{"id":8922,"date":"2015-05-22T09:09:51","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T13:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=8922"},"modified":"2018-04-16T07:50:17","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T11:50:17","slug":"all-we-need-is-love-at-love-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2015\/05\/all-we-need-is-love-at-love-park\/","title":{"rendered":"All We Need is Love at LOVE Park?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Looking<\/a>
Looking Northwest from City Hall Tower, April 10, 1929. (Detail.) Photograph by Charles L. Howell. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In order to succeed in its grand ambitions of City Beautifulism, the Parkway had to overcome a handful of awkward design moments. The first, at the base of City Hall, got the boulevard off on the wrong foot. Instead of elegance and clarity, we see Broad Street Station’s tower\u00a0poking and jutting<\/a> into what should<\/i> have been an open vista. A second awkwardness appeared at Logan Square, where the Parkway sliced through on the diagonal. And the Parkway\u2019s third clumsy challenge was at the rocky base of Fairmount itself.<\/p>\n

Jacques Gr\u00e9ber\u00a0brilliantly addressed the last two awkward moments. His solution at Fairmount employed a giant set of steps to extend the Parkway’s axis to the entrance of the \u201cGreek Garage.\u201d At Logan Square, Gr\u00e9ber introduced an off-center traffic circle disguised as a Beaux-Arts fountain.<\/p>\n

And so two<\/em> of the Parkway’s design problems were solved.<\/p>\n

The remaining problem at the base of City Hall, was at the site with the greatest demands and conflicting responsibilities. As early as 1911, a proposed plaza design for the start of the Parkway got loaded up with a host of additional<\/em>\u00a0functions in as many new buildings: a headquarters for the Free Library, a Franklin Institute, and a massive court house. Fortunately, these projects were soon moved to Logan Circle. But by 1920, the expanse at the start of the Parkway still felt and looked<\/a> unfinished, a pleasant jumble, as depicted by Salvatore Pinto, of cars, towers and citizens.<\/p>\n

Enter Edmund N. Bacon, who spent at least some of his adolescence wondering what this awkward space could become. Bacon worked on the problem for his architecture thesis<\/a> at Cornell in 1932 and his plans, which introduced a giant, circular terminus for the Parkway vista would simmer for another three decades.<\/p>\n

According to Greg Heller<\/a>, as head of the City Planning Commission, Bacon worked with Vincent Kling to advance a version of his earlier idea for a plaza. In the Spring of 1962, the aged Gr\u00e9ber\u00a0even gave the idea his<\/em> thumbs up. The soon to be named JFK Plaza featured a giant, 90-foot wide fountain<\/a>, large and symmetrical enough, on this burdened, little square<\/a>, to strongly punctuate the beginning (or the end) of the Parkway.<\/p>\n

\"Detail,<\/a>
Detail: Plan Showing Relation of the Proposed Parkway Development to the Present Street System. Philadelphia, March 1931. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aspirations called for something more for JFK Plaza than the giant geyser fountain we\u2019ve come to accept. But a design competition turned up nothing winnable, not even Robert Venturi’s proposed giant, seemingly NASA-inspired fountain\u00a0that would provide much-needed scale, \u00a0dimension (and wit) to the Bacon\/Kling idea. As Venturi explained his solution in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture: <\/i>“The form is big and bold so that it will read against its background of big buildings and amorphous space and also from the relatively long distance up the Parkway. Its plastic shape, curving silhouette, and plain surface also contrast boldly with the intricate patterns of the buildings around\u2026.\u00a0 This fountain is big and little in scale, sculptural and architectural in structure, analogous and contrasting in its context, directional and nondirectional, curvilinear and angular in its form, it was designed from the inside out and the outside in.\u201d Venturi recognized what the site demanded: a hyperlegible feature, a bold solution.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to the recently announced redesign for JFK Plaza, aka LOVE Park. Hargreaves Associates and Kieran Timberlake allowed competing demands to have their way with the space. It has become many things to many interests, at the expense of being big and bold (in spite of one review claiming the contrary). The fountain survives, though shrunken; the beloved Visitor Center<\/a>\u00a0is offered a new life; a greensward dominates as it might in a suburban office park. A century later, we find ourselves rediscovering the plaza’s original awkward complexity.<\/p>\n

LOVE Park is again\u00a0bereft of much needed boldness, or as Bacon would put it, a powerful “design idea.” Unless LOVE is enough to carry the day.<\/p>\n

Maybe, just maybe<\/i>, the relatively small (but big-hearted and extraordinarily\u00a0popular) LOVE statue<\/a>\u00a0can save the square? Long ago, William Penn urged: \u201cLet us try what love will do\u2026 Force may subdue but love gains.\u201d Penn was talking about his policy of peace with Native Americans. More than 330 years later, we’d like<\/em> to think that we, too, believe in the power of love to solve all kinds of problems, maybe even our most demanding design challenges.<\/p>\n

So, taking Penn\u2019s lead: \u201cLet us try what Love will do.\u201d Maybe, by some miracle, love is<\/em> all we need at LOVE Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In order to succeed in its grand ambitions of City Beautifulism, the Parkway had to overcome a handful of awkward design moments. The first, at the base of City Hall, got the boulevard off on the wrong foot. Instead of elegance and clarity, we see Broad Street Station’s tower\u00a0poking and jutting into what should have […]<\/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-8922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8922","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=8922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}