City Safari: The Zen Of Philadelphia’s New Fashion District
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Wed, Sep 25, 2019
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Philadelphia’s original Gallery Mall opened in 1977. It was an interesting user-friendly place with a long gushing Zen Japanese style canal near long rows of slab benches. Patrons could sit and listen to rippling water sounds while watching passers-by and munching on snacks.
I remember having long conversations in the old Gallery with a medium friend of mine who often told me that the spot helped him to center himself. Across the way was a B. Dalton’s bookstore, not the best bookstore in the world but in the Gallery, it seemed more than adequate. I mention B. Dalton’s because I had a book signing there in 1988 when the Gallery seemed to be going downhill. I sat at a book-signing table in front of the bookstore, although I was practically in the mall hallway, surrounded as I was with signs advertising the book that I was promoting (The Cliffs of Aries). It was around lunchtime, not the best time for a signing, nevertheless I wound up speaking with many people, including an odd younger male who asked me a series of awkward questions while eyeing the young B. Dalton woman proprietor at the counter seated behind me. She was a winsome blonde in her twenties, no doubt a student, the only one working in the bookstore at the time. When the guy in question had had enough of me he went into the bookstore where he remained for a long time. When he exited, I noticed that not only was he walking very fast but that he was being followed by the proprietor who came up to me in a panic.
“I need to talk to you,” she said. She told me that the man who had just left the store had performed a public act of biblical onanism, between the pages of a book and then had given her the book as he left.
The fear caused by his perversity provoked her perspiring wildly. She wanted to know if she now needed to get an HIV AIDS test. The next 25 minutes or so was spent in a panicked medical consultation.
The Cliffs of Aries had become The Cliffs of AIDS.
The Gallery in those days was all about the food court: cheap fast food of every variety. Always packed, people often sat with strangers in the food court, although in the Gallery at large public benches were slowly beginning to disappear. The same time the benches were disappearing, Gallery management decided to cover up the gushing Zen canal and replace it with tile. How did this happen? No doubt some bureaucrat got it into their head that the beautiful gushing stream was a safety hazard. Society was becoming increasingly cautious and overprotective: The Nanny State in velvet gloves, a precursor to the endless pre-recorded “For your safety” announcements one hears today in subways, trains and buses. Shoppers who sought to take a break from walking or shopping risked being approached by security guards if they sat too long on one of the rare, free benches on the mall’s second level. Sadly, the Gallery was slowly becoming a hostile environment.
Gallery I and Gallery II then shut down for a period of three years although it seemed much longer to most Philadelphians. Skyscrapers have been built in less than three years. Comcast One and Comcast Two were built in less than three years. Liberty Place I and Liberty Place II were built in less than three years. Walking past the walled up old Gallery, behind which the Great Rehab was taking place, people asked: What are they doing in there? What’s taking them so long?
“Oh yes, it’s a union town so of course there are a zillion complications.” Etc.
During the Gallery reconstruction, the 16.5-million-dollar wreck-o-vation of JFK Plaza had been completed. The wreck-o-vation was hailed as a great achievement by cutting edge design enthusiasts. Created by Hargreaves Associates, the new design was even lauded by the Fairmount Park Conservancy. But the new design was as if Walter Gropius himself had returned from the dead and set about obliterating what made the old plaza, despite its wear and tear, such a magnificent space: the splendid tall fountain and pool which perfectly framed the view of the Museum of Art in the distance. The new Love Park has been called everything from “Love, Blunder Park” to “Car Park,” a nod to the ten-foot-high sign that advertises underground parking. The barren landscape (with no shade) is a sterile, hostile unwelcoming space. It’s no wonder that those opposed to the new design—and their numbers are legion—have staged lawn chair sit ins to demonstrate what the plaza lacks. The new JFK Plaza might be compared to a parking lot with a pock marked sprinkler system. complex below-grade
I visited the so-called Philadelphia Fashion District (the new Gallery) a couple of days after the opening. There were still huge clusters of balloons around the entranceway on Market Street and great numbers of curiosity seekers like me were going inside to see what the place was like. What struck me most was the spaciousness of the place; it was very Kimmel Center, very clean and “big walled.” I rode on an escalator that smelled like a new car. I had never seen a new escalator in my life and marveled at its gliding virginity, wondering what it might look like in 4 months. At the bottom of the escalator there were men in suits, all of them with that smiling opening day festivities look.
The first store I spotted, H&M, loomed like the Great Wall of China. Gone was the old Gallery boardwalk neon look, of stores on top of stores, which I never found objectionable. This was corporate sparseness with a moving upmarket feel. I remembered something I had read in Next City: “They are trying for a different tax bracket. They are weeding out the people who can’t afford to shop that high.” Walking in front of me were black girls looking longingly at expensive purses and cowboy boots encased in small plastic dimly lighted MOMA-like display boxes. These goodies were obviously aimed for the denizens of Rittenhouse Square, the same “money is no object” ladies who hit the Ball on the Square every year and who appear in the back pages of Philly Style.
The real test will be the food court, I told myself, remembering the Fellini-like atmosphere of the old food court with its grass roots democracy rowdiness. Suddenly, there it was, although it appeared much smaller than the original food court but still filled with the same sort of people that populated the old one: Scores of giddy, sometimes loud school kids in long lines waiting to give their food orders. Sitting alone at a small table in the middle of the ruckus an elderly Chinese woman seemed to be fast spooning her soup as if she’d just made the decision to leave as quickly as possible. A food court band belted out rap.
So where was the Brahms and Beethoven for the ladies of Walnut Street?
