Industrial Picturesque

Reading Viaduct - Photos by Juan Levy

The Reading Viaduct is a mile-long earth berm along which the Reading Railroad used to bring anthracite coal from Pottsville to Philadelphia. It runs above Northern Liberties and offers an updated version of a strain of English romanticism that helped make Central Park. The “picturesque" English park was for contemplating classical ruins in a natural landscape, a nostalgic refuge from industrialization for the class that had brought that world into existence, not least with steam-powered railroads for transporting coal (Like good burghers, they disdained the aristocratic French gardens of Versailles in their own choice of an aesthetic).

Today the bones of this late industrial fabric are having a go of their own at nostalgia. Made softer by wildflowers and grasses among rusted rails and weather-carved wooden ties, those bones are quite beautiful. On Sunday, walking the viaduct under a big sky was akin to being in a spacious meadow where warehouse mountains popped up every so often.

Clusters of Center City skyscrapers to the south never intruded on the serene horizontality of the berm. Where small trees were burned between the ties, the woody remains were like black and brown sea corals with eyes at the end of each velvety charcoal knob.

This is industrial picturesque, a phrase that doesn’t properly capture the look of signal bridges made graceful and fragile (and classical: what is a signal bridge, after all, but industrial post and lintel). English picturesque meditated on the aspirations of classical civilization to timeless beauty and knowledge. American civilization was built on the railroad, emblem of the mobility and strength of industrial capitalism. If English gardens showed how timeless values surrender to nature and time, the lesson of the Viaduct might be that what once pushed relentlessly forward is now stilled and vulnerable--but also a gift to be re-adapted in this moment as a unique space for the community.

The berm looks out on (and eventually the Viaduct could connect to) surrounding neighborhoods, abandoned buildings, and artists’ studios. An imaginative reincarnation of the Viaduct would bring additional energy and beauty here. My "excellent adventure" neighbor Juan Levy brought me along on a scouting mission by folks thinking along the lines of the wildly popular High Line in New York City (Kate Brower points out the Viaduct is considerably wider than the High Line).
A couple of these folks, John Struble and Sarah McEneaney, founded a non-profit group in 2003 to develop the Viaduct as an open public green space with its railroad fabric intact. You can find out about their terrific work here. And this link shows how local artists engaged the Viaduct last April. I intend to join up when I come back; it’s a wonderful project.

The trip was partly a chance to test a camera Juan was recommending for India. Along with Waldo Aguirre and Brendan Keegan at Annenberg, whatever image quality I manage to achieve in video and still shots (and getting the images back here!) will be with the help of these good folks.

Totally incidental: After a fierce thunderstorm yesterday, tons of rainwater pushing the Schuylkill along were smoothly sluicing over the spillway by Boathouse Row. As they tumbled over the dam in the late afternoon, those gallons of muddy water looked like (stay with me now) gallons of molten milk chocolate and, where they violently churned up the river below, frothy whipped cream. It was GREAT.