During the mid-1800s, wealthy Philadelphians
built estates and summer homes here, and the western suburb was incorporated
into the city in 1854. The University of Pennsylvania moved to West Philadelphia
from Ninth and Chestnut Streets in the 1870s, and growth took off in the area.
The section known as University City now
also includes Drexel University, founded in 1891, and the University of the Sciences,
which was established during 1821 as the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in
Carpenter’s Hall. The southern edge of University City is home to an amazing
network of nationally-recognized hospital facilities, including those of the
University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia,
somewhat awkwardly known as CHOP.
I started my tour heading west across the
Schuylkill on Walnut Street, and I could see 30th Street Station off to the
right. I soon passed the WXPN studio and the World Café Live, a venue where I
have seen many concerts over the years. I ducked under the trestle built by the
Pennsylvania Railroad, which now hosts Norfolk Southern freight trains heading
across the “High Line” to bypass crossings with city streets.
Immediately on my left was the Class of 1923
Arena, a rink that has been home to college and high school hockey since 1970.
I made a left on 34th and spotted the Fisher Fine Arts Library, a spectacular
red sandstone, brick and terracotta structure designed by Frank Furness and
completed in 1890. The building is also home to the Arthur Ross Gallery, the
University of Pennsylvania’s official art gallery.
The next structure on the right was Irvine
Auditorium, home of the world’s largest university-owned pipe organ! The design
of the 1928 building, said to have been inspired by the Mont-Saint-Michel
monastery on the coast of France, was from the firm of Horace Trumbauer. His
chief architect, Julian Abele, was the first African-American graduate of Penn’s
School of Architecture in 1902.
I made a left on Spruce Street and stopped
on the far corner at the Penn Museum. I love the overview photo below of the
beautiful structure, as I think that, if not for the modern hospital buildings
in the background, someone might think they were mistakenly dropped in Tuscany.
Wilson Eyre led an association of Penn
architects in designing the incredible museum (opened in 1899), which is one of
the world’s leading institutions of archaeological study. The halls contain
fine collections of objects from ancient Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, Greece,
China, South America and Middle America.
I couldn’t help feeling some type of old
world, Colosseum-type connection as continuing north on 33rd, I immediately
reached Franklin Field.
The impressive brick structure is the NCAA’s
oldest operating football stadium, hosting University of Pennsylvania games, and
from 1958 to 1970, the stadium was home of the NFL’s Eagles. I’ve been
fortunate to attend a few events at Franklin Field over the years, including a
U.S. national team soccer game against Russia and the Penn Relays, a famous
multi-day track meet featuring (local, national and a few international) high schools, college and world-class Olympic athletes!
Right out front of the stadium is a statue
of Benjamin Franklin in 1723, a work depicting a young man arriving in the city,
full of ideas and hope. Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania in
1740, along with numerous other institutions.
Continuing north, I passed the Palestra,
often called the Cathedral of College Basketball. The arena has hosted more NCAA
men’s regular season and postseason games, and more NCAA tournaments than any
other U.S. venue. However, the last tournament game there was in 1984, and
because it holds under 9,000 people, it is doubtful another will ever be held
there.
The Palestra is the official home of the Penn
men’s and women’s teams, but it regularly hosts matchups between Philadelphia’s
Big Five (Penn, Villanova, St. Joe’s, LaSalle and Temple). At the time of its
completion in 1927, it was one of the largest arenas in the world. It was one
of the first steel and concrete arenas in the U.S. and one of the first without
view-blocking interior pillars.
I want to quickly mention the large brick
building across the street, which houses Penn’s School of Engineering, as it
was the birthplace of ENIAC, the world’s first computer. Much of its final construction
of 80 feet long, 30 tons and 18,000 vacuum tubes is now in the Smithsonian,
but part of the machine is still on display here.
I made a left on Walnut and a right on 36th Street
to reach the Institute of Contemporary Art, the city’s premier contemporary museum
with ever-changing exhibits of new artists. I headed back south on 36th, which
becomes a pedestrian-only path, and then made a right on Hamilton Walk to visit
the Richards Medical Research Laboratories, built in 1962.
Architect Louis Kahn created what is
considered one of the most influential buildings of the post-World War II era.
Kahn, who had joined the Penn faculty in 1957, received international acclaim
for his design, which featured a broken roofline of brick towers between
concrete piers. This distinct visual effect is repeated in several buildings
around campus.
I had intended to cross Hamilton Walk and visit
Penn’s Main Quadrangle. I had read the handsome Gothic-style dormitory
buildings surrounding the grassy yard provided a feeling very reminiscent of the
great European universities. Unfortunately, my 18-year-old Inquirer guidebook didn’t
predict that our ever-increasingly security-conscious society would eliminate
that idea. The area now has card-activated gates that only allow for the
passage of students.
Instead, I rode out to 40th Street and headed
left across the Septa Trolley Portal to arrive at the Woodlands. The cemetery
here is on the grounds of a mansion built in 1793 by William Hamilton, grand-nephew
of Alexander Hamilton. There are some incredible monuments and statuary along
the grounds’ winding lane, and a few well-known people, such as artists Thomas Eakins
and Rembrandt Peale, pioneering surgeon Samuel David Gross, as well as Drexel
University founder Anthony Joseph Drexel, are buried here.
I then pedaled out Woodland Avenue and
zigzagged down through some industrial areas that had seen better days on 49th
Street and Grays Avenue. At the end of 51st Street I passed under the steel
railroad truss bridge onto the bicycle trail that leads into Bartram’s Garden.
America’s oldest surviving botanical garden
really is an oasis among some of the crumbling manufacturing plants and active
petrochemical industry on the surrounding land! The 45-acre National Historic
Landmark contains the 18th-century farmhouse, barn and outbuildings of John
Bartram, a gardener genius who served as Royal Botanist for America to King
George III. Visitors can enjoy the fruits of his labors, strolling down
walkways through lovely flower beds past historic trees, a wildflower meadow
and wetlands.
Construction is ongoing to better connect
the Dupont/Grays Ferry Crescent Trails on the Schuylkill’s east bank to the
west. As it exists, the trail across the Grays Ferry Avenue bridge, actually
marked as part of the current East Coast Greenway bike route, is in really
sorry shape. The lane separated from traffic by a concrete barrier has a deteriorating
surface with a good amount of debris/garbage to test your bike handling.
Reaching the Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk, maybe
the most attractive section of trail in the area, really was a complete 180-degree
turn visually, and it provided me with a morale boost for the ride back home!
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