“When a traveler sees a tree-filled sq. with lots of of males reclining on park benches or lined up for soup and salvation throughout the road, then he has arrived in Philadelphia.” Such was a 1952 description of Franklin Sq., then Philadelphia’s Skid Row. Nearly a decade later, the Roundhouse, the town’s police headquarters, designed by Geddes Brecher Qualls Cunningham (GBQC), would open throughout the road, with the specific function of taming the park’s chaos. One block away, Metropolitan Hospital, one other undulating constructing, opened in 1971 as the town’s charity hospital. As Philadelphia fought towards white flight and the decline of producing, this neighborhood served residents seen as much less fascinating.
It’s exhausting to think about this historical past while you stand in Franklin Sq. these days. You’ll hear the lilt of a carousel, the music from the miniature golf course, or the cheerful screams of kids on the playground. One in every of William Penn’s authentic 5 squares, this public house is as soon as once more vibrant. However the results of the jail and hospital, together with the close by freeway that bisects the town and the Ben Franklin Bridge resulting in New Jersey, stay. Whereas the remainder of Heart Metropolis has flourished, regardless of the town’s drop in inhabitants from 2 million to 1.5 million since 1950, this fast neighborhood stays riven with parking tons and devoid of retail and housing.
It’s inside this context that the town has been considering the destiny of the Roundhouse. Its design, which resembles binoculars—or, maybe, handcuffs—when considered from above, received GBQC the AIA’s Gold Medal Award for Finest Philadelphia Structure in 1963. The construction pioneered using architecturally expressive precast concrete in america, incorporating roughly 1,000 precast items in its facade. It stands as a chief instance of the midcentury Philadelphia college, which included works by Louis Kahn, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and notable architect, educator, and GBQC cofounder Robert Geddes.
But, regardless of these bona fides—and its standing as structurally sound—the constructing was just lately denied inclusion in Philadelphia’s Register of Historic Locations. Whereas this transfer doesn’t assure demolition of the 125,000-square-foot construction, it opens the door to it. The constructing sits adjoining to a 50,000-square-foot parking zone on a city-owned 2.7 acre lot website ripe for redevelopment.
Ought to that new improvement embrace the Roundhouse? One might argue that such a big website has loads of house to each reuse the Roundhouse and assemble new buildings. The Preservation Alliance for Better Philadelphia has provided conceptual renderings by a neighborhood structure agency that present how mixed-use towers may very well be constructed on the identical website, with its beneficiant FAR. If an enterprising developer sought a spot on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations for the Roundhouse, federal tax credit might assist finance the undertaking.
But preserving the Roundhouse actually means preserving a facade. Whereas GBQC meant the constructing to represent a extra clear police power, the finished undertaking included a harsh concrete perimeter fence and achieved the alternative impact. To create any street-level connection would require chiseling away on the Roundhouse’s exterior. The inside, with its defunct jail cells and police processing areas, would require gutting. Nonetheless, protecting the constructing could be price doing for causes past architectural ones, as it may well safely be assumed that adaptive reuse would entail much less embodied carbon.
Lastly, whereas the constructing is understood for its legacy of racist and violent jail practices, a community-engagement course of led by the earlier mayoral administration discovered that native residents have been open to reusing the constructing for inexpensive housing, educating the general public on police brutality, and benefiting close by Chinatown.
These are all legitimate causes to reuse the Roundhouse. However Philadelphia doesn’t have an amazing report of rapidly turning historic buildings into new developments. A Beaux-Arts constructing by John Torrey Windrim in probably the most alternative components of the town has gone unused for a decade since its designation on the federal Register of Historic Locations. A 1961 futuristic saucer-shaped guests middle in famed Love Park has sat empty since a multi-million greenback renovation was accomplished in 2019; the town’s RFP for a restaurant tenant within the house landed not a single response. And there’s been no motion on the location of a traditionally protected 1959 constructing that served as a metropolis well being clinic, regardless that it was bought in 2019.
To some, these years or a long time of emptiness are price it for the reason for preservation. To me, that stance doesn’t match the present second—the housing-affordability disaster is at its worst ever, Philadelphia is as soon as once more shedding inhabitants, and cities throughout the nation are going through a glut of workplace buildings requiring adaptive reuse. Difficult websites just like the Roundhouse would be the final choose. And, after years spent debating a possible new basketball stadium downtown, which in the end didn’t come to fruition, there’s a renewed push to remodel the adjoining neighborhood of Market East, making this parcel moreover helpful proper now.
The positioning has a tantalizing proximity to regional rail and subway connections, in addition to highways, that make it supreme for inexpensive and market-rate housing. Its location two blocks east of Chinatown might present very important house for retail and neighborhood services doubtlessly displaced by the brand new stadium improvement. Given Franklin Sq.’s built-in viewers of households, it’s the good place to find different family-oriented choices, similar to a college, well being care, or a museum. It’s essential that the town not promote this parcel off to the best bidder however leverage public possession, to maximise constructive social, financial, and environmental outcomes.
Ideally the town would provide an RFP for the location, leaving it to builders to determine whether or not the Roundhouse would improve their proposal or not. But it surely must be famous that money and time are at stake right here. To renovate the Spherical-house would require main subsidy—native, state, and federal taxpayer {dollars}—and doubtlessly a decade the place nothing will get constructed. At what worth is that this facade price protecting?
