For many years, Dilworth Plaza in Philadelphia, PA, was a muddle of raised and sunken terraces, concealed stairways and gloomy corners. In 2009, Philadelphia’s Center City District commissioned landscape architecture firm OLIN, architect Kieran Timberlake and Urban Engineers, to restore the sunken plaza to street level, thereby providing widespread access to the park and creating a space worthy of its prominent location. The $55-million project, completed in 2014, re-established William Penn’s original Center Square, immediately adjacent to City Hall, which is considered a national historic landmark. In the process, the site was renamed Dilworth Park to indicate its new status as a destination for people to gather, eat and relax.
One of the design team’s major goals was to create a space that established Dilworth Park as a central transit hub, as well as to improve aesthetics. “The original plaza needed to be replaced due to deteriorating infrastructure and to create a sustainable gateway to subway and regional rail lines and an attractive, safe, well-managed and maintained civic space,” said Rebecca Popowsky, Landscape Architect at OLIN. “The entire plaza was removed and redesigned. Some of the original granite was salvaged, re-cut and re-finished and used for wall veneer in the renovated subway concourse.”