by Nathaniel Popkin
October 23, 2007

My expectations for the new Jefferson campus at Tenth and Locust were low. I didn't like the siting of the new Hamilton Hall, the overly restrained, almost meaningless design, or its massing. And yet after walking in circles around the new campus plaza, including a pair of trips through the arcades of the Scott Library, I have to report that the project is a terrific addition to Center City east -- a bolt of much-needed green, air, and dimension to the otherwise unrelenting grid.

Andropogon Associates' design of the new Lubert Plaza is a bright example of what happens when space is effectively carved out of the built environment. Their design adds depth, color, diversity of views, and a variegated palate of materials to the otherwise drab campus area. This capacity for synthesis reflects the program of the Dorrance Hamilton building, which is one of the first centers in the nation for multi-disciplinary medical education.

The landscape design puts many of the strange art and architecture statements in a new light. The Scott Library, particularly, is energized. The 1970 Baroque Revival by Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson serves as the north portal -- and in fact does so in a classic way. From Walnut Street you have to walk under the arcades to enter the plaza. One of my biggest complaints about the design is that there isn't anything (yet?) going on under the arcade to pull you through it (or to make you linger there). Nevertheless, the plaza's energy is communicated all the way to the front of the Library and vice versa, so effectively that the front of the building on Walnut feels different now, its wide sidewalk all of a sudden appealing.

The same can be said for the open space in front of the Kimmel Cancer Center on Tenth Street. Now the ridiculous mounded "hill" has purpose and context. One can imagine sitting on the grass there just to look down on the new plaza. The sleek Modern wall (of Drexel-style orange brick) of the Orlowitz Residence Hall and especially its minimalist clock all of a sudden look refined and sculptural, as their designers intended. Even the prison-like Alumni Hall and Henry Mitchell's Otters, really an unattractive fountain-sculpture, are given appropriate space and context here. Mitchell's much more enticing Winged Ox is given the wonderful sight lines it deserves.

Andropogon had a hell of an assignment to make a motley collection of buildings and objects work in some kind of pleasing -- and elevating -- harmony. The result is a little gift to Philadelphia and a signature space for Jefferson and its father-figure, Dr. Samuel Gross. Though it may in the end be better than the rival Penn's clinical care facility now under construction on Civic Center Boulevard, Hamilton Hall itself disappoints. The curved façade is so reminiscent of the Wills Eye Hospital two blocks away that if you blink you may be unsure which bland new medical facility stands before you.

Readers: the Possible City will return later this week or early next as we reconsider the "City of Neighborhoods."

–Nathaniel Popkin
nathaniel.popkin@gmail.com