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Empty Lot of the Week: Corduroy Building Lot
This desert of parking was once occupied with cool and important buildings. Today, it's part of the barrier between Chinatown and Philly's Historic District.
Empty Lot of the Week: Corduroy Building Lot
A weekly series of foulmouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other development and design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at philaphilia.blogspot.com.
Bounded by Arch, Appletree, Eighth Street and the African American Museum of Philadelphia. Pictured: Emptiness.
What a crappy lot. Not only is this ocean of asphalt in an unfortunate location, but it's also surrounded by a multitude of ugly buildings. This lot is part of the barrier between Chinatown and the Historic District. When you stand on the block where this pile of tarmac sits, you can't even tell that Chinatown is only a block away.
This piece of shit has always irked me. There's really little to no redeeming qualities of anything you can see from this location. The lot is bookended on the East and West by 1970s trash buildings: the Philadelphia Garment Center (now Driver's License Center) and the African American History Museum of Philadelphia. Both of these buildings are clad in that shitty 1970s facade material that looks like Corduroy pants. Therefore, I dub this lot the Corduroy Building Lot.
This isn't even one of the buildings! This is a small wall of corduroy facade that fronts the Corduroy Building Lot
To the North, the lot is surrounded by smaller surface parking lots, and the first building you can see is the Butt-Fugly Police Administration Building two blocks away. Pitiful. To the south of the lot, there is one cool old commercial building (the Cast Iron Building), but the rest of the block is a gigantic 60-year-old parking garage and a relatively new Federal Prison/Holding Tank. What a disaster.
Now is pretty much the only time in history when this desert of parking was not occupied with cool and/or important buildings. In the 1770s, this block was home to David Rittenhouse's mansion, (you know, the guy that Rittenhouse Square is named after). A few decades later, the rest of the block was filled to the brim with 1830s-style mega-rowhouse mansions. By the turn of the 20th Century, a kick-ass row of commercial buildings covered the entire block, most of which lasted well into the 1970s.
The 700 block of Arch Street in 1959. From PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Philadelphia Department of Records.
Then the Bicentennial came. This was a time when the city was rife with a shitload of huge projects (most of them horrible-looking) and entire blocks were being cut clear with the anticipation of development that didn't come for 10, 20, 30 years and sometimes never. This lot is one of those "nevers."
To add insult to injury, the Center City Commuter Connection Tunnel was installed a block to the West, causing a multi-year upheaval in the neighborhood from which the area has never recovered.
Anyone who walks down Arch Street from the east or west wallows in the disappointment they find when reaching this location. Out-of-towners visiting Independence Mall are probably like "Oh, I can easily walk to Chinatown from here via Arch Street!" and then reach the Corduroy Lot and say, "Fuckin' Philly SUCKS!! I'm going back to Ardmore and starting my own Chinatown!!" and never return.
This is officially the worst part of the entirety of Arch Street — and that's saying something, considering the huge empty lot where the American Commerce Center was supposed to be built is also on Arch Street. If and when there is a revitalization of Market East, hopefully some of the unlikely success it has will leak a ways north and cause development of the Corduroy Building Lot. Maybe a massive expansion of the African American History Museum could take out a portion of this Pavement Sea. Shit, they could extend the Federal Prison across the street and into the lot and I'll be satisfied. Just do something!!! Goddammit!!
Yay for dirty corduroy!!
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