The Pit and the Plaza

Independence Mall's First Amendment Plaza is still waiting to be built. Why?

by Bruce Schimmel

Anyone who's puzzled about why tourists don't spend more than a day in Philadelphia should be standing next to Laurie Olin and me right now. The lead architect for the Independence Mall renovation and I are at the northeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets, in the thick of crowds being shunted about by security guards pushing metal barricades.

Independence Mall — with the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall — is easily the leading tourist attraction of Philadelphia. But it's also a perennial mess.

Olin — all in white, from his cropped white hair and beard to his spotless pants — is clearly getting hot under the collar as he describes how this and other jury-rigged security measures are ruining the experience of Independence Mall. Penned in by bunting-covered barricades, the scene has all the charm of visiting day at a penitentiary.

"I don't think it's any safer with the security they have," he says.

Security is a speciality of Olin's firm, which is completing the security design for the Washington Monument. Despite the recent, unheralded opening of a grassy section just north of Chestnut, the Independence Mall renovation — which is supposed to include a new security station and a "First Amendment Plaza" designated for freedom of speech activities — is now officially stalled.

Visitors walking from the National Constitution Center toward Independence Hall must walk around a huge gravel pit. Further down the mall is the future site of the First Amendment Plaza, currently occupied by the former Liberty Bell pavilion. Here, visitors are screened before seeing the bell and the hall. Some days it can take three hours to get a timed slot to get inside the hall; some days you can't go at all, because the tickets sell out before noon.

If you ask park administrators, they'll tell you that the problem finishing the mall renovation is not security, but money. They say that after raising $300 million for the new bell pavilion, the Visitor's Center and the National Constitution Center, the government and the foundations are tapped out. Just $5 million, they claim, is needed to finish the mall. But in the last two years, no donor has come forward to foot the bill. In the meantime, the mall will remain unfinished.

But Olin isn't buying the money excuses. For him, the real, hidden issue is security — specifically, the government's continuing pretense that what they're doing will make visitors safer. "Look at all these big buildings," he says, pointing at the office towers around the mall. "You want to bomb Independence Hall? Anybody, any teenager can bomb that building from any of these roofs.

"This security is silly. There's no way to make this site totally secure in our society today. It's a waste of money and it's ruining our freedoms."

Walking away from the bell pavilion's glass facade, Olin points to the adjacent promenade. Olin designed this wide walkway at Sixth and Chestnut to treat visitors to a classic scene of the hall's clock tower. From this side, the modest, 18th-century building can be viewed against the sky — not dwarfed by an office tower emblazoned with the name of an insurance company. But the promenade is barricaded and empty of visitors, its panorama enjoyed only by security guards.

On our way to the proposed site of the First Amendment Plaza, we encounter a sign featuring Olin's park plans. Except in place of the free speech area is an unrelated sketch of a side street. In fact, the only complete plans of the Independence Mall renovation are available on Olin's site (www.olinptr.com/project_current_parks2.html).

The First Amendment Plaza was the first planned renovation, and it's fully funded. The Friends of Independence Park raised about $250,000 from private individuals almost 15 years ago. Since then, the funds have grown. Tom Caramanico, who heads the Friends, says he expects First Amendment Plaza to be built next. But according to park administrators, Caramanico will be disappointed.

There's enough money earmarked for the plaza and Olin says there's no technical reason why it can't be built right now. But park administrators say it will be built last.

From its 40-by-100-foot white-marble deck, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell would frame potential orators, creating a panoramic icon of Americans' First Amendment rights. In a sad, ugly irony, the hall and the bell now frame only the visitors passing through X-ray machines inside the security building. And the only citizens treated to this image of liberty, at the moment, are security guards.

Next week: The real reason for the holdup.