Site Description and History

City Archives

Undated photo of the Grays Ferry floating bridge

The Fourth Annual Ed Bacon Student Design Competition focuses on the Grays Ferry Crescent in South Philadelphia. For the purposes of this competition, the area of focus is bounded by 34th Street, Grays Ferry Avenue, and the Schuylkill River. The Grays Ferry Crescent, is also colloquially known as the DuPont Crescent, as it was home to DuPont’s Marshall laboratory complex from 1917 until 2009. This site was selected for the competition, in large part, because of its timeliness. DuPont is in the process of vacating the Marshall laboratory, with the intent of selling the property in the near future.

Meanwhile, the riverfront portion of this site will soon be home to the next segment of Schuylkill River Park — a multi-phase waterfront trail, developed by the Schuylkill River Development Corporation (SRDC). This segment of the trail will extend around the site’s riverfront perimeter, from the University Avenue Bridge to Wharton Street. Site remediation work has already taken place on this part of the site, containing the trail right-of-way, and trail construction will begin this fall.

The transformation from brownfield to greenway for this riverfront ribbon of land is on track, but for the rest of the massive site, the future is much less certain. Physical challenges abound. Since 1863 chemicals, dyes, paints, and other pollutants have been manufactured on this location. One-hundred-thousand-gallon tanks of oil and tar littered the site’s outskirts, some underground. Pipes wove their way in and out of a complex of nearly two-dozen structures. For decades, the site’s western portion was a slaughterhouse.

Connectivity is another major challenge. The neighborhoods immediately adjacent are stable, vibrant, and rich in history, but short on investment and recognition. For centuries, the citizens in Grays Ferry have lived a stone’s throw from the beautiful Schuylkill River, but found their paths to the waterfront asset impeded by rail, road, and industry. Conceptualizing a site redevelopment cognizant of the near-neighbors is central to this design competition.

Since the Civil War era, the development of this site has set the tone and precedent for the development of the surrounding parcels. Its fenced-in, industrial profile has attracted other self-contained uses that have made poor neighbors. However, for a city like Philadelphia that has an industrial past, but is seeing a new urban renaissance, it is a challenge to alter the perception, typology, and function of old, historically industrial parcels. Is it possible to take this polluted and long-isolated land, and redesign it for a sustainable future? With the riverfront trail soon to be snaking around the periphery, a glimpse of a different future is emerging.

Herein, lies the competition’s central challenge: the beautiful trail connecting this city back to its hidden river (the meaning of Schuylkill in Dutch) is becoming a reality. However, the future of the rest of the site is unknown — waiting for a fresh vision to guide its potential. Applicants should therefore focus their energies on the thoughtful, creative, safe transformation of a brownfield in the core of Philadelphia into a sustainable urban landscape for the future.

Immediate Vicinity

The Schuylkill Expressway (I-76) is immediately east of the site, passing over vacant industrial parcels and the CSX railroad tracks, which span from the south, underneath the 34th Street and Grays Ferry Avenue intersection, northward up the east side of the river through Center City. The nearest residential sections are in the neighborhoods of Grays Ferry and Forgotten Bottom, southeast of the site — dense, two-story rowhouse communities born of this area’s industrial heritage.

Across the river, over the University Avenue Bridge, University of Pennsylvania Health Systems is in the final stages of its mammoth project replacing the demolished Civic Center with a landscape of cutting edge medical buildings. The Grays Ferry Bridge leads westward from the site to the neighborhoods of Southwest Philadelphia. A river crossing has existed at this point since the 1690s.

History

1682-1863

At the time of William Penn’s arrival in 1682, activity along the Schuylkill River had been limited to bands of native Lenapes, a fort near the confluence with the Delaware River, and Dutch and Swedish fur traders. In the Colonial period, the Gray family owned estates in the Grays Ferry Crescent, and operated a pre-existing ferry, in place since the 1690s, and in their property since the 1740s. A crossing of some form has been there ever since. This ferry was the city’s southern gateway for those arriving from Baltimore or the southern colonies. On the approach to the ferry were numerous estates, including that of John and William Bartram, on the site of a Swedish farmhouse, with its luscious gardens, still maintained to this day.

