Editor’s Note: A version of this story was published in the Fall 2025 issue of Extant, a publication of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.
Fairmount Park Welcome Center
Location: 1501 John F. Kennedy Boulevard
Architect: Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson
Built: 1960
Like a flying saucer from a 1950s science fiction film, the circular building originally commissioned as the Philadelphia Hospitality Center landed on the southwest corner of the public square across from City Hall in 1960, 16 years before Robert Indiana’s sculpture inspired the name LOVE Park. Designed by the firm Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson–former students of Ben Franklin Parkway designer Paul Cret–the $300,000 midcentury modern visitors center offered 360-degree views of the heart of Center City through floor-to-ceiling windows and a wrap-around terrace under a projecting cornice.
The building served as the Fairmount Park Welcome Center for more than 50 years until a dramatic park redesign began in 2016. The underused structure was threatened with demolition, but a “Save the Saucer” campaign led by the Young Friends of the Preservation Alliance helped rescue it. The City spent $5.6 million in 2021 to renovate the building, and a restaurant tenant was onboard until COVID-19 dashed those hopes.
Vacant for a decade, the building was utilized this year for a public arts project celebrating Philadelphia’s immigrant roots, and the Department of Parks and Recreation is again seeking proposals for this modernist survivor. Until a visionary entrepreneur or organization realizes its potential, the City needs to show the building some LOVE by adding it to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.
I work for a company that proposed a cafe there in 2012. We were back and forth with the city until they chose todo their own thing.
I think a private use with heavy limitations on changes would likely be best.
Worked for and with H2L2 for many years. Would like to see someone like Steve Starr open a boutique restaurant there .It’s too iconic to lose!
Fight to save, and even make historic, a useless abandoned building?
Its nomination is on the agenda for the Historical Commission on October 10th, with the support of its Committee on Historic Designation!
Unfortunately, the 2019 renovations largely destroyed its historic integrity. The balcony railings were removed and replaced with a different design. The glass façade was removed and replaced with a different design. The underside of the roof has been replaced with a different panel and lighting arrangement. While some preservationists have advocated a different approach to preserving modernist buildings based on design instead of materiality; I do not subscribe to that approach. Even if I did, the design of this building has been changed, albeit subtlety. Almost everything that could have been landmarked is in a landfill; the building that exists right now really only dates to 2019, and I do not believe a building of that vintage warrants landmarking.
Used to get my free tix for the Orchestra concerts at the Mann there!
While working at H2L2 in 1984, I was assigned by Paul Harbeson to survey and photograph the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau. I have the product of the work which was a report with recommendations for renovations to provide new exhibition space and space for office support. The report included interior and exterior improvements as well as mechanical and electrical upgrades. I have both original and 1984 B+W photographs. I am also in possession of a complete set of 22, 24×36 original prints of Architectural, Structural, Mechanical and Electrical Construction documents from 1959.
It is still a wonderful building and should be preserved as an example of architecture from the early 1960s.
Love the color rendering of the former Visitor Center!
As one of thousands of people who live and work in buildings that look down on the saucer, I would like to see some attention to its roof. Maybe a green roof or a large sculpture?