs at the entrances. Okaying Unisys' request to brand this trophy tower with their logo sets a bad precedent, especially since it would appear so arbitrarily placed on the building's massing. And then you have residents above the sign -- do they want to live in the "Unisys Tower"? I doubt it. Please, ZBA, shoot this stupid idea down. Unisys can have a subtle sign at ground level, just like the other high profile tenants there.

Unless of course Richie Sambora wants to pin a rotating Bon Jovi heart-and-dagger on the point of the crown, shooting different colored lasers through the air that transmit "Wanted Dead or Alive" . . .

In the meantime, please pardon our busy-ness. It is Tax Day, after all. For which, why not, let us yank on yonder YouTube for this late rendition of a Beatles song released after their touring days. As nearly as I can tell, it was never performed live -- their last tour spanned summer of 1966 and Revolver was released that August. According to Wikipedia, "the newest song the Beatles performed on their 1966 tours was "Paperback Writer", released on a single and recorded at the same time as the Revolver album."

Taxman: George Harrison's first "serious" contribution to the maturing Beatles. This version, from a circa-Traveling Wilburys show in 1991 in Japan, is no Concert for Bangladesh, but it's still cool, in a terrible "old men who used to do drugs get clean and perform with backing singers" sort of cool. Clapton on guitar, Harrison on commentary: "Ah haa, Boris Yeeeeltsin. Ah haa, Mister Bush!"

Go 'head, Taxman.

–B Love



14 April 08: PSA: Sport is missing!



A special call out to our friends in West Philly and neighboring communities: Sport is missing. The beloved male cockatiel and semi-official mascot of the 4600 block of Hazel Ave flew away on Saturday afternoon and has been missing since.

Sport has small, a yellow head with bright orange cheeks, and a gray and white body. He responds to "SPORT" and will repeat it back. He also nods his head if you clap a beat for him.

If you have any information or if you have seen him, please call Melissa at 215 203 4957.

–B Love







LINKS | ABOUT | CONTACT | FAQ | PRESS | LEGAL