To redeem the Roundhouse, make it the anchor for a new, affordable neighborhood

When the curvaceous, dazzlingly white building that would become known as the Roundhouse was completed in 1962, the surrounding Franklin Square area was architecturally indistinguishable from its neighbors, Chinatown and Old City. Brawny factory lofts and vaudeville-era theaters mingled with a noir-ish collection of cheap hotels, soup kitchens and dive bars. Patronized mainly by down-and-out men, the area was dismissed as Philadelphia’s Skid Row.

Within a year of the Roundhouse’s opening, the Franklin Square neighborhood would be ignominiously designated Unit 4 in Philadelphia’s sweeping downtown urban renewal plan. By the early ‘70s, virtually every building between Arch and Vine would be leveled.

The destruction cut off Chinatown from Franklin Square park, its only patch of green space, and left the city’s ambitious new police headquarters an island, encircled by surface parking lots. More than half a century later, that asphalt wasteland remains, one of the few undeveloped sections in an otherwise revitalized Center City.

Now, even the police have abandoned the area. After the department moved to bigger quarters on North Broad Street in April, the Kenney administration announced it was putting the Roundhouse up for sale. But selling the double-barreled building at Eighth and Race is no ordinary property transaction.

During the six decades that it served as the headquarters for Philadelphia’s Police Department, the Roundhouse was the site of dozens of documented cases of brutality. Homicide detectives beat up suspects in the building’s basement cells to coerce confessions, The Inquirer found in a 1977 investigation. Since 2018, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has been reviewing a host of tainted cases. So far, the prosecutors have exonerated 25 people — nearly all of them Black — after determining they were wrongly convicted. Some had been in jail since the early ‘90s.

Because the Roundhouse is the city’s most visible symbol of police misconduct, the Kenney administration believed that its history needed to be aired before the building could be put on the market. Over the last several months, a team of consultants — led by Connect the Dots and Amber Art and Design — has been holding meetings with a variety of people, including those impacted by police misconduct and those who worked in the building. The consultants have also spoken with architects and preservationists. Their findings, due in late January, are intended to help determine the building’s future — whether it should be sold to a developer, used to advance social justice, or simply demolished.

Those conversations have been an important step in the healing process. But the strict focus on the building has unfortunately limited the discussion of the larger issues. As my Inquirer colleagues documented in a powerful 2020 report, racist policing did not begin with the Roundhouse. It has existed in Philadelphia since the creation of the department in the early 1800s. Yet there has been little citywide soul-searching about the racism that infected the police ranks before the Roundhouse was built.

The other problem with putting all the emphasis on the building is that it ignores the damage inflicted on the surrounding blocks by the demolitions carried out during the urban renewal period. As the residential neighborhood closest to Franklin Square, Chinatown was severely impacted by the void created when the area was destroyed. That damage was compounded when I-676 was built, separating Chinatown from the area north of Vine Street.

One of the goals of the Roundhouse engagement process has been to set the stage for what Connect the Dots calls “meaningful placemaking.” But for that to happen, the city needs to address all the injustices associated with the Roundhouse, urban renewal included.

As a site of so much trauma, some have argued the Roundhouse should be demolished. That would be a mistake. The building is one of the most distinctive works of architecture produced by Philadelphia in the ‘60s, and its striking form should be harnessed to right the wrongs of the past.

The meaning of a building, even one with a notorious history, can be changed. Take the Ku Klux Klan headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. It is being converted into a center for arts and healing. Closer to home, Eastern State Penitentiary, once slated for demolition, was turned into a museum that educates visitors about the history of mass incarceration. Being able to see the spartan cells where inmates were housed 23 hours a day makes the experience “much more powerful,” says Sean Kelley, the venue’s director of interpretation.

Part of the tragedy of the Roundhouse is that it was originally envisioned as a symbol of reform.

The building was commissioned by one of the most progressive mayors in modern Philadelphia history, Richardson Dilworth. Together with his predecessor, Joseph Clark, Dilworth sought to root out corruption and reduce patronage in city agencies, including the Police Department. The two mayors built dozens of neighborhood libraries, health clinics, and fire stations in the belief that such services would make Philadelphia a more modern and equitable city.

The Roundhouse was the most ambitious of those projects. Hoping a new headquarters would give the police a fresh start, Dilworth turned to Robert Geddes, of the firm GBQC. He was associated with a group of innovative local architects collectively known as the Philadelphia School. Like Dilworth, they saw themselves as reformers and believed architecture should serve the public good. Their attempts to make modernism more urban and less coldly utilitarian won them international acclaim.

Geddes, who turned 99 this month, teamed up with engineer August Komendant, who was developing new ways of using concrete to make buildings that were lighter and more graceful than conventional concrete construction. Geddes and Komendant were able to realize something that was almost unthinkable in the days before computers: a building that had the qualities of sculpture.

