Shibe Park, Philadelphia, PA. Year unknown (Image copyright The City Record and Boston News-Letter).
I recently came across a blog on Philadelphia's architecture written by Inga Saffron, the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and was very impressed. I don't know much about the current state of development in Philadelphia (oddly enough I know more about Philadelphia in the 1790s than present day Philadelphia) so it is interesting to see what their particular challenges are and to see how local architects are solving local problems. Architectural criticism has to walk a fine line between the technical and academic while still being accessible to the general public, a balancing act Ms. Saffron accomplishes. Bonus points are given for giving the blog a title reminiscent of Lewis Mumford's "The Sky Line" column written for the New Yorker, which remains a classic of architectural criticism. Mumford's New Yorker columns have been compiled into a book, Sidewalk Critic.
The illustration is an insurance map
showing Shibe
Park, the former home of the Philadelphia Athletics baseball
team. Ms. Saffron's thoughts on ballparks can be found here.
What I like about this illustration is how it shows Philadelphia's grid plan,
which has guided development since being drawn up by William Penn, who
founded Philadelphia in 1682.
Link: Skyline Online.
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