This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. It is the third story in a three-part series about the roots and realities of gun violence in Black America. You can read the first installments at thetrace.org. Sign up for The Trace newsletters here. Walter Palmer, 90, vividly
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You’d think that after protecting 50 gardens, the process would get easier. But for the Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT), a nonprofit tasked with preserving gardens, securing each parcel of land is a unique challenge. This spring NGT and members of Brewerytown Garden at 27th and Master streets celebrated the protection of some of the garden’s
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Melvin Powell spends most of his days at a vibrant greenspace and community center in North Philadelphia, a backyard garden surrounded by tall walls filled with graffiti art. Community members gather at the outdoor venue for neighborhood events like concerts and art-inspired showcases. “It was a converted gas station that was basically just an empty
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In 1737, William Penn’s son Thomas and Penn’s secretary, James Logan — Logan Circle’s namesake — did one of the dirtiest deals in the country’s history. The Walking Purchase, specified that the Lenape Indians, whose homeland of Lenapehoking, stretched from the Chesapeake to New York, would sell Thomas Penn as much land as a man
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On June 22, the following letter was sent by email to Mayor Jim Kenney, Parks & Recreation, members of City Council, Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell and their respective staff. It was also hand delivered on June 20 to Ott Lovell. It is a response to various problems identified within the FDR Park Plan, completed in
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Fatherhood, for me, has been a course in community building and reclaiming collective cultural memory. As the son of a social worker and a Vietnam veteran (working with jazz musicians in Brooklyn post-war), I prayed for a daughter named Coltrane so that my parents would see that I understood the lessons that they taught through
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The Painted Bride Art Center has announced Resistance Garden: Cultivating Abundance, a programming series including five community dinners, five artist residencies, and four zine releases. “When you’re making a radical effort like beautifying and reclaiming land, the best way to engage people is art. Our artist residencies are how we bring an element of creativity
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Like many American cities, Philadelphia is built on land that wants to be wet. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Park sits in a particularly soggy corner, right at the junction where the Schuylkill River rushes into the Delaware. The park is perforated by several lakes and water channels, and flooding regularly renders pedestrian walkways impassible. Over
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I’d been hearing about the South Philly Meadows for some time, so I finally paid a visit. I biked from Center City — a very manageable 29-minute ride — and started to wander. The sound of traffic on Pattison Avenue began to fade with every step into the open, unplanned expanse, and the birdsongs grew
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Flooding is the reason for the FDR Park master plan. It also could be its undoing. No one denies that FDR Park has been growing soggier over the years. Paths that once led walkers around the “lakes” now run through marshy ground at the edge of the water. Stormwater flows off of I-95 and the
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Grid has been hearing a lot lately about FDR Park. After our series of articles on the development of the Cobbs Creek golf courses, Philadelphians concerned about the fate of the South Philly Meadows got in touch to defend the park’s former fairways against a plan to develop the beloved greenspace into a complex of
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