Of course, some Philadelphians find it hard to look past the Roundhouse’s concrete skin. The building is frequently lumped in with an architectural style called Brutalism. While the name derives from the French word for concrete, the term is used to describe some of the more massive, concrete buildings from the ‘60s and ‘70s, which do, in fact, look rather brutal.

The Roundhouse, by contrast, has a playfulness that those overbearing buildings lack. Its concrete is smoother and more refined. Inside, the elevators, exit signs and other details are all cylindrical, and walnut cabinetry follows the interior’s groovy, mid-century curves.

The Preservation Alliance and Docomomo, which just filed a nomination with the Historical Commission to make the Roundhouse a city landmark, argues that the building is really an example of a different architectural style, Expressionism. Like the gestural scrawl that animates the paintings of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, the Roundhouse’s voluptuous curves create a sensual effect as they shimmy along Race Street. The Roundhouse can be seen as a modern interpretation of Rome’s undulating Baroque facades, which did so much to shape that city’s streetscape.

Since the Roundhouse overlooks Franklin Square, Geddes arranged the building’s contours so that its two main wings appear to embrace the park and, by extension, the city. The central indentation cradles a small entrance plaza. By offering visitors a gracious welcome, the designers had hoped to recast the image of the police as protectors, rather than enforcers.

But that message was undercut when the department insisted on installing a tall concrete fence around the perimeter. After Frank Rizzo became police commissioner in 1967, he literally shut the door on the public by closing the Race Street entrance. From then on, officers entered the building from a secure parking lot behind the building. Once the surrounding neighborhood was leveled, the Roundhouse was reduced to an isolated fortress.

To help people reimagine the building, the Preservation Alliance commissioned a set of renderings from architect Anthony Bracali, showing how it could look cleaned up and redeveloped. Bracali started by taking down the fence and reopening the Race Street entrance. He also replaced the solid panels on the ground floor with windows, recreating the transparency Geddes intended. The transformation is dramatic.

Because the city is selling the whole parcel, Bracali also wanted to illustrate what could be built on the Roundhouse’s 1.5-acre parking lot. The lot is easily big enough for a high-rise residential tower — or two. But in case market conditions don’t support a tower, Bracali included a rendering that shows a large mid-rise wrapping around the old headquarters. Bracali recommends a walkway separating the Roundhouse from the new residences, to avoid compromising its distinctive form. A developer should be able to offset the renovation costs by taking advantage of the high-rise zoning.

We’ve been repeatedly told that the Roundhouse is the most hated building in Philadelphia. But what struck me during the Connect the Dots meetings was how many people wanted to see it redeveloped. For years, I’ve heard Philadelphians pine for a swooping Frank Gehry-style design. Turns out, we’ve had a homegrown version all along.

Rather than simply sell the property to a developer, as the city did with the historic health center on South Broad, it should first prepare a plan to transform Franklin Square into a new, equitable neighborhood, one that includes substantial affordable housing. With its striking round form, the Roundhouse could anchor the development, just as the mid-rise Bulletin building does at Schuylkill Yards. The subsidized apartments wouldn’t necessarily have to be in the Roundhouse.

The building, or more likely a part of it, could also be put into the service of social justice. Perhaps the ground floor could be turned into a memorial to the victims of police brutality, while the upper floors could be used for a practical purpose, such as a health clinic or a community center. Since the floors are essentially open loft space, any of those uses are possible, says Jack Pyburn, an Atlanta-based preservation architect who has written extensively about the Roundhouse.

There is certainly plenty of land available nearby for housing. Philadelphia’s African American museum will soon leave the corner of Seventh and Arch for the old Family Court building on the Parkway. Combined with the existing parking lots south of the Roundhouse, that creates a separate three-acre site. The city also owns a 3.7-acre parking lot at Ninth and Race, which has been vacant for half a century. Although it is finally allowing Chinatown to use a small piece at the northwest corner for senior housing, the rest should be developed, too.

Handing over land to developers without guidance won’t create a neighborhood. For that, the city needs to repair the damaged public realm. There is already some promising activity. PATCO plans to reopen its long-shuttered Franklin Square station in April 2024. City planners have also gotten behind Chinatown’s efforts to cap I-676, which would reconnect the neighborhood with the area north of Vine Street.

But narrowing the stretch of Race Street in front of the Roundhouse, which was widened for cars during urban renewal, would truly make the area feel like a residential neighborhood again and enable Chinatown residents to walk safely to Franklin Square.

Given Philadelphia’s need for affordable housing, as well as Franklin Square’s central location, redeveloping this area as a model neighborhood, should be easy. Let the Roundhouse be the change maker it was originally meant to be.