Changing Skyline: He puts the "urban" back in New Urbanism

November 8, 2007

By Inga Saffron
Inquirer Architecture Critic

For all their idealistic talk, it often seems that New Urbanist developers are looking to save the world in all the wrong places. They insist they want to create sustainable neighborhoods where you don't need a car to get to work or run out for a quart of milk. But then they locate their utopias in a landscape governed by the logic of sprawl, far from convenient shops, jobs or transit stops. It's long been known that New Urbanist developments look and perform best when they can latch onto existing infrastructure, like street grids and transit networks. Yet New Urbanists have been oddly reluctant to venture into places where those amenities exist in abundance: the decaying quarters of American cities.

The housing boom of the last decade encouraged practitioners like Sam Sherman to rethink their resistance to urban sites. Sherman, a suburban developer, first experienced his New Urbanist epiphany in 2000 while stuck in traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway. During the time he was trapped in his car, he heard Andres Duany, founder of the movement, expound on his New Urbanist principles in a radio interview. Sherman vowed then and there never to assemble another suburban subdivision.

But it wasn't until 2004 that Sherman found the perfect urban location to try Duany's ideas. His dream site sits in tattered North Philadelphia, at 10th and Mount Vernon Streets, just south of the notorious Richard Allen housing project.

Sherman and his business partner, Lawrence Rust, identified four separate parcels that had been cleared by the city in the name of urban renewal back in the 1960s - and then left to gather trash. A few disembodied rowhouses and the St. Paul's Baptist Church on Wallace Street were the nearest neighbors. But there were also restaurants on nearby Spring Garden Street. The site is four blocks from the Broad Street Subway and a 20-minute walk to Market Street's office towers. Sherman and Rust were inspired.

As is often the case in Philadelphia, it took two years for their New Urban Ventures partnership to win zoning approval to build in a traditional rowhouse format, and to acquire the land from the city's Redevelopment Authority. Sherman had to live off his savings while the project, called Spring Arts Point, stalled. But this summer, when all but one of the first 16 townhouses sold, they felt they had mastered the goals of New Urbanism.

Plenty of new rowhouse clusters have sprouted recently, but few are knitted so seamlessly into the existing city as Spring Arts Point. Though it may sound counterintuitive, the development didn't accomplish this feat by imitating historic houses in the area. Its success comes instead from marrying rowhouse values and contemporary design.

The houses, by architect David Slovic, look modern but act old. You won't find any garage doors marring the street facades here. There's a screened interior parking court, as well as optional rear garages. At the same time, there is a convenient alternative that benefits the larger neighborhood: two spaces in the parking court are devoted to PhillyCarShare. Maybe that's why few buyers have opted for the garages.

While it's important to design responsibly, the developers also spent time thinking about aesthetics. In hiring Slovic, a well-known Philadelphia modernist, they embraced a spare, contemporary look that is only just catching on with New Urbanists. Slovic isn't the sort of architect who uses historical doodads to con people into thinking a rowhouse is a small mansion.

The exterior materials at Spring Arts Point, where a 2,000-square-foot house goes for about $439,000, are as basic as they come: brick, vinyl, and composite panels. But Slovic makes the most of these modest finishes.

He started by ensuring the 20-foot-wide houses were carefully proportioned. Unlike many new rowhouses, which copy traditional window formats, Slovic designed horizontal bands - a modernist standard that helps offset the rowhouse's natural verticality. Although the interior layouts are fairly typical, the rooms blaze with light from the large windows.

The developers found that, as construction costs spiraled upward, they had to abandon plans to clad the exteriors with trendy zinc panels and seamed metal, and instead use vinyl and composite panels. The galvanized-steel balconies and door canopies are the only evidence of Slovic's industrial sensibility. But Slovic and the developers proved their real mettle by choosing the right shades and textures of these lesser materials. The somber gray vinyl, for instance, has a matte finish and was applied vertically. Nothing screams "cheap."

That's true even behind the walls. The greatness of the rowhouse form is its expandability, but unfortunately modern construction techniques often limit the possibilities. The Spring Arts Point houses are designed so they can be enlarged on every floor.

The developer also revived another rowhouse tradition by including four-story houses on the corners. The ground floor is fitted with a separate entrance so it can serve as a shop or office. The development has been so successful that Sherman and Rust will start building the next 25 houses in the spring. And Sherman was just elected to the board of the Congress for New Urbanism.

Altogether, the plan calls for 59 new homes, but there will probably be quite a few more. Hoping to capitalize on Spring Arts Point, other developers are rushing to slip new houses onto nearby infill lots, while buyers are scooping up older homes for renovation. Mount Vernon Street is almost unrecognizable from a year ago.

Call it New Urbanism, but it's still the oldest way there is to make a city neighborhood.

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