34th Street Magazine's "Toast" is a semi-weekly newsletter with the latest on Penn's campus culture and arts scene. Delivered Monday-Wednesday-Friday.
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Walking down 36th Street, one can see various locales of Penn's campus: the Bookstore, Cosi, the Institute of Contemporary Art. Yet one location on campus that is oft-overlooked is on the second floor of 133 S. 36th Street. You might have no idea what building I am referring to, but you've probably all seen it.
It started with the gentle stroke of a pen, almost exactly 50 years ago. Across the country in the 1950s, highways were being pounded through cities, regardless of what stood in their way. In Philadelphia the 1950s highway explosion is evidenced by the Schuylkill Expressway, which marked "a huge planning and urban design mistake," said Dennis Pieprz, the president of Sasaki Associates, the firm designing Penn's eastward expansion.