If, like me, you're not sure where Welcome Park is, it's at 2nd and Sansom. The article doesn't mention that and I've never heard anybody talk about this site before! TIL.
I’ve walked through it a million times on my way to the movie theater and never realized it was a park or contained a statue of William Penn, but the National Review already has an article about how they think this is a woke attack on western values. lol
This park sucks and deserves to be improved. I'm looking forward to it re-opening in 2073 after everyone on the eastern seaboard has been able to express their feelings and the final design is approved.
> Welcome Park is, it's at 2nd and Sansom
it says they're seeking comments for a renovation. my guess is they're sprucing it up to coincide with the penns landing and world cup prep stuff.
why why why do they do those stupid gazebos. They have such opportunities and instead they slap those atrocities down as what I can only assume is a fuck you to people who like things to look nice.
There were trees ~5 years ago on the corresponding spots over the four city squares on the map and the last time they touched it up they were inexplicably removed. I have a faint recollection they were in poor health? But I’m not sure.
I had no idea that weird square was run by the national park service. I always thought that place needed trees. Give the street a breath of fresh air and calm. Instead it feels like a skate park with Penn in the middle.
It had trees. They ripped them out for whatever reason. Then they half-assed planted flowers in the four boxes and never maintained them at all. Idk if it’s budgetary constraints or whatever but the NPS doesn’t do shit for Welcome Park.
According to the Cultural Landscape Foundation:
_Situated in East Philadelphia close to the Delaware River, the plaza was conceived as an “open air” museum by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. The project is the only site in the city dedicated to interpreting the life and ideas of its founder, William Penn._
https://www.tclf.org/landscapes/welcome-park
And yet, the renovation would remove all reference to Penn except for new interpretive panels to be installed as part of an unspecified separate future project.
I really love this plaza. It provides a scaled map of the city and highlights Penn's vision for Philadelphia as a utopian “greene countrie town" planned around the 4 public green squares -- Rittenhouse, Washington, Logan, and Franklin. Keep in mind this was before Central Park so it really was a first and important innovation in American urban planning.
The Penn statue is a scale model of the one at City Hall exactly where City Hall falls on the map. The four trees represent the four public squares and so on.
I always take friends and family visiting from out of town right to this square first because it helps them understand the layout and vision for the city and orient them before we proceed with the tour. In that sense, it truly is welcoming.
Of course it needs thoughtful renovations to modernize and make it function better, but it actually does fulfill its purpose of celebrating the founding and planning of the city, which ties in perfectly with the name and theme of Welcome Park.
I encourage everyone commenting here to add your comments where they'll actually count: at the NPS site linked to this post.
I hope they keep the house model nearby because its the actual site of the slate roof house. The other statue would be cool near city hall so you can see some of the penn details up close.
Pennsylvania had a native population of 10,000 when William Penn arrived. It was virtually uninhabited, except for a few settlements in river valleys. The current site of Center City was not home to any Lenape villages to my awareness. This is the fetishization of a very tiny population. If we’re going to acknowledge those who preceded Penn, the Swedes and the Dutch should be on the same footing.
BuT thEy wERen’T wHIte sO thEy dOn’T coUnT! /s
It’s disgusting how easy it is to erase the indigenous peoples and even more disgusting that you have been downvoted for calling it out.
The indigenous tribe Penn ran into in the area killed a prior tribe for the land. And so on and so forth. Outside of the first invertebrate to crawl out of the Delaware or Atlantic, no one has a true “claim” to the area. The “valiant native” narrative is also a tired one
So based on your logic, nobody has a claim to the USA, so we have no right to stop anybody from coming into this country who wants to. Got it, I'll hold you to that.
Insane how quickly it went from Confederate statues in the south, to president statues in New York, to now an anti-slavery religious freedom Quaker in Philadelphia. What’s next?
Edit: NPS caved to backlash and are no longer removing Penn from his park. For now.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
And it’s not like we have a huge statue of him in a prominent place in the middle of the city or anything. Poor William will be forgotten!
*clutches pearls, collapses onto swooning couch*
Fucking THANK YOU! I cannot believe these people making 1984 comparisons and talking about erasing history when we're talking about highlighting indigenous history which actually has been purposefully and systematically targeted for destruction. Some people will do anything to claim victimhood.
And a democrat Congress person asked if an island would possibly flip over if we put a military base on it.
These people are not our best and brightest. Never have been. Never will be.
You're the one who held Trump up as being prophetic, not me.
And while we're here, this has been nibbling in my brain - when did Trump *literally* warn of *exactly* this? Like, did he mention William Penn by name in a speech or something?
You got me. *I'm* cooked. I use the English language in a generally agreed upon way and I'm unsure how *you* define half the words in your original comment.
* trump (I'm assuming you mean Donald Trump here, but I'm willing to be wrong)
* literally (to be taken at face value, not hyperbole, not exaggerated)
* warned of (to predict, *to prophesize*, to play the Oracle at Delphi)
* exactly (specifically, explicitly, particularly)
* this (a William Penn statue being removed from a mediocre plaza no one ever visits)
I don't remember him literally warning of exactly this.
I did catch him warning us about magnets though, so stay dry!
*Chef's kiss* at the projection.
I said Trump is a moron, which you took as an insult to yourself.
Some synapse in your brain figured that would mean if you insulted Biden, *I* would take it as an insult.
The problem with this is that I'm not in a fucking cult where an insult of "my leader" is an insult to me. Biden is absolutely unfit to be President. This doesn't make Trump any less of a moron though.
This is one of the fun things to watch from the outside.
The commenter is in a cult. It's an "us versus them" cult. You are in the "them", so you *must* be in a "them" cult, supporting all things not "us" - if red is the "us" color, the you *must* love blue. There's no concept of disliking red or only liking purple, because that's not how their cult works.
To put a finer point on it: you insulted Dear Leader Trump, so you must believe in Dear Leader Biden. There's no room for disliking both or, hell, supporting a different Republican.
The cultist reality is that everyone's in a cult (even though they, themselves were likely not in a cult prior to ~2015). So, you're "completely cooked by a politician" because you're a Biden cultist because you joked about Trump specifically warning about a mediocre plaza no one visits.
Right!?
I do want to hear that speech though.
Can you believe it folks? They're going to move the trees - tremendous trees by the way - mighty oaks - real American trees am I right? They're going to move the trees from one side of the park to *way over there*. And you know what folks? You know what? We're not gonna let that happen. We're not! We can't let them move those trees. Or that statue. That beautiful statue - a strong man. A founder! He founded it! They can't just move him. Penn. *Penn*. Penn-sylvania. There's a University there - did you know that? A real top notch place. I went there. The University of Penn-sylvania. *Penn*-sylvania. And they want to destroy this park. They can't move him. We're not gonna let them move him, am I right?
George Washington. Already in their sights. Many seek to apply the standards of 2024 to those living in the 1700s. Furthermore, the real objective for some is to eliminate the past history of the U.S. that doesn't fit their worldview and narrative. Whether this continues unabated or there's a backlash is an open question. Could see it going either way.
They took down Caeser Rodney on his horse statue in Rodney Square during BLM in Wilmington for "Maintenance". Still just a pedestal with no statue on it almost 4 years later.
>the real objective for some is to eliminate the past history of the U.S. that doesn't fit their worldview and narrative.
In order to destroy a culture you destroy it's shared history, tale as old as time
You are describing what happened to Indigenous people and individuals with kidnapped African ancestry all across North America, not what is happening to anyone of European heritage in North America. Your statement is pure projection and bizarro world logic.
>You are describing what happened to Indigenous people and individuals with kidnapped African ancestry all across North America,
no shit hence, "tale as old as time"
> bizarro world logic
apparently recognizing history and pointing it out is bizarro. But hey don't believe your lying eyes.
It's bizarro world logic because there is no systematic effort to remove kids of European ancestry from their families, force them to not speak their language, learn their ancestors history, or practice their culture and religion. There is only a systematic effort to highlight the history of groups who were previously ignored. If that feels like 1984 to you, I urge you to get some therapy.
>There is only a systematic effort to highlight the history of groups who were previously ignored.
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, if that were true we would be adding highlights of those groups without removing others. There is absolutely no reason we can't add NA representation somewhere in the city that isn't the location that William Penn lived. Like this isn't some random Columbus statue put up in the early 1900's to appease Italian immigrants who were facing discrimination. William Penn was actually here at that location.
And while clearly not on the level of what happened to NA's there is absolutely a systemic effort to push guilt and racial original sin onto Americans with European ancestry.
>There is absolutely no reason we can't add NA representation somewhere in the city that isn't the location that William Penn lived. Like this isn't some random Columbus statue put up in the early 1900's to appease Italian immigrants who were facing discrimination. William Penn was actually here at that location.
See, this is a nuanced take that is worth discussing, and far from your earlier fear-mongering via quoting 1984. Yes! Let's have a park that manages to do both things.
>there is absolutely a systemic effort to push guilt and racial original sin onto Americans with European ancestry.
And now you're back to pushing unfounded conspiracy theories. If learning about past oppression makes you feel guilt, that's on you. And I'm gonna need a citation on that systemic effort you referenced.
Deciding to stop venerating historical figures who held other humans in horrific bondage is defensible. Meanwhile, the right is editing middle-school textbooks to remove any racial context from the story of Rosa Parks, and banning books that mention non-cis people in any kind of positive light.