Much of Philadelphia’s early development occurred along the Delaware River, to the east. However, the arrival of the U.S. Naval Home & Asylum in 1832 along Grays Ferry Road at what is now Bainbridge Street, brought not only increased traffic, but also permanent residents to the Schuylkill River side of Philadelphia. The Schuylkill Arsenal had been at what is now the intersection of Washington and Grays Ferry Avenue since 1799, and helped outfit the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

However, at the Grays Ferry Crescent, development was minimal. In 1838 a defining feature arrived — the Philadelphia Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. The tracks, engineered by William Strickland, architect of the Naval Asylum, crossed the Schuylkill beside the ferry, traveled along Grays Ferry and Washington Avenues, terminating at Broad Street. This prominent feature defined the development of the Grays Ferry Crescent immensely, though the tracks have been covered since the 1970s. In the 1880s the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad would pass under the PWB at 34th Street and Grays Ferry Avenue, before continuing up the east side of the Schuylkill River.

By 1854, the year Philadelphia was consolidated to its current geographic boundaries, industry was sprouting along the railroad tracks. In the Crescent industry arrived in 1863 with the Grays Ferry factory of the Harrison Brothers Chemical works.

1863-1917

undated Harrison Brothers flyer.

The Harrison Chemical Company, employing 500 people, established the Grays Ferry Crescent firmly as industrial, and the parcels along the river in both directions followed suit. By 1876 the Grays Ferry Iron Works occupied the area just south of Grays Ferry Avenue, with connections to both Harrison and the railroad. Ten years later, the Kalion Chemical Company set up shop around 31st Street on land previously owned by the University of Pennsylvania. A slaughterhouse was built across the avenue from the iron works by 1907.

Next to the slaughterhouse was a hub for the Grays Ferry Passenger Rail, in place since the 1860s, which traveled up the avenue to the South Street intersection. Around the Crescent, large private landholders ceded ground to development of new tracts of rowhouses. The passenger rail served the area’s growing population. Blocks were subdivided, alleys cut and communities born, first between Reed Street and Grays Ferry Avenue, 33rd and 31st Streets, with a public school and Presbyterian church. The 3500 block of Wharton Street saw new rowhouse development as well.

By 1900 the Crescent boasted a new Grays Ferry Bridge, and in 1917, it had a new anchor tenant — E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Co. Philadelphia Works Manufacturers of Paints Colors & Chemicals.

1917-1960

1894 rendering of the proposed Grays Ferry bridge

The new DuPont facility was massive. As Harrison had done in its day, DuPont set a new course for the Crescent. Over the 1920s and 1930s DuPont renovated its complex, housing more than 50 structures, millions of gallons of storage space, underground and above, rail and boat connectivity, and a network of pipes.

The DuPont buildings housed every type of chemical or dye imaginable. There were the acid buildings, the resin cooling platforms, sulfur storage buildings, color grinding and mixing facilities, the

Ready-Made Paint Department, furnaces, oil tanks and more. The office building was completed in the 1930s and the main Marshall Laboratory completed in 1950. Rail connections led in and out of the site, including a track around the perimeter, still visible today.

The arrival of DuPont heralded a vibrant, active epoch for the Grays Ferry Crescent, with most riverfront land developed as chemical or oil facilities. The area between Forgotten Bottom and the river was home to the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation, and scores of tar and oil storage tanks. Across Grays Ferry, Oscar Meyer utilized the slaughterhouse facility, with its killing rooms and connections to the Consolidated Dressed Beef Company. Northeast of the intersection of Grays Ferry and 34th Streets was the American Oil Company, wedged between the B&O Railroad tracks and the University City Bridge. The old Kalion facility at 31st Street was owned by Texaco by mid-century.

The adjacent neighborhoods had completely developed with dense, gridded, rowhouse blocks by the time DuPont arrived. But in 1960, with the completion of the adjacent section of the Schuylkill Expressway, these enclaves were cut off from the rest of the city — excepting one connection via Wharton Street. The new, elevated highway wedged the homes west of 34th Street between the river, rail, industry and a freeway.

