Well, it’s Friday which means it is time to reveal the answers to Week 1 of what we hope will be an ongoing test of how well you pay attention to your surroundings as you traipse around our fair city.  Back on Monday we put up 3 close-up photos of what we’ll generically call “interesting things” somewhere in Philadelphia. Now, let’s step back a few feet and figure out exactly what we were looking at:

This should be fairly easy, especially if you recognize architect Vincent Kling’s modernist Municipal Services Building in the background:

That’s right. It’s good old, Francis Lazarro “Frank” Rizzo, Sr. in front of the MSB on JFK between Broad and 15th.  Masashi dug up the following:

The sculpture was made by Zenos Frudakis in 1998.  Rizzo was a former mayor of Philadelphia for 2 terms, from 1972 to 1980. During his term, construction of The Gallery at Market East and the Center City Commuter Connection began. Wikipedia is a decent source for Rizzo trivia:

Rizzo had a tremendous impact on Philadelphia politics. An extremely polarizing figure, Philadelphians were either extreme supporters or detractors. A Democrat, Rizzo’s politics were primarily in the conservative wing of the Democratic party. His political appeal, however, transcended political parties. His switch from the Democratic party to the Republican party spawned a political term, “Rizzocrats” — people who would follow Rizzo regardless of party affiliation.

Undoubtedly, Rizzo will have a lot of space in that new Philadelphia Encyclopedia that I heard about on WHYY this morning.  Feel free to share your own thoughts about Rizzo in the comments section.

Next up:

We wandered out of our Center City comfort zone to get this one, which is probably immediately recognizable to fans of Johnny Brenda’s.

I bet that’s not what you were expecting. This beauty of a bike rack is located on Frankford Avenue near Girard. According to Masashi, it’s the Bike Icon Rack by Bob Phillips and was put in place as part of the New Kingston Community Development Corporation’s (NKCDC) Frankford Avenue Artracks Project in 2005. As an avid commuter cyclist (and wannabe recreational cyclist with too little spare time) I appreciate any attempts to increase the bike rack quotient in this town.  Making them look cool is icing on the cake.

And finally:

You’ll recall that my hint for this one was “This picture was taken a few weeks ago and it definitely does NOT look like this any more, so the question is what was it?”

Answer:

The building formerly known as The Youth Study Center on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Even the picture above (with the striking blue sky so expertly captured by Masashi) represents a stage in the demolition that has since passed.  In the first picture, note the wall mural in what must have been a common area in the YSC.  As I walked or drove by the YSC during its stages of destruction I was struck by how similar the inside of that prison looked like the inside of an unadorned Holiday Inn which I saw during its construction process several years ago.  I guess it all depends on which side of the door the locks are located.

Masashi found the following about the YSC:

The Youth Study Center was first established in 1909 as the House of Detention.  The building on 20th and Pennsylvania Avenue was opened on May 15, 1952. The new Youth Study Center is planned to be opened in October 2011 in West Philadelphia. From the web (.pdf):

The Youth Study Center was first established in 1909 as the House of Detention. This early facility, run by a Court appointed Board of Managers, sought to keep children whose delinquency was not of a serious nature, from appearing in formal court proceedings. The residents consisted mainly of status offenders and abused and neglected children. Status offenses were generally minor crimes such as truancy or curfew violation. The facility program consisted of an educational component and provided medical, psychiatric, and psychological evaluations.

On May 15, 1952, the present (sic) facility was opened at 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue, almost the exact geographic center of the juvenile delinquency pattern in Philadelphia at that time. The expansion of the facility, in addition to satisfying space requirements, reflected the prevailing social climate, which emphasized human relations, social responsibility and the need to deal with the increasing number of serious offenses being committed by juveniles.

Kind of makes you wonder what the “exact geographic center of juvenile delinquency” is today.

So there you have it.  The first three answers are in the book.  The comments section is open and we invite everyone to fill us in with more information about our featured objects/locations if we missed anything.  That’s a standing invitation for all of these contests.  We know we don’t know everything and, in fact, for some objects we don’t know anything.

Below, we’ve begun mapping our answers.  Go ahead and play around with it. Click on the map to enlarge and then click on the push pins to see the featured objects.

Click on the map image to enlarge

The Winners

As promised, we have special kudos for the first It’s Our City reader to email all of the correct answers to Masashi. Congratulations to… drum roll…

Matt Walsh

Among what was eventually dozens of email entries, Matt was the first with all three correct answers.

Honorable mention goes to the following folks who also got all three of these correct:

Reader identified as Jim
Greg Heller
George Matysik

Reader (and past It’s Our City contributor) Albert Yee and reader Michelle Atherton got two out of three.

Several others got one or none.  Special thanks to everyone who participated.  Stay tuned for our next three pictures on Monday.