The newly formed Friends of Franklin Town Park will meet Thurs Oct. 4 at the Tivoli building, 19th and Hamilton, to discuss the future of the green space. The meeting will begin at 6:30. Some neighbors are advocating drastic changes, while others would just like to see better maintenance. See the story below.

Form vs. Function at Franklin Town Park


By Brian Rademaekers
Star Staff Writer
Wedged between 18th and 19th streets, just below Spring Garden, Franklin Town Park is a refreshing city block of green grass and winding paths.
But Mel Seligsohn, a Hamilton Street resident who lives just across the street from the park, thinks the green space could use a lot of improvement.
Apparently, Seligsohn isn’t alone.
After distributing fliers in the surrounding neighborhood, Seligsohn addressed about 40 residents at a meeting two weeks ago.
“There were some people who came out and said they didn’t want a blade of grass touched,” said Seligsohn. “But for the most part, people overwhelmingly agreed that the park needs some tweaking.”
In its most recent history, the park was a two-acre lot owned by the city’s Redevelopment Authority. The agency commissioned internationally known artist Athena Tacha to transform the land into a sculpted park, a project that was completed in 1991.
Seligsohn said that, at the time, the city was expecting several high-rise towers to be built around the park and anticipated the construction of an elevated boulevard.
In part, Tacha designed the park — a network of raised and landscaped semicircles and rock sculptures — with the understanding that many people would view the space from on high.
Aside from the Tivoli Condos and the Spring Garden Towers, much of the anticipated development never materialized.
In the last 10 years, Seligsohn said, the residential community around Franklin Town has expanded, and the public space has grown to become “the neighborhood’s park,” something he feels it was never designed to be.
“It’s a work of art, but it doesn’t work as any anything else,” said Seligsohn, “A park is supposed to work as a park.”
One of the more frequent complaints he has heard is that much of park is off-limits. Spanning the entire center of the park, the raised gardens consume much of the open space.
On the periphery, a network of asphalt paths lined with benches circles the gardens and gets heavy use.
But Seligsohn said many people are disappointed that there is no clear line of sight from side of the park to the other.
“A lot of parents say they don’t want to bring their kids here because they’re afraid that they’ll lose them,” he said. “I don’t think (Tacha) envisioned children playing here.”
He also said the park’s raised central garden makes the park an intimidating place to pass through at night.
Seligsohn pointed out that much of the raised gardens is barren; their stone walls, he said, are crumbling in a number of places.
As he sees it, those issues have combined to distance the park from the surrounding community. He’d like to see the space retooled to make it more accessible as a meeting place for neighbors.
“This is the community park for this area, and right now it feels more like a place that people just pass through to go somewhere else,” said Seligsohn. “It just doesn’t have any real relationship to the neighborhood.”
Seligsohn and others in attendance at the recent meeting discussed ways to make the park more appealing to the public, including a central space for concerts and the addition of an exercise area for dogs.
Seligsohn said other city parks, like Rittenhouse Square, could provide a useful example for changes at Franklin Town.
“I think Rittenhouse Square is a work of art, but it is also a place that people can use,” said Seligsohn.
Elizabeth Osborne, a Brandywine Street resident who came out to the recent meeting, agreed that the park’s layout makes it inaccessible to the community. She advocates a major change.
“I would love to change the middle of the park,” Osborne said. “It isn’t functional at all, and it inhibits any kind of meeting of people.”
Osborne said the park has seen improvements in landscaping and litter control in recent years, but she thinks the park’s design is fatally flawed as a public meeting space.
A temporary move that has her staying nearby at Rittenhouse Square has shown her how nice it can be to live by a well-designed public park.
“I walk through Rittenhouse several times a night, and it is really nice,” she said.
Seligsohn’s recent meeting led to the formation of a group tentatively meeting as the Friends of Franklin Town Park. Osborne plans to join the group, explaining that she is committed to seeing positive change at Franklin Town.
Like Seligsohn, she believes that planned expansion of the Central Library and the likely addition of the Barnes Collection to the Parkway make the park’s renovation even more urgent.
Besides changing the look and feel of the park, Seligsohn and the group hope to address the growing number of homeless people who sleep in the park at night.
If nothing more, Seligsohn said, the group would like to see more trees planted in park and better lighting installed so that people would feel safer walking by at night.
“Right now, it is a two-acre park that is starting to be a problem for the community because of the homeless issue,” said Seligsohn. “But it has potential to become a tremendous asset for the community, and that is what we want to work toward.”
Friends of Franklin Town Park will hold its next meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4, in the community room of the Tivoli Condo building, 19th and Hamilton streets. The public is invited to attend.
Reporter Brian Rademaekers can be reached at 215-354-3039 or brademaekers@phillynews.com

I walk past that park often and until i read that bit of information I never did understand it. Understanding that the park was designed to be viewed from above clears up some things for me. In general it is never a good idea to design a park for the select few people that might see it from their windows 50+ feet above the park, it's far more important to design a park to be enjoyed at street level.

I think the center element could be livened up just by increasing the variety of plants, currently the low growth plants in the center are dull and do little to stimulate or soothe the eyes.

The trees in the park are a strange choice as well. Though I do not advocate removing the trees I would suggest adding some less coarse plants throughout the park that would make it more user friendly and soften the ridgitity of many of the conifers in the park.

It could be a very nice park with some minor improvements geared towards ground level experiences.

An early picture of the park from above, and some interesting comment from the creator:


http://www.studiolo.org/CIP/VARA/Tacha/Tacha.htm

Sooo grateful that Seligsohn has initiated a new look at the park. It does have great potential that's currently not being realized. It would be unfortunate, though, to improve the park and it not get utilized because the homeless continue to use it as a bedroom and bathroom.

You need to give people a reason to go there. Put in a playground and a dog run. Encourage a coffee shop to open as close as possible. Work with the city to try to make it more of a through-route into Center City for people walking to and from work who live farther north.

Whats is up with the green area just south of the park at 18th & Callowhill? I've been here over a year, and have wondered how such a prime piece of land can sit there undeveloped? My only guess is CCP owns it and doesn't have the money to build yet?

"Encourage a coffee shop to open as close as possible. "

There are two coffee shops a block away.

"Whats is up with the green area just south of the park at 18th & Callowhill? I've been here over a year, and have wondered how such a prime piece of land can sit there undeveloped? My only guess is CCP owns it and doesn't have the money to build yet?"

I don't know if CCP has an option on that land or not but, consider, that there
was even MORE prime/"blank" land, across the street, before CCP
built their newest building. That building is only a couple of years old.

I'm thinking in terms of a park I saw in Portland, Oregon, where the coffee shop actually had a patio that was part of the park it was adjacent to. This made coffee shop patrons also park users, and brought more life to the park. It also had a *really* cool fountain I'd love to see replicated in Philly.

I always wondered why they put all the effort into building those terraced stone walls in the center of the park and made no effort to define the parks perimeter. Rittenhouse and Washington Squares have a definitive perimeter that separates the park from the sidewalk. Connections has nothing. If I were to make changes, I would move the low stone walls to the sidewalk at 18th & 19th Streets to define the parks border and open the interior for people to enjoy. It's just a big waste of space otherwise.

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