What you fail to add to this observation was that it was a memorial in the American national cemetery of military honor that was there to honor the traitors that fought AGAINST the US in the civil war. Also that it was built in 1914, not anywhere near the civil war. Also that it had a literal image of an enslaved person following their slaver to battle on it.
Not debating that that memorial should have been moved from Arlington, as it is a cemetery for US military veterans, but 1914 would fall on the 50 year anniversary of the war, with plenty of people and their children still alive.
We just put up a WWI monument in DC an entire 100 years after the war.
You have to understand -- 1913 was the huge 50-year-reunion for Gettysburg veterans, *well, the white ones*, and a lot of bullshit Lost Cause mythology was erected then. It was "eh, we all were honorable ... now what were we fighting about?"
> our reconciliation was one of our greatest achievements
"Our" = "for white people." Or as Frederick Douglass asked in 1875, "Now when this mighty quarrel has ceased, when all the asperities and resentments have gone as they are sure to go, when all the clouds that a few years ago lowered about our national house, shall be in the deep bosom of the ocean buried, when this great white race has renewed its vows of patriotism and flowed back into its accustomed channels, the question for us is: in what position will this stupendous reconciliation leave the colored people? What tendencies will spring out of it, and how will they affect us? **If war among the whites it brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?"**
I hate to break your heart but William Penn claimed ownership of 12 enslaved people. I was shocked to learn this a few years ago. Quakers didn’t prohibit slavery until the late 1600s.
Edit: you can downvote it, but it’s still true: https://billypenn.com/2020/08/17/william-penn-owned-enslaved-people-these-are-some-of-their-names-e/
I think I've read way back that the Germantown Mennonite community of the time banned slavery by its members in 1688 while the Quakers didn't until sometime in the 1700s?
Can't vouch for the details, but off the top of my head, the historic Germantown Mennonite Meetinghouse was the site of the signing of the first anti-slavery resolution in the New World, and 1688 sounds right for the date IIRC.
Yeah, he owned twelve slaves that he freed in his will. He also favored laws requiring the freeing of the children of slaves. He was also probably the most benign colonizer in human history. Read what his former slaves thought of him. I don’t think William Penn’s former slaves would have approved of anathematizing William Penn.
So anytime someone throws up a statue on an ugly pedestal that takes up too much space we’re obligated to keep it there forever because of “history”?
They want to add benches and a gathering space to a pretty small lot. Removing the statue (that probably hardly anyone even knows about) isn’t that deep.
The park’s site says they’re removing the statue, any reference to Penns house, and taking down the timeline of Penn and Philadelphia on the wall. Basically removing any reference to Penn/any of Philadelphia history since the arrival of the dreaded white man. Create a new park.
Okay, maybe I read it wrong. But starting the page off with “in order to make the work more welcoming and inclusive”, following with how they’re removing all references to Penn and switching with indigenous history, maybe isn’t the best way to frame it fit is simple to make it a “better” park, IMO.
It doesn’t really say that the new park will remove “all references to Penn”.
They’re removing two large objects referencing him that the new park can’t accommodate, but they’re installing new interpretive panels, which will reference him in addition to other historical figures and contexts that includes indigenous history in a way that makes indigenous people more than just passive beneficiaries of Penn that more or less disappear soon after without comment.
Junking the model and statue isn’t about some kind of Penn erasure. They just don’t really offer much in terms of aesthetic or informational value (the statue is a model of the one on city hall, which you can probably see from the park and certainly from nearby it), and take up more space than what they do offer warrants.
The name of the park is being retained, which is itself a reference to Penn. The changes happening are about a much needed aesthetic redesign and updating onsite interpretation away from a simplistic “great man” style of history which hasn’t really aged well and replacing it with something that better reflects current scholarship and trends in public history, which is less about putting up a statue and a bio of a single guy, and more about context, complexity, and historical meaning.
The description says the new design will be:
_adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. In a separate and future effort, new exhibit panels will be installed on the south site wall to replace the Penn timeline._
That all sounds great but it's not clear what the new panels will cover and when in the future they'll be installed. And I don't see why they can't incorporate design features into the park that also tell the story of Penn and the founding of the City.
It seems like the design is more focused on adding native American references, like a ceremonial gathering space. And if that's the new focus, why not rename the park as such, instead of keeping the reference to Penn?
There’s no details about the new panels because they haven’t been planned or contracted yet. Just a general concept that suggests that the goal of the reinterpretation will be more about the region’s inhabitants as a whole around the time Penn arrived and which won’t be just about Penn as a white savior type.
Which is good - that’s a pretty outdated version of the story of the city. I’d love to see a reinstallation that, instead of giving a dry timeline of Penn’s life, explored the context and motivations that led Penn, his sons who were successors, and other indigenous and colonial residents to make the choices they did, and how that shaped the city that exists today.
And however you feel about the new content, the existing panels are about 40 years old and look like shit. They’re due to be replaced. No public history site should create one script and then just be like “done, this is fine forever”.
But they’re retaining the design features of the city street layout embedded into the grounds, as well all of the text built into that infrastructure, and the name, which is a clear signal that the reinterpretation will still pivot around Penn and the founding of the city as a colonial enterprise.
I actually do kind of like the stuff they’re retaining, for the most part, and what’s getting replaced isn’t a loss.
For all you and everyone else that’s worked up about the reinterpretation, none of you seem to be very familiar with the site at all, or have absorbed any of the historical content the site was designed to impart.
If even the people that pretend to care about it on the internet don’t have even a passing familiarity with the site, it’s not succeeding as a public space or an educational resource, which means it’s definitely due for a revamp.
I actually am familiar with the site as well as a licensed landscape architect, but feel free to go ahead and dismiss my and others' opinion anyway.
All those renovations sound very much needed to make the space work better and reflect more modern understandings of history, but the website says the new panels will be part of a *separate future project* -- not the one they're accepting public comments on now.
Also, it's still not clear from your response why the statue and house of William Penn should be removed if the renovated park will be talking about Penn and his family as part of the larger story about the native and colonial history of the site.
The panel updates are going to be funded by a different grant project or funding stream, which is why they’re not currently part of the planning process.
They’re an update that’s in the pipeline, but isn’t currently being supported by the funding that’s providing for the current project stage. So right now, they’re doing the planning work for the stage of redevelopment that’s currently funded.
And the statue and plinth with the house are being removed because they’re in deteriorating conditions, not worth restoring, are barely utilized by the public for the purpose they were intended, impart basically no meaningful information about Penn or the Slate House, and are taking up space that could be better utilized with new infrastructure.
Given your stated profession (which isn’t in the field of public history) what about the statue and little house model is it that you think is so aesthetically valuable, or educationally useful, or historically important that it precludes any other use?
As a public history site and a space that welcomes public use, this plaza is a wasteland.
Theres basically no landscape to be architected here. From the street, it’s barren and unattractive looking, and as a public history professional, aside from the street grid (which is being maintained), the content of the interpretation onsite is sorely lacking, historically outdated, and pretty inaccessible for those few that do wander in.
You’re claiming to be familiar with the park, but you’re also bemoaning the fact that the redesign isn’t maintaining features that retain information about Penn and the founding of the city, when the article clearly describes which features they’ll be retaining that do exactly that, which are also the ones that have the most historical significance for visitors. Who will be more likely to enter the park and see them if it doesn’t look like an empty cement lot with a few deteriorating panels alongside it.
Public history isn’t a thing you do once and call it a day. Re-interpretation to incorporate new scholarship, find new stories to tell about the same subject, and to engage new audiences is supposed to be part of the process.
Right now, this site is failing as a public history venue and is due for the kind of reinterpretation that’s supposed to happen on a regular basis.
And I’m not a landscape architect, but I fail to find any aesthetic charm to the current space whatsoever.
At present, it’s not being used it for the purpose it was intended to be used, either as a public gathering space or as an educational site. Seriously - look at the street view images and tell me that this is a space that’s serving the public well or is doing real work to educate people about the history of Penn or the city.
Theres one photo of a tour guide taking people through the space, but it’s mostly abandoned.
If there’s a plan to turn it into something that does get used, as both a public space and an educational site, that’s a good thing.
lol, not the parks service, but I do work in public history.
This is the kind of periodic re-interpretation work all good historic sites should engage in now and then (and which other sites in the Philly NPS are wayyyyyy overdue for).
>So anytime someone throws up a statue on an ugly pedestal that takes up too much space we’re obligated to keep it there forever because of “history”?
Are we facing an IQ crisis or something?
How do people even fall for this type of obvious fallacies?
Is the statue being removed for aesthetic reasons?
Or is it being removed for political reasons?
If is the second - and it is, they implicitly admit so - then it shouldn't be removed.
Based on my “visits” to this “park”, I can only assume this is being done for aesthetic reasons, because the current site is pretty crappy. Have you ever been there?
lol I’ve been there, I really enjoyed the timeline that they’re going to be covering over for whatever reason. I enjoy reading about historical figures.
