Plaza links to the north

For ages it's been a short, dirty stretch of concrete, a wide spot in the road where 10th Street crosses the Vine Expressway. It's served mostly as a bed for the homeless and a dump for beer cans.

No more.

Today, a giant, granite foo dog guards each end of the property - transformed into an open, brightly lit plaza complete with benches and tables.

The makeover was designed to turn a no-man's land into a welcoming connector, helping to join Chinatown to the fast-growing neighborhood that constitutes "Chinatown North."

What's being called the 10th Street Plaza is key to assisting the flow of pedestrians across the physical and psychological barrier of the expressway.

"It's like the gateway to Chinatown," said Xin Ge, special-projects manager for the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp., which initiated the $300,000 project.

The development was six years in planning and execution, cosponsored by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and Hahnemann University Hospital, among others.

A neighborhood desperate for open, public space now has a little more room.

An Asian-style pergola stands in the center of the plaza to create a shady retreat as vines climb its roof. The PCDC wants the area to be a gathering place, particularly for seniors who live in the nearby On Lok House, and to perhaps serve as a stage for bands or even as a tiny fairground.

"If we want to go north, we need that space," said Melody Wong, who runs PCDC's Main Street program.

What was once the defining feature of the place, a giant concrete planter that functioned mostly as a catchall for trash, was demolished and removed.

And a forgotten strip of property is getting noticed.

"Very good!" said Chung Tin, who gave a big thumbs-up as he crossed the plaza Wednesday.

He stopped to admire the craftsmanship of the foo dogs.

"From China, right?"

Right.

The dogs were carved in Fujian Province, shipped to New York, trucked to Philadelphia, then unloaded by crane onto the plaza. Each weighs seven tons.

On the south side squats the female, her paw on a cub. To the north sits the male, his paw on a globe or ornamental ball.

Traditionally, the cub and globe denote foo dogs' gender. In this case, however, the Fujianese carvers were exact in their work, making the globe redundant. The male is doubtless the most anatomically correct foo dog ever to appear in Philadelphia. Or anywhere.

Soon, possibly by spring, the big dogs will be joined by an 8-foot-tall statue of Lin Zexu. He's a Chinese scholar revered for his opposition to British imports of opium, leading to the First Opium War in 1839.

He might seem an obscure choice - why not Sun Yat-sen, founder of the republic, or even Mao? - except for this: Lin was born in Fujian. And a Philadelphia Fujianese association that has agreed to provide care and upkeep of the plaza had a large say in whose likeness would stand there.

The plaza is not perfect. The traffic is loud. And it's unclear whether people will wade into the center of a highway for events.

Stray work buckets and paint rollers remain to be picked up, but the plaza was deemed complete last week. A formal dedication is scheduled for spring.

For now, a marble slab carved with Lin's accomplishments awaits the arrival of his statue. He'll face northeast, mostly away from a Chinatown that has over decades seen land taken for huge public and private developments, including the Gallery mall, Market East train station, and Convention Center.

The only room for Chinatown to grow lies north - a path hampered by the 1980s expansion of the Vine Street Expressway. As the Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit organization in New York, noted, "Even the surface-level streets on each side of the expressway feel like highways, with their wide lanes, fast-moving traffic, and poor pedestrian amenities."

Factories and warehouses once dominated the area north of Vine. But in recent years that's changed, and the neighborhood has filled with businesses that want to be close to Chinatown - restaurant-supply firms, travel agencies, and construction companies among them.

Many people who live and work in the Chinatown area traverse 10th Street every day - now stepping past a new plaza.

"It's really going to transform how people think about that space," said John Chin, executive director of PCDC, "but more important, it will make the cross across Vine Street much more pleasant."