Jeff Cap

Cars In Daily: Thomas Jefferson University wants to build the city’s largest parking garage here.

Thomas Jefferson University is expanding without thinking.

by Harris Steinberg

In case you haven’t noticed it, the entire south side of the 900 block of Chestnut Street doesn’t exist anymore. Eaten away by demolition for years -- beginning with the destruction of the venerable Leary’s Bookstore at the corner of Ninth and Chestnut and culminating with the recent razing of another Philadelphia retail icon, I. Goldberg, everything is gone. Sadly, in 21st-century Philadelphia, this means only one thing: parking. Indeed, the block is slated to house Philadelphia’s latest aboveground parking structure -- a 900-car garage at the corner of 10th and Chestnut running a good three-quarters of the block east toward Ninth Street. Dressed up with floating screens and grilles, it is still a garage with a massive deadening street presence.

Why on Chestnut Street, you might ask, particularly when the entire block is cleared and development frontage is available on Sansom Street? Why design a garage on Chestnut Street that requires seven zoning variances for use, height, curb cuts and number of cars, when the city is trying to revive this dying has-been of a pedestrian-scaled urban retail street? Jefferson Hospital maintains that it desperately needs this structure in order to solve its parking crunch and aid its long-range development goals. And according to the architect and the developer of this project, placing this giant garage along Chestnut Street is the only solution that works.

Jefferson Hospital needs to park cars -- but not just any cars. These spaces are for the family and relations of trauma victims who, we are told, rarely enter the city. And they must be able to instantly see the user-friendly sight of other cars parked snugly behind a floating grid of terra cotta and wire mesh, bathed in the comforting glare of metal halide lamps. And only then will they feel comfortable enough to enter this building -- a building which will hog precious street frontage and suck up whatever urban vibrancy (not to say daylight) there is in the air around it. Nothing like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And here's the rub. When pressed, the developer and the architect will tell you that Jefferson has plans for the Sansom Street portion of the lot. And then the larger issue comes into focus. For what this really seems to be about is Jefferson, the largest employer in Center City, skirting the issue of revealing its true intentions for the site.

And what a shame it is, for this could be a truly wonderful block of Chestnut Street. The site for the proposed garage sits diagonally across from the ever-near-death Victory Building (1873, with later additions, Henry Fernbach, architect) on the corner of 10th and Chestnut. On the north side of Chestnut is the elegant, marble-clad Federal Reserve Board Building (1931-42, Paul Phillipe Cret, architect) complemented by the dramatic, limestone-faced U.S. Post Office and Courthouse (1933-34, Harry Sternfeld, architect). Along Ninth Street, the stately and urbane jazz-age, Georgian revival Benjamin Franklin Hotel (1923, Horace Trumbauer, architect) flanks the eastern side of the street and Jefferson's own Edison Building (the former main building of the Philadelphia Electric Company, 1927, John T. Windrim, architect), a skillfully faceted, buff-colored art deco high-rise with an arcaded base, holds the southwest corner of Ninth and Sansom. This is a significant collection of buildings designed by important architects, a fabulous context in which to create an inspiring piece of urban design.

Jefferson used to know how to be a good urban neighbor. Their older buildings, like the Edison Building, deftly fit within the urban fabric -- neither abrasive intrusions nor faceless anonymous structures. Sadly, such cannot be said for all of its more recent constructions. Why not take this as an opportunity to rethink the 21st-century urban hospital and redress insensitive urban developments made over the past 40 years? Where is the master plan for Jefferson's expansion? How does parking play into their future plans for the block and beyond? How can Jefferson become a good urban neighbor once again?

It is not difficult to imagine a lively mixed-use structure on this block with retail shops, cafés, office and hospital use expertly conceived in a fashion that recognizes the special character of the surrounding buildings, creates a true gateway to a world-class institution and puts the parking where it belongs -- underground. Jefferson would be well-advised to take its urban design cues from its institutional neighbor to the west, the University of Pennsylvania. For Penn, with its recent proliferation of outdoor cafés and street life (retail and otherwise), has come to understand the seminal relationship between a richly diversified, people-scaled streetscape and the health and security of a neighborhood. As such, Penn has breathed new urban vitality into University City. Jefferson could well do the same for its neighborhood.

The garage project comes before the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for a second time on Oct. 15 for review and comment before going on to the Zoning Board of Adjustment at the end of the month. Now is the time to be heard. Let's turn this around before it's too late.

Harris Steinberg is a local architect and member of the Design Advocacy Group.

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