by Nathaniel Popkin
November 20, 2007
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and . . .
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all
the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
--This is Spinal Tap
Philadelphia needs that extra push. A dozen years of building have brought us some delightful new forms and yet as a city we still lack the confidence to boldly
invent. (This is an American problem; the forward-looking US is well-behind in architecture, landscape, and planning.) Perhaps this is the problem everyone has
with
Symphony House: its insecurity is transparent even through the cast concrete. So we look back first -- and always. And we look over that cliff with fear: we
can't
see the other side. New row houses, especially, suffer this fear. The result is an endless supply of artifice, poor-quality materials, and sheer boredom.
Garages
and curb cuts are only part of the problem.
When do see boldness it refreshes; when we can follow its path all the better. So it is on Eleventh Street, that hidden connector. One can argue that the
building
boom started here in two phases. I remember milling through the 1993 grand-opening of the Convention Center (for or against spending economic development money in
this way one has to conclude the building was a symbolic success) realizing that the building was the first major piece of contemporary architecture in
Philadelphia
since the Bell Atlantic Tower. It was a first sip in a parched desert. The second phase was the gorgeous 1998 renovation of the 16-story factory at Eleventh and
Vine for a Hawthorn Suites. Because of this project's visibility on the Vine Street Expressway it too was a powerful symbolic gesture -- and in real ways made
that
end of Chinatown more pleasant and vibrant.
So we still go to Eleventh, which I followed the other day from Tasker to Brandywine; and I was rewarded -- in a couple places I didn't foresee. At Tasker, where
ambitious people are rethinking South Philly, I found the new 1540 Hardware, its bold yellow bays proclaiming a new day. This alone was interesting; only later I
realized the builder had used yellow plastic panels to great effect; at Reed an outstanding jeweled post-Modern rowhouse; and at Washington the former Southwark
Metalworks still being converted to the Lofts at Bella Vista with its sky-pods. At Spruce, the handsome Le Grenier. At Locust the now-complete Hamilton Building
and
its canyon-neighbor (here's the other side of the cliff) the edgy and massive Western Union. At Arch, the Convention Center, the poor Hilton Garden, and the
former
Pitcairn Building, now seriously contemporary lofts; at Vine, the Chinese Community Church, which is a great retro-60s roadside (and an awful, awful mistake),
Michelle Liao's renovated loft building, the renovation that houses Khmer and Vox Populi, at Hamilton the city of pods (electric substation, the coolest of all),
and
finally the sales center (now closed, I think) of Spring Arts Point. All this along the shiny tracks of the old 23, may it live again (how about dazzling new
light-rail cars to pull all this together?)
–Nathaniel Popkin
nathaniel.popkin@gmail.com
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