Places We Can’t Understand: The Fifth Street Tunnel
I mean, yes, we understand it: The Fifth Street Tunnel is there so you can zoom from Old City straight through to Northern Liberties while the rest of the lemmings clog the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge. That much we get. But do ever get the feeling that the Fifth Street Tunnel isn’t telling you something about itself? Better still, have you ever ridden your bike through the thing? Drunk or going in the wrong direction? We will contend that this is easily more horrifying than that slingshot ride down in Ocean City, and it’s free. Plus, it comes with the added extra of never really knowing whether or not a homeless ghoul is gonna pop out at you from one of those columns. We bring it up because the tunnel is closed today due to bridge inspections, which also seems weird. It’s not the bridge. It’s not even part of the bridge. AND, conspiracy buffs, don’t you think it’s just a little too close to the U.S. Mint for comfort? I mean, who’s to say that you couldn’t fall down a manhole down there and find yourself in Dick Cheney’s Secret Poker Game? Anything can happen down there, people, and it’s best you just get in and out of there as quickly as you can. The Fifth Street Tunnel: It’s Philly’s Scary Vagina. And we just can’t get enough of it.
Previously: Places We Can’t Understand: The Back Room At Lorenzo’s
Is there a Place You Can’t Understand in Philly? Some nook or cranny that makes no sense whatsoever? Let us know about it at tips[at]philebrity[dot]com.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:33 am
I go out of my way so that I can ride my bike through that tunnel. You go so fast!
August 14th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
One time a few years back, when the tunnel was initially closed for months for roadwork, I decided to ride my bike through it anyway(I was BWI). It wasn’t until I was a good way down the ramp that I realized that there weren’t any overhead lights on in the tunnel and I was rapidly descending into a pitch black void. I couldn’t see a thing and kept thinking I was going to run over shards of glass or crash into some bum’s shopping cart. It was definitely scary, but still not as much as biking north on 7th between Race and Callowhill!
August 14th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Let’s not forget its sister tunnel, the one at the end of Spring Garden that speeds you beneath Eakins Oval. It is a little scarier / dirtier / crazier for my money.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Until recently, the remnants of the tracks for the extinct Rt. 50 trolley (Rising Sun Ave to S. Philly) were still exposed in the 5th Street tunnel. There are a few trolley wire posts and fixtures still visible. At the bottom of the tunnel to the right was a platform and stair entrances for a trolley station. Part of the platform is still visible.
To get truly tangential here, the Ben Franklin bridge still has platforms (visible as you drive by) for a once-planned but never built trolley line over the bridge. There are tile mosaics and stairwells inside the western pylons of the bridge for the stations (never completed) which would have connected to the Market El below.
The Spring Garden car tunnel was a trolley-only tunnel for the extinct Rt. 43 trolley (Northern Liberties to Parkside). Again, there were plans to have a station at the bottom of the tunnel. This one was to lead directly into the basement Art Museum. The basement corridor of that section of the PMA has sealed-up arches which were to to be entryways to the trolley platform.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Well if it’s any consolation, the Spring Garden Street tunnel is now opened. It must have happened Monday, without any fanfare.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Tvox, there’s a program that aired on WHYY, called Secrets Beneath the Street, that gave a tour of the incomplete trolley station. I believe they occasionally put the video in their On Demand library.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Tvox, Clintoris, etc… here ya go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNkPmVIUVow
August 14th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Ahh, so it looks as though the 5th Street tunnel station may have been intended to connect somehow to this once-planned underground trolley terminal which now sits vacant beneath the lightning bolt sculpture at the foot of the bridge. Crazy.