PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future

BRIDGES

FRISCO LANDMARK: The Boring Bay Bridge
While the Golden Gate rightfully gets all the attention, it’s in a wooded area miles from downtown. The only real city bridge here is the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, an 8-mile multi-span bridge that lands just south of the office core in an area called Rincon Hill. Completed in 1936, it soars above the Embarcadero in precisely the same majestic way that our Ben Franklin Bridge overtops Delaware Ave…. Except that ours is nicer.

PHILLY LESSON: Celebrate the Ben
There’s not much we need to do with the Ben, other than love it, and perhaps open up the ornate “lost train station” inside the abutment. Regardless, it’s is one thing we’ve got on San Francisco. While the Bay Bridge is more than four times as long, it falls far short on charm, with a drab gray superstructure and naked concrete abutments. The Ben, finished just 10 years earlier, mixes ornate Beaux Arts stonework with American structural muscle. Plus, it’s blue. When one thinks of the sub-par condo projects proposed for its immediate area, you can almost imagine creating stricter design controls to respect the genius of Paul Philippe Cret.