1960-2003

By the 1960s, on both sides of the Schuylkill Expressway, south of Grays Ferry Avenue, the neighborhood was indeed forgotten, except of course, by those who lived there. Conditions deteriorated, due in-part to the physical impediments, as well as disinvestment that impacted many of Philadelphia’s communities. Industrial decline and the rise of the suburbs took a toll on the city’s population, tax base, and the vitality of its neighborhoods.

In October 1968, the City Planning Commission expanded the South Central Redevelopment Area — certified to receive federal urban renewal dollars — to include the Forgotten Bottom and Grays Ferry neighborhoods, specifically the area bounded by the Schuylkill River, Reed Street, 34th Street, Tasker Street, 25th Street and Washington Avenue.

The redevelopment of the site sought to alleviate blighting conditions through the removal or renovation of existing vacant homes, decrease in residential density, and redesign of faulty street layouts. Little of the plans came to fruition, however. Eventually, some public housing developments were constructed by the Office of Housing and Community Development, but not in the competition site’s immediate vicinity, and not until the 1990s.

Meanwhile DuPont hummed along, but its fellow industries in the Crescent shuttered over the course of the second half of the 20th century. Many residents fled the surrounding neighborhood as well. The population of Grays Ferry and Forgotten Bottom dropped by 12% between 1990 and 2000. The median sales price of homes was well below the city average, and over one-third of residents lived below the poverty level in 2000.

In 2003 a new transformation of this area began with the release of the Master Plan for the Tidal Schuylkill River, a product of years of study and preparation by the Schuylkill River Development Corporation (SRDC).

2003–Present

Grays Ferry Chemical Works — Owned By Harrison Brothers & Co. Date: 1894.

The Master Plan’s stated goal is to guide the short and long term redevelopment of the tidal Schuylkill River for the benefit of the city, region and the Commonwealth. The central tool for realizing this goal is the extension of the Schuylkill River Park pedestrian and bike trail from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to Fort Mifflin, at the river’s confluence with the Delaware, roughly nine miles south. To-date, SRDC has completed construction on roughly 1.2 miles of the trail to the base of Locust Street. The Grays Ferry Crescent section will be the next to go into construction.

The Master Plan lays out some short-term steps for the areas south of Locust Street. A cantilevered boardwalk is to extend over the river to the South Street Bridge (this bridge is currently under reconstruction). On the new bridge, the trail will be well-defined and safe, before it cuts in the narrow lane between the Schuylkill Expressway and the new buildings of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, around the bend to the University Avenue Bridge.

The third and most immediate of these steps takes the trail down from the University Avenue Bridge, around the perimeter of the competition site on city-owned land, under the Grays Ferry Bridge, to the base of Wharton Street. DuPont donated an easement along the Schuylkill River for the future alignment of the trail. SRDC completed site remediation work on this land at the start of 2009, and trail construction is to begin this fall. Engineering documents are available in the Documents and Images section of this Competition Program.

Access from the bridge to the site will likely come directly from a sharp ramp, or more gradually from an easement though the DuPont property, as indicated on the provided plans. Slipping into the corridor between the river and the railroad tracks — owned by Waste Management Inc. — the trail will be shrouded in native vegetation. An old metal pier juts out into the river, right across from an abandoned waterfront motel. At its terminus, the trail passes under the Grays Ferry Bridge to Wharton Street. Currently many enjoy fishing just South of Wharton Street, and the new trail will extend the fishing area north of Wharton.

DuPont Marshall Laboratory

After 92 years on the Grays Ferry Crescent, Dupont is vacating the Marshall Laboratory complex. The brownfield it leaves behind is at the center of this design competition. The Environmental Protection Agency has not declared this a superfund site (a hazardous waste site eligible for significant federal funds to clean up, of which there are only 1,255 nationwide), nor does it have the state’s equivalent label. However, DuPont only recently announced its intentions to vacate and sell the land.

Large-scale chemical and lead paint manufacturing has taken place here since 1863. A site near the Grays Ferry Bridge was a slaughterhouse for decades, and is now a Waste Management Inc. transfer station. The surrounding riverfront parcels all have a similar industrial heritage. Given these ingredients, the soil could likely preclude many types of development — though the extent of the soil pollutants has not yet been measured. It is clear that the site’s history will, in many ways dictate its future from brown to green.