Road closures tonight in Philly: A historic gas station is being moved from 20th and Arch to Fairmount Park
The historic Gulf station will be moved to Fairmount Park as the Parkway Corp. prepares to construct a new office tower on the site.
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Ever wanted to see an antique gas station wend its way through Philadelphia at 1-mile-an-hour? Tonight’s your lucky day.
The Parkway Corp. will be shifting the Spanish terra-cotta encrusted, century-old gas station from 20th and Arch Streets to Fairmount Park. The historically protected building is on the site of a new office tower Parkway is developing for Chubb Ltd, the international insurance giant.
Parkway is a parking garage company and real estate developer. It isn’t usually in the business of preserving buildings, let alone shifting them across town.
“I’ve never moved a building before,” said Wale Mabogunje, vice president at Parkway. “For the most part, we demolish things and build new buildings. So this is a first.”
Very few companies have experience in moving historic buildings, so Parkway’s contractor had only two options.
“There are very few of them, and they typically name their price and process,” said Mabogunje, who is the project executive for the new Chubb office tower. “Then you have to stabilize it before you pick the building up, so it doesn’t fall apart on you.”
The total cost of the move will be over $1 million.
Only night owls will be able to watch this unusual process. For those who would like to take a peek, or for those taking a night drive, here is the expected timeline for the move.
10 p.m.: The Philadelphia Police Department will close 20th Street between Cuthbert Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Traffic signal mast arms will be removed at Arch, Cherry, and Race Streets to clear the way for the gas station.
10:30 p.m.: The gas station will be moved down 20th Street, with an estimated one-hour travel time to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Any closures on the parkway will be done at the police department’s discretion. “They will be doing closures based on traffic and would decide how much of the route to block off and when,” Mabogunje said.
11:30 p.m.: The gas station will move down the parkway, along the east side of Eakins Oval and past the Art Museum onto Kelly Drive.
12:30 a.m.: The building will turn right onto Sedgley Drive, and within an hour it will reach its new home near the Sedgley Porter House in Fairmount Park.
Very rarely are historic buildings uprooted and moved around Philadelphia. In recent years only two historic buildings have been moved in the region, according to the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia: a townhouse at Ninth and Locust Streets and the King of Prussia Inn.
“Relocating and restoring the historic filling station preserves an early artifact of the automobile culture that shaped our city and nation, for good and for ill,” said Paul Steinke, executive director of the Preservation Alliance. “I think future generations will be grateful that we saved it.”