|
|
|
PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Jayne Estate Lot of Sorrow
This lot at Columbus Boulevard and Vine Street was more occupied when it was half river.
PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Jayne Estate Lot of Sorrow
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.
Columbus Boulevard between Vine and Water streets -- What a pathetic pile of shit. This particular piece of land has no excuse to be so empty. This thing was more occupied when it was half river. The past decade and some change marks the ONLY time this lot has been empty. Fucking horrible!!
This lot was one of the earliest settled areas of the city. Before there was even such a thing as Philadelphia, a few primordial Swedes called the western edge of this lot home. Water Street, on the lot's western side, was called that for a reason. Until the 1830s-'40s, Water was the closest street to the river and the lot was mostly river and small docks. Most notable among these docks was one called Mifflin's Wharf.
Once the land was filled in, the site held factories/warehouses and a row of residences lay at the northern edge. The lot was right next to the Vine Street Wharf, one of the most important piers in the city. Though this area was an important commercial distribution point for most of its life with plenty of its own interesting history, the really good shit didn't happen there until the legendary Dr. David Jayne died.
Dr. Jayne was a badass at selling patent medicines. He grew his company so large so fast that he was forced to build the country's (briefly) tallest office building to hold it (the subject of the first ever Philaphilia article). On top of being the best snake-oil salesman in history, he was also one of the city's first sleazy real estate developers. Think about it: a guy who was that good at selling crazy medicines MUST be pretty fucking adept at buying and selling real estate. At the time of his death in 1866, one of Dr. Jayne's speculative properties was the entire northern half of the site of this empty lot -- a property he purchased in 1841 but never touched. Jayne made a special order in his will to get the lot developed directly after his death.
In 1870, Jayne's goofy medicine company, which was still going strong, complied with the will's order and demolished the fuck out of the buildings there were there in order to build a gigantic factory/warehouse that they would call the Dr. D. Jayne & Sons Inc. Laboratory. This wasn't just any waterfront warehouse. While the others were just brick boxes lacking in design, this one would be work of the Grandmaster of Marble Dickkicks, John McArthur, Jr., who would later be the architect of City Hall.
Well into the 20th century, the building that would later become known as the Jayne Estate Building became a symbol of the entire Northern Delaware Commercial Warehouse District. While different tenants would come and go and the success of the District would ebb and flow, this four-story warehouse would keep going strong -- despite multiple fires and nearby demolition for the construction of the Ben Franklin Bridge.
 |
| A 70-year-old Jayne Estate Building on the right in this view from 1941, still carrying the ghost sign of Jayne's company. Image from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Department of Records. |
The Northern Delaware Commercial Warehouse District did very well until about WWII, then got its ass kicked in the 1960s by the early preparations for the construction of I-95. An aerial view from the highway construction period in 1989 shows this lot as one of the only ones in the immediate area to retain its old commercial warehouses. Even after almost every other building on the site was demolished, the Jayne Estate Building still stood.
Despite national historical registration and plans to turn the building into a waterfront hotel, the early 1990s saw the demolition of the Jayne Estate Building, creating the Jayne Estate Lot of Sorrow. The lot spent the next decade or so as just another surface parking lot along the waterfront. Then, in 2005, there was hope. A proposal for a massive modern condo building called the Marina View Towers came along to save the day.
 |
| I hate when they call a single building a plural name. Marina View TowerS? There's just one!! |
The anticipation for this was huge. For the entirety of the mid-00's real estate boom, it was considered an inevitable development. The lot was cleared of asphalt in 2006 and a rendering of the building was placed on the site (which is still there, faded as hell). Needless to say, it never happened. Six years later, the lot is overgrown, its temporary chain link fence tattered, and Water Street is broken as fuck. Nonetheless, there is hope on the horizon.
A new version of the Marina View Towers proposal has come along, this time quite a bit shorter and consisting of 180 apartments. The new building has been approved, despite whining by NIMBYs for being too cheap-looking, slightly non-compliant with their precious Master Plan for the Central Delaware and too tall by 30 feet (give me a fucking break).
 |
| Rendering of what will now be called Marina View Apartments. They should call it Jayne Estates. |
At this point, it appears that this shitty lot's days are numbered. Good luck to Ensemble Real Estate, the folks trying to get the new tower built. Its construction will bring the delicious taste of NIMBY tears to my tongue. Ok, so it's not the best-looking building ever, but for fuck's sake, beggars can't be choosy. Start building ... NOW.
 |
| Here, have an extra view of the Jayne Estate Building. This one is from 1953, taken from roughly the same location as the pic at the top of the article. Pic from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Department of Records. |
This is from Philadelphia’s Lost Waterfront(2011):
The spectacular waterfront conflagration on July 9, 1850, was the first great fire in Philadelphia’s history and the city’s most destructive inferno during the nineteenth century. It started at a five-story warehouse on the east side of Water Street, between Vine and Race, at what is approximately 237 North Water these days.
The fire began when pressed hay stored in an upper floor of the storehouse somehow combusted. This itself did not cause much alarm, but a number of violent explosions of saltpeter—stored in the warehouse’s basement—spread the fire. Burning hay and flaming embers from the blown-up building flew in all directions. Summer winds conveyed bits of smoldering sulfur (stored in an adjoining storehouse) all the way to Broad Street.
Very quickly, the ensuing fire reached southward to Race Street, westward to Second and northward past Callowhill. People who lived close by packed their things and prepared for a sudden evacuation. The city was at risk of a cataclysm that night. The light of the fire was seen for thirty miles around.
News of the blaze was telegraphed across the United States and was even later reported in Great Britain. More than one hundred firemen from New York City, Newark, Wilmington and Baltimore arrived by express train to relieve Philadelphia firefighters who had became exhausted by their exertions and the heat. This was probably the first American disaster in which technology—telegraphs and trains—were employed.
The inferno was subdued sometime during the night. At least twenty-eight lives were lost (accounts vary), including some killed in the street and in adjacent buildings as a consequence of the initial explosion. Others were trampled in the chaos. Yet others drowned in the Delaware River from the shock of the explosion or from purposefully jumping into the river to flee the calamity. Several firemen died, too.
— cchali
- 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
