About The AIAPrograms & Initiatives

Harris M. Steinberg, AIA
Department of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Opportunities present themselves, and my opportunity was a street called Germantown Avenue in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of the City of Philadelphia.

Mt. Airy is a wonderful place to live and work and raise children, but we struggle like any inner-city area in America. Identified as the model integrated community in the United States by US News & World Report in 1991, the neighborhood is organized along Germantown Avenue, an old Indian trail that includes the site of a Revolutionary War battle. A Victorian streetcar suburb, it is home to many wonderful examples of American architecture from the past 300 years.

As white flight and racial polarization threatened to destroy the community in the 1950’s and 1960’s, determined and courageous neighbors fought to maintain the neighborhoods and the public schools while the central business district declined. What was once a bustling urban shopping district was reduced by the 1970’s to an avenue of vacant stores and grated, cut-rate shops. Germantown Avenue did not reflect the vitality of the surrounding community.

In the summer of 1993, I became president of the Mt. Airy Business Association and embraced the challenge to center community attention on the condition of the avenue. Holding several well-attended town meetings, organizing street clean-ups, and establishing an arts festival, I was able to focus positive community attention on the avenue and celebrate the diversity of the neighborhood. With the support of a local state senator, I helped spearhead an economic development plan for the community.

And then corporate America handed me a wild card. A fast-food restaurant (one of a handful of viable businesses in the community) closed, and the site was taken over by another restaurant chain. This new chain abandoned the site and proceeded to build a new facility two blocks away in a less diverse and more prosperous community.

Gathering local political and civic leaders, I led a concerted effort to play out the issue in the court of public opinion. We demanded that the site be kept clean and graffiti free, and we worked to secure the site for other developers. The battle waged on for months, but the effects of the recession and an obdurate absentee landlord held our community captive.

Five years later, a team of investors wrestled the property out from under the owner and set about achieving their vision for an old-fashioned diner in Mt. Airy. And they turned to my local architectural practice for design help. Despite our lack of restaurant experience, these local visionaries knew us as dedicated professionals who understood and loved the community. They knew us as people whom they could trust.

The project involved gutting the old restaurant, building an addition, and relocating a classic 1952 Mountainview diner to the front of the building. The making of the diner became a community affair. Word spread rapidly about this new diner, and the neighborhood waited in anxious anticipation. The day that the old diner actually arrived and was craned onto the site was a scene worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting of small-town America. Policemen, contractors, schoolchildren, and families camped out in awe of this 60-ton behemoth lumbering towards our community.

The Trolley Car Diner opened to a wave of community cheers during the summer of 2000. Opening to overflow crowds, it sits today in its neon resplendent splendor on Germantown Avenue. The partners anticipated that a good day would serve 350 people. They served 750 meals on the first day and have never served fewer than 500 meals a day. Overnight, it became a local meeting place and community center—a House of All People.

This little diner is but one example of the power of the architecture of engagement. The owners have become believers in the positive powers of architecture, and the project received a 2001 Preservation Achievement Award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, further demonstrating the powerful potential of the partnership between preservation, development, design, and community.