There’s the possibility it may become a museum according to this short film http://philly.curbed.com/archives/2012/04/13/museum-of-contemporary-art-inside-the-divine-lorraine.php

Actually, the last thing that neighborhood needs is for the Divine Lorraine to remain this city’s version of The Tower of Terror.  A luxury condo (which ain’t going to be built at Broad & Ridge anytime soon) would not hurt a thing.

Have you even been to Osteria?  Comparing it to TGIFridays proves you know little of what you’re talking about.

Hey everybody!  My name is Noah.  My friend Sherri
used to work for Philebrity.  She graduated from Temple a few years ago
and I left Temple to study architecture in the middle of Pennsylvania.  I
miss Philly. 

I have been working on my thesis since June.  It is the rejuvenation of
North Broad Street centered on the adaptive reuse of the Divine Lorraine Hotel
as a shared institute for Temple, Drexel, UArts, and UPenn.  UPenn has an
excellent historic preservation program that can stand to learn a lot from the
cornucopia of construction details; the dictionary of arches, masonry, and
steel connections visible now that the building has been gutted like a
fish.  Most interesting to note, is that the original marble corridors
still exist on each floor.

My professor told me my grade depended on me getting in the
building.  Unfortunately I could not get
in contact with the owners.  But
nevertheless you can check out some 500 hi-def photos I took of the space from
September 2011 and Black Friday 2011.

As Ben Leech of the Preservation Alliance explained to me, if a developer were
to buy the building, he or she would most likely be buying it for the
land.  The land is of great value to the expansion of the city’s
metropolitan center whose limits extended north from Spring Garden to now
Girard, and south from South Street to Washington Ave.  A developer would
want to build high-rise apartment buildings behind the Divine Lorraine to yield
a maximum profit.  A business-oriented developer would sink just enough
money to bring it up to code and it would still be a beautiful statue from the
outside, but the interior would be nothing to write home about.

I believe that she is too much for one man to handle.  She means too much to the city.  Everyone loves it.  Many cannot even say why they love it.  Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of time periods
– the neon sign and the Victorian elegance clashing with graffiti of the past
decade and the prairie that has naturally grown up on the site.  It’s an oasis of Piranesian prescription; a
delightful play on socioeconomics thru time in a neighborhood built by the rich
Jews of yesteryear and inhabited by some of the most downtrodden
African-Americans in Philly.  Current
demographics show that in 19122, 1198 out 20,769 neighbors have achieved some
high school education.  The median
household income is less than that of the median income of someone less than 25
years old in my old zip code of 19006.

If the structure wasn’t so sturdy and intact I could see the
block that the Divine Lorraine resides on as a huge urban forest with sections
of wall remaining creating that romanticist idea of picturesque ruins.

But I cannot in good conscience destroy all the potential
future uses of the building.  It’s lasted
this long already.  And Willis G. Hale,
the building’s architect, designed it to last for much longer.  It is a model of efficiency.  Pre-industrial, passively illuminated, simple
yet elegant.  Let me tell you something
about “GREEN” architecture.  LEED
(Leadership in Energy Efficient Design) is a gimmick. Stick a bike rack out
front and u get some LEED points.  I’ll
settle for LEED being a necessary evil. 
But before 20th century’s addition of electric lighting to
architecture buildings were simply designed to be efficient, in every sense of
the word. 

What I think the Divine Lorraine Hotel, North Broad Street
and indeed all of Philadelphia could stand to benefit from would be to
collaborate between the mayor’s office, the city’s universities, volunteers,
and neighbors and not leave our beloved piece of history in the hands of one
man trying to feed a family.  This is our
building, and with the $700,000 owed to the city in back taxes it should be
ours.

I asked architects working for Temple, Drexel, and UPenn what
sort of facilities the schools could use. 
Housing was the only thing they said, so I created space for 297
students.  Dorm-style living, very modest
rooms, but with grand community kitchens, living spaces, and workspaces. That
takes care of the majority of the building. Offices for the universities on one
floor – art supplies, a tool library, a café, and a clothing exchange on
another floor.  The top floor having two
large vaulted spaces will be transformed into a garden in the south space and a
ballroom able to be rented out for weddings and catered events.  

Students of the culinary arts, tourism and hospitality
management, architecture, nutrition, marketing, interior design, business, and
entrepreneurial students will gain hands on experience creating and running a
restaurant on the ground floor.  Below
the restaurant in the basement are a bar and a lounge.  Across the lobby from the restaurant I have
designed a fresh produce market. Below the produce market in the basement is an
old entrance to the subway.  I have reused
this entrance to lead into a gallery of student work on display for real world
feedback.  The students living here have access
to hands-on learning and can build their portfolio on real world experience.

What can the neighborhood stand to benefit from?  Well, as I mentioned earlier the Divine
Lorraine is financially and intrinsically attached to the large chunk of land
it sits on.  So instead of building
apartments behind it, plant an urban forest that will give North Broad access
to green space; a major part of the Philly2035 plan.  But I don’t see this as just any urban
forest, I see it as an urban food forest, one so dense with seven layers of vegetation,
from roots and vines to fruit and nut trees to large canopy trees.

Of course the soil in Philthadelphia is not clean enough to
plant such a sweet idea.  So as part of
the Philly 2015 plan, I have designed a nursery for trees to be planted on the
vacant lots around the Divine Lorraine. 
Philly 2015 asks the city to plant trees in vacant lots that will be
transplanted along the sidewalks greening the streets of our city.  However, this nursery I have designed is not
so much a nursery as it is a city park, with paths and benches and a play area
for children, and bball courts for my homies. 
Some trees like London Spry and Black Poplar have the ability to clean
the soil, filtering out toxins so that edible plants can be grown successfully
and organically in the near future.  This
process that takes place in the soil is known as phytoremediation.

I have so much to say, but it is almost 9am and I still need
to go to bed so I can wake up and organize all my thoughts for my final
presentation.  I would like to invite
anyone interested in learning more about the building or my ideas on the matter
to my presentation Saturday April 28 at 2pm in the architecture building of the
Pennsylvania State University.

I’ll leave you with this: 
when it makes more sense to knock something down and build anew than to repair
what is already there, something is wrong with the business strategy.  Finance needs creative and collaborative
effort, just like design.