Weitzman Preservation students Sissi Wang, Jiwen Fan, Carrick Reider, Debbie Fu, and Khayla Saunders documented the Painted Bride before the legendary mural's demolition in October. (Photo Ashley Hahn)
While visitors from around the world line up daily at the Rocky statue outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it’s the mosaic murals of Isaiah Zagar—cheerful, meandering compositions of recycled tile fragments that adorn buildings around the city—that bring out Philadelphians. So it came as a blow when a beloved Zagar work in Old City was recently marked for demolition.
In response, the Philadelphia's Magic Gardens, the nonprofit dedicated to Zagar’s work, mobilized a team of preservation professionals. Students from Weitzman were able to complete careful photographic documentation of the mural before Magic Gardens staff spent days up on scissor lifts, chiseling away at the exterior of an Old City building that once housed the community arts organization known as the Painted Bride to salvage Zagar’s 7000-square foot work, The Skin of the Bride.
Philadelphia's Magic Gardens Executive Director Emily Smith points out work to be done on Zagar's House of the Two Writers at Pemberton and Schell Streets. (Photo Ashley Hahn)
In addition to the pending Painted Bride demolition, last year the Eye’s Gallery at 4th and South, which featured interior and exterior murals by Zagar, sustained significant damage from a fire at Jim’s Steaks next door. The staff received a frantic call this summer from neighbors who essentially held a sit-in to prevent further demolition of a Mildred Street mural in Bella Vista.
These losses highlight the uncertain future of one of Philadelphia’s most iconic and unconventional collections of public art, which was the subject of a fall studio in the Department of Historic Preservation led by writer and researcher Ashley Hahn (MSHP’08,MCP’08).
Right now, there is no regulatory framework protecting the landscape of over 200 mosaic murals, concentrated in South Philadelphia east of Broad. Commissioned outside the typical channels of public art, these murals are not owned by the Magic Gardens, but rather almost entirely by individual property owners. In a city that claims to have one of the oldest and largest collections of public art in the country, the studio asks, how can we ensure that these works are accounted for?
Hahn’s studio, a requirement for the Master of Science in Historic Preservation curriculum, was oriented around an internationally recognized framework for values-centered conservation, she says. “What is there? What values can be ascribed to it? To whom is it valuable and for whom is it valuable?” Starting with the understanding that values and needs change over time, the course grapples with the complex relationships between cultural assets and community, past and future.
The work began with stakeholder interviews, including staff from the Magic Gardens and intercept surveys with community members, and archival and historical research aiming to place the murals in a necessary historical context. The history of South Street is tied up in the mid-20th century urban renewal–era proposal to build a Crosstown Expressway, which would have razed the corridor and destroyed the commercial and cultural vibrancy it was once known for. As residents and businesses fled the planned path of destruction, a community of artists and creatives bubbled up in the blocks around the Theatre of the Living Arts, the historic performing arts venue at 3rd and South.
The Crosstown Expressway plan was eventually defeated, thanks to community activism and the influx of new residents. But the threat had taken its toll: those who could afford to left the area, and what remained was an abandoned and broken landscape. Shortly after Isaiah and Julia Zagar moved to 402 South Street in 1968, Isaiah suffered a mental health crisis and suicide attempt. In his recovery, he began tiling the bathroom of the family home, which would eventually become the Eyes Gallery. The practice became his therapy, and he expanded into the public realm.
“It’s really an interesting material story,” says Hahn, “where you have a person who's trying to make something beautiful out of a broken place, both in his own mental wellness and in the neighborhood where they live.”
Studio instructor Ashley Hahn (MSHP'08,MCP'08) at Philadelphia's Magic Gardens
The mosaics Zagar would come to create throughout the last decades of the 20th century tell the history of the neighborhood, often in the scale of the charmingly mundane. One work, for example, is dedicated to Zagar’s longtime plumber, Mike Mattio. In a section of The Skin of the Bride, Zagar used tiled lettering to retell the story Abie Kravitz, an independent vendor on South Street who sold fruit and freshly-ground horseradish. Says Hahn, the murals take the form of “a postcard, from, to, and about the people of this place.”
At the studio’s mid-review, the students had boiled their research and analysis down to four discrete values: First, the historic, documenting stories of the neighborhood and representing the threat of the Crosstown Expressway. Second, their deliberate publicness, almost entirely on exterior surfaces and intended for community appreciation. Third, the artistic value: students have paid extensive attention to the “Zagar method,” the idiosyncratic and spontaneous techniques that developed over time across the landscape.
The final value the students highlighted was the works’ unique materiality, which has endeared Zagar’s work to generations of Philadelphians, also make them difficult to preserve. They often incorporate unconventional materials like broken bottles, repurposed sculpture, pre-made assemblages, and collected folk art, not all of which were intended for exterior use.
Daren Johnson (MSHP’24), a student in the Department of Historic Preservation, was drawn to the studio topic because of the unique confluence of art conservation and building preservation. He says the most common issue facing the mosaics’ longevity is water damage and weathering. Johnson has studied public responses to the Zagar landscape, including through interviews with property owners.
The team at the Magic Gardens has become acutely aware of the need for preservation and have developed a preservation manual specific to the Zagar method. But, their resources are limited when it comes to advocacy and legal representation. The years-long battle to save The Skin of the Bride, which wound its way through many channels of preservation bureaucracy in the city, included several advocacy victories. Ultimately, however, the neighbors’ association voted against a proposed design that would have expanded the development vertically, building above the mural rather than tearing it down.
"How can we look at the problems with the Painted Bride and learn from them, and be responsive when it comes to the rest of the landscape?”
Emily Smith, the Magic Gardens’ Executive Director, feels like there was public support for the fight for The Skin of the Bride, but not enough attention when it mattered most. She says she when she heard from community members, they said things like “‘We just thought it was going to be protected. We thought they were going to fix it.’ And it was like, well, it's us trying to fix it. And like, we needed more people, I guess. I think people don't realize what's going on around them.”
Says Smith, “this work feels very immediate. We’re really losing these things.” Smith hopes that the public anger, confusion, and sadness over the loss of the Painted Bride can be harnessed to change outcomes. “We’re in the eye of a very particular storm right now," she says.
So, beyond the physical preservation of the existing murals, the students also studied comparable cases of protecting public art, even and especially when it is not owned by the artist, and perhaps under threat of demolition. They found one important precedent in New York, where almost 7 million dollars were awarded to graffiti artists when their work at the 5Pointz complex was destroyed. Another model is Barcelona, which has a much more active and centralized approach to public art preservation.
Hahn expects that doing preservation work in the face of loss will give students a different perspective. “It’s a problem that preservationists, unfortunately, are caught in an endless cycle of responding to: How can we look at the problems with the Painted Bride and learn from them, and be responsive when it comes to the rest of the landscape?”
Video: Photo composite of the Painted Bride by Weitzman Preservation student Jiwen Fan
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