I’ve been itching to bike more and more but the weather has not been
accommodating. Today ended up being a
beautiful day for a ride; sunny, warmish and a Sunday. I debated with myself for way to long on
where I should go (it was between Fairmount Park and the Delaware) and finally
decided on taking a leisurely ride through the park. I ended up going a few
more miles than expected. The stats,
link and map are below.
|
Miles
|
Minutes
|
Speed
|
Calories Burned
|
|
14.7
|
77
|
11.3
|
927
|
Although the Schuylkill trail is a wonderful and gleaming case study in
waterfront recreation and revitalization, on a warm early spring weekend it’s a
bit TOO wonderful. My disdain for
braking for people with their dogs or runners that are oblivious to their
surroundings and uturn in front of you leads me to choose routes that bypass
the entire area south of the boathouses.
Additionally, the Kelly Drive trail is usually clogged up with high
school, college and professional regattas (today was a high school regatta). While
rowers tend to be great eye candy, they and their fans are too numerous for any
decent bike ride. This is all leading up to the fact that I started my ride by
biking up 22nd Street into the Fairmount neighborhood. Fairmount is one of the quintessential Philly
neighborhoods, except that it’s really hard to get to on foot or transit. The houses are very well maintained, they
have a pretty vibrant commercial corridor (that contains a lot of bars that I’m
not too familiar with so I’m not going to vouch for them) and lots of flowering
trees.
Biking north I turned left onto Parrish St and then veered onto
Pennsylvania Ave. (the wrong way…shh) to an informal bike crossing of whatever
railroad runs through there. The
crossing puts you onto Popular Drive, the east edge of the park, and then turns
into 33rd St. as you cross Girard.
There is quite a hill that takes you to the formally named East
Fairmount Park as well as the neighborhood, Strawberry Mansion. Before entering
the park I biked past a new, and enthusiastic, vegan restaurant. It seemed a little out of place but via
internet research it’s a real place, if you want vegan delivery as far south as
Penn hit them up. Vegan restaurants are generally not that noteworthy, but in Strawberry
Mansion they are. The neighborhood is a
classic case of wealthy, white neighborhood that was abandoned in the 1950s for
the suburbs and became a poor, black neighborhood. Along the southern edge, primarily
the area known as Brewerytown, there’s been gentrification by artists and young
professionals (hence the vegan restaurant) but as a whole the neighborhood has
a lot of large, ornate buildings that have been neglected for decades.
As I entered the park I realized something was happening as there were
many parking attendants and a lot of signs for $12 parking. It turned out to be
the regattas down the hill but it made for a really awkward confrontation with
one such attendant that stopped me to ask me what I was doing. I answered, biking and starred at her. Anyway I toured around the drives of a few of
the mansions that are settled in the park. A brief introduction to the park, it
is approx. 4,100 acres and was formed in the 1850-60s as a collection of
private estates and undeveloped land to prevent pollution of the city’s water
supply. One of the “estates” I visited
was Mt. Pleasant. Mt. Pleasant is a
Georgian manor that was built in the 1760s by some guy named McPherson. However, fun fact, it was owned briefly by Benedict
Arnold until he became a traitor and they were forced to give up their country
house. Another nearby estate I visited
was the Rockland Mansion, now home to PCOP.
I spent a good 5 mins riding around trying to figure out what that meant,
Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. I
got nowhere close to that. The mansion however was constructed in 1801 and is a
great example of Federal style.
After that I followed the roads around the reservoir located directly
in the center of the park past some interesting park activities. Most people
were doing “normal” things, i.e. flying kites, playing softball/baseball,
etc. However there was a group of guys
that were all dressed in the same thing with back packs all huddled around each
other and moving down the road looking like a bunch of lemmings searching for a
cliff. Upon closer inspections they
seemed to be boy scouts that had a hold of some really large tree trunk and
just moving it down the road. There were
like 40 of them it was a little strange.
Even though I wanted to I didn’t take a picture b/c I felt that would be
stranger.
Continuing my tour of the eastern portion of the park I biked past his
old crumbling building that looked like it once used to be a concession
stand. It actually turns out to be one
of the few structures left of the Strawberry Mansion Music Pavilion, designed
by famed Philadelphia architect Horace
Trumbauer in the early 20th century.
It is a reminder of just how wealthy the area around East Fairmount Park
was. The structure now is crumbling and fascinating.
Apparently as recently as 2004 there were plans to renovate the structure as
part of a larger bird sanctuary/educational center to be constructed and
managed by the national Audubon Society.
After crossing the Schuylkill River along the Strawberry Mansion Bridge
I biked along Greenland Dr. and up what seemingly is the biggest hill in
Philly. It’s not, but to give you
context I live (as most of Center City is) around 10 – 30 feet above sea
level. When one is along Chamonix Ave,
one is at approx. 260 feet. Point being
there are lots of hills in the park. However,
once you are that high you have the ability to bike DOWN the Belmont
Plateau. This plateau is where the
Belmont Mansion sits and, possibly more importantly, has some of the grandest views
of Philadelphia in the city. The view is
basically looking over the Art Museum at all of Center City and West Philadelphia.
After snapping a few pictures, I biked down the hill and reached the fastest
speed I’ve even gotten on a bike, 30mph.
On the other side of Montgomery Ave. from the plateau is the Fairmount
Horticultural Center. It’s a 20 acres
site that was formed for the Centennial Exhibition, the centers building was
built in 1976 for the Bicentennial. Many of the trees and landscaping however
date back to when the grounds were part of the Centennial. I have never spent much time on the grounds; I’ve
just biked through or have been cockblocked by the fence that seems to have
irregular hours. I was hoping for some flowering trees but I think I was in
between their blooms. In addition to the
gardens and the greenhouse the center contains a Japanese tea house and
gardens. The building is a replica of a
17th century scholar house. I
think for $5, you can go in and visit it.
The end of my Fairmount Park excursion was marked by Memorial Hall, the
main hall for the Centennial Exhibition and now the Please Touch Museum, and
biking around the relatively newly minted running/biking trails nearby.
After that I headed home through some relatively rough neighborhoods in
West Philly, where one person decided to point out I was a cracker. I should have told him that was really cheesy
of him to say…ah, ha, ha, but in retrospect biking away is the best thing to do
in that situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment