Old City / Society Hill : In The News

The team behind the Franklin Fountain has transformed Shane Confectionery.

For the Berley brothers, it’s not just the candies that are nostalgic–it’s the experience, too. A look around the pristine storefront shows an antique cash register and pay phone, walls lined with memorabilia and ephemera of eras gone by, and apothecary jars stocked with penny candy (think Abba Zabba and Bit-o-Honey). The duo, along with head confectioner Davina Soondrum, use period tools and equipment like hand-fused copper kettles and bowls heated over a manually-fired gas stove, to keep the production experience as authentic as possible.

Via The New York Times.

Original source: Sweet Paul 
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Middle East meets East as Philly chef Michael Solomonov takes Zahav's modern Israeli cuisine to Momofuku Ssam bar for a late-night dinner.

Original source: Zagat
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An intriguing vision of a waterfront park obscuring I-95 has been unveiled, and could mean a major green space achievement for Philadelphia. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation is currently seeking designers and engineers.

A preliminary rendering of Penn's Landing Park extracted from the Master Plan for the Central Delaware, shows a sloping lawn, roughly the size of Rittenhouse Square, through which people could walk from Front Street down to the water's edge, or where they could linger to watch fireworks or concerts. The park would sit on a structure that expands the existing partial cap of I-95, which covers the highway from Front to Columbus, and from Chestnut  Street just about half way to Walnut Street.

Original source: PlanPhilly
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Shopping Center Business takes a stroll through Center City Philadelphia, finding a bright spot for U.S. retailers via redevelopment and growing assets.

Meanwhile, Walnut Street -- Center City’s high street shopping district -- and its surrounding streets continue to pick up additional retailers who want to capture the city’s affluent residents (Philadelphia has the third largest CBD residential population following New York and Chicago). Center City District estimates that a business located on the 1400 block of Walnut Street can expect to see an average of greater than 2,000 people per hour. The Center City District estimates retail demand within one mile of City Hall is $710.9 million per year. Center City has a population of nearly 180,000, 73% of which have at least a bachelor’s degree.

Original source: Shopping Center Business
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Philadelphia landscape architecture and urban design firm OLIN has a history of wowing New York crowds with its work, and is now part of an ambitious plan to transform the city's Museum of Modern Art, reports The New York Times.

OLIN, the Philadelphia landscape architecture and urban design firm behind the renewals of Bryant Park and Columbus Circle, has planned the project and will serve as its lead designer. David H. Koch, a Met trustee and the philanthropist who in 2008 pledged $100 million to renovate the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center -- which was renamed for him -- is providing $60 million to finance it. But the plaza will not be named after him.

"It all began when I was invited to attend the restarting of the fountains on Lincoln Center’s plaza" in 2009, Mr. Koch said in a telephone interview. "When the water started shooting up and was so beautifully illuminated, it blew me away. That's when I suddenly got the idea that it would be great if the Met did something similar with their crummy fountains."

Original source: The New York Times
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Philly based game designer Cipher Prime is cited by Gamezebo as building a reputation as one of the top developers in the world of music games.

The studio previously responsible for Fractal and Auditorium released their first iPad-exclusive project back in May, and much to our delight, it seemed to be the kind of game that could only work on a big touch screen like the iPad’s. Players tapped circles as they came into contact with a “pulse” from a set of concentric rings – and we found ourselves tapping up a frenzy.

And the music? Wow. If you’re the kind of audiophile who relishes in finding great new tunes, you’ll only last minutes in Pulse before you head to iTunes and by the soundtrack.

Original source: Gamezebo
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Local restaurants are getting a reputation for farm fresh ingredients, according to OffManhattan.

To taste the freshest produce in the region, you can shop one of the city’s many farmers market, haul your selections back home, and crack open a cookbook. Or you can take the effortless route, and settle into one of the top farm-to-table restaurants in Philadelphia.

Uniquely positioned between ‘Jersey Fresh’ territory and Amish Country, Philly offers its chefs an impressive variety of local, seasonal ingredients from which to craft their award-winning menus. And diners will be excited to know that much of this produce makes its way from farm to plate just one day after harvesting. Yes, the peppery radishes and buttery greens in your appetizer salad may have been plucked from the dirt just hours ago.

Source: OffManhattan
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Philadelphia's rich landscape heritage makes for a city painted in shades of green, according to The Huffington Post.

The transformation of the urban core, as I've written before, is hot, hot, hot. Currently, there's a great deal of attention focused (justifiably) on the much-talked-about opening of the second phase of the much-talked-about High Line in New York, which has put yet more vim into that city's vigor. But if you want to see some serious va-va-voom, set your sites on Philadelphia (and don't get all snarky quoting W. C. Fields now). Philadelphia's exceptional array of parks and open spaces, and the visionary, entrepreneurial and civic-minded people behind them, is where to really see a city center in high gear (and the BYOB restaurant scene is taste bud nirvana).

For more than three centuries, city planning, landscape architecture and a unique civic ambition that emphasizes horticulture as much as the pedestrian experience in its public spaces and streetscapes, have made Philadelphia a fascinating city. From the five squares that were at the core of William Penn's 1683 plan to Dan Kiley's mid-20th-century design for Independence Mall, which connected Franklin Square to the north and Washington Square to the south, the city has a landscape heritage that few others can boast.

Source: The Huffington Post
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The grassroots soul music movement of Philadelphia that created The Roots and Musiq Soulchild hasn't disappeared, and its latest practitioners are worth seeking out, according to Urban Cusp.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Philadelphia had one of the most diverse and respected cultural scenes on the East Coast. One could walk down South Street and hear poets on the corner, see Rasta street vendors selling patchouli and flags, and not make it too far down the block without receiving at least two hand-bills advertising upcoming events. You could walk on UPenn and Temple's campuses and see a range from tattooed Rockers with spiked hair to B-Boy wannabes in full Adidas gear. The culture was so bountiful that it made you stop and ask, "Are we still in Philly or is this Brooklyn?" But, now it almost seems like the diversity has disappeared or at least gone into hiding. Where did all of the culture go? Have all of the true artists been pushed out? Have they sold out or have they all given up and relocated to New York and DC?

Source: Urban Cusp
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Walk Score ranks Philadelphia fifth in its listing of the most walkable cities in America.

Philadelphia's most walkable neighborhoods are Center City West, Center City East, University City. Philadelphia's least walkable neighborhoods are Byberry, Torresdale, Fox Chase.

Source: Walk Score
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The Bowery Presents rock club group will open Union Transfer in Philadelphia in the former Spaghetti Warehouse building on Spring Garden Street, with help from local impresarios Sean Agnew and Avram Hornik, according to The New York Times.

The Bowery Presents empire of rock clubs and theaters has already expanded from the Lower East Side to New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maine, and now it is spreading to Pennsylvania.

Working with two local partners, the company is opening Union Transfer, a new performance space near Center City in Philadelphia with room for 600 people. The first show will be Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on Sept. 21, and other coming shows include Shellac on Sept. 29, Wild Flag on Oct. 19 and Boris on Oct. 28, according to an announcement on Tuesday by Bowery Presents. About 200 shows a year are planned for the space, which was once a train depot and more recently a Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant.

Source: The New York Times

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