In The News

Eater names Federal Donuts one of the country's hottest spots

Eater Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Federal Donuts earned a spot on Eater's list of the top 23 hottest donut shops in America.

Mike Solomonov's Federal Donuts has been inspiring doughnut shops across America for years and just this past fall opened up a second location for its magical combination of fried chicken and doughnuts. (There's also a new stall at the Phillies ballpark.) Doughnut options include strawberry-lavender, Turkish coffee, milk chocolate-peanut butter, and blueberry muffin.

Original source: Eater
Read the complete list here.

AP hypes Reading Terminal's Festival of Forgotten Foods

Associated Press Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The Reading Terminal Market's third Festival of Forgotten Foods draws praise for its unusual delights.

"Some of the foods are old-fashioned kinds of foods that are part of Philadelphia’s culinary history," Levitsky said Friday, "and some we sell every day in the market ... like snapper soup and raw milk."

Pepper pot soup — a thick stew of tripe, vegetables, lots of black pepper and other spices — is sometimes called "the soup that won the Revolutionary War." According to legend, it’s credited with restoring the strength and fighting spirit to Gen. George Washington’s troops during the harsh 1777-1778 winter at Valley Forge.

Original source: Associated Press
Read the complete story here at the Washington Post.

Philly cracks Saveur's 50 Best Donuts list

Saveur Tuesday, March 19, 2013

These days, if there's a donut list, local favorite Federal Donuts will earn a spot. This Saveur run-down of the country's 50 Best Donuts is no exception.

The donuts at this ambitious newcomer include the Appollonia, served hot and rolled in cocoa and orange blossom powder. The other specialty? Fried chicken.

Original source: Saveur
Read the complete list here.

British travel writer hard falls for Philadelphia

The Telegraph (UK) Tuesday, March 12, 2013

A travel writer from the Telegraph (UK) came to Philadelphia for the museums and the history, and fell instead for its walkable, understated charm.

Dizzy with images, I felt ready for more trivial pursuits. Like shopping, along elegant Walnut Street and Rittenhouse Row; exploring the independent boutiques and galleries of 3rd Street in the Old Town; trawling the renowned vintage shops of Fabric Row and shops of Antiques Row; and sampling Amish farm produce at Reading Terminal Market.

Compact and human in scale, friendly in atmosphere, Philadelphia is a city made for walkers, divided into contrasting neighbourhoods and dissected by the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, whose banks sport the boat houses of the city's six proud universities, prettily illuminated at night (a scene popularised by the paintings of Thomas Eakins).

Original Source: Telegraph (UK)
Read the full story here.

The Washington Post visits the Flower Show

Washington Post Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Washington Post's Adrian Higgins visited the Flower Show, PHS's big annual event, and came away impressed. (Check out Flying Kite's pics from the shindig here.)

Historically, big-city flower shows are like big cities themselves: They either change or decline but cannot stay the same. By all appearances, the Philadelphia show is in the midst of healthy change: Attendance climbed from 235,000 in 2010 to 270,000 last year and is on track to exceed 300,000 this year. The number of competitive entries in a feature called the horticultural court — the horticourt — is about 11,000, and the entrants’ enthusiasm has been rewarded with a new $1 million setting for the competitions that includes a fabric roof and new show benches and display backdrops.

Original source: The Washington Post
Read the full story here.

Eight-acre park to cover riverfront stretch of I-95?

PlanPhilly Tuesday, February 05, 2013

An intriguing vision of a waterfront park obscuring I-95 has been unveiled, and could mean a major green space achievement for Philadelphia. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation is currently seeking designers and engineers.

A preliminary rendering of Penn's Landing Park extracted from the Master Plan for the Central Delaware, shows a sloping lawn, roughly the size of Rittenhouse Square, through which people could walk from Front Street down to the water's edge, or where they could linger to watch fireworks or concerts. The park would sit on a structure that expands the existing partial cap of I-95, which covers the highway from Front to Columbus, and from Chestnut Street just about half way to Walnut Street.

Original source: PlanPhilly
Read the full story here.

Oscar Road Trip stops off in Philadelphia

Oscar Road Trip Tuesday, February 05, 2013

An Oscar statue's three-week pre-awards tour will make a stop in the City of Brotherly Love on February 6. Locals have extra reason to be excited for the big show this year, with Philly-centric Silver Linings Playbook garnering multiple Academy Award nods.

Follow @OscarRoadTrip on Twitter and tweet using #OscarRoadTrip to let us know where you’d like to see us bring Oscar. Or, if you’re old school, you can also shoot us an email to let us know where we should go next.

Original source: Oscar Road Trip
Read the full story here.

Four new hotels planned for Philadelphia after recession lull

Philadelphia Inquirer Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Hotel development has bounced back in Philadelphia, with four new projects on the docket. The latest addition is Hotel Indigo, planned for the Bailey Building at 12th and Chestnut Streets.

If all are completed, the four hotels would add a combined 1,268 rooms to the city's inventory of 11,600 - enough to support the expanded Pennsylvania Convention Center, which officials say requires about 12,500 rooms.

In addition, a new hotel tax will kick in July 1, boosting the rate to 15.5 percent from 15.2 percent, or 50 cents per room night - additional revenue that will go toward marketing the city's tourism industry.

Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Read the full story here.

Opportunities for development after death of Forum Theater

The Philadelphia Inquirer Tuesday, January 08, 2013

The closure of the infamous Forum Theater opens up a world of development possibilities on an underserved stretch of Market Street.