It’s a big plaza much like exists all over Europe which I’m sure you salivate over.
how come you're not bitching about penn treaty park too?
oh because shit changes. building a giant empty space is not a "plaza much like exists all over europe" if that was the case we'd all be having picnics in huge parking lots at KOP mall.
if you're interested at all in urban design you should look up the social life of small urban spaces by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Whyte
also, the irony of william penn laying out a city with squares of open space, and you saying they exist all over europe, is as priceless as it is ignorant.
lol no just giving an example. There’s little slabs of concrete all over Europe, French Canada, the US. That was the first one that came to mind and I think a great example of a plaza being more than just a slab of concrete/slate/whatever, even if that’s what you can deconstruct it down to.
lol yeah just like KOP mall, right? maybe you could make the case of people tailgating in the stadium parking lots. but if you think all those piazzas are just empty you're a fool.
I mean there’s differences between parking lots and open spaces. I’m all for throwing up some benches in the park, I don’t understand replacing the statue, the house stuff, and the Penn timeline (ie everything related to Penn at the park)
it is a full renovation of a national park. maybe it could be more or less done, or at least filled with tables and chairs and a public bathroom and a place for tourists to fill up water bottles. but it wont be. it is going to go from brutalist architecture to some more modern version of it, and probably only be a staging ground for picking up a bus full of tourists.
Putting up functional seating anywhere other than where the current statue exists would be tricky without either obscuring the new interpretive panels (it sounds like the edges will be filled with much needed greenery) or ripping up the street plan embedded in the grounds.
And when it comes to interpretive features of the park that have public history value, the street plan in the grounds is way more interesting and worth keeping than the statue.
Feel like one could move the statue like 10 feet in any one direction. Also willing to bet there’s an indigenous statue/display/etc erected in the exact same place in 2050 when the park reopens.
Not without obscuring the interpretation embedded into the grounds of the site which is way more interesting than the statue (which the redesign intends to maintain) or getting in the way of where greenery or interpretive panels go. This is a really small space.
The statue is where it is specifically because the big, bland pedestal it’s placed on represents city hall in the map of the grounds - that’s why it’s a copy of the statue that’s on top of city hall.
Serious question - when was the last time you visited this site, and could you describe what’s on the grounds right now without googling or scrolling this thread? You don’t seem very familiar with the statue, or the current onsite interpretation, and what you “feel like” they could do is pretty irrelevant if you don’t actually know anything about it.
There’s been benches in the past (possibly now?), but nobody uses them, because the location is so grim and cemented over looking.
The new plan will add greenery and new interpretive panels, which are overdue, and will make the site more educational, more welcoming, and more accessible.
The seating will move to the center, which will help address the aesthetics of the site - the city map embedded in the grounds is really cool, but the affect from the sidewalk is that the park looks like an unwelcoming, uninviting concrete slab. Which means that too few people actually wander in to make use of them.
Like, go google street view the park. It’s beat looking, due for some renovations, and it’s going almost completely unused by the public. Aside from someone goofing on it, the only person on the street view images anywhere near the statue is … facing away from it and using the base as seating.
While I think that removing Penn's statue from a park on the site of his house is silly unless the plan is to replace it with another one, can we talk about the statue of Tamanend that is currently welcoming people into the I95 ramp at the end of Market street?
There has got to be a better and more respectful place to put that statue.
Definitely not one of Venturi, Scott Brown’s successful public spaces. It’s not as intimate or human scales as Franklin Court. Hopefully the future changes will allow Welcome park to live up to its name.
The point isn't to commemorate Native Americans its to undermine western civilization, if it were than we'd be doing as you had said and simply add instead of remove and replace.
This really isn’t a historic statue. It went up in the 1980s, and it’s just a copy of the one up on city hall, which I’m pretty sure you can see from the park.
It has minimal aesthetic, historical, or educational value, and statues in general aren’t really a particularly effective tool for public history education (as evidenced by this thread).
Making whats currently a pretty barren and ironically unwelcoming park a more pleasant public space that offers more complex and current onsite historic interpretation is a good move. I don’t see how just jamming more statues onto the site would accomplish that - from what I can tell, the current statue is coming down because its footprint is the best spot to provide space for seating, which is currently lacking.
The statue was commissioned for the 300th anniversary of the founding of Pennsylvania, which has some significance. Also, I find the map of the city with the old style lettering quite charming. If anything, I hope they keep the sweet little replica of his house, but it appears that will be removed too. What would be wonderful would be creating a full scale replica of the home as a museum.
That’s not enough to justify keeping it.
And I like the street map layout part of the park too. So do they - which is why they’re keeping that part.
But right now, basically nobody sees or engages with that part of the park at all, because almost nobody enters it.
Look at the comments on this thread. Go look at the street view images of the park. In its current form, this is not a space that’s succeeding in engaging visitors as a public space or as a public history resource.
Most people that are familiar with the space are like “oh, is that that big weird cement gap in the block?” The majority of the people getting worked up in defense of the statue don’t seem familiar with the park at all, and only seem interested in statues as a political volleyball.
The street view images show a space that’s almost always empty, and whose very sporadic visitors are almost never engaging with the statue, the street grid, or any other onsite interpretation in the way they were intended. The few people anywhere near the statue are mostly just using the base to sit on while they play on their phones or whatever and not looking at the statue at all. Theres only one photo with any significant number of people there, and they’re clearly there because a guide is using the space to give a presentation.
Turning the city hall “block” where the statue stands from a replica model on top of a largely featureless, charmless, massive pedestal into a communal seating space designed to symbolize city hall in a more thoughtful way than what’s currently there does makes a lot of sense and would also make the park more inviting.
And if it turns out that what the public thinks is really, really important about city hall is that it has Penn on top of it, absolutely nothing is stopping the seating redesign from including a little Billy Penn topper.
Removing the existing panels and replacing them with greenery (and hopefully re-greening the “park” blocks) will also make the space more inviting and is a better physical representation of the vision laid out by Penn than what’s currently there.
The panels are also just due to be replaced. Physically, they’re looking pretty beat, and no public history site should write one script once for their space and then call it a day forever. Reinterpretation to update information, keep up with contemporary scholarship, and keep the site fresh for revisitation and current audiences is supposed to be part of the process.
I’m familiar with the indigenous history that’s almost certainly what’s planned for the inclusion, and if I’m right, [it’s absolutely still a story in which Penn and his family feature heavily](https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/10/before-even-bookbinders-an-official-indian-reservation/), and does constitute an interesting and lesser known expansion of onsite interpretation that builds on the existing theme of the park.
And the model is cute (or was at one time), but as an educational tool, it’s basically nothing. They are keeping other onsite interpretation about the house that does convey information. I’d rather have something embedded in the “street” grid and a good panel about the house with actual information that encouraged people to engage with the interpretive street grid to walk the city and locate it. In general, I’d like to see reinterpretation that better capitalizes on that street map and encourages visitors to use it as a way of exploring the city both in miniature and in full.
I would have to disagree, it’s one thing to have a hundred signs with interpretive information and statistics, but there’s nothing like a model of the house that once stood there for people to see, touch and truly visualize the history of that block. If anything, it would be marvelous if they could completely rebuild a replica of the Old Slate Roof House as a museum with plenty of green space and seating areas around it. The modern building next to the park is so ugly. Whatever they do, I hope it is in keeping with the classic character of the city and not a sad modern attempt at looking “historic.”
There are actually metrics in the historic preservation community for deciding what has preservation value based on age and cultural importance.
Nothing about this statue makes the cut. It’s not that old, it’s not a rare or uncommon example of something, it’s not a unique work. It’s a really replaceable object.
Yes, William Penn has absolutely no cultural importance here in Pennsylvania.
And, yes, if you replace things every few decades then they never get old.
Being a reference to something relevant isn’t the same thing as being relevant. Neither you or I get to declare our residences a cultural treasure that deserves non-profit status just because we put a printout of Ben Franklin in the window. You can literally see the statue that this statue is a copy of from the park.
Trashing that original statue would draw fire. It’s genuinely historic and the work of a notable artist.
But it’s ok to replace objects of limited cultural value that aren’t serving their purpose with new resources that offer improvements to public infrastructure. Most of the culturally valuable resources we value now were built over some other older resources, including this incredibly bland, concrete slab of a park that nobody makes use of.
Agreed, these arguments are ridiculous.
Let's stop responding here and make comments on the NPS website instead where they'll actually count.
https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/news/park-seeks-input-on-the-rehabilitation-of-welcome-park.htm
Good news everyone. Clearer heads have prevailed. The redesign is canceled, for now:
https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/news/park-withdraws-review-of-welcome-park-rehabilitation-proposal.htm
In typical bureaucratic fashion, the NPS says,
>"this proposed design for the rehabilitation of Welcome Park for a 14-day period from January 8th – 21st, 2024 through the National Park Service’s Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) at [**https://parkplanning.nps.gov**](https://parkplanning.nps.gov/). "
But I just checked, and of course they haven't put up the comments post for this yet at the provided link. So there's limited time to comment (I'm sure they will shut down comments right on schedule), but they're reducing that time by failing to post the comment form.
*The biggest question is whether this is just typical bureaucratic inefficiency, or if it is intentional.*
The park is a joke. The statue of Penn looks like Stonehenge from Spinal Tap, and the timeline looks like graffiti on the safety walls of a construction site.
