Front Street's Domino Scenario

The block-by-block demolition of Phila-delphia's surviving maritime arch-itecture seems to be going quite nicely, as these shocking images of Front Street's Girard Warehouses suggest. With the north corner of Front and Chestnut Streets having been just transformed into a smooth asphalt parking lot by the Spear brothers, it looks like the next logical place for the wrecking ball will be the long, handsome facade of the Girard Warehouses, the row of early 19th Century buildings that Stephen Girard built between Market and Arch Streets.
Talk about a domino effect. It was only June when the Spears, who own a collection of apartment buildings and parking lots, succeeded in manipulating city building code officials into letting them level two historically certified buildings that had defined the Front Street intersection of Chestnut since the 1830s. Now the virus of destruction is spreading uptown.
Officials at the city Historical Commission first became concerned in May, when the Brooklyn company that was supposed to be turning the Girard Warehouses into condos began tearing wildly at the facade. BRP Development ripped out the historic wooden frames, and then sheared off the rear of the building - apparently without a building permit! Commission staffers
got involved in the spring, but then all work stopped. The warehouses have been sitting in this condition ever since, waiting for winter to deal the final death blow.
And now - surprise, surprise - the owner, Tom Stafford is quietly talking to city planning officials about abandoning the approved renovation project. He wants to demolish the historic structures and erect a brand new condo tower. If the city agrees to that, it may as well write out a death certificate for its historic preservation law. Both Plan Philly and Skyline Online are concerned that the buildings could collapse any minute.

Over and over, we've seen developers buy fragile historic buildings, only to let them fall to pieces and then claim they have no choice but demolition. The only way for the city to stop that scam is to just say no: If you don't want the head-aches and expense of renovating a certified historic building, then don't buy it. Interestingly, in the same time that BRP and Stafford have been picking at the poor Girard warehouses, their neighbor to the north has successfully completed a beautiful renovation and filled the old historic building with tenants. So, it can be done, so long as you're not too greedy.
Front Street, as I wrote in this February post, was, until the start of 1993, a glorious, intact edge of the city, a living reminder of what Philadelphia was like in its maritime heyday, when clipper ships jostled for space among the wharves. But then Ed Rendell made his middle-of-the-night decision to allow the Bookbinders restaurant to demolish the Elisha Webb Chandelry at Front and Walnut. Within two years that entire block had been razed. And most of it is still empty today. If the Girard warehouses go, Philadelphia will have lost nearly four blocks of Front Street, the original Center City portion.
The waterfront activity is the reason that Stephen Girard built his series of warehouses and shops on Front Street. The ground floors were leased out to shopowners, while shipping merchants rented storage space and counting houses on the upper levels. The business had all but dried up by the time the city's port moved to South Philly in the 1960s. The old warehouses sat abandoned and forlorn for 30 years until people started to figure out that they were tailor-made for a loft living.
It's been frustrating watching the Girard Warehouses grow more decrepit while so much else in Old City has been spectacularly renovated. The buildings' bad luck was to have I-95 in its front yard. But at least the buildings managed to survive the imposition of that highway barrier. Now, ironically, that interstate road no longer seems to be such a deterrent to residential development. Several towers have been completed on Front Street. How ironic if these poor warehouses should be done in, not by the loss of the port or a massive highway, but by the overly grandiose expectations of a residential revival.