CENTER CITY: PLANNING FOR GROWTH BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PARKWAY The proposals for enhancing the Benjamin Franklin Parkway have emerged from over five years of collaborative work with the Parkway Council Foundation, the Fairmount Park Commission, the Philadelphia Art Commission and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. In 2003, a new conceptual master plan was prepared by the Olin Partnership. Additional design and traffic engineering work was done by Brown & Keener Bressi, Cope Linder Architects, Lager Raabe Skafte Landscape Architects, Kise Straw & Kolodner, Urban Engineers, Cloud Gehshan Associates, The Lighting Practice and Grenald Waldron Associates. The advancement and implementation of these enhancements is anticipated soon. B. Krist, GPTMC BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Philadelphia PARKWAY Museum of Art SPRING GARDEN D V L B S T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T S S U S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S B T T D H H H D H D H H H H H H D H H H H H H N S A T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T M R N N 1 3 2 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 0 9 8 7 6 5 O 3 O 2 2 U 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 R L R S 2 C F B B H E O U N C Y JA L M R K I E I N CALLOWHILL L H L FR R AN P IV KL O E IN T R S PK I W R Y VINE ST H C T T S S FRANKLIN LOGAN R D SQUARE E R SQUARE P 3 I 2 N RACE ST U J Convention CHERRY ST Center ARCH ST 30th St Station (Amtrak) JFK BLVD CiCCiitytyty HallHHaallll MARKET ST G N I CHESTNUT ST D N A L INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL S SANSOM ST ’ HISTORICAL PARK N N E WALNUT ST P RITTENHOUSE WASHINGTON LOCUST ST SQUARE SQUARE SPRUCE ST T T T Prepared by S S S H H H T T T 6 5 4 2 2 2 PINE ST Center City District & T LOMBARD ST S H Central Philadelphia Development Corporation T 7 2 SOUTH ST May 2008 (Revised) BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PARKWAY KEY PRINCIPLES & OBJECTIVES • Achieve a better balance between pedestrians and vehicles while improving access to cultural institutions. • Design and program public spaces with exhibits and events sponsored by the cultural institutions to achieve a higher level of use and animation. • Determine the appropriate level and location for new developments and provide for the management of open spaces. • Expand the collaborative effort by Parkway institutions to better manage and market the Parkway as a place. • Address parking and transportation issues. On an enhanced cultural campus, visitors to the Parkway should be able to arrive by public transportation or have to park only once. The Benjamin Franklin Parkway is a 1.1 mile-long, diagonal boulevard reaching from City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and offering broad, inspiring vistas, extraor - dinary fountains and public sculpture. Framed by an ensem - ble of monumental buildings, it is the setting for some of the region’s foremost educational and cultural institutions that draw almost three million visitors each year. Students of all ages can learn about archeology, astronomy, biology, ecology and technology. Local residents, office workers and tourists can appreciate fine art, fine dining and luxury hotels with extraordinary views. In recent years, Parkway institutions have been improving their facilities, upgrading exhibits, expanding their offerings 1 Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives and hosting blockbuster shows. The Franklin Institute and (1) The Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the 1940s, before the Vine Street Moore College of Art & Design have completed major ren - Expressway cut through Logan Square. ovations. The expansion of the nearby Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has more than doubled the offer - Many of these challenges derive from the Parkway’s failure ing of fine American art. The United Way is developing to finish its founding vision. The idea for the Benjamin new ways to engage the public on the Parkway. The Franklin Parkway was first proposed in the 1870s as a diago - Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) opened its new nal linking Philadelphia’s new City Hall with the recently Perelman Building in 2007. It is also building a new garage created Fairmount Park. From the 1890s, as the concept for and sculpture garden and has announced plans for expanded a Fairmount parkway gained broad civic, business and polit - underground galleries. With design underway for the relo - ical support, drawings portray a narrow and denser, cation of the Barnes Foundation near the PMA and adjacent Parisian-style boulevard lined with commercial, residential to the Rodin Museum, the Parkway will soon host one of and civic buildings. Finally constructed in the first two the most extraordinary collections of 19th- and 20th-centu - decades of the 20th century, the Parkway was strongly influ - ry French art. The Free Library is fundraising for a signifi - enced by the “City Beautiful” movement, inspired by the cant expansion. New residential development is capitalizing Chicago Exposition of 1893. Renderings done in 1907 by on proximity to the Parkway. With the Convention Center Paul Cret at the start of construction show a wider boule - expanding, there is also the potential for new hotels. vard lined with closely spaced, classically inspired civic and An uncompleted place cultural institutions to replace the 1,300 properties that were being demolished. Nevertheless, the Parkway still feels too much like a high - way that is crowded at rush hour, but devoid of people and Jacques Greber’s final plans, drawn as roadway construction activity throughout the rest of the day and evening. Unsafe was nearing completion in 1917, envision a less-dense park - pedestrian crossings, high-speed traffic and large empty dis - way as an extension of Fairmount Park into the city with tances isolate cultural institutions, discourage casual long rows of trees, landscaped gardens and numerous foun - strolling and impulse visits and constrain the Parkway from tains. With the automobile in its infancy, drawings also realizing its full educational and economic potential. depict a gracious thoroughfare where strolling pedestrians, Center City District & Central Philadelphia Development Corporation www.CenterCityPhila.org 3 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PARKWAY Print and Picture Collection, The Free Library of Philadelphia 2 4 3 5 6 (2) In 1884, Charles K. Landis first drew a new diagonal boulevard. (3) The 1892 James H. Windrim plan envisions a dense Parisian-style boulevard. (4) This 1911 model was deeply influenced by the City Beautiful movement. (5) Horace Trumbauer portrayed pedestrians and cars sharing the roadway on the Parkway. (6) By the 1940s, the roadway had become overloaded with cars. 4 Center City District & Central Philadelphia Development Corporation www.CenterCityPhila.org BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PARKWAY 8 Cloud Gehshan Associates (7–8) Through lighting, signs and information panels, the CCD has been 7 Tom Crane adding pedestrian amenities to the Parkway. horse-drawn and horseless carriages comfortably co-exist in institutions from Logan Square, while Eakin’s Oval was con - a verdant setting that offers respite from a dense, industrial verted to a traffic circle to accommodate traffic pouring off city. But even these plans show far more cultural and educa - the Schuylkill Expressway. Today, with 12 lanes of roadway tional institutions that were ever constructed. west of Logan Square, the Parkway serves as a busy rush hour route to and from Northwest Philadelphia and the The first new building on the Parkway, the Free Library western suburbs. But during the rest of the day and on of Philadelphia, was completed in 1927 and was followed weekends, it is usually devoid of people and activity. the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rodin Museum, the Franklin Institute and the Family Court. But the Rethinking the Parkway Depression put an end to new developments, leaving the In 2002 the William Penn Foundation funded Central Parkway with half as many institutional buildings as were Philadelphia Development Corporation (CPDC) to work in originally planned. partnership with Parkway institutions, the Parkway Council But as early as the 1920s, as the volume and velocity of gas- Foundation, the Fairmount Park Commission, other city powered vehicles rose exponentially, the Parkway took on agencies and civic associations to develop a new framework the character of a landscaped highway. Traffic lights were for animation and growth. first installed in 1933 and intersections were soon tapered to In early 2003 CPDC hosted a design charrette to answer a expedite traffic flow. Throughout the 1940s, no new build - fundamental question: What type of place do we want to ings appeared on the Parkway and plans for more museums, create? Looking back at early plans for the Parkway and an art school, a concert hall and numerous fountains were learning from models as diverse as the Champs Elysées in slowly forgotten. Paris, the Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona, Forest Park in St. Projects conceived in the 1950s, like the Youth Study Louis, Balboa Park in San Diego, Commonwealth Avenue Center and Park Towne Place, did not orient themselves in Boston and Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, a consensus towards the Parkway nor engage its public spaces. Instead, emerged that the Parkway should advance as an animated they set back from the roadway, suburban-style. In the cultural campus. Though carrying high volumes of cars, all 1960s, to reduce traffic jams, the depressed Vine Street parties agreed that the Parkway must become less a highway Expressway was sliced through the Parkway, disconnecting and more of a place.