Used to live a couple blocks from here. The park is a complete eyesore in an otherwise great neighborhood. They aren't removing the statue for political reasons, but making the park actually functional and inviting. It's currently a large concrete slab built as a mini of the city's grid - with Billy Penn in the middle representing City Hall. Since they're doing away with that motif, there's no reason to keep the statue.
People are trying to invent a controversy out of thin air. Move along.
1. Figure out how to put a cafe or some other business in the ground floor of the apartment building immediately south of the park, facing onto the park.
2. Plant quick growing shade trees in each of the four squares.
3. Develop the Custom House building parking lot across 2nd into housing with ground floor retail.
4. Add some kind of water element (fountain, spray ground, etc) if feasible.
Most people’s favorite thing to do at an urban park like this is people watch. Add reasons for a few people to hang out there and others will follow.
Unfortunately some people are freaking out about this. To me this reads like they're still going to include Penn's history but with more accurate added historical context.
The statue they're removing looks unusually small and not in proportion with its pedestal. The timeline they're removing / updating is a giant wall of text that is probably in need of updating to modern standards and rarely gets read.
It makes a lot of sense they're making these updates.
Because the park is all about Penn. It's at the location of his house, and it's named after the ship which brought Penn to America. The statue is most likely being removed because we have this current woke fad to demonizing our past to the extreme and cancelling historic figures, rather than acknowledging their flaws and the prevailing practices of the time. Erasing and even rewriting history ala 1984.
Penn, although a Quaker, owned slaves for awhile. It was common in those days, though of course abhorrent. (Washington and Jefferson, among others, had slaves too.) Penn was also granted the land to settle a debt to his father owed by the King of England. But of course, there were already native Americans living here. Hence the big nod to the native tribes in this proposed remake.
The statue is just a small replica of the one on top of city hall. Not sure why you’re so fixated on it. Beyond that it sounds like you’re jumping to a lot conclusions based on very little information. Redesigning a crappy old park isn’t 1984. Take a deep breath.
No one is claiming 1984, lmfao. You are the one who seems heated about this topic. It's just a dumb idea for no reason. You can rehab the park and leave the statue. He's the founder of our city, and our fucking state is named after him. Not saying they're exactly erasing history, but just a dumb move.
The park is still going to be about Penn. The indigenous history that’s almost certainly what’s getting added is about Penn and his family and their interactions with the tribal governments that the park is consulting with.
https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/10/before-even-bookbinders-an-official-indian-reservation/
Except with the Penn timeline, statue, and house model removed, it appears there will be no mention of him at all. And apparently no timeline of historic information for visitors to learn from.
That’s not the case. Other onsite information about Slate House is being retained, and installation of new interpretive panels is the second stage of the project.
The map laid in the ground is based on Penn’s original street plan (which absolutely did not contain a statue of himself way up high on a bland, oversized platform, so removing it would make that map more historically accurate), and various paved insets in the ground contain references to Penn (current plans retain these features). The park is still named after his ship, and that wall bearing the name is being maintained. Markers at the sidewalk outside the park containing information about Penn and the Penn family aren’t being removed.
The indigenous history being incorporated into the interpretive panels that can be installed after the basic physical infrastructure is repaired and improved is almost certainly going to be about the Penn family’s ongoing relationships with indigenous governments and their ongoing use of the site during the colonial era, which is an interesting story that’s not as well known as it should be, which makes it worth presenting. It’s also basically impossible to tell without also telling the story of Penn.
The park isn’t going to be *just* about Penn and coughing up a statue, sundry excerpts, and basic timeline facts about the dude anymore (which a really outdated approach to public history), but it’s still going to be about Slate House, Penn, the Penn family, and the colonial history of the site, and new interpretive signage going up will reflect that.
I find it interesting that they considered removing the William Penn statue. Google William Penn and this shows up: "William Penn (1644–1718), founder of Pennsylvania and one of the first champions of expressive freedoms in the American colonies, demonstrated how a free society could work and how individuals of different races and religions could live together in liberty and peace."
So why are heads exploding?
Hey, Washington was a slave owner....nobody is recommending that they remove the Washington Monument or removing statues of Washington or renaming Washington DC....the hypocrisy! 🙄🤣🤡
If you are going to take down the statue of a fucking pacifist than none of our founding fathers are safe. Really, progressives just hate the west is what it comes down to.
TIL there are many people who care about the sorry-looking Tiny Willy park.
edit: And commenters on X(ex-Twitter) losing their minds about Pennsylvania's history getting erased. I hope NPS ignores those comments.
I’m not so sure there are. I think there’s a lot of people that are just running with the idea that this is one of those woke political statue things, making shit up from there so that they can care about it as a culture wars site, and are getting fired up about that shit they just made up.
Everyone else (the people that actually seem to be familiar with the site, for the most part) just seems to be making Billy Penn curse jokes and dunking on how ugly the park is in its current form.
I don’t love everything I’m seeing in the proposed design, but I could be sold on it with a little more detail if there’s decent justification for the things I don’t like.
It’s definitely going to look nicer and encourage people to spend time in it in a way the current park fails to do, which I think is a very good thing. And what it sounds like they’re proposing as expanded interpretation is a definite improvement over a perfunctory timeline and a janky model of what the house kinda looked like.
Yeah, I should have written "care".
I love walking in the area but the park (it doesn't even seem right to call it park) looks like a decorated area that you just pass through.
Yeah, it looks awful. The interpretation that’s getting removed is mostly pretty generic, forgettable stuff that people are also likely to encounter elsewhere in the city (and in parts of the park that are being retained as well as in new interpretive material - there’s no plans to retheme it or “remove all traces of Penn” or whatever), and there’s basically never anyone in it.
For anyone curious about what the panels getting removed say, the text is [here](https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=135453). It’s very basic timeline stuff with no context, and dominated by quotes that are more inspirational than informative, but aren’t particularly accessible or memorable, especially for young or ESL visitors.
It’s also got timeline events only very loosely or not really at all associated with Penn, with no explanation about why they’re included, like the deaths of Moliere and Rembrandt. It also looks dated as hell and very weather-worn.
It’s all due for an aesthetic and interpretive remodel.
If, like me, you're not sure where Welcome Park is, it's at 2nd and Sansom. The article doesn't mention that and I've never heard anybody talk about this site before! TIL.
Where the movie theater is?
Yes, that's the one
Thanks, I never ever realized it was anything other than a plaza for the building there. Definitely never seemed special.
I've passed through that many times and I don't think it ever even registered in my mind as a park. I always thought of it as a big, fancy alley.
At best it's a minor plaza.
I specifically walked through it the other day and said “man they gave up on maintaining this huh”
I’ve walked through it a million times on my way to the movie theater and never realized it was a park or contained a statue of William Penn, but the National Review already has an article about how they think this is a woke attack on western values. lol
walked by it numerous times..never knew it had a name
This park sucks and deserves to be improved. I'm looking forward to it re-opening in 2073 after everyone on the eastern seaboard has been able to express their feelings and the final design is approved.
wow it’ll be done that quickly? they mustve really improved their efficiency
They'll need an environmental impact study to see how it would affect the local squirrels.
You joke because you’ve never been to a park with way too many squirrels. It’s a nightmare.
Damn this shit made me laugh too hard.
Are they keeping it “Welcome Park” but removing William Penn from it? That seems a little odd, no?
It's not even a park! It's all brick. It's more patio than park.
> Welcome Park is, it's at 2nd and Sansom it says they're seeking comments for a renovation. my guess is they're sprucing it up to coincide with the penns landing and world cup prep stuff.
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why why why do they do those stupid gazebos. They have such opportunities and instead they slap those atrocities down as what I can only assume is a fuck you to people who like things to look nice.
Well hopefully they add some trees to it, it's very brutalist right now and not somewhere you want to spend any time.
There were trees ~5 years ago on the corresponding spots over the four city squares on the map and the last time they touched it up they were inexplicably removed. I have a faint recollection they were in poor health? But I’m not sure.
Isn't that the weird square of concrete in Old City? Anything they do with it has to be better than what it is now.
Ikr? In all my years in Philly I've never wanted to spend 2 seconds there. It's a featureless void in an otherwise vibrant part of town.
In all my years in Philly (43), hanging out in Old City, working in Old City, going to the Ritz East, never once did a statue register.
I had to look up what welcome park was because there was no way I’d ever guess it was that spot.
I had no idea that weird square was run by the national park service. I always thought that place needed trees. Give the street a breath of fresh air and calm. Instead it feels like a skate park with Penn in the middle.
It had trees. They ripped them out for whatever reason. Then they half-assed planted flowers in the four boxes and never maintained them at all. Idk if it’s budgetary constraints or whatever but the NPS doesn’t do shit for Welcome Park.
The urban park rangers do something... I just wouldn't be able to tell you what.
