Also this issue:

Find the Pony
Big box malls are not the answer to the eternal Penn’s Landing question.
-Harris M. Steinberg

September 19-25, 2002

cityspace

Stern Warnings

by Daniel Brook

On Sept. 10, members of Philadelphia’s architecture and design crowd converged on the archaeology museum at Penn to chat over wine and cheese and listen to Robert A.M. Stern. Stern’s beige office tower, One Pennsylvania Plaza, is set to r ise at 17th and JFK. The architect played to the home crowd with a lecture entitled, “My Philadelphia Story” -- a surprising choice from a man who mocked the idea that the United Nations considered locating in Philadelphia in the nationally br oadcast PBS documentary on his hometown, New York. Stern, who is the current dean of the Yale School of Architecture, joked that architects have long known that the Amtrak train runs from New Haven to Philadelphia, only slowing down in New York. The crowd loved the joke, but the joke was on the crowd. Despite his academic post in New Haven, Stern’s firm is still headquartered on West 34th Street in Manhattan.

Stern praised, of all things, Philadelphia's transit system for its unity. Commuters can catch any train in any of the three downtown stations, contrasting with New York, which is struggling to create an integrated transit hub at Ground Zero. For alm ost 100 years the metropolis has suffered the inconvenience of having different Midtown train stations serving different suburbs.

As a designer of homes for the rich and famous, Stern praised Chestnut Hill for giving well-heeled Philadelphians the option of having a large parcel of land and a large house, without leaving the civic and political unit of the city.

Stern also addressed what architecture can do for those of us who can't afford to live in one of his homes. Citing the brownfields that dot many American urban neighborhoods, Stern pushed his decades-old plan for "Subway Suburbs" -- inner-city neighbor hoods rebuilt on a smaller scale near el train stops.

The architect gladly fit himself into that great Philadelphia tradition of being the outsider who shows us what we've got.

But will we get one of his buildings? After discussing how the depression of the 1930s kept many a great building from being built, he quipped, "I hope our building won't be a victim of this one."