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PHILAPHILIA Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week: World Forum for Science and Human Affairs
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.
PHILAPHILIA Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week: World Forum for Science and Human Affairs
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.
3601 Market St. -- Ever wonder why the University City Science Center can't seem to fill up all its space in the 47 years since it opened? Well, it would all be filled in right now if this project right here got built. The World Forum for Science and Human Affairs wasn't just any hotel/conference center complex. It was designed to make West Philadelphia be a science and humanity crossroads for the WORLD.
In 1973, after spending two decades getting off the ground, the University City Science Center finally started turning out a surplus. The original plan for the center always was meant to include a hotel/conference component for all the smart motherfuckers who worked there to have more contact with other genius-brains across the world. Now that there was this surplus, it was time to get the ball rolling on getting the motherfucker built. In August of 1973, Chairman of the Board Paul Cupp announced that a brand-new science-related megaplex would be built on Market Street between 36th and 38th that would host the greatest minds of the world during Philadelphia's upcoming bicentennial events in 1976. The architect was to be the Great Satan of Philadelphia architecture, the firm of Mitchell/Giurgola.
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A very early model of the World Forum, before it was even called that. This photo of the model is the only surviving rendering of the project. Pic from the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project. |
This double-block-long juggernaut would have a 700-room hotel, meeting rooms of all sizes, restaurants, retail, parking garages, and to top it all off, facilities for instant translation of foreign languages. The place would also include the most modern telecommunications and computer-related equipment 1973 had to offer (to put that into context, the Ethernet method of network connection had just been invented four months earlier).
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The Xerox Alto, the most awesome computer in existence in 1973. It was considered to be advanced as fuck because it had... a monitor. |
They were originally going to call it the Center for the Transfer of Information and Convention Center, but by 1973 they decided to call it the World Forum for Science and Human Affairs. The $24 million project was expected to employ 15,000 people. Almost immediately, the project went to shit. The UCSC just couldn't scrounge up the $24 million in time to complete the Forum before the Bicentennial, so they said "fuck it".
In November of 1979, after a period of massive growth for the UCSC, the idea came back to light; this time for REAL. They were able to get a new developer, NYC's Rockefeller Center Realty, and switched the architect to the firm of Geddes, Brecher, Qualls, & Cunningham. The new design pared the project down to less than half the hotel rooms and way less conference space. Instead of 15,000 permanent jobs, the center was now advertising that it would only 300; literally one fiftieth of the previous amount.
Then came the NIMBYs. Local neighborhood residents thought that Penn was extending its reach too far into the 'hood (though Penn is only one of the many institutions that works with the Science Center) and that the World Forum would create too much traffic. On top of that, local hotels NIMBY'd up, fearing that the hotel component would take all of their business away. Rockefeller Center Realty put the project on hold in early 1980 in order to conduct a feasibility study.
Five years later, the UCSC was tired of waiting for Rockefeller to get its shit together, so they switched developers, going to Batlimore's Cordish Embry Associates instead. The University of Pennsylvania was sick of waiting as well, so they planned their own conference center that would serve nearly the same purpose. This caused Cordish Embry to lose their shit and sue Penn in August of 1985 for fucking over everybody involved. This put the project on hold for another year. Eventually, Cordish, the UCSC and Penn were able to settle the matter. UPenn promised that their new conference center (later called the Steinberg Conference Center) would only host conferences and events planned by the University.
The next hurdle was money. The pricetag on the World Forum kept going up: $21 million, then $24 million, then $30 million, then $40 million. By the start of 1987, Yorkridge-Calvert Savings & Loan of Pikesville, Maryland agreed to foot the bill. The UCSC would also get a "float loan" from the city to start construction "no later than Spring 1988". Needless to say, it never happened.
After that, the project went kaput. By this point, plans for the Pennsylvania Convention Center were well on their way so I'm guessing that's the reason this plan got fucked. In addition to that, despite 16 years of planning, the World Forum never actually got any official approvals from the city. In the end, we're probably better off. The two largest projects that Geddes, Brecher, Qualls, & Cunningham designed for this city, the GlaxoSmithKline Building and the infamous Roundhouse are both being abandoned by their intended occupants. If you want a good idea of how their version of the World Forum would look like today (if it was built), check out their Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex.
The University City Science Center started building on the Forum's site in the 1990s with the construction of the super-short 3615 Market. 3701 Market was added in 2000, 3711 Market in 2010. The two remaining spaces on the World Forum's site are about to be filled. Construction has recently begun on 3737 Market and a proposal for a residential tower has come along for 3601 Market.
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3737 Market |
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| 3601 Market |
OK, so they're not the best-looking buildings ever, but it's good to know that the entire site of the World Forum will now be filled. Yet, plenty of empty UCSC lots remain. Had the Forum been built, the entire Science Center campus would be built up by now. Nonetheless, one less brutalist concrete monstrosity in this city is worth the wait.
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