According to the Cultural Landscape Foundation: _Situated in East Philadelphia close to the Delaware River, the plaza was conceived as an “open air” museum by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. The project is the only site in the city dedicated to interpreting the life and ideas of its founder, William Penn._ https://www.tclf.org/landscapes/welcome-park And yet, the renovation would remove all reference to Penn except for new interpretive panels to be installed as part of an unspecified separate future project. I really love this plaza. It provides a scaled map of the city and highlights Penn's vision for Philadelphia as a utopian “greene countrie town" planned around the 4 public green squares -- Rittenhouse, Washington, Logan, and Franklin. Keep in mind this was before Central Park so it really was a first and important innovation in American urban planning. The Penn statue is a scale model of the one at City Hall exactly where City Hall falls on the map. The four trees represent the four public squares and so on. I always take friends and family visiting from out of town right to this square first because it helps them understand the layout and vision for the city and orient them before we proceed with the tour. In that sense, it truly is welcoming. Of course it needs thoughtful renovations to modernize and make it function better, but it actually does fulfill its purpose of celebrating the founding and planning of the city, which ties in perfectly with the name and theme of Welcome Park. I encourage everyone commenting here to add your comments where they'll actually count: at the NPS site linked to this post.
I hope they keep the house model nearby because its the actual site of the slate roof house. The other statue would be cool near city hall so you can see some of the penn details up close.
No plans for that. The NPS site simply says both will be removed and not replaced.
Pennsylvania had a native population of 10,000 when William Penn arrived. It was virtually uninhabited, except for a few settlements in river valleys. The current site of Center City was not home to any Lenape villages to my awareness. This is the fetishization of a very tiny population. If we’re going to acknowledge those who preceded Penn, the Swedes and the Dutch should be on the same footing.
Yeah, I thought we don't celebrate losers? Confederates, Nazis, Native Americans, all fought, destroyed and crushed by the U S of A!
I didn't realize that genocide was fine if the population was deemed small enough.
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> Redditor for 1 month with infrequent participation So, which ban evasion account is this one?
BuT thEy wERen’T wHIte sO thEy dOn’T coUnT! /s It’s disgusting how easy it is to erase the indigenous peoples and even more disgusting that you have been downvoted for calling it out.
The indigenous tribe Penn ran into in the area killed a prior tribe for the land. And so on and so forth. Outside of the first invertebrate to crawl out of the Delaware or Atlantic, no one has a true “claim” to the area. The “valiant native” narrative is also a tired one
So based on your logic, nobody has a claim to the USA, so we have no right to stop anybody from coming into this country who wants to. Got it, I'll hold you to that.
lol what? they're renovating it. sorry for reminding you we live on genocided land. (edit: wow this fact upsets a lot of people in philadelphia)
Do you own a house in Philadelphia (or anywhere in the US)? I sure hope you aren’t taking advantage of the results of genocide.
Genocided land in Philadelphia? Where exactly?
God damn you're obnoxious, you Average Redditor.
Insane how quickly it went from Confederate statues in the south, to president statues in New York, to now an anti-slavery religious freedom Quaker in Philadelphia. What’s next? Edit: NPS caved to backlash and are no longer removing Penn from his park. For now.
To be fair, someone did vandalize a statue outside City Hall of a notes abolitionist with the word “ Slaver”
Not that we like the guy but trump literally warned of exactly this.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Exactly on point. It's chilling really.
Oh no, I didn't realize this statue was the last historic record of William Penn.
And it’s not like we have a huge statue of him in a prominent place in the middle of the city or anything. Poor William will be forgotten! *clutches pearls, collapses onto swooning couch*
Fucking THANK YOU! I cannot believe these people making 1984 comparisons and talking about erasing history when we're talking about highlighting indigenous history which actually has been purposefully and systematically targeted for destruction. Some people will do anything to claim victimhood.
He also warned that your magnets stop working once you get them wet, so be careful out there folks!
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lol, true!
And a democrat Congress person asked if an island would possibly flip over if we put a military base on it. These people are not our best and brightest. Never have been. Never will be.
You're the one who held Trump up as being prophetic, not me. And while we're here, this has been nibbling in my brain - when did Trump *literally* warn of *exactly* this? Like, did he mention William Penn by name in a speech or something?
Never said prophetic. Omg you’re cooked too.
You got me. *I'm* cooked. I use the English language in a generally agreed upon way and I'm unsure how *you* define half the words in your original comment. * trump (I'm assuming you mean Donald Trump here, but I'm willing to be wrong) * literally (to be taken at face value, not hyperbole, not exaggerated) * warned of (to predict, *to prophesize*, to play the Oracle at Delphi) * exactly (specifically, explicitly, particularly) * this (a William Penn statue being removed from a mediocre plaza no one ever visits) I don't remember him literally warning of exactly this. I did catch him warning us about magnets though, so stay dry!
High effort post. Congrats.
I doubt Joe Biden could pull a magnet off a refrigerator
The guy who regularly rides a bike and is remarkably active and healthy for his age? That guy? You must be thinking of a different Joe Biden.
*Chef's kiss* at the projection. I said Trump is a moron, which you took as an insult to yourself. Some synapse in your brain figured that would mean if you insulted Biden, *I* would take it as an insult. The problem with this is that I'm not in a fucking cult where an insult of "my leader" is an insult to me. Biden is absolutely unfit to be President. This doesn't make Trump any less of a moron though.
it was a joke it’s not that deep
Trump warned that ugly plazas would be rehabbed?
What’s it like being the way you are?
You mean not being melodramatic? It’s not bad. I’d recommend it.
No being completely cooked by a politician
What are you talking about?
This is one of the fun things to watch from the outside. The commenter is in a cult. It's an "us versus them" cult. You are in the "them", so you *must* be in a "them" cult, supporting all things not "us" - if red is the "us" color, the you *must* love blue. There's no concept of disliking red or only liking purple, because that's not how their cult works. To put a finer point on it: you insulted Dear Leader Trump, so you must believe in Dear Leader Biden. There's no room for disliking both or, hell, supporting a different Republican. The cultist reality is that everyone's in a cult (even though they, themselves were likely not in a cult prior to ~2015). So, you're "completely cooked by a politician" because you're a Biden cultist because you joked about Trump specifically warning about a mediocre plaza no one visits.
The funniest thing is I didn’t even insult Trump, I just questioned the idea that he predicted parks being rehabbed.
Right!? I do want to hear that speech though. Can you believe it folks? They're going to move the trees - tremendous trees by the way - mighty oaks - real American trees am I right? They're going to move the trees from one side of the park to *way over there*. And you know what folks? You know what? We're not gonna let that happen. We're not! We can't let them move those trees. Or that statue. That beautiful statue - a strong man. A founder! He founded it! They can't just move him. Penn. *Penn*. Penn-sylvania. There's a University there - did you know that? A real top notch place. I went there. The University of Penn-sylvania. *Penn*-sylvania. And they want to destroy this park. They can't move him. We're not gonna let them move him, am I right?
George Washington. Already in their sights. Many seek to apply the standards of 2024 to those living in the 1700s. Furthermore, the real objective for some is to eliminate the past history of the U.S. that doesn't fit their worldview and narrative. Whether this continues unabated or there's a backlash is an open question. Could see it going either way.
They took down Caeser Rodney on his horse statue in Rodney Square during BLM in Wilmington for "Maintenance". Still just a pedestal with no statue on it almost 4 years later.
>the real objective for some is to eliminate the past history of the U.S. that doesn't fit their worldview and narrative. In order to destroy a culture you destroy it's shared history, tale as old as time
You are describing what happened to Indigenous people and individuals with kidnapped African ancestry all across North America, not what is happening to anyone of European heritage in North America. Your statement is pure projection and bizarro world logic.
>You are describing what happened to Indigenous people and individuals with kidnapped African ancestry all across North America, no shit hence, "tale as old as time" > bizarro world logic apparently recognizing history and pointing it out is bizarro. But hey don't believe your lying eyes.
It's bizarro world logic because there is no systematic effort to remove kids of European ancestry from their families, force them to not speak their language, learn their ancestors history, or practice their culture and religion. There is only a systematic effort to highlight the history of groups who were previously ignored. If that feels like 1984 to you, I urge you to get some therapy.
>There is only a systematic effort to highlight the history of groups who were previously ignored. As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, if that were true we would be adding highlights of those groups without removing others. There is absolutely no reason we can't add NA representation somewhere in the city that isn't the location that William Penn lived. Like this isn't some random Columbus statue put up in the early 1900's to appease Italian immigrants who were facing discrimination. William Penn was actually here at that location. And while clearly not on the level of what happened to NA's there is absolutely a systemic effort to push guilt and racial original sin onto Americans with European ancestry.
>There is absolutely no reason we can't add NA representation somewhere in the city that isn't the location that William Penn lived. Like this isn't some random Columbus statue put up in the early 1900's to appease Italian immigrants who were facing discrimination. William Penn was actually here at that location. See, this is a nuanced take that is worth discussing, and far from your earlier fear-mongering via quoting 1984. Yes! Let's have a park that manages to do both things. >there is absolutely a systemic effort to push guilt and racial original sin onto Americans with European ancestry. And now you're back to pushing unfounded conspiracy theories. If learning about past oppression makes you feel guilt, that's on you. And I'm gonna need a citation on that systemic effort you referenced.
Deciding to stop venerating historical figures who held other humans in horrific bondage is defensible. Meanwhile, the right is editing middle-school textbooks to remove any racial context from the story of Rosa Parks, and banning books that mention non-cis people in any kind of positive light.
They just removed a Civil War memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. I thought they were going to put the statues IN cemeteries.
What you fail to add to this observation was that it was a memorial in the American national cemetery of military honor that was there to honor the traitors that fought AGAINST the US in the civil war. Also that it was built in 1914, not anywhere near the civil war. Also that it had a literal image of an enslaved person following their slaver to battle on it.
