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PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Archdiocese Lot
For the last 40 years, this lot, which had a perfectly good historical building on it, has been sitting empty at 17th and Vine, collecting dust (and cars).
PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Archdiocese Lot
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena around Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
Southwest corner of 17th and Vine streets -- You can gussy it up with all the trees and statues you want, but it's still a shitty surface parking lot. For the last 40 years, this lot, which had a perfectly good historical building on it, has been sitting empty, collecting dust (and cars). This lot needs a future ... and fast.
This lot started its development life in the mid 19th century as a row of five super-gigantic rowmansions. These huge fuckers, 36 feet wide, were half of a small group of such houses that flanked the long lost 1700 block of Summer Street. In 1872, the Philadelphia Orthopedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases moved into 1701 Summer St., the easternmost of the row.
This hospital was the only one in the region that served patients with physical deformities and worked as a discovery point for new kinds of human variation. Say you had a horn growing out of your ass: you would go there to get treatment while being looked over by the region's top Asshornologists. It was also one of the first hospitals to study neuroscience, something so new at the time that they might as well have been studying The Coming of Tan as far as anyone was concerned.
The hospital grew quickly. They bought 1703 Summer, the house next door, and contracted Dick-Kicking Architect of Doom Theophilius Parsons Chandler to design a 100-bed hospital building for them in 1886-'87. After it was complete, it was already too small for the ever-growing organization. They acquired house after house on the northern half of the rowmansion complex to keep up. 1705 Summer in 1892, 1709 in 1896, and 1707 in 1902. After that, they spent two years constructing a block-long addition to the Chandler-designed building, this time designed by the architectural tag-team of G.W. and W.D. Hewitt.
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The hospital on the lot in 1909. |
In 1938, the Philadelphia Orthopedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases would be absorbed by the University of Pennsylvania and move out of the building. The structure then became home to Doctor's Hospital for the rest of the building's life. Across Summer Street, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was using the remaining houses in the mega-mansion row for offices.
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| The row-estates before they were church offices. Told you they were huge. Image from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Department of Records. |
In 1971, the 189-foot Archdiocesan Office Building was built on the site of the old mansion/church office row. Back then, nobody gave a shit about requiring such a large building to have underground parking, so they were able to knock the old Orthopedic Hospital building down and use the land for a surface parking lot for it and the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul ... for the next 41 years. Today, the lot is one of many in the area, and is adjacent to the Vine Street Expressway. Trees and statues decorate the place, along with a fancy gate ... but a surface lot is a surface lot is a surface lot.
C'mon Archdiocese, can't you use this land for something else? It's across the street from a large hotel and around the corner from the newly renovated Sister Cities Park. A parking garage would be better than this shitty pile of asphalt. The new Mormon Temple is about to be built within sight of this thing. Are you gonna let the Mormons see this embarrassing car desert? Better yet, sell the land. You sure could use the money right now. Sell to some developer that will build something nice there. It's been over four decades: put this damn lot out of its misery!
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| The remnant of the 1700 block of Summer Street is now the entrance to the lot. |
It was torn down later than 1971. I was born there in July of '72, and it closed within the next year. Late '72 or early '73.— Lionel
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