{"id":4697,"date":"2013-05-09T11:07:52","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T15:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=4697"},"modified":"2013-05-13T07:28:34","modified_gmt":"2013-05-13T11:28:34","slug":"lower-schuylkill-the-upside-of-phillys-underside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2013\/05\/lower-schuylkill-the-upside-of-phillys-underside\/","title":{"rendered":"Lower Schuylkill: The Upside of Philly’s Underside"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Penrose Avenue Bridge, October 4, 1951. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a shame no one has anything good to say about the drive from Philadelphia International Airport to Center City. It\u2019s a gritty but grand entrance, this ride on PA 291, aka the Penrose Avenue Bridge, aka the Platt Memorial Bridge to US 76, aka the Schuylkill Expressway\u2014a ride punctuated by the usual roadwork, billboards, questionable signage and occasional pothole. Those<\/em> features are found just about anywhere. What makes this stretch truly special is the rich urban choreography visible from atop the viaduct of concrete pylons rising above the brackish marsh. That<\/em> scene offers complex and meaningful drama.<\/p>\n

I feel sorry for those who go out of their way to avoid Philadelphia\u2019s gritty entrance. They miss the point.<\/p>\n

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Platt Memorial (formerly Penrose Avenue) Bridge – Underside. November 30, 1951. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Platt Memorial Bridge experience is considered an embarrassing nuisance. Hosts of out-of-town guests apologize for it. Hospitality hates it. The Inquirer<\/a><\/em> has called it a \u201cgrimy industrial gateway \u2026 arching over sprawling oil tanks and\u2026 steaming stacks.\u201d Most Philadelphians consider this entrance the worst of our worst, but it may actually be the best of our best.<\/p>\n

Arriving via the Platt is a genuine and aesthetic Philadelphia experience. It\u2019s an everyman, everywoman, everyday encounter for those in the 56,000 vehicles that pass over this 1.7-mile, 62-year-old bridge. Sure, as the Inky<\/em> says, it \u201cbegins in weeds and ends by a junkyard\u201d but that\u2019s the beauty and the irony of it. By traversing the bridge in our cars, we\u2019re threading a needle, that fragile zone in time and space between refined gasoline and crushed cars. Our reason for passing through breathes life into the scene and gives it a reason for being.<\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not beautiful in the traditional sense, but we need<\/em> this stuff. And isn\u2019t Philadelphia at its best when it\u2019s averse to pretense? We\u2019re barreling along, there\u2019s a sewage treatment on our right, an oil refinery on our left\u2014plumes of smoke, gas flares burning effluent high above the natural no man\u2019s land below. This <\/em>scene is nearly entirely man made, taking place above the loneliest and least welcoming stretch of the meandering Schuylkill, two miles beyond the last bit of green at Bartram\u2019s Gardens. This is about the automobile and its victory in the 20th-century city. As drivers, we\u2019re offered a commanding straight shot to and from the city. Rising over the crest <\/a>of the Platt Bridge may is among the most dramatic and authentic that Philadelphia ever gets. Why should we allow it to embarrass us? Why would <\/em>we want to avert our eyes?<\/p>\n

Philadelphians opened the bridge in 1951; twenty years after the idea was first proposed<\/a> and just as the automobile had completed its win over the 19th-century city. (The Penrose Avenue Bridge was among the last works designed by architect Paul Cret<\/a>.) With a ribbon cutting<\/a> and a celebratory dinner<\/a> hosted by AAA, the swing bridge<\/a> from Philadelphia\u2019s Iron Age had been reduced to fading memory. Sixty years later, in June 2011, PennDOT identified this bridge one of 5,000 in the Commonwealth that are \u201cstructurally deficient\u201d and launched a three-year \u201crehabilitation project.\u201d<\/p>\n

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SPC Corporation – Camden Iron and Metal, 2600 Penrose Avenue (Google)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s structural integrity and then there\u2019s experiential integrity. What wakes up both citizen and visitor and puts them in the true Philadelphia frame of mind, what completes the whole Platt experience is the car shredder at the base of the bridge. But SPC Corporation which operates this Godzilla grinder, this Rockosauraus of rust, is planning to leave town. After abandoning a plan to relocate to Eddystone, Pennsylvania, SPC\u2019s parent company, Camden Iron & Metal announced<\/a> a plan to move back to the city of its namesake. They\u2019re behind schedule a year or so, but \u201csooner or later\u201d the company confirms, \u201cwe\u2019re going to move.\u201d<\/p>\n

What a pity. Just as we\u2019ve grown accustomed to Philadelphia\u2019s most apocalyptic and ironic vision, just as we\u2019ve become fully conscious of this 20th-century expression of unsustainability, we\u2019re about to lose its most dramatic expression. As the song goes: \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you\u2019ve got till it\u2019s gone,\u201d and then it says something about a parking lot. Exactly<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a shame no one has anything good to say about the drive from Philadelphia International Airport to Center City. It\u2019s a gritty but grand entrance, this ride on PA 291, aka the Penrose Avenue Bridge, aka the Platt Memorial Bridge to US 76, aka the Schuylkill Expressway\u2014a ride punctuated by the usual roadwork, billboards, […]<\/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-4697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697","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=4697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}