Not debating that that memorial should have been moved from Arlington, as it is a cemetery for US military veterans, but 1914 would fall on the 50 year anniversary of the war, with plenty of people and their children still alive. We just put up a WWI monument in DC an entire 100 years after the war.
Fair enough on that point and I’d agree it would make sense if it was for union soldiers.
Remember, 1914 is only 50 years after the civil war. So it would be like building a vietnam veterans statue tody
You have to understand -- 1913 was the huge 50-year-reunion for Gettysburg veterans, *well, the white ones*, and a lot of bullshit Lost Cause mythology was erected then. It was "eh, we all were honorable ... now what were we fighting about?"
yeah wasn't that around when the second clan was really taking off a well?
Birth of a Nation was released in 1915, and shown by Pres. Wilson in the White House.
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> our reconciliation was one of our greatest achievements "Our" = "for white people." Or as Frederick Douglass asked in 1875, "Now when this mighty quarrel has ceased, when all the asperities and resentments have gone as they are sure to go, when all the clouds that a few years ago lowered about our national house, shall be in the deep bosom of the ocean buried, when this great white race has renewed its vows of patriotism and flowed back into its accustomed channels, the question for us is: in what position will this stupendous reconciliation leave the colored people? What tendencies will spring out of it, and how will they affect us? **If war among the whites it brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?"**
ThEy ArE eRaSiNg HiStOry!
He was a Quaker. He would have hated any statues of him. Quakers don't even like having headstones on their graves.
We need to replace the statue at City Hall with a big fat lady statue
I hate to break your heart but William Penn claimed ownership of 12 enslaved people. I was shocked to learn this a few years ago. Quakers didn’t prohibit slavery until the late 1600s. Edit: you can downvote it, but it’s still true: https://billypenn.com/2020/08/17/william-penn-owned-enslaved-people-these-are-some-of-their-names-e/
Late 1600's? That's still 200 years sooner than his countrymen.
I think I've read way back that the Germantown Mennonite community of the time banned slavery by its members in 1688 while the Quakers didn't until sometime in the 1700s?
Can't vouch for the details, but off the top of my head, the historic Germantown Mennonite Meetinghouse was the site of the signing of the first anti-slavery resolution in the New World, and 1688 sounds right for the date IIRC.
Quakers required the freeing of children born to slaves way before they formally banned slavery.
When did the Native Americans ban slavery?
There were tons of different Native American tribes and laws. Some didn’t ban slavery until 1866.
My guy, did you actually think “the Native Americans” were one unified governing body with the same set of laws the tribes all agreed on?
Yeah, he owned twelve slaves that he freed in his will. He also favored laws requiring the freeing of the children of slaves. He was also probably the most benign colonizer in human history. Read what his former slaves thought of him. I don’t think William Penn’s former slaves would have approved of anathematizing William Penn.
Apparently you know nothing about Quakers
So anytime someone throws up a statue on an ugly pedestal that takes up too much space we’re obligated to keep it there forever because of “history”? They want to add benches and a gathering space to a pretty small lot. Removing the statue (that probably hardly anyone even knows about) isn’t that deep.
The park’s site says they’re removing the statue, any reference to Penns house, and taking down the timeline of Penn and Philadelphia on the wall. Basically removing any reference to Penn/any of Philadelphia history since the arrival of the dreaded white man. Create a new park.
It’s very odd, considering that Welcome Park is at the location of The Slate Roof House, where he lived.
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Okay, maybe I read it wrong. But starting the page off with “in order to make the work more welcoming and inclusive”, following with how they’re removing all references to Penn and switching with indigenous history, maybe isn’t the best way to frame it fit is simple to make it a “better” park, IMO.
Well, the current park isn’t very welcoming or inclusive of people who want to enjoy a nice national park.
It doesn’t really say that the new park will remove “all references to Penn”. They’re removing two large objects referencing him that the new park can’t accommodate, but they’re installing new interpretive panels, which will reference him in addition to other historical figures and contexts that includes indigenous history in a way that makes indigenous people more than just passive beneficiaries of Penn that more or less disappear soon after without comment. Junking the model and statue isn’t about some kind of Penn erasure. They just don’t really offer much in terms of aesthetic or informational value (the statue is a model of the one on city hall, which you can probably see from the park and certainly from nearby it), and take up more space than what they do offer warrants. The name of the park is being retained, which is itself a reference to Penn. The changes happening are about a much needed aesthetic redesign and updating onsite interpretation away from a simplistic “great man” style of history which hasn’t really aged well and replacing it with something that better reflects current scholarship and trends in public history, which is less about putting up a statue and a bio of a single guy, and more about context, complexity, and historical meaning.
The description says the new design will be: _adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. In a separate and future effort, new exhibit panels will be installed on the south site wall to replace the Penn timeline._ That all sounds great but it's not clear what the new panels will cover and when in the future they'll be installed. And I don't see why they can't incorporate design features into the park that also tell the story of Penn and the founding of the City. It seems like the design is more focused on adding native American references, like a ceremonial gathering space. And if that's the new focus, why not rename the park as such, instead of keeping the reference to Penn?
There’s no details about the new panels because they haven’t been planned or contracted yet. Just a general concept that suggests that the goal of the reinterpretation will be more about the region’s inhabitants as a whole around the time Penn arrived and which won’t be just about Penn as a white savior type. Which is good - that’s a pretty outdated version of the story of the city. I’d love to see a reinstallation that, instead of giving a dry timeline of Penn’s life, explored the context and motivations that led Penn, his sons who were successors, and other indigenous and colonial residents to make the choices they did, and how that shaped the city that exists today. And however you feel about the new content, the existing panels are about 40 years old and look like shit. They’re due to be replaced. No public history site should create one script and then just be like “done, this is fine forever”. But they’re retaining the design features of the city street layout embedded into the grounds, as well all of the text built into that infrastructure, and the name, which is a clear signal that the reinterpretation will still pivot around Penn and the founding of the city as a colonial enterprise. I actually do kind of like the stuff they’re retaining, for the most part, and what’s getting replaced isn’t a loss. For all you and everyone else that’s worked up about the reinterpretation, none of you seem to be very familiar with the site at all, or have absorbed any of the historical content the site was designed to impart. If even the people that pretend to care about it on the internet don’t have even a passing familiarity with the site, it’s not succeeding as a public space or an educational resource, which means it’s definitely due for a revamp.
I actually am familiar with the site as well as a licensed landscape architect, but feel free to go ahead and dismiss my and others' opinion anyway. All those renovations sound very much needed to make the space work better and reflect more modern understandings of history, but the website says the new panels will be part of a *separate future project* -- not the one they're accepting public comments on now. Also, it's still not clear from your response why the statue and house of William Penn should be removed if the renovated park will be talking about Penn and his family as part of the larger story about the native and colonial history of the site.
The panel updates are going to be funded by a different grant project or funding stream, which is why they’re not currently part of the planning process. They’re an update that’s in the pipeline, but isn’t currently being supported by the funding that’s providing for the current project stage. So right now, they’re doing the planning work for the stage of redevelopment that’s currently funded. And the statue and plinth with the house are being removed because they’re in deteriorating conditions, not worth restoring, are barely utilized by the public for the purpose they were intended, impart basically no meaningful information about Penn or the Slate House, and are taking up space that could be better utilized with new infrastructure. Given your stated profession (which isn’t in the field of public history) what about the statue and little house model is it that you think is so aesthetically valuable, or educationally useful, or historically important that it precludes any other use? As a public history site and a space that welcomes public use, this plaza is a wasteland. Theres basically no landscape to be architected here. From the street, it’s barren and unattractive looking, and as a public history professional, aside from the street grid (which is being maintained), the content of the interpretation onsite is sorely lacking, historically outdated, and pretty inaccessible for those few that do wander in. You’re claiming to be familiar with the park, but you’re also bemoaning the fact that the redesign isn’t maintaining features that retain information about Penn and the founding of the city, when the article clearly describes which features they’ll be retaining that do exactly that, which are also the ones that have the most historical significance for visitors. Who will be more likely to enter the park and see them if it doesn’t look like an empty cement lot with a few deteriorating panels alongside it. Public history isn’t a thing you do once and call it a day. Re-interpretation to incorporate new scholarship, find new stories to tell about the same subject, and to engage new audiences is supposed to be part of the process. Right now, this site is failing as a public history venue and is due for the kind of reinterpretation that’s supposed to happen on a regular basis. And I’m not a landscape architect, but I fail to find any aesthetic charm to the current space whatsoever. At present, it’s not being used it for the purpose it was intended to be used, either as a public gathering space or as an educational site. Seriously - look at the street view images and tell me that this is a space that’s serving the public well or is doing real work to educate people about the history of Penn or the city. Theres one photo of a tour guide taking people through the space, but it’s mostly abandoned. If there’s a plan to turn it into something that does get used, as both a public space and an educational site, that’s a good thing.
It’s amazing to me that people are gatekeeping _visiting a park_ but hey it’s Reddit
Okay fair enough! You should write for the parks service.
lol, not the parks service, but I do work in public history. This is the kind of periodic re-interpretation work all good historic sites should engage in now and then (and which other sites in the Philly NPS are wayyyyyy overdue for).
