{"id":1553,"date":"2011-12-01T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=1553"},"modified":"2021-04-12T17:38:49","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T21:38:49","slug":"back-to-basics-at-logan-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2011\/12\/back-to-basics-at-logan-square\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to Basics at Logan Square"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\"Purchase <\/a> \"View <\/a>
\nParkway from Bell Telephone Building – 17th and Arch Streets, February 7, 1919.<\/span><\/div>\n

No matter how welcomed and honored they may be, guests just don\u2019t get to call the shots. It\u2019s a basic law of hospitality. About a century ago, when planners exercised \u201cexcellent ruthlessness\u201d sacrificing an entire rowhouse neighborhood<\/a> and leafy park<\/a> at Logan Square to welcome the automobile into the city, folks hoped for the best in what would eventually become a difficult, if not doomed relationship.<\/p>\n

OK, it\u2019s true: driving the Benjamin Franklin Parkway makes for one heck of an entrance to a city<\/a>, maybe any city anywhere.\u00a0 Space collapses with a touch of the gas pedal.\u00a0 City Hall rises up as the Art Museum fades in the rear-view mirror. Never before or since had a city and a machine found such amicable terms. Philadelphia embraced the automobile, as Ed Bacon used to say, as \u201can honored guest.\u201d\u00a0 But where is it written that the city also had to turn over naming rights to the petroleum philistine?<\/p>\n

Logan Square has been victimized, again and again, by the automobile. To create a sweeping vista<\/a>, an axis connecting City Hall and Fairmount, to enable a unique urban driving experience on it, Parkway designer Jacques Gr\u00e9ber expanded the Square westward to 20th Street, doing away with one street, West Logan Square, and demolishing a block of fifty-five houses.\u00a0 Then, with a landscaper’s sleight-of-hand, Gr\u00e9ber carved out an off-center circle<\/a> and created on it the illusion of centrality with a giant obelisk.<\/p>\n

The obelisk gave way to the eye-catching Swann Memorial Fountain<\/a><\/em> by architect Wilson Eyre and sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder. But not everyone was taken in. As Jane Jacobs put it in The Death and Life of Great American Cities<\/em>, the square \u201chas been whittled to a small traffic island\u201d adorned by a \u201cgreat soaring fountain\u201d that\u2019s mostly \u201can elegant amenity for those speeding by.\u201d\u00a0 Pedestrian visitors knew as well, from both reality and name, they <\/em>were the guests here, on a purpose-built traffic island, maybe the most glorified one in history.<\/p>\n

And if a multi-lane traffic circle<\/a> wasn\u2019t harsh reality enough, in the third quarter of the 20th century, Logan Square\u2019s entire northern side was given over to a sunken expressway<\/a>.\u00a0 Long before then, the name change from Logan Square to Logan Circle had driven home the fact that this place no longer existed in the spirit of its 17th-century designers. Logan Circle was now about its capacity to funnel automobiles into the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs all the asphalt around Logan Circle really necessary?\u201d asks the Project for Public Spaces, which included Logan Circle in its Great Public Places “Hall of Shame<\/a>.” PPS suggests how to fix the place, and folks have begun<\/em> to pay attention.\u00a0 But those changes will cost us.<\/p>\n

Why wait?\u00a0 We can take a first, important step in the journey to recognize and reclaim the authenticity at hand. We have here a great square, albeit one with a circle in it.\u00a0 The place should be named for what it offers<\/em> pedestrians, not how it yields to the automobile.\u00a0\u00a0 A name change, and the change of mind that will accompany it, will cost nothing.\u00a0 It’s time, once again, to call a square a square.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parkway from Bell Telephone Building – 17th and Arch Streets, February 7, 1919. No matter how welcomed and honored they may be, guests just don\u2019t get to call the shots. It\u2019s a basic law of hospitality. About a century ago, when planners exercised \u201cexcellent ruthlessness\u201d sacrificing an entire rowhouse neighborhood and leafy park at Logan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}