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PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Asbury Essex Penn Lot
PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Asbury Essex Penn Lot
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.
3311-3359 Chestnut St. -- What the fuck, man? The University of Pennsylvania was actually using buildings on this lot, but then fucked it all up! How the hell does that happen? Though there are plans to make this lot better, for now, it remains an asphalt ocean of shitslices consisting of two different surface parking lots.
The first piece of development on this property was connected to the last. The Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church was the oldest Methodist congregation in West Philadelphia. Though loosely organized in 1818, they were not able to have their own property, which is on the site of this lot, until 1827. They worshipped in an old schoolhouse on the lot until their first church building was finished in 1830. For decades, the old church was the only building on the entire block, bounded by Cramond (33rd Street), Moore (34th), Ludlow (Oak), and Chestnut (Chestnut, duh) Streets. The church faced Oak Street.
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The lot from the Ludlow Street side as it appeared in 1827--filled with way more urban exuberance than it has in 2013. Image from the 1903 book West Philadelphia Illustrated. |
The place was so successful by 1849 that the original church, built for a congregation of 70, wasn't cutting the mustard. The land around the church was purchased and an addition was built that faced Chestnut Street from behind the Church's burial ground. After another three decades, the addition wasn't enough. A brand new church was planned that would keep the congregation satisfied for the rest of its existence. They moved the bodies out of the burial ground and constructed a grand $80,000, 800-seat church that held Sunday school classrooms and apartments for trustees. They liked the new place so much that they sold off the old church, which was later altered beyond recognition into a machine shop.
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The new church. Image from West Philadelphia Illustrated. |
The new church stood for the next 114 years. In the 1930s, it became known as the Asbury University Church. In the 1990s, Penn became interested in this building, probably because it stood between Penn and Drexel property. Unlike previous expansions, when they've mowed down whole blocks of historic buildings, this one would be more special. They were going to adaptively re-use the old church by turning it into an academic building, Penn's new Graduate School of Fine Arts. On March 9, 1997, while the church was being renovated, a fire broke out and the whole place burned down.
Thats not the only sad story on this lot. The corner of 34th and Chestnut on this lot used to hold a fancy apartment house. Built in 1900, the Essex, which shares its name with like seven or eight other buildings in the city's history, was in its day the finest piece of apartment living you could find in West Philadelphia for the three years until Hamilton Court was built. A five-room apartment complete with bathroom, pantry, reception hall, mahogany floors, and roof garden access would run you about $65 a month.
In the early 1920s, the growing numbers of female students at Penn caused the university to search for a new building to use as a women's dorm. The four consecutive rowhomes the school was calling a "woman's dorm" since 1913 were no longer adequate. They purchased the Essex in 1924 and converted it for dormitory use, re-naming it Hannah E. Sargeant Hall.
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What a cool building! |
Penn made use of the old Essex until 1971 and then demolished the fuck out of it in 1975, giving birth to the first incarnation of this empty lot. Though the lot got smaller once that shitbag parking garage was built, the burning down of the Asbury Church brought the shitty lot to its current size.
This lot didn't used to seem like such a big deal. Until 2006, there was a gigantic 20-year-old surface lot across 34th Street. Once Domus was built there, this piece of shit started to look much more voluminus. Unlike other empty lots I've told you about, this one actually MIGHT have a future. Penn's current master plan has a building planned for this location, only known as "34th and Chestnut Mixed-Use."
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There it is!! |
Whatever "34th and Chestnut Mixed-Use" is, it's not going to happen until the far future. The new dorm across the street hasn't even started yet, and it's much further along. Oh well. At least there's SOMETHING planned for this piece of shit. Drexel also has plans to demolish and replace the crappy building that stands just to the east of this lot, which itself has a surface lot. Therefore, some time in the 27th century, all the space on this block will be filled.
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| Parking lot with a Parking Garage. What the crap!?! |
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