This project will include a two-day workshop focusing on the plight and potential of urban religious properties. Churches have long been a focus of interest among preservationists. Visual and social anchors of their neighborhood, these structures present special challenges and opportunities, both for congregations that wish to remain in them and as potential adaptive reuse projects.
Philadelphia Churches: Plight & Potential Tickets, Philadelphia – Eventbrite.
I can barely believe this is really happening!
Thanks to Gary Rubin and Flo Dallas.
I can barely believe this is really happening!
Thanks to Gary Rubin and Flo Dallas.
Face meet egg: Yesterday, Philadelphia Weekly reported that there was a tentative plan to pave over the rail tracks on 11th and 12th Streets in Center City, from Market to South Streets, this fall. That information came directly from Keisha McCarty-Skelton, Public Relations Supervisor at the Philadelphia Streets Dept., by email, who confirmed said information with an engineer on the project.
McCarty-Skelton now tells PW that the streets will be paved, but the tracks will remain!
Philadelphia’s threatened Church of the Assumption. Credit: Jonathon Much, Much Photography
Next City is hosting a live blog of the 2013 Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference, now ongoing in Philadelphia.
Zach Patten of Curbed Philly contributed to this story.
The Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference turned its eye to preservation at an afternoon session on Tuesday, with panelists exploring how shrinking cities and neighborhoods can become more desirable and healthier places to live.
Demolition versus rehabilitation was the crux of the conversation. While stressing the importance of educating the public about a neighborhood’s historic assets, the panelists made it clear that preservationists advocating for rehabilitation must convey why redevelopment is better than teardowns.
From what we understand, the property will be going to auction in November. No word on an opening bid price, but we’d have to imagine it will be lower than the $7M+ number the owners were seeking when it was previously on the market. We had never heard of Maltz Auctions before, but they apparently run auctions all over the country.
Independence Press Building Should Be Sold This Year | NakedPhilly.
SEPTA’s Spring Garden stop along the Broad-Ridge spur isn’t architecturally unique. It has barrel vaulted concrete ceilings, steel I-beams supporting the street above, and the Broad-Ridge line passes by it every day. What is unique, the train doesn’t stop.
At 12th & Spring Garden, the southwest corner features a property that looks positively awful, as our friend GroJLart wrote in the City Paper this spring (though we’ve hyperlinked his story, the link now curiously doesn’t work). It’s the site of a derelict former car repair shop that looks like it’s a Hollywood representation of a gas station after the bombs fell. It’s right across the street from the still-gorgeous Church of the Assumption, which continues to stand despite the probability of demolition in the name of development.
Blight and Vacancy at Two Corners of 12th & Spring Garden | NakedPhilly.
Pennsylvania Ballet made a historical move into the Louise Reed Center for Dance on North Broad Street this year. This new facility will take us into our next 50 years. #paballet50
“We did have to ultimately remove all of the existing landscape that was up there to go down to the bare structure. We waterproof it, redo the drainage system. Actually, the single most expensive part of the project was repainting the structure. It had originally been painted in lead paint. So, it had to be put in containment units and all sandblasted, primed, and repainted. It was the single biggest part of the job.”
-on the High Line