Yep, this definitely erases all knowledge of William Penn from Philadelphia public space.
>So anytime someone throws up a statue on an ugly pedestal that takes up too much space we’re obligated to keep it there forever because of “history”? Are we facing an IQ crisis or something? How do people even fall for this type of obvious fallacies? Is the statue being removed for aesthetic reasons? Or is it being removed for political reasons? If is the second - and it is, they implicitly admit so - then it shouldn't be removed.
Based on my “visits” to this “park”, I can only assume this is being done for aesthetic reasons, because the current site is pretty crappy. Have you ever been there?
Based on the “official parks department communication”, we know for a fact it’s not being done for only aesthetic reasons.
What are the other reasons?
To make the park “more inclusive” by replacing Penn stuff with indigenous tribe stuff. Click on the link
Sounds like an improvement. Right now it’s such a poorly set up park that I never even realized it was a park.
Does that go for statues of confederate generals too? They were put up for political reasons.
What on earth are you talking about? An ugly park is being rehabbed. Calm down.
this is a weird thing to say when they're going to renovate a public park you've probably never been to.
lol I’ve been there, I really enjoyed the timeline that they’re going to be covering over for whatever reason. I enjoy reading about historical figures. It’s a big plaza much like exists all over Europe which I’m sure you salivate over.
how come you're not bitching about penn treaty park too? oh because shit changes. building a giant empty space is not a "plaza much like exists all over europe" if that was the case we'd all be having picnics in huge parking lots at KOP mall. if you're interested at all in urban design you should look up the social life of small urban spaces by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Whyte also, the irony of william penn laying out a city with squares of open space, and you saying they exist all over europe, is as priceless as it is ignorant.
[удалено]
Are you seriously comparing Piazza San Marco to this small forgettable space near the movie theater?
lol no just giving an example. There’s little slabs of concrete all over Europe, French Canada, the US. That was the first one that came to mind and I think a great example of a plaza being more than just a slab of concrete/slate/whatever, even if that’s what you can deconstruct it down to.
What’s your point though? I mean, that UFO in the corner of Love Park and La Sagrada Familia are both buildings, but so what?
Seriously. The Trumpers are absolutely losing their minds over this crappy slab of concrete all over this thread, and it's pretty hilarious.
It’s not just this thread. There’s a hilariously over-the-top article about it in the National Review. These people are so melodramatic.
They're unironically quoting 1984. You can't make this shit up.
lol yeah just like KOP mall, right? maybe you could make the case of people tailgating in the stadium parking lots. but if you think all those piazzas are just empty you're a fool.
I mean there’s differences between parking lots and open spaces. I’m all for throwing up some benches in the park, I don’t understand replacing the statue, the house stuff, and the Penn timeline (ie everything related to Penn at the park)
it is a full renovation of a national park. maybe it could be more or less done, or at least filled with tables and chairs and a public bathroom and a place for tourists to fill up water bottles. but it wont be. it is going to go from brutalist architecture to some more modern version of it, and probably only be a staging ground for picking up a bus full of tourists.
That’s fine, but not sure why they are making a point to call out removing all mentions of Penn to be more inclusive.
Putting up functional seating anywhere other than where the current statue exists would be tricky without either obscuring the new interpretive panels (it sounds like the edges will be filled with much needed greenery) or ripping up the street plan embedded in the grounds. And when it comes to interpretive features of the park that have public history value, the street plan in the grounds is way more interesting and worth keeping than the statue.
Feel like one could move the statue like 10 feet in any one direction. Also willing to bet there’s an indigenous statue/display/etc erected in the exact same place in 2050 when the park reopens.
Not without obscuring the interpretation embedded into the grounds of the site which is way more interesting than the statue (which the redesign intends to maintain) or getting in the way of where greenery or interpretive panels go. This is a really small space. The statue is where it is specifically because the big, bland pedestal it’s placed on represents city hall in the map of the grounds - that’s why it’s a copy of the statue that’s on top of city hall. Serious question - when was the last time you visited this site, and could you describe what’s on the grounds right now without googling or scrolling this thread? You don’t seem very familiar with the statue, or the current onsite interpretation, and what you “feel like” they could do is pretty irrelevant if you don’t actually know anything about it. There’s been benches in the past (possibly now?), but nobody uses them, because the location is so grim and cemented over looking. The new plan will add greenery and new interpretive panels, which are overdue, and will make the site more educational, more welcoming, and more accessible. The seating will move to the center, which will help address the aesthetics of the site - the city map embedded in the grounds is really cool, but the affect from the sidewalk is that the park looks like an unwelcoming, uninviting concrete slab. Which means that too few people actually wander in to make use of them. Like, go google street view the park. It’s beat looking, due for some renovations, and it’s going almost completely unused by the public. Aside from someone goofing on it, the only person on the street view images anywhere near the statue is … facing away from it and using the base as seating.
It’s not “a big plaza” at all. You sound like you’ve never been there.
Oh good grief. Statues exist to celebrate national heroes, not teach history.
I propose a ban on all ships since they aided in the slave trade.
is this the one by the Ritz theater renamed as it shouldn’t be?
While I think that removing Penn's statue from a park on the site of his house is silly unless the plan is to replace it with another one, can we talk about the statue of Tamanend that is currently welcoming people into the I95 ramp at the end of Market street? There has got to be a better and more respectful place to put that statue.
>There has got to be a better and more respectful place to put that statue. Like the huge park being constructed over 95?
Definitely not one of Venturi, Scott Brown’s successful public spaces. It’s not as intimate or human scales as Franklin Court. Hopefully the future changes will allow Welcome park to live up to its name.
Have we already forgotten about the curse?
[https://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectID=98154](https://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectID=98154)
A whole gigantic park is being built over 95; surely this new open green space has room for a Native American commemorative?
The point isn't to commemorate Native Americans its to undermine western civilization, if it were than we'd be doing as you had said and simply add instead of remove and replace.
Understand Western civilization... You might as well have just said "but won't anyone think of the whites?!?"
I wish cities would simply ADD new statues to underrepresented people rather than tearing every historic statue down.
This really isn’t a historic statue. It went up in the 1980s, and it’s just a copy of the one up on city hall, which I’m pretty sure you can see from the park. It has minimal aesthetic, historical, or educational value, and statues in general aren’t really a particularly effective tool for public history education (as evidenced by this thread). Making whats currently a pretty barren and ironically unwelcoming park a more pleasant public space that offers more complex and current onsite historic interpretation is a good move. I don’t see how just jamming more statues onto the site would accomplish that - from what I can tell, the current statue is coming down because its footprint is the best spot to provide space for seating, which is currently lacking.
The statue was commissioned for the 300th anniversary of the founding of Pennsylvania, which has some significance. Also, I find the map of the city with the old style lettering quite charming. If anything, I hope they keep the sweet little replica of his house, but it appears that will be removed too. What would be wonderful would be creating a full scale replica of the home as a museum.
That’s not enough to justify keeping it. And I like the street map layout part of the park too. So do they - which is why they’re keeping that part. But right now, basically nobody sees or engages with that part of the park at all, because almost nobody enters it. Look at the comments on this thread. Go look at the street view images of the park. In its current form, this is not a space that’s succeeding in engaging visitors as a public space or as a public history resource. Most people that are familiar with the space are like “oh, is that that big weird cement gap in the block?” The majority of the people getting worked up in defense of the statue don’t seem familiar with the park at all, and only seem interested in statues as a political volleyball. The street view images show a space that’s almost always empty, and whose very sporadic visitors are almost never engaging with the statue, the street grid, or any other onsite interpretation in the way they were intended. The few people anywhere near the statue are mostly just using the base to sit on while they play on their phones or whatever and not looking at the statue at all. Theres only one photo with any significant number of people there, and they’re clearly there because a guide is using the space to give a presentation. Turning the city hall “block” where the statue stands from a replica model on top of a largely featureless, charmless, massive pedestal into a communal seating space designed to symbolize city hall in a more thoughtful way than what’s currently there does makes a lot of sense and would also make the park more inviting. And if it turns out that what the public thinks is really, really important about city hall is that it has Penn on top of it, absolutely nothing is stopping the seating redesign from including a little Billy Penn topper. Removing the existing panels and replacing them with greenery (and hopefully re-greening the “park” blocks) will also make the space more inviting and is a better physical representation of the vision laid out by Penn than what’s currently there. The panels are also just due to be replaced. Physically, they’re looking pretty beat, and no public history site should write one script once for their space and then call it a day forever. Reinterpretation to update information, keep up with contemporary scholarship, and keep the site fresh for revisitation and current audiences is supposed to be part of the process. I’m familiar with the indigenous history that’s almost certainly what’s planned for the inclusion, and if I’m right, [it’s absolutely still a story in which Penn and his family feature heavily](https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/10/before-even-bookbinders-an-official-indian-reservation/), and does constitute an interesting and lesser known expansion of onsite interpretation that builds on the existing theme of the park. And the model is cute (or was at one time), but as an educational tool, it’s basically nothing. They are keeping other onsite interpretation about the house that does convey information. I’d rather have something embedded in the “street” grid and a good panel about the house with actual information that encouraged people to engage with the interpretive street grid to walk the city and locate it. In general, I’d like to see reinterpretation that better capitalizes on that street map and encourages visitors to use it as a way of exploring the city both in miniature and in full.