"Those [2100 and 2200] blocks of Market Street are kind of one of the last significant gaps in the quality of the streetscape," said Alan Greenberger, the city's commerce director. Drexel University's eastward expansion and the transformation of the west side of the city near the Schuylkill from industrial to commercial and recreational uses are "all suggesting that there is a wave that is going to happen to get the west side to meet the east side" of the city, Greenberger said.

Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

Read the full story here.

The New York Times reviews 'Dancing Around the Bride"

The New York Times Tuesday, January 08, 2013

The New York Times takes note of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's much-lauded dance exhibition, "Dancing Around the Bride," an exploration of the collaborations between Merce Cunningham and the artists John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Many moments in these solos are like the sudden exclamations and figures of speech that make some Shakespearean soliloquies so present-tense. As a dancer re-examines a step or a position — although there’s nothing that could be labeled acting — we might be watching the movement equivalents of Angelo’s “What’s this? What’s this?” in “Measure for Measure” or Hamlet’s “Ay, there’s the rub.”

Dance performances connected with “Dancing Around the Bride” run through Jan. 21 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Original source: The New York Times
Read the full review here.

The Wall Street Journal celebrates Rosenbach Museum & Library

The Wall Street Journal Tuesday, December 04, 2012

The Wall Street Journal highlights the Rosenbach Library & Museum, an amazing private collection of books and manuscripts located on a gorgeous, out-of-the-way street near Rittenhouse Square. Gems include the manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses, early editions of Chaucer and a huge collection Maurice Sendak's paintings, illustrations and editions (including original drawings of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen).

To handle scholarly materials, the Rosenbach requires not the usual white gloves demanded by other libraries but a good old-fashioned hand-washing (latex can do more damage to delicate paper than clean, oil-free hands). I couldn't resist asking to see and touch one piece that stopped my heart and brought tears to my professorial eyes. It was the manuscript whose purchase got A.S.W. Rosenbach started on the final, and greatest, chapter of his buying career. In London in 1885 Sotheby's had sold at auction the manuscripts of six letters of John Keats. Oscar Wilde, enraged by the salacious intermingling of art and commerce, wrote a protest sonnet. Thirty-five years later, at Manhattan's Anderson Galleries, Rosenbach bought the poet's penultimate letter to Fanny Brawne, his fiancée, dated July 5, 1820, before his departure for Italy, where he died of tuberculosis seven months later. The great poet was also a typical, temperamental 24-year-old young man who, finding his girlfriend flirting with his roommate, wrote to her with envy, jealousy, rage and sadness, "I will resent my heart having been made a football."

Original Source: The Wall Street Journal
Read the full story here.

Report details big population bump in Center City

The Daily News Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Thanks to national trends and an increasing urban vitality, Center City is experiencing a big population increase. According to a report released last Tuesday by the Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corp., the population of "greater Center City" rose 10.2 percent from 2000-2010.

Philadelphia now has the third-largest downtown population among American cities (behind New York and Chicago), the report notes. That trend boosted both the volume and price of residential sales and rentals, and spurred more construction and renovation, the report shows.

Original Source: The Daily News
Read the full story here.

Update: New Vision for South Broad announces a decision

PlanPhilly Tuesday, December 04, 2012

As Flying Kite detailed back in late November, Avenue of the Arts, Inc. (AAI) partnered with the Pennsylvania Horicultural Society (PHS) to launch a "New Vision for South Broad Street" competition. The goal was to continue the thoroughfare's original purpose as an arts and entertainment district but with a modern take. Ten architectural and landscape firms submitted ideas, and four were chosen as finalists. Now the list has been narrowed once again.

A judging panel, overseen by Avenue of the Arts, Inc. (AAI) Chairman Dianne Semingson, has chosen Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and Jonathan Alderson Landscape Architects, Inc., to participate in Phase II of the “New Vision for South Broad Street” Request for Proposal (RFP) project. The two teams, selected from four finalists (the other two were LRSLA Studio and Cairone & Kaupp, Inc.) are charged with pushing forward a program to reinvigorate South Broad Street from City Hall to Washington Avenue.

The two firms will present refined proposals in early 2013 and one winner will be selected.

Original Source: PlanPhilly
Read the full story here.

Business Insider admires Philly's murals

Business Insider Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Business Insider takes a self-guided tour of Philadelphia's Mural Mile and walks away impressed. Their slideshow offers a great run-down of some of the city's most visible public art pieces.

The program has grown into a thriving network of muralists, youth, local businesses, and Philadelphia residents all seeking to add more beauty to the City of Brotherly Love. More than 3,000 murals have now been painted all around the city, and many more are in progress. We've heard some incredible praise for the program, so we decided to go see it in person. We took the self-guided walking tour of Mural Mile in the Center City neighborhood, and thought it was astounding.

Original Source: Business Insider
Read the full story here.

Tracing Prohibition's maddening journey at the National Constitution Center

The New York Times Monday, October 22, 2012

With 120 artifacts and plenty more multimedia displays and activities, the National Constitution Center's "American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" exhibit gets a solid review from The New York Times.

The show’s curator is Daniel Okrent, who (aside from having been the first public editor of The New York Times) wrote an excellent, nuanced history of Prohibition, “Last Call,” a book whose details also informed Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s 2011 documentary, “Prohibition.”

The exhibition, like the book, touches on important themes in its narrative, but there is almost nothing dry about it, except that in the mock speakeasy at its center, the bottles are empty and nothing is served. In that gallery, you are served up Prohibition as a form of unlicensed and licentious play. A giant video screen shows film footage of the Charleston, while on a dance floor, foot markers teach visitors the moves.

Original source: The New York Times

Read the full story here.

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