The American Commerce Center Tower, which will soar above the recently completed Comcast Center in Center City, Philadelphia, passed its last zoning test last week. When completed, the skyscraper will be the third tallest building in the United States. It’s great that the developer is stressing SEPTA and AMTRAK accessibility and seeking LEED Gold Certification. If construction goes as scheduled, the tower should be completed in 2012, the same year as the Cira Center South project. It’s exciting that Philadelphia is becoming quite a hub of architecture.
In contrast to the last two years, where most of my regional rail rides were to/from Market East and Suburban Station, this year I’ve been spending a lot of time at 30th Street Station. With my Intro to Education placement trips and my Megabus journeys, I’ve gotten plenty of chances to investigate different parts of the station, including the cool sculpture in the North Waiting Room. The Spirit of Transportation, sculpted by Karl Bitter in 1895, was originally installed in Philadelphia’s Broad Street station. A baby carrying an airship leads this procession of transportation innovations, “a prophetic vision of a mode of transportation to come.”
Futuristic transportation: paddleboats, dirigibles, and locomotives
This evening, I returned from a trip to New York that will be my last for quite a while. There were some enjoyable highlights on the ride back. Of course, I got stuck in an aisle seat and out of respect of others’ personal space (which some of my fellow passengers seemed to lack), I couldn’t lean over to the window and snap any pictures. What I saw:
While I missed the moonrise last night due to clouds, I got an awesome view of a huge full moon rising over Manhattan as we emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel.
Around Exit 14-14C of the New Jersey Turnpike, the lights of five planes on approach to EWR’s runway 4R could be seen stretching out in the distance. They appeared to form a downward opening parabola, with the closest light about to land and the farthest just above the lights of the Goethals Bridge. It almost looked like the lights of the bridge were flying off and skipping over to Newark. Very cool.
One of the tall gas flares at the Linden Cogen Facility had numerous strings of lights attached to the top, spreading out to form a circle at ground level. That’s right, an illuminated petrochemical Christmas tree. Only in New Jersey…
We passed about 30 utility trucks and cherry pickers with their lights flashing heading north on the Turnpike. Quite the convoy of reinforcements heading up to get the power back on up in New England.
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