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Originally Posted by Knight Hospitaller
...and the One Meridian site memorializes fire fighters killed in the line of duty. That makes eminent sense. As bad as this building collapse was on so many levels, these folks were accident victims (resulting from the negligence of workers and government). Why do they merit more attention that that poor little girl killed by the Rita's security grate on Girard Ave. (which involved similar negligence)? It's really sentimentality without substance -- but I stop here before launching into a diatribe about the present state of our culture. However, I will note that L&I is busy running around closing beer gardens. I fell much safer.
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Plus I actually see people sitting and eating lunch in that one Meridian Plaza every day. It's sort of a weird space in between the residences garage entrance and the back of the ritz carlton where nothing really would have made sense to build there anyway. The space is inviting to sit in, looks relatively nice to look at, and the simple fire helmets make a fitting memorial. Making a memorial space really isn't that hard.
When this memorial park was first announced, so many here instantly were against it and upset. I'm not gonna act like I was happy, I too thought it was a pretty dumb idea, but I was taking the wait and see approach. If done right, this could have been fine. Perhaps even a neighborhood asset.
But this is just so so so bad. The word I keep coming back to is "insane." It really does look like it was designed by a totally insane person. In what reality does something like this feel appropriate to put on the corner of a prominent city street corner. It's just such an odd mix of the extremely morbid giant gravestone looking things, and then the bizarre neon lights, then they just throw in the ridiculous giant lettering that says June 5th. It looks totally absurd.
And that's not even getting into how much it fails as a park. There is no feeling of escaping the sidewalk, nothing to draw you in, no benches to sit on, no grass to sit on, and the incredibly stupid decision to build a giant stone wall behind it, blocking off any interaction with whatever will be built there.
Creating a successful memorial park is not rocket science. It starts with creating a good park. Then you can have a big sign calling it the June 5th Park and beneath you place a nice plaque. Interested people can go read that plaque, read about the tragedy that once occurred there and then read the names of the poor people who lost their lives there. I've seen so many parks of this nature. But you put the park first and the memorial aspect is for those who wish to seek it out.
Philly has been on such a roll lately in this arena, there are so many great small parks in this city now, this dumb park draws on none of that success. And it's no wonder why, they never even set out to make a park. No one involved in this process was ever thinking about the public or the common good of this city. This is nothing but a memorial, a poorly conceived, tasteless memorial that is calling itself a park to act as it will offer anything of value to anyone. And I'm sorry, this memorial is just totally out of scale with what this tragedy deserves. I'm not diminishing the lives lost in anyway and I'm not trying to be crass, but accidents happen and people die every single day. This was not a tragedy of epic proportions. These people deserved a plaque to remind people of what happened there, but the idea that they deserve a bigger and more grandiose memorial than all the firefighters and cops that have lost their lives in this city is offensive. I mean honestly, the size and scope of this memorial basically puts it on par with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington Square Park and that memorial is for THOUSANDS of people who are literally BURIED in the park where the memorial stands. And again not to be crass, but the people memorialized in Washington Square died fighting for creation of this country and all of freedoms... these people died buying second clothes. I'm not saying that to diminish their lives, but normally public memorials are for people who served the public in some way or at least interacted with the public, not for some random people who die in accident.
This rant is super long now, but I just hate this park so much. It's so ugly and stupid and once it's built we're going to be stuck with this 🞵🞵🞵🞵 forever. Ugh. I'm hoping against hope that someone with a brain intervenes and prevents a second tragedy at this location.
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Thanks for this post . 
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