Love Note #45: Walk Ed Bacon’s greenways with me

As promised, Eyes on the Street is occasionally featuring especially plannerdly Philly Love Notes culled from the growing collection on the Philly Love Notes blog. Last time around the Bicycle Coalition‘s Nicholas Mirra expressed his appreciation for the symbolism embedded in the bikes locked to the fence around Rittenhouse Square. Today I’m up to bat with a love note for meandering through Society Hill along Ed Bacon’s greenways.

Love Note #45: Ashley Hahn

(ahem, hi)

• Favorite Spot: Ed Bacon’s Greenways
• Neighborhood: Society Hill
• Address: St. Joseph’s Way, St. Peter’s Way, and Lawrence Court, between Locust and Pine, 3rd and 5th Streets

• I am: a planner, preservationist, writer, maker, grower, and beagle enthusiast.
• Years in Philly: On and off since 2005. Happily on again since 2011.
• Current Home: Bella Vista

My love note: As a rule, I don’t have a lot of love for modernist, urban-renewal era projects but Ed Bacon’s greenways are an exception. Under Bacon’s leadership at the Planning Commission, Society Hill was partly razed and partly preserved using federal urban renewal funds. Today the greenways Bacon designed in Society Hill show off both sides of this history in spades, as 1960s modernism abuts Federal-era rowhouses.

For me, a walk down Bacon’s paths is like a meditation. It’s a quiet experience of heightened sensory awareness. I tune in to appreciate the light, the birds, the textures, or the happenings in someone’s yard. I go out of my way to route myself through the greenways day and night.

A Walk: Start at 4th and Locust and walk east down St. James Place to I.M. Pei’s mod townhouses surrounding a circular garden. Then turn right (south) to walk down St. Joseph’s Way. There’s a park nook to your left and an historic interior court of houses to the right. Cross Spruce and St. Joseph’s Way becomes St. Peter’s Way. St. Peter’s leads you through another mixed historic and modern block to Three Bears Park (aka Delancey Park), a space designed by John Collins. Three Bears is a leafy mid-block treasure tucked between Cypress and Delancey streets. The park has a small play structure, mature plantings, plenty of benches, and a small sculpture of three bears covered in chalk markings. It’s at once a peaceful and playful space and on weekends it is packed with families. You could continue straight down St. Peter’s Way to Pine Street or hang a right on lovely Delancey. Cross 4th Street and walk down a narrow alley (Lawrence Court Walk) that looks like a dead-end – it isn’t. Keep meandering through Lawrence Court (smelling the roses if they’re in bloom) or turn south onto 4th Street. [Here’s a map for your walking pleasure.]
 

———

 Philly Love Notes is a collection of reminders. There is too much in the city that is forgotten or overlooked. This site seeks to rediscover those places — to remind the city, and us, that it is loved.  Want to share your favorite spot? Drop Philly Love Notes an email with your idea.

Eyes on the Street has teamed up with Philly Love Notes to feature especially plannerdly love notes about places in Philly on this blog. This piece originally appeared on Philly Love Notes on August 14, 2012.