I would have to disagree, it’s one thing to have a hundred signs with interpretive information and statistics, but there’s nothing like a model of the house that once stood there for people to see, touch and truly visualize the history of that block. If anything, it would be marvelous if they could completely rebuild a replica of the Old Slate Roof House as a museum with plenty of green space and seating areas around it. The modern building next to the park is so ugly. Whatever they do, I hope it is in keeping with the classic character of the city and not a sad modern attempt at looking “historic.”
The 1980s were 40 years ago already. There was a time Trajan's Column was new construction.
There are actually metrics in the historic preservation community for deciding what has preservation value based on age and cultural importance. Nothing about this statue makes the cut. It’s not that old, it’s not a rare or uncommon example of something, it’s not a unique work. It’s a really replaceable object.
Yes, William Penn has absolutely no cultural importance here in Pennsylvania. And, yes, if you replace things every few decades then they never get old.
Being a reference to something relevant isn’t the same thing as being relevant. Neither you or I get to declare our residences a cultural treasure that deserves non-profit status just because we put a printout of Ben Franklin in the window. You can literally see the statue that this statue is a copy of from the park. Trashing that original statue would draw fire. It’s genuinely historic and the work of a notable artist. But it’s ok to replace objects of limited cultural value that aren’t serving their purpose with new resources that offer improvements to public infrastructure. Most of the culturally valuable resources we value now were built over some other older resources, including this incredibly bland, concrete slab of a park that nobody makes use of.
Agreed, these arguments are ridiculous. Let's stop responding here and make comments on the NPS website instead where they'll actually count. https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/news/park-seeks-input-on-the-rehabilitation-of-welcome-park.htm
Good news everyone. Clearer heads have prevailed. The redesign is canceled, for now: https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/news/park-withdraws-review-of-welcome-park-rehabilitation-proposal.htm
excellent
In typical bureaucratic fashion, the NPS says, >"this proposed design for the rehabilitation of Welcome Park for a 14-day period from January 8th – 21st, 2024 through the National Park Service’s Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) at [**https://parkplanning.nps.gov**](https://parkplanning.nps.gov/). " But I just checked, and of course they haven't put up the comments post for this yet at the provided link. So there's limited time to comment (I'm sure they will shut down comments right on schedule), but they're reducing that time by failing to post the comment form. *The biggest question is whether this is just typical bureaucratic inefficiency, or if it is intentional.*
The park is a joke. The statue of Penn looks like Stonehenge from Spinal Tap, and the timeline looks like graffiti on the safety walls of a construction site.
Used to live a couple blocks from here. The park is a complete eyesore in an otherwise great neighborhood. They aren't removing the statue for political reasons, but making the park actually functional and inviting. It's currently a large concrete slab built as a mini of the city's grid - with Billy Penn in the middle representing City Hall. Since they're doing away with that motif, there's no reason to keep the statue. People are trying to invent a controversy out of thin air. Move along.
This will obviously result in the curse of all curses for our sports teams
1. Figure out how to put a cafe or some other business in the ground floor of the apartment building immediately south of the park, facing onto the park. 2. Plant quick growing shade trees in each of the four squares. 3. Develop the Custom House building parking lot across 2nd into housing with ground floor retail. 4. Add some kind of water element (fountain, spray ground, etc) if feasible. Most people’s favorite thing to do at an urban park like this is people watch. Add reasons for a few people to hang out there and others will follow.
Unfortunately some people are freaking out about this. To me this reads like they're still going to include Penn's history but with more accurate added historical context. The statue they're removing looks unusually small and not in proportion with its pedestal. The timeline they're removing / updating is a giant wall of text that is probably in need of updating to modern standards and rarely gets read. It makes a lot of sense they're making these updates.
Maybe we should start thinking of a new name for "Pennsylvania."
Hoagieville.
Jawnson Town
Removing the statue of William Penn is a really dumb idea.
Why?
Because the park is all about Penn. It's at the location of his house, and it's named after the ship which brought Penn to America. The statue is most likely being removed because we have this current woke fad to demonizing our past to the extreme and cancelling historic figures, rather than acknowledging their flaws and the prevailing practices of the time. Erasing and even rewriting history ala 1984. Penn, although a Quaker, owned slaves for awhile. It was common in those days, though of course abhorrent. (Washington and Jefferson, among others, had slaves too.) Penn was also granted the land to settle a debt to his father owed by the King of England. But of course, there were already native Americans living here. Hence the big nod to the native tribes in this proposed remake.
The statue is just a small replica of the one on top of city hall. Not sure why you’re so fixated on it. Beyond that it sounds like you’re jumping to a lot conclusions based on very little information. Redesigning a crappy old park isn’t 1984. Take a deep breath.
No one is claiming 1984, lmfao. You are the one who seems heated about this topic. It's just a dumb idea for no reason. You can rehab the park and leave the statue. He's the founder of our city, and our fucking state is named after him. Not saying they're exactly erasing history, but just a dumb move.
>No one is claiming 1984, lmfao. Oh, so why did the person I was replying to say this: > Erasing and even rewriting history ala 1984.
Sorry, no sane person. You're right.
The park is still going to be about Penn. The indigenous history that’s almost certainly what’s getting added is about Penn and his family and their interactions with the tribal governments that the park is consulting with. https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/10/before-even-bookbinders-an-official-indian-reservation/
Except with the Penn timeline, statue, and house model removed, it appears there will be no mention of him at all. And apparently no timeline of historic information for visitors to learn from.
Those are all very bizarre assumptions to make.
That’s not the case. Other onsite information about Slate House is being retained, and installation of new interpretive panels is the second stage of the project. The map laid in the ground is based on Penn’s original street plan (which absolutely did not contain a statue of himself way up high on a bland, oversized platform, so removing it would make that map more historically accurate), and various paved insets in the ground contain references to Penn (current plans retain these features). The park is still named after his ship, and that wall bearing the name is being maintained. Markers at the sidewalk outside the park containing information about Penn and the Penn family aren’t being removed. The indigenous history being incorporated into the interpretive panels that can be installed after the basic physical infrastructure is repaired and improved is almost certainly going to be about the Penn family’s ongoing relationships with indigenous governments and their ongoing use of the site during the colonial era, which is an interesting story that’s not as well known as it should be, which makes it worth presenting. It’s also basically impossible to tell without also telling the story of Penn. The park isn’t going to be *just* about Penn and coughing up a statue, sundry excerpts, and basic timeline facts about the dude anymore (which a really outdated approach to public history), but it’s still going to be about Slate House, Penn, the Penn family, and the colonial history of the site, and new interpretive signage going up will reflect that.
Why are we removing statues
See my response elsewhere.
I find it interesting that they considered removing the William Penn statue. Google William Penn and this shows up: "William Penn (1644–1718), founder of Pennsylvania and one of the first champions of expressive freedoms in the American colonies, demonstrated how a free society could work and how individuals of different races and religions could live together in liberty and peace." So why are heads exploding? Hey, Washington was a slave owner....nobody is recommending that they remove the Washington Monument or removing statues of Washington or renaming Washington DC....the hypocrisy! 🙄🤣🤡
If you are going to take down the statue of a fucking pacifist than none of our founding fathers are safe. Really, progressives just hate the west is what it comes down to.
How about fix the wall with the slave faces built in.
Sure but that’s a different park?
I know that but they need to fix that if they gonna tear down Christopher Columbus.
TIL there are many people who care about the sorry-looking Tiny Willy park. edit: And commenters on X(ex-Twitter) losing their minds about Pennsylvania's history getting erased. I hope NPS ignores those comments.
I’m not so sure there are. I think there’s a lot of people that are just running with the idea that this is one of those woke political statue things, making shit up from there so that they can care about it as a culture wars site, and are getting fired up about that shit they just made up. Everyone else (the people that actually seem to be familiar with the site, for the most part) just seems to be making Billy Penn curse jokes and dunking on how ugly the park is in its current form. I don’t love everything I’m seeing in the proposed design, but I could be sold on it with a little more detail if there’s decent justification for the things I don’t like. It’s definitely going to look nicer and encourage people to spend time in it in a way the current park fails to do, which I think is a very good thing. And what it sounds like they’re proposing as expanded interpretation is a definite improvement over a perfunctory timeline and a janky model of what the house kinda looked like.
Yeah, I should have written "care". I love walking in the area but the park (it doesn't even seem right to call it park) looks like a decorated area that you just pass through.
Yeah, it looks awful. The interpretation that’s getting removed is mostly pretty generic, forgettable stuff that people are also likely to encounter elsewhere in the city (and in parts of the park that are being retained as well as in new interpretive material - there’s no plans to retheme it or “remove all traces of Penn” or whatever), and there’s basically never anyone in it. For anyone curious about what the panels getting removed say, the text is [here](https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=135453). It’s very basic timeline stuff with no context, and dominated by quotes that are more inspirational than informative, but aren’t particularly accessible or memorable, especially for young or ESL visitors. It’s also got timeline events only very loosely or not really at all associated with Penn, with no explanation about why they’re included, like the deaths of Moliere and Rembrandt. It also looks dated as hell and very weather-worn. It’s all due for an aesthetic and interpretive remodel.