A Childhood Memory ...

I don't know why this suddenly came into my head, but I kept thinking of it and figured I may as well let it out. I believe the following is why I am and always have been a city person and love architecture, both residential and highrise.

Each year, from as early as I could remember until I was about nine or ten years old, my grandmother used to take me into "the city" once a year on my birthday to pick out a present. What neither she nor I realized so early on in my life was that part of her present to me was the trip itself, as it established a passion within me that hangs tight to this very day: city life.

My birthday is in the 2nd week of December, so a trip into the city also meant a trip to the department stores lining Market Street and a walk through "Dicken's Village" in the Strawbridges building or the organ light show in the old Wanamaker Building. Many of you already know this building if you've seen the movie mannequin and the scene where Kim Cattrell glides down through the elaborate 10 story courtyard of the department store on a hand-glider. That scene (as well as all interior shots) was in Philadelphia's Wanamaker Department Store. At Christmas, a light show display in the courtyard fascinates children and adults alike, while a century old pipe organ blasts Christmas music. It's been a tradition in that store since its begninning and carries through to this day, even though Wanamaker's is long out of business and Lord & Taylor now occupies the space.

Alongside those yearly treks, there's a more materialistic memory that I feel has developed a childhood burning desire to be part of "the city".

As a young child, I remember going with my mother to the dentist. As I waited for her check-up to be completed or waited for my own to begin, I would pass by the Hilights magazines and always grab the same book I've read each and every time I entered the dentist's waiting room. Even after it got to the point where my mother would take it out of my hands, telling me that I was too old for that book and I should read something else, I would sneak back to the all too familiar pages and study the pictures, imagining myself in those images, wondering what it would be like to live in "the big city". That book was "The Little House", by Virginia Lee Burton. Written in 1943, it was the story of a husband and father who built the perfect house on a sprawling farm for his family to grow up. Unfortunately for the little house, the world grew up also. First other houses sprang up around, then tenements, traffic became a problem when new roads were built around it, and trolley lines and subway systems as skyscrapers towered both sides of the house. The father has since died and the family moved away and, just when the wrecking ball is about to demolish the house, a great-great grandson finds it and rescues his family home, transporting it far, far away into the country, where he fixes it up and begins to raise his own family again.

Wow...even writing this little post now, I can feel the swell of emotions I felt long ago as a child. The drawings of the house grew sadder and sadder with each page, until the very end when it was fixed up again and ready for a new life. But I also remember the pictures of the city growing around the house, the hustle and bustle of activity as this house sat quietly, deteriorating in the shadows of highrises around it. Even as a child, I felt like that little house. Not necessarily sad, but surrounded by activity and unable to participate. I remember thinking all those long years ago how I wanted to jump into those pages and be a part of that city.

And now I am.

And, for the most part, I'm luvin' every minute of it!!