PROSPECTS

This neighborhood is reaching a new crossroads with the millennium. It is attracting new interest and investment. Decades of being overshadowed by other promising areas had mostly insulated it from transformation through large-scale real estate development since the 1920s, allowing all kinds of local adaptation in small pieces serving individual needs and ambitions. More positive national economic trends and renewed interest in Center City are leading to new construction on long-vacant lots and the conversion of office space in tall buildings to apartments. Meanwhile, potential visitor traffic from the Convention Center is driving more hotel conversion, ground-story commerce, and neighborhood amenities.

As investment looks to the area anew, the place is being recognized for the values of an older urbanism now on the lips of planners. There is a new appreciation of a walking city of intimate scale and quick changes, an appreciation that, one hopes, will help preserve it from being redefined in the big pieces that developers sometimes tend to prefer, but which could well threaten the area's unique character. What had long survived out of lack of investors' interest no longer has that defense.

Over the past few months this neighborhood has been a focus for a graduate studio in the University of Pennsylvania's Historic Preservation Program and an undergraduate class in Bryn Mawr College's Growth and Structure of Cities Program. While the Bryn Mawr students focused mainly on historic research reflected in many places in this exhibition and the associated websites, one of the principal challenges for Penn studio was finding strategies and policies to assure the survival of this area's most valued characteristics. Following a period of study and analysis, the Penn studio's seventeen students devised a plan that proposes an urban conservation district, providing a mechanism for community-based controls over future development. They also created information kits and a signage program to raise awareness of the historic, community, and architectural assets embodied in the neighborhood's buildings. Although this was a student exercise, one hopes that this effort may provoke discussions and ultimately measures that will help preserve the qualities of this very vulnerable neighborhood against development efforts that might otherwise be unsympathetic to the often off-center vitality, human scale, lived-in authenticity, and deeply rooted continuities that give western "Wash West" much of its character.

 

Instructions: Click on the small image to bring up a full-screen view. This will appear in a second window.

  • G1. Site Development, area map color-coded by building period (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Site Development, area map color-coded by building period
  • G2. Building Cornice Height, color-coded area map (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Building Cornice Height, color-coded area map
  • G3. Surface Parking Lots, Vacant Lots, and Vacant Buildings, color-coded area map (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Surface Parking Lots, Vacant Lots, and Vacant Buildings,color-coded area map
  • G4. Historic Marker Program, area map color-coded to sites of proposed historic markers (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Historic Designation, area map color-coded
  • G5. Current Zoning, color-coded area map (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Current Zoning, color-coded area map
  • G6a. Model Ordinance for an Urban Conservation District, 12th and 13th Street Corridor (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Model Ordinance for an Urban Conservation District
  • G6b. Community Awareness Kit, model pamphlet describing neighborhood history and resources for community improvement efforts (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Community Awareness Kit
  • G7. Current Use, area map color-coded by land use (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Current Use, area map color-coded
  • G8a. Area Census Analysis, 1990 (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
1990 Census Analysis
  • G8b. Map showing census block group sampled, census of 1990.
Map showing census block group sampled, census of 1990
  • G9. View from 11th and Rodman streets, looking northwest.
    Photograph, February 2000.
View from 11th and Rodman streets, looking northwest
  • G10. View from Quince and Waverly streets, looking south.
    Photograph, February 2000.
View from Quince and Waverly streets, looking south
  • G11. Area Census Analysis, 1850-1990, Ethnicity (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
Area Census Analysis, 1850-1990, Ethnicity
  • G12. Area Census Analysis, 1920 (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
1920 Census Analysis
  • G13. Map showing seven sites sampled, censuses of 1880 and 1920.

    U.S. census data varies from decade to decade in the types of information gathered, in geographical specificity, and in forms of aggregation. The 1850 census, for example, does not provide addresses, so a random sample drawn from twenty consecutive pages in the city's Spruce Ward was examined. The Spruce Ward extended from 7th to 16th and Spruce to Lombard streets (although a check on some addresses in city directories suggests some looseness in the polling area). For the 1880 and 1920 census, seven specific sites were sampled ranging across the more residential part of the site. Privacy dictates that specific data about individual households is not available from the 1990 census. The smallest entity for which data was provided is the census block group. The map accompanying the 1990 data shows the boundaries of the census block groups chosen for this most recent sampling.
Map showing seven sites sampled, censuses of 1880 and 1920
  • G14. Area Census Analysis, 1880 (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
1880 Census Analysis
  • G15. Southwest corner 13th and Pine streets.
    Photograph, February 2000.
Southwest corner 13th and Pine streets
  • G16. 224-28 South Jessup Street.
    Photograph, February 2000.
224-28 South Jessup Street
  • G17a. Area Census Analysis, 1850 (Historic Preservation Planning Studio, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, December 1999).
1850 Census Analysis
  • G17b. Map showing Spruce Ward, census of 1850.
Map showing Spruce Ward, census of 1850
This exhibition has been greatly enhanced by the efforts of students from two concurrent classes this fall.
  • Undergraduates from Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College in Cities 306, taught in Bryn Mawr's Growth & Structure of Cities program:

    • Heather Davis
    • Danielle Jubert
    • Shelby Kohn
    • Joseph T. McCool
    • Michele T. Mieuli

  • Graduate students in HPSV 701, the capstone urban preservation studio in the University of Pennsylvania's Historic Preservation Program, co-taught by Gustavo F. Araoz, Nellie Longsworth, and Jeffrey A. Cohen. The members of the studio were:

    • Elsa Bourguignon
    • Yun-shang Chiou
    • Lissa D'Aquisto Felzer
    • Julianne L. Dunn
    • Sarah Gray
    • Andrew Gustine
    • Mandy Hall
    • Kristopher King
    • Debra E. Lavoie
    • Suzi Merriam
    • Kristin Milley
    • David K. Myers
    • Rosina Negron
    • Gregory J. Saldana
    • Lonna Schwartz
    • Catherine Vieth
    • Zana C. Wolf
Introduction | From Edge to Center: Movin' West | Communities | Commerce |Enclave
Persistence and Ambition in the Twentieth Century | The Cassatt House | Prospects

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Last revision 03/25/00. eb.