DESTINATION // THE ROUNDHOUSE
Does preserving a Brutalist building also preserve the brutal ghost of Frank Rizzo?
by Lauren Earline Leonard
EXCERPT //
The Roundhouse was to be a new, modern, and visible home for the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD), who were at the time headquartered in the basement of City Hall, a location where the easy mixing and mingling of politicians and police was cause for constituent concern. It’s exemplary of Brutalist architecture, a post-WWII style that emphasizes the overt use of materials such as concrete and steel, texture, and massing. Brutalism makes little effort to disguise service and mechanical towers. Designed by Philadelphia’s Geddes, Brecher, Qualls & Cunningham (GBQC) with construction oversight by famed structural engineer August Komendant, the building was the headquarters of the PPD from its opening in 1962 to 2017.
The move to the Roundhouse roughly coincided with a surge in crime and the waging of the war on drugs. For Philadelphians, these were the Rizzo years, the time when police commissioner Frank Rizzo became Mayor Frank Rizzo. He is remembered mostly for the unchecked brutality of his police force(s). Before being removed in 2020, the bronze Rizzo statue that stood on the steps of the Municipal Services Building—another Brutalist structure—was decorated with crochet, graffitied, and burnt. This (ugly) history and the perception that the building was designed to resemble a pair of handcuffs—GBQC insists this was not the intention—have complicated conversations about the Roundhouse’s future use and preservation, its very presence salt in the wound of the communities who suffered under Rizzo’s watch.
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