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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.
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