Love Notes #19 + #54: Alex B. and Sandy Salzman both love Penn Treaty Park
Today Eyes on the Street continues its collaboration with Philly Love Notes with two different expressions of love for lovely Penn Treaty Park – as a place that embodies community and as a connection to the Delaware River.
Favorite Spot: Penn Treaty Park Neighborhood: Fishtown Address: Delaware and Columbia Avenues
Love Note # 54: Sandy Salzman
- I am: Lifelong resident and Executive Director for New Kensington Community Development Corporation.
- Years in Philly: My whole life!
- Current Home: Fishtown
Sandy’s love note: This is a “love note” about people working together to get things done. Penn Treaty Park, as it stands today, is a beloved community asset where people can enjoy the riverfront whether it’s a peaceful morning jog or live music and fireworks on a summer night. It’s home to annual festivals like RiverCity and Shadfest, with special events like outdoor movies and family game nights as well.
But the park wouldn’t be what it is today without hard work and dedication over more than 60 years. At that time, the park wasn’t yet recognized for its historic significance. Through the years, those who held the park dear would work tirelessly to raise awareness.
Today there are still individuals who take a special interest in the park, and there is an organized Friends of Penn Treaty Park and also a Penn Treaty Museum. The Historic Commission recently added the park to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. Neighbors and visitors alike treasure the park as a connection to the river and to the city’s history.
This is a love note about pulling together. It’s about change that takes decades. And it’s about all of those people who work hard for what they believe in, even when the “thank you”s don’t come as often as maybe they should.
Love Note #19: Alex B.
- I am: A city lover and a nature lover
- Years in Philly: 5
- Current Home: 10th and Pine
Alex’s love note: As if in fear of being lapped up by the million tongues of the mighty Delaware, Philadelphia keeps its rivers at bay. Stone walls rise from the rivers and old piers decay, severed from the city bustle by our local stretch of the Eisenhower interstate highway system. But a little notch of green in Fishtown cuts through these defenses, where a smokestack giant lumbers upriver and a casino sprawls across its parking lot blanket downriver. You may notice as you walk towards the river at Penn Treaty Park that nothing stops you from walking on, as you head down onto the riprap, till the water laps your feet. Sit there at sunset or after the sun has fallen below the horizon, and it’s another world completely. The sounds and smells of the river seem oceanic. The slow boats, the trees on Pettys Island, the lights on the graceful Ben Franklin Bridge, and a wide expanse of the night sky… it’s a place to be swept away by greater forces.
———
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. We’ve shared an ode to the symbolism embedded in bikes locked around Rittenhouse Square and my quiet perambulations through Ed Bacon’s greenways.
These pieces originally appeared on Philly Love Notes on June 25, 2012 (#19) and August 27, 2012 (#54).
WHYY is your source for fact-based, in-depth journalism and information. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on financial support from readers like you. Please give today.