|
|
|
PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Chinatown Schoolhouse Lot
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Chinatown Schoolhouse 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.
1020-26 Cherry St. -- What the fuck? The small area that is the main part of Chinatown (not the North part or Western piece above the Convention Center) is so goddamn crowded that old buildings are getting additional floors tacked on top just to make everyone fit. Nonetheless, there's an assload of surface parking lots scattered all over this little district. Here's the story of just one of them.
This is yet another lot that was way more occupied in 1850 than it is now. Back then, a large lawn filled most of the lot, with a squat two-story rectangular building toward the back. This little building was rented by the primordial School District of Philadelphia and used as a co-ed primary school. The tiny street behind it, now called the 1000 block of Appletree Street, was the original Academy Street, probably named so to describe the school that sat on the site of the lot. Nowadays, the same name (as Academy Road) is used to describe a major arterial in the "Great" Norfeast.
In 1870, the School District got tired of renting this crappy little building so they purchased the lot and built a brand new school building to take the old one's place. They named it the John Agnew School. The design was a common one for the city's schools in that era. This was one of many by architect Lewis H. Esler, who served as the Superintendent of Public School Buildings and Repairs from 1869-1883.
 |
| The John Agnew School as it appeared in 1897. Source: Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project |
The Agnew School started as a boys' primary, then added a girls' primary and a co-ed secondary school a few years later. How the hell did they fit all that into this little building? This school later became pretty well known among Philly's many public schools. Not for academics or extracurriculars, but because of its shitty condition. This place was considered the single worst school facility in the whole district.
In 1890, rats had taken over the building. They made such a large hole in the cellar that it became constantly flooded with foul-smelling water. A leak under the boys' urinal lasted for the ENTIRE 1890s, making the entire property stink of piss. The classrooms on the first floor had no natural light and no outdoor space for the children. Unsurprisingly, the Agnew School had the highest rate of contagious diseases of any building in the system.
After talking about it for close to a decade, the School District finally threw a few bucks at the school in 1902 to get this shit fixed. $8,000 was spent fixing up the place while the lot next door, 1020 Cherry Street, was purchased to provide a small amount of outdoor space. Five years later, the Agnew School would take on a new distinction. It became the city's first-ever community center.
Superintendent Martin Grove Brumbaugh was intent on turning the School District of Philadelphia into a morality-endorsing agent of social change. He said, "Nothing will more quickly break up more bad habits and tendencies to lawlessness than social centers, where children, under wise guidance, are given such a moral uplift as to make them hunger for the cleaner and the sweeter, and the better things of life." He wanted schools in the shittiest neighborhoods to start offering evening and weekend programs so that kids would grow up with useful skills and proper morals. On Jan, 22, 1907, the John Agnew School became the first "social center," holding classes in woodwork, brasswork, basketry, gymnastics, sewing, and music. All current community centers are descendants of this first social center.
Around the time of the Sesquicentennial in 1926, the School District built a shitload of large school buildings to replace these little dinky schools from the Esler era. Most of the ones built from this time are still in use today. It's not clear when the old Agnew School was razed and this crappy surface lot was born, but it definitely happened before 1942. That makes this lot AT LEAST 70 years old.
Currently, the lot is a pile of dirty ass-shit. Its location is ideal, tucked behind some old buildings on 11th Street right next to the eastern end of the Great Wall of Pennsylvania a.k.a. the Pennsylvania Convention Center. It was purchased by a new owner in December of 2010 for $2.7 milllion, a high price for 7,400-square-foot patch of asphalt. After so many decades, there's no reason not to build an awesome building here. Plans exist for a new Chinatown Community Center/apartment building at 10th and Vine. Wouldn't it be cool if they tried to squeeze the same building in this lot, the same location as the city's first-ever community center? Oh well, fuck it... and fuck this lot!
 |
| Here's a pic from the early days of the surface lot in 1944. There it is on the right. Image from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Department of Records. |
- ActiVman
- adventures
- Arts
- Ask A Man-About-Town
- Award Tour
- Awards
- Bad Idea Factory
- Beer
- Below the Curve
- Bikes
- Booze
- Brian Hickey
- BRT
- Budget
- Budget Fuss
- Business
- Casinos
- City Council
- City Hall
- CouncilMANIC
- CP Abroad
- CP in the Community
- Criminal Justice System
- Day Tripper
- Death and Taxes
- Delaware River
- Design
- DROP
- Drugs
- Dubious Distinction
- Elections
- End of Days
- Environment
- Fashion
- Film Fest
- Financial Meltdown
- FrackTrack
- Free Library
- Gambling
- Gay Stuff
- Get Lit
- Greenstorming
- guns
- Hall Monitor
- Health
- Health Care
- Hello, Kitty
- Holidays
- Ice Cubes
- Iggles
- Immigration
- In Memoriam
- Labor
- Lawsuits
- Letters
- LGBTQ
- Maps
- Marcellus Shale
- Media
- MMA
- Mummers
- Music
- MUST READ
- Mysterious Mysteries
- Nation
- News
- Non Sequitur
- Opinion
- PA politics 2010
- Parking Wars
- Parks and Recreation
- People Send Us This Stuff
- Philadelphia Police
- Philadelphia Union
- Philaphemera
- Philly From Scratch
- philly madness
- Photos
- Poverty
- PPA
- President Obama
- Print Edition
- Prisons
- Protest
- Readers Write
- Real Estate
- Rock Bottom
- Schools
- Science
- Screwing Philly
- SEPTA
- snow
- So Lush
- Soccer
- Sporting Life
- Sports Complex
- State Politicians
- State Politics
- Street Art
- Strike
- Stuff We Like
- Taxes
- Taxi Drivers
- Tech Fetish
- television
- The Budget Crisis
- The City Paper
- The CLOG
- The Human Condition
- The Mayor
- The Phightin Phils
- The World
- Things that make you go hm
- Tinfoil Hats Off
- Under the Table
- Under the Tables
- Urban Development
- Urban Planning
- urban wildlife
- Video Poker
- We Call Shenanigans
- Weather
- Web Junk
- Weekend Omnibus
- White House
- What We've Found
- Women's Issues
- Flyered Up!
- How 'Bout That Weather?
- it's always sunny in philadelphia
- Stu!
- Shopping
- get out
- 10-track mind
- ArtsFlash
- Bloggity
- Bruce Being Bruce
- Colleges
- Comedy
- Gigantic Surprises
- Hello Canary
- Hello Puppy
- errata
- get lost
- Inside The Fishbowl
- Library Closings
- Local Support
- Movies
- Murder
- Night Moves
- Recycling
- radio
- Scientology
- Sex
- Sixers
- Skeeze Police
- State Politicians Screwing Philly
- That's a cool stencil!
- Theater
- Things We See
- This Week
- This Week in Oates
- University City
- WIN
- What we don't heart
- trailer!
- what we heart
- Feeling Guilty
- Askadelphia.
- Broke in Philly
- Contest
- Dance
- Dear Paper Doll
- Do A Good Thing
- Education
- Film Fest Schism
- G20-20 Vision
- Goodbye
- Gossip
- Great American Heroes
- PATCO
- Pearl Jam Week
- Puppy
- Stars of the Photostream
- sustainability
- Lower Merion Webcam-Gate
- The Cycle
- Equality Forum
- Bureaucrat of the Week
- Animals
- ElectionEar
- Photostream
