Philadelphia Noir

Philadelphia City Hall has been described as the greatest American example of Second Empire architecture in the United States, even the greatest masonry structure of the 19^th Century. More accurately it is the greatest pile of Victorian bat shit in the Western Hemisphere. It dominates that city's center in the way that the Brandenburg Gate dominates Berlin. It's the greatest example of design by committee on the Eastern seaboard.

Construction began in 1871, while Philadelphia could still claim to be the first city of the realm, and ended in 1900 by which time Pennsylvania's coal and steel robber barons had abandoned the "City of Brotherly Love" for the upscale avenues of New York. Despite its monumental proportions, Philadelphia's City Hall never made it to the pages of great architecture sourcebooks. When the last stone was laid, the public taste had already declared it old and frivolous.

The gilded age Brahmins of Philadelphia didn't give up the city's place in the urban pantheon without a fight, of course. Across from City Hall stands the great Masonic lodge of Philadelphia as testament to the keepers Philadelphia's last stand. The great gray temple of freemasonry is still a going concern, a secret society where generations of middle aged white men have gathered to secretly snap towels, share ancient unknowable handshakes and ritually shave each other's crotches. Rather than retreat gracefully into the status of "Queen City of the East," Philly fought her fate for decades, scratching and clawing all the way. But it was all in vain, the fight turned Philly into a madwoman; though sometimes she seems just a gritty old hag with blood on her teeth.

These days on the one side of Broad Street facing City Hall is a larger than life statue of Frank Rizzo, a thug and a lout if ever there was one, and a monument to the City's total decline; while on the other, the Masonic Temple still conducts its secret rituals. Though, the mysterious recessed oak doors of the Mason's hall mostly just makes the perfect place for homeless men to take a piss.

I often fear America in its entirety might be well on the way to becoming Philadelphia writ large, with George W. Bush playing the fool, Rizzo.