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PHILAPHILIA Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week: UPenn Revlon Center
The University of Pennsylvania is responsible for so many Dead-Ass Proposals that they could probably publish a series of books about them. Some, like the Perelman-funded Revlon Center designed for 36th and Walnut, fell apart at the last minute.
PHILAPHILIA Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week: UPenn Revlon Center
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
North-facing view of Revlon Cente, with Walnut Street in foreground.
3601 Walnut St. -- The University of Pennsylvania is responsible for so many Dead-Ass Proposals that they could probably publish a series of books about them and not be able to cover them all. Some were just visionary, like Fuckminster Fuller's design for the Institute of Contemporary Art, while others, like this one, were planned down to the last detail before going to shit.
It all began in the fall of 1988, when mega-bazillionaire and Penn grad Ronald O. Perelman donated $10 million to the school. At this point, it was the largest gift Penn had ever received. The money was earmarked for a "multi-purpose campus center" that would be installed somewhere on the campus. The new center was slated to include offices, meeting rooms, restaurants, performance space, a new bookstore (something sorely needed at the time) and a movie theater. Since Perelman was the CEO of Revlon Group, Inc., and the money was technically coming from the Revlon Foundation, the new complex would be called the Revlon Center.
Of course, you can't have a project in Philadelphia without a shitload of people rallying against it. What was the biggest concern? The name. Many saw it as commercialization of the campus, a way for Revlon to advertise in perpetua. Some feared that all future Penn construction would be named after companies. Hustler School of Business, Walmart Quadrangle, Bain Capital Auditorium. This is what they were afraid of. People were also pissed off about how the place was going to have stores and restaurants. Some folks thought that Penn's campus was sacred and was going to be turned into a shopping center.
Then there was the location. At the time, a very conspicuous surface parking lot filled the entire area bounded by 36th, 37th, Sansom and Walnut streets. It was a vertigial leftover from the 1960s and '70s, when gigantic surface lots surrounded the Penn campus as a way of buffering it from the once-shitty neighborhood that was adjacent to the school. The completion of the Revlon Center would extend the campus north and fill a void that had been there for decades. Seems logical, right? Well, it made some people flip their shit. Some thought it would take the social center of campus away from where it had been for over a century.
In October of 1990, Penn shut everybody the fuck up, at least about the name. The Board of Trustees, of which Perelman is one, voted unanimously and without discussion to officially name the place the Revlon Center. After all, the biggest donor gets to name the place. Perelman could have called it "Muh Dick" and no one could've stood in his way. Designs for the complex were put together by NYC's Kohn Pedersen Fox, creators of one of the city's greatest-looking buildings, the Mellon Bank Center. One of the main architects working on the project was a Penn grad himself, so plenty of care went into the design to make it both look awesome and match the rest of the campus (and not the crappy 1960s parts).
The 200,000-square-foot complex would feature a massive cylindrical building (this is before the Wharton School was built, so it was a new idea) with a bunch of other buildings sticking out of it. A large public space was placed in front with ramps, green space and other shit. The complex would also be emblazoned with a super-gigantic Penn coat of arms, and 36th Street would be shut down between Walnut and Sansom in order to help integrate the space into the campus. Now all the school needed was $20 million more to get it built.
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| A portion of the western half of the complex. |
The money was slow in coming. Years went by and the Revlon Center became known as "that new thing they're going to build but still haven't" for an entire generation of Penn students. Finally, at the end of 1993, construction began on that big fucking parking garage at the corner of 38th and Walnut, intended to serve the new Center. Penn announced that construction on the center itself would begin in early 1995 and be completed one year later.
Even after all that, the debate over the location was still irking planners at Penn. In January of 1997, they decided to throw the money at improving the original center of campus instead. Perelman was actually pretty cool with the idea and doubled his original donation to get the project going. Today, the result of this is called Perelman Quadrangle. The surface lot at 36th/37th/Walnut/Sansom would finally see construction in 1997-1998, giving us the Sansom Common (later called University Square) that sits there today. The only similarity between this and the Revlon Center is the placement of the bookstore.
The Revlon Center, as goofily named as it was, would be a pretty cool thing to have around today. Unlike other dead proposals, the non-happening of this complex isn't such a big deal. At least this one's original intent came to fruition, albeit in a different form. The Penn campus is a continuously changing development animal; this was just one of an ASSLOAD of other proposals Penn never got away with.
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