{"id":8139,"date":"2014-10-07T07:17:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T11:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=8139"},"modified":"2014-10-07T22:05:17","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T02:05:17","slug":"a-permanent-slice-of-piazza-on-south-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2014\/10\/a-permanent-slice-of-piazza-on-south-street\/","title":{"rendered":"A Permanent Slice of Piazza on South Street?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Grays<\/a>
Grays Ferry Avenue at South Street [and 23rd Street] Looking Southwest, May 22, 1936. Wenzel J. Hess, photographer. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>South Street\u2019s civic temperature \u2013 and Philadelphia\u2019s by degree \u2013 can be measured by checking in at the triangular intersection at South Street, 23rd<\/sup> Street and Grays Ferry Avenue. This pizza-shaped- piazza continues to change with the times, proving, once again, that what goes around comes around.<\/p>\n

About a century ago, Christopher Morley<\/a> (who resided nearby on too-quiet Pine Street) enviously noted the \u201cuproarious and na\u00efve humours\u201d a few blocks away. \u201cOn South Street,\u201d Morley wrote, \u201cthe veins of life run close to the surface.\u201d By the 1970s, things had settled down, though not necessarily in a good way. “The street lay like a snake sleeping; dull-dusty, gray-black in the dingy darkness,\u201d wrote David Bradley<\/a>. \u201cAt the three-way intersection of Twenty-Third Street, Grays Ferry Avenue, and South Street a fountain, erected once-upon-a year by a ladies guild in remembrance of some dear departed altruist, stood cracked and dry, full of dead leaves and cigarette butts and bent beer cans, forgotten by the city and the ladies\u2019 guide a minor memorial to how They Won’t Take Care of Nice Things.”<\/p>\n

Ah, but given time they will care. If given half a chance.<\/p>\n

In 2014, we\u2019ve witnessed a waking up, a coming around to this very \u201cnice thing\u201d along the western end of South Street. Not exactly \u201cuproarious,\u201d and hardly \u201cna\u00efve,\u201d the movement began three years ago with a celebration of the diagonal in a city made up of right angles. And it\u2019s more than saving one of the city\u2019s rare, vintage horse troughs<\/a>. The Grays Ferry Triangle effort<\/a> has been a grass-roots project since 2011, one bolstered by arguments that spaces are better, often far better, when reclaimed by and for community. To demonstrate and consolidate support, there\u2019s been an annual Plazapalooza<\/a>, a spate of social media<\/a> and a poll showing 98% of near-neighbor support<\/a> for promoting pedestrianism and banning the can on at least one<\/i> tiny but potent stretch of Philly byway.<\/p>\n

Last Spring, a six month trial street closure started and \u201can underused South of South space\u201d got a \u201cpedestrian-friendly makeover.\u201d<\/a> Will this experiment in participatory urban design come to an end? Will South Street once again revert to a place that \u201cWon’t Take Care of Nice Things\u201d? Or has Philadelphia made yet one more turn toward becoming a post-petroleum city, a city whose veins not only \u201crun close to the surface\u201d but pulse with something more organic than gasoline?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Street\u2019s civic temperature \u2013 and Philadelphia\u2019s by degree \u2013 can be measured by checking in at the triangular intersection at South Street, 23rd Street and Grays Ferry Avenue. This pizza-shaped- piazza continues to change with the times, proving, once again, that what goes around comes around. About a century ago, Christopher Morley (who resided […]<\/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-8139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8139","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=8139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}