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PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: South Street Bridge Lot
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PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: South Street Bridge 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.
600 Block of Schuylkill Ave. -- Hopefully this lot is only temporary. While I've informed you about empty lots that have been empty for over 80 years, this one is only about two years old. That shit doesn't matter. This lot still has no damn excuse to exist and there's a possibility that this patch of dog dung may last for decades to come.
This pile of dirt started its development life as ... a pile of dirt. In the 1860s, this lot consisted of three piers that stuck out into the Schuylkill. A few little buildings dotted the site, which was bounded by the diagonal corner of Sutherland (now Schuylkill) Avenue and a pre-South Street Bridge South Street that ran west of Chippewa (now 27th) Street.
Things changed for the site of the lot in the late 1880s, when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad constructed the Schuylkill River East Side Railroad on some landfill along the east side of the river (hence the name). This extended the land on the lot as far out into the river as the old piers used to be. In 1895, the Electric Traction Company, a short-lived trolley operator, ran six electrical cables under the Schuylkill that came back above ground on the site of this lot. These lines would power the company's South and Lombard Street trolley loop. A small building that housed the emergence of these cables was built on the site. Another empty lot, the parking lot of the fancy-ass Philadelphia School on the 2500 block of Lombard, is all that remains of the Trolley Car Repair House that supported the same trolley route.
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| This 40-plus-year-old parking zoo is a second cousin to the South Street Bridge Lot. |
The Lombard/South trolley line stayed in operation through the 1910s, controlled by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company after 1896. By 1920, the old trolley power hut on the site of the empty lot was taken over by Anderson and York Plumbing and Air Conditioning. In 1931, they had the architecture firm of Ketcham and McQuade design additions for both the east and west sides of the old power house. The company would stay there well into the late 20th century.
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The old Power House with 1930s additions, as seen in 1949. Pic from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Deparment of Records. |
By time the Springfield Beer Distributor opened up on the site, the old powerhouse building looked like shit. It served as an entranceway/sign-holder for the beer distributor in its final years of life. Once the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia bought the site in 2009, the building had become a major piece of blight in a neighborhood already called "Devil's Pocket."
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The Anderson/York Plumbing and Air Conditioning addition to the Electric Traction Company Power House as photographed by the Google Street View car in August, 2009. |
The little building was knocked down in early 2011, creating the lot as we see it today. CHoP just recently installed a weird little box on the lot that is a mock-up of all the facade pieces that will be on their new building, which is under construction across the river. They plan to build a super-massive complex that includes this lot and the old Marine Corp munitions and tank factory site nearby — 1.35 million square feet of usable space including 1,350 parking spots in a bunch of garages. Retail, green space and an extension of the Schuylkill River Trail are part of the plan.
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There it is in the middle. |
OK, so what's the big deal about this lot? Phase One, covering this space, is supposed to be complete in 2017, so the lot should only last a total of six years, right? Well, that's only if this whole plan works out. In the last decade and change, many high-end homes have been built in the neighborhood closeby, bringing scores of new NIMBYs that have already started to wield their powers to alter or put a stop to this new and exciting development. The story is a familiar pattern that often leads to a decades-long empty space that will never go away. Hopefully, that won't happen for this toddler of an empty lot and we can say "sayonara" to this shitbag soon. Don't get your fucking hopes up.
"...a major piece of blight in a neighborhood already called "Devil's Pocket" isn't quite right. That neighborhood is Schuylkill. The Devil's Pocket is at the other end of Schuylkill Avenue.— jr1- "Schuykill" is a modern name made up by real estate agents. Devil's Pocket officially starts below Lombard.— GroJLart
- I guess it depends on how you define modern. I grew up there in the 60s, that area has always been Schuylkill. My 89 year old aunt who still lives there would be surprised to find that she lives in the Pocket.— jr1
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