«
»

Dept. Of Big, Sad, Old Shafts: Drexel Shaft To Be, Er, Blown To Smithereens On Sunday

booted-car-stack

The “Drexel Shaft” at the 30th Street Station Steam Heating Plant, built in 1929, is slated to come down forever (also sexy) this Sunday morning at 8AM, whereupon there will be an awkward brunch date immediately afterwards. The fairly excellent Necessity For Ruins blog has more history on all of this than you thought you’d ever want to know. But now you do! Goodbye, Old Crumbling Shaft. This post brought to you by Philebrity Brand Dick Pills For Old Dudes®.

[Photo credit: Chris Dougherty/NFR]

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 1:18 pm.

8 Responses to “Dept. Of Big, Sad, Old Shafts: Drexel Shaft To Be, Er, Blown To Smithereens On Sunday”

  1. lord_whimsy Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    This is going to be a really tricky demolition. I don’t know how they’ll do it without wrecking part of the railyard.

  2. phillypub215 Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

    LOL @ awkward brunch.

  3. thecitydesk Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    It’s Philadelphia! What could possibly go wrong?

  4. madame_dakar Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    I’ll miss seeing this building when I’m pulling into 30th Street Station. Inga Saffron notes in the Inky that they had previously planned on incorporating this and the historical porter dormhouse into the developing Cira Centre, and that it’s unclear why they are tearing it down now.

  5. LAUGHATGRAVITY Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    Maybe Drexel will stop Shafting Their student now!!!! Some how I think not haha

  6. lord_whimsy Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 4:19 pm

    Seems to me that any structurally sound edifice could and should be repurposed (I know, THAT word). The city could give it over to artists for a limited time until they could come up with another use for it. Seems a shame to obliterate any building that doesn’t have an immediate use. Really wasteful of the city to do that.

  7. Tvox Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    It’s not the city doing it, apparently it’s the owner, Amtrak. Apparently some lawyer at Amtrak thinks it’s a terrorist target and should come down. I know, where to start.

    See Inga Saffron’s piece:
    http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/inga_saffron/20091106_Changing_Skyline__Powering_down.html

  8. jrpettit Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    More old 30th flicks over yonder: http://tiny.cc/tbwtX

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.