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PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Chinatown College of Pharmacy Lot
On May 31, 1889, shit got real. The college acquired the old Aimwell School building and demolished the fuck out of it. A new addition was planned that would create a large presence on both 10th and Cherry Streets, finally exposing the campus to the world. You'd think that the College of Pharmacy would stay in a place like this forever, but no.
PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Chinatown College of Pharmacy 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.
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| From the Hutchinson Street side. |
139 N. 10th St. & 100 Block of North Hutchinson Street -- Here's another Chinatown lot that doesn't make any goddamn sense. Though it's actually three lots combined, the center property on this location has been a surface parking lot for more than 70 years. Though mostly hidden by buildings, any empty space in Chinatown becomes extremely conspicuous, due to the rest of the neighborhood's crowded nature.
The earliest known development on this site was from 1809. The First Dutch Reformed Church was one of several churches that had purchased land on Franklin Square from William Penn's greedy descendants for use as a burial ground. In 1795, the city finally put its foot down and took back the public squares from private ownership. The churches that were holding bodies there were all given new plots on city-owned land and the corpses were moved. A plot in the middle of the block bounded by Cherry, 10th, Race and Elwyn (now North Hutchinson) streets was given over to the First Dutch Reformed Church. It took until 1809 to get all the bodies moved. Almost immediately, the church hated the new burial plot. The land was wet and full of clay. Only family members of the bodies that were moved there contributed new corpses to the graveyard. In all, 614 people were interred there between 1809 and 1857.
By 1825, this area was not yet Chinatown, but Quakertown. Wealthy Quakers made this neighborhood their home. A Quaker named Ann Parrish, daughter of the guy Parrish Street is named after, purchased the Cherry Street-facing part of the burial ground and had a building constructed to house the Aimwell School. This school, which she was previously running out of her family home since 1796, instructed neglected/homeless girls as a primary and grammar school. The Aimwell School became relatively famous at this Cherry Street location, and was incorporated in 1859 as the Society for the Free Instruction of Females.
A few blocks away, over at 710 Zane (Filbert) Street, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy was scouting locations for a brand new campus. They had outgrown their little building, known simply as "the Hall," in 1832, but didn't get serious about a new location until 1867. Edward Parrish, a professor at the college, nephew of Ann Parrish and brother of Dilwyn Parrish, Vice-President of the college, discovered that the old First Dutch Reformed Church graveyard was for sale. This plot of land was much larger than the others they were looking at. On December 10th, 1867, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy purchased the land and had the bodies removed. By this point, the graveyard's property was irregularly shaped. The center of it was 86 feet by 132 feet, but had little thin segments that reached out to North 10th Street.
When the new building for the College of Pharmacy began construction on April 22, 1868, it was clear that whomever moved the bodies from the graveyard fucked up. Construction workers kept running into skeletons while digging for the foundation. The new $34,650 building opened on Oct. 7, 1868, two months before it was even finished. It was three stories and had an extension that led out to 10th Street, taking advantage of the fucked up shape of the land.
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| 10th Street entrance to the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. |
The location, in the center of a block, surrounded by other buildings, proved to be very successful due to how quiet the place was. Only six years after the new campus opened, the college had grown enough to justify another expansion. Properties along 10th Street and Elwyn (now North Hutchinson) Street were gradually acquired. In 1881, a hidden four-story addition was constructed. Then, on May 31, 1889, shit got real. The college acquired the old Aimwell School building and demolished the fuck out of it. A new addition was planned that would create a large presence on both 10th and Cherry Streets, finally exposing the campus to the world.
Dick-kicking mega-architect John T. Windrim was commissioned to design a new building that would take the college into the next century. He came back with a design that kicked their asses all the way down the street. After only 10 months of construction, the new and improved Philadelphia College of Pharmacy opened on Feb. 22, 1893.
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| 1868 section in the middle, 1881 addition on the right, 1893 John Windrim section on the left. |
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| Hooooollly shit!! Image from the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. |
You'd think that the College of Pharmacy would stay in a place like this forever, but FUCK NO. After less than 30 years at this location, the college, at this point called the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, started making plans to move to West Philadelphia, where they still exist today as part of the University of the Sciences.
Some time in the 1930s, the entire campus was eliminated and the empty lot was born, as a surface parking lot that took the entire corner of 10th and Cherry Streets. a massive architectural loss. An Esso gas station took over the lot in the mid '40s and used the middle section, the part that's still empty today, as a surface lot. On May 22, 1954, the city purchased the corner of the lot with the intention of building a new home for the Philadelphia Fire Department's Engine #20. It was built a few years later.
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| The Esso station on the lot right after the city purchased the land for the Engine Company #20. Image from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Department of Records. |
In 1983, the middle section of the empty lot was acquired and a four-story residential building was constructed on the northwestern section of the site. For the next decade, the lot was smaller than it had been since the early 1930s. Then, in the early '90s, it got bigger. The George F. Lasher Building, a great-looking midrise that was built just north of the College of Pharmacy at the turn of the 20th century, was demolished. A crappy little commercial building took its place, adding a massive parking lot to the already crappy surface lot.
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| Aerial view from Google showing the current configuration of the lot. |
Today, the combination of the fire station's rear parking lot at the corner of Cherry and Hutchinson, combined with the middle section, the site of the First Dutch Reformed Church graveyard/Philadelphia College of Pharmacy campus, combined with the parking lot of the crappy commercial building, creates one gigantic empty space in what should be the densest part of Chinatown. I'll tell you right now: it's not going anywhere. This will probably keep parking cars for the next 70 years. What a piece of shit. Why, oh why, did anyone ever demolish Windrim's College of Pharmacy building? Just think of all the great things that building could house today. FUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu ...
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| Check out this dragon: he's cursing out the empty lot. |
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| Obviously he's pissed ... he just blew fire at the entrance! |
That's a lion, not a dragon. He's believed to bring good luck and fortune to the business he dances in front of. Of course, replacing the empty lot with something awesome definitely counts as good luck and fortune, IMO.— Bob Bruhin
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