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.

What was wrong? Why was it demolished?

What was wrong? Why was this train station, built in the late '30s in the art deco style, demolished only a few decades later? Why? For the same reasons the station that replaced it is now no longer standing either.

To many of us have a disposable attitude toward or built heritage. Buildings are discarded and for the flimsiest of reasons. Demolishing a building is seen as "no big deal." But it is a big deal. It is wasteful⁠—of materials, of money. It is unimaginative.

Tearing down the old is seen by some as the price of progress. All too often it isn't. It may simply prove to be a way of marking time. A perfectly usable railway station disappears and an equally usable one replaces it. At worse, an irreplaceable building is lost and replaced with a truly disposable structure. And that is what happened in this case.

Today, less that a century after the art deco station was built, the city has a third station which does not appear to offer anymore than the station from the '30s. Which leaves one to wonder: What did the '30s station replace?

Possibly the money wasted building train stations could have been put to better use, and sweetened the pot for funding the design and quality of construction of other civic structures. Just a thought.

The waiting areas in the '30s London railway station

Some of London's finest built heritage has disappeared over the passing years.

On Sept 1st, 1936 London opened a new Art Deco train station with a formal opening by Sir Percy Vincent, Lord Mayor of London England. The station lasted less than 30 years before being demolished in 1963.

 

Located below the railway tracks, the concourse was entered down a ramp from the main floor lobby just inside the station entrance. The concourse was 117 ft. long by 36 ft. wide and sat under 3 platforms. At the far south end of the concourse was the entrance to the L&PS (London and Port Stanley) subway tunnel - 100 ft long by 9 ft wide.

 

 

Photo source - https://ingeniumcanada.org/archives CN Images of Canada collection

Info source - https://railwaypages.com/carl-riff-s-railway-history-diaries

Brilliant thinking increases productivity

It's hard to see but this is a bit of truly brilliant thinking. It only took one man to deliver a new gas water heater to our home. The steel dolly used to move the heater had a small motor and a sliding bottom platform that descended down a central track at the push of button. No need to bump the dolly down the stairs.

The platform, driven by the small motor, can be extended five feet to where it is stabilized on a lower step. Then the movement is reversed and the extended dolly collapsed. At this point the dolly is again slanted back and the platform descends again taking the heater to a new and much lower step. The operation as repeated until the water heater reaches the basement floor.

The old heater is removed the same way. No wear and tear on the home. No tearing of the carpeting. Very little strain on the installer. Brilliant.

When we think of urban life, we don't always consider the support staff. Folk like this hot water tank installer are important and if they are very productive all the better. This dolly clearly makes this man a far more productive worker. Unfortunately, it also puts one person out of a job. The last heater installation required two delivery folk.

Back to the river is sunk

The project at the Forks of theThames was known as Back-To-The-River. Supposedly Londoners has forgotten the river that runs through the city from east to west with a very large branch forking off in the core to head north.

Is this true? Have Londoners forgotten the river? I can't speak for others but I've always been very aware of the Thames River and the larger North Thames River. I live where I do because of the river. I didn't want to live on flood plain and that is one reason I live near the local ski hill.

I lived for years in a neighbourhood near the Forks of the Thames and each spring I lived with the fear of a flood. Before Fanshawe Dam and Pittock Dam floods were not common but they did happen and homes were lost and people died.

Note the depth of the water in the illustration of the curving walkway proposed for the Forks of the Thames. The height is a lie. A dam on the river in the southeast of the city washed out a few years ago. That dam held back the river creating a reservoir that extended all the way upstream to the core of the city. Without the dam, the water is lower, cleaner and one might say healthier.

Now, with the cost of covid-19 looming, the cost of the Back-To-The-River walkways seems out of the question. The folk behind the effort have withdrawn their funding and the project has been canceled. Many folk will not be sorry. A natural, free-running river with fish and osprey and even a few bald eagles is more to their liking.

Forget the river? I don't think so. But it may not take long for many Londoners to forget the winding walkway.

We share our cities

We think we are important when it comes to the scheme of things -- and we are. We are far more influencial when it comes to what happens on our planet than our numbers appear to warrant. For instance, insects make up the bulk of the world’s animal species, some 70% in fact.

Many of us don't give the other species on our planet enough credit. We need them. The linked article may overstate the problem. It is hard to extrapolate the way the author does. Yet . . .

It may feel more natural to fret about wolves, sea turtles, and white rhinos dying off than it is to feel remorse about vanishing bugs.

But the loss of insects is a dire threat — one that could trigger a "catastrophic collapse of Earth's ecosystems," according to a February 2019 study.

Source: Last year, 40% of honey-bee colonies in the US died. But bees aren't the only insects disappearing in unprecedented numbers. -- Business Insider.

The first of the month. Is this share a park day?

London's parks are peaceful but across the States parks are in shambles after days of protest and rioting. Canada is not free of the taint of racism. There but for the grace of god as my dear departed mother would have said.

The unfolding story in the U.S. is a wake-up call for Canadians. We have racist issues and these issues have resulted in violence, very localized, but violence in the past nevertheless. These matters must be addressed, dealt with and dealt with successfully.

One thing that I have not seen discussed is that half way through this century whites will be the minority, at least in the States for sure. If we have not solved the race issue, we, or our children and grandchildren, may suffer the same fate we have inflicted on others for centuries. This game could flip.