I met two friends after my tour of the new Gallery—I am not able to call this the Fashion District--and told them what I had experienced. They agreed that with my view that an upscale redesign will have absolutely no effect on the base population that goes to malls. You can reinvent and rehab buildings but reinventing populations is perhaps another matter.
I remember having long conversations in the old Gallery with a medium friend of mine who often told me that the spot helped him to center himself. Across the way was a B. Dalton’s bookstore, not the best bookstore in the world but in the Gallery, it seemed more than adequate. I mention B. Dalton’s because I had a book signing there in 1988 when the Gallery seemed to be going downhill. I sat at a book-signing table in front of the bookstore, although I was practically in the mall hallway, surrounded as I was with signs advertising the book that I was promoting (The Cliffs of Aries). It was around lunchtime, not the best time for a signing, nevertheless I wound up speaking with many people, including an odd younger male who asked me a series of awkward questions while eyeing the young B. Dalton woman proprietor at the counter seated behind me. She was a winsome blonde in her twenties, no doubt a student, the only one working in the bookstore at the time. When the guy in question had had enough of me he went into the bookstore where he remained for a long time. When he exited, I noticed that not only was he walking very fast but that he was being followed by the proprietor who came up to me in a panic.
“I need to talk to you,” she said. She told me that the man who had just left the store had performed a public act of biblical onanism, between the pages of a book and then had given her the book as he left.
The fear caused by his perversity provoked her perspiring wildly. She wanted to know if she now needed to get an HIV AIDS test. The next 25 minutes or so was spent in a panicked medical consultation.
The Cliffs of Aries had become The Cliffs of AIDS.
The Gallery in those days was all about the food court: cheap fast food of every variety. Always packed, people often sat with strangers in the food court, although in the Gallery at large public benches were slowly beginning to disappear. The same time the benches were disappearing, Gallery management decided to cover up the gushing Zen canal and replace it with tile. How did this happen? No doubt some bureaucrat got it into their head that the beautiful gushing stream was a safety hazard. Society was becoming increasingly cautious and overprotective: The Nanny State in velvet gloves, a precursor to the endless pre-recorded “For your safety” announcements one hears today in subways, trains and buses. Shoppers who sought to take a break from walking or shopping risked being approached by security guards if they sat too long on one of the rare, free benches on the mall’s second level. Sadly, the Gallery was slowly becoming a hostile environment.
Gallery I and Gallery II then shut down for a period of three years although it seemed much longer to most Philadelphians. Skyscrapers have been built in less than three years. Comcast One and Comcast Two were built in less than three years. Liberty Place I and Liberty Place II were built in less than three years. Walking past the walled up old Gallery, behind which the Great Rehab was taking place, people asked: What are they doing in there? What’s taking them so long?
“Oh yes, it’s a union town so of course there are a zillion complications.” Etc.
During the Gallery reconstruction, the 16.5-million-dollar wreck-o-vation of JFK Plaza had been completed. The wreck-o-vation was hailed as a great achievement by cutting edge design enthusiasts. Created by Hargreaves Associates, the new design was even lauded by the Fairmount Park Conservancy. But the new design was as if Walter Gropius himself had returned from the dead and set about obliterating what made the old plaza, despite its wear and tear, such a magnificent space: the splendid tall fountain and pool which perfectly framed the view of the Museum of Art in the distance. The new Love Park has been called everything from “Love, Blunder Park” to “Car Park,” a nod to the ten-foot-high sign that advertises underground parking. The barren landscape (with no shade) is a sterile, hostile unwelcoming space. It’s no wonder that those opposed to the new design—and their numbers are legion—have staged lawn chair sit ins to demonstrate what the plaza lacks. The new JFK Plaza might be compared to a parking lot with a pock marked sprinkler system. complex below-grade
I visited the so-called Philadelphia Fashion District (the new Gallery) a couple of days after the opening. There were still huge clusters of balloons around the entranceway on Market Street and great numbers of curiosity seekers like me were going inside to see what the place was like. What struck me most was the spaciousness of the place; it was very Kimmel Center, very clean and “big walled.” I rode on an escalator that smelled like a new car. I had never seen a new escalator in my life and marveled at its gliding virginity, wondering what it might look like in 4 months. At the bottom of the escalator there were men in suits, all of them with that smiling opening day festivities look.
The first store I spotted, H&M, loomed like the Great Wall of China. Gone was the old Gallery boardwalk neon look, of stores on top of stores, which I never found objectionable. This was corporate sparseness with a moving upmarket feel. I remembered something I had read in Next City: “They are trying for a different tax bracket. They are weeding out the people who can’t afford to shop that high.” Walking in front of me were black girls looking longingly at expensive purses and cowboy boots encased in small plastic dimly lighted MOMA-like display boxes. These goodies were obviously aimed for the denizens of Rittenhouse Square, the same “money is no object” ladies who hit the Ball on the Square every year and who appear in the back pages of Philly Style.
The real test will be the food court, I told myself, remembering the Fellini-like atmosphere of the old food court with its grass roots democracy rowdiness. Suddenly, there it was, although it appeared much smaller than the original food court but still filled with the same sort of people that populated the old one: Scores of giddy, sometimes loud school kids in long lines waiting to give their food orders. Sitting alone at a small table in the middle of the ruckus an elderly Chinese woman seemed to be fast spooning her soup as if she’d just made the decision to leave as quickly as possible. A food court band belted out rap.
So where was the Brahms and Beethoven for the ladies of Walnut Street?
I met two friends after my tour of the new Gallery—I am not able to call this the Fashion District--and told them what I had experienced. They agreed that with my view that an upscale redesign will have absolutely no effect on the base population that goes to malls. You can reinvent and rehab buildings but reinventing populations is perhaps another matter.
