Fires during riots destroy more than structures

This is the area of Philadelphia in the Inquirer article. It's old elegance can still be seen in the decaying structures.

Stan Wischnowski, a 20-year veteran of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the newspaper's top editor, has sepped down days after the publication of an article that led to a walkout by dozens of Inquirer journalists. Wischnowski was responsible for the tone-deaf headline that said "Buildings Matter."

As someone who worked at newspapers almost all my life, I can understand how this happened. Editors like to play with words when composing headlines. All too often editors are too cute by half and leave the journalists who wrote the story under the headline fuming. Appearing to equate the deaths of black men and women at the hands of police officers with the destruction of some building was totally wrong. The newspaper's apology was necessary.

But, read the article and the reporter, Inga Saffron, makes some valid points. She tells readers, there was a frenzy of destruction and by evening . . .

"hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire. Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods."

She goes on to say,

" 'People over property' is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift.

Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood."

In the '60s I was in Detroit at a black friends's 1930s apartment on Chicago Blvd. when the rioting threatened to engulf the area. I was accompanied by my friends to my car and told to leave Detroit. Take Woodward, drive to the tunnel and return to Canada immediately. I did.

After the riot I was saddened to find that the half century plus ice cream parlour I used to take neighbourhood kids to was gone. Burned. In the suburbs white folk lined up to have an ice cream sundae at Farrell's. It was a tacky, ersatz copy of an old ice cream parlour. In the inner city, they had the real McCoy. It was wonderful. I hope those kids, now in their 60s, can still recall sitting at the counter enjoying a single scoop ice cream cone with a silly, white photographer fellow. I have the memories, and I also have one of the sidelights from the front of the store, I found it in the rubble.

The store, in any form, was never rebuilt. The kids disappeared as well. After the riots there were no kids and no ice cream. The neighbourhood was destroyed.