The menhaden net reel is back in the news, and I would like to recount a personal experience that is relevant to the urban design and jurisdictional aspects of the discourse. In the late 1960s, I was a fledgling architect working in the office of Vincent G. Kling & Associates in Philadelphia when the venerable Franklin Insitute became recipient from NASA of the outer shell of an Atlas rocket to put on public display. The Kling office was hired to perform the design and engineering services required to place and install the rocket, and I was assigned coordination and oversight of the project.
The Franklin Institute occupies a full city block. Its grand, main entrance faces Logan Circle, one of the four original public places located symmetrically and at some distance around the fifth, and central, square which is home to Philly’s City Hall. The institute’s north face is directly across the Benjamin Franklin Parkway from the Barnes Foundation Museum and galleries. In sharp contrast to these very public and very grand exposures are the two remaining sides of the institute, which face row houses and small-scale storefront buildings.
At that time, in the ‘60s, the institute had a small “backyard“ that provided just enough space at the corner of the property to erect the rocket, which was 107 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter. I can’t imagine a cultural artifact more out of scale and out of character than this rocket was with its context. Yet no-one questioned the propriety of the institute’s decision to place the rocket for exhibition at this very public and very residential location. No-one contested the institute’s cultural and curatorial sovereignty over its domain. And there was nothing but pride and celebration expressed by the neighbors.
It pains me no end to see the upset that LHS’s placement of the net reel has caused in our town. It is a piece of our history with a direct, consequential, and intimate connection to Lewes, and LHS is the appropriate entity to determine its placement in the community.
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