Rail Park

Rail Park History Wall

In 2019, I attended the SEGD Placemaking seminar in Center City Philadelphia. Several walking tours of outstanding local placemaking projects gave unique opportunities to walk the projects along with designers and fabricators. My tour of The Rail Park, set on abandoned railroad tracks bisecting the Callowhill neighborhood and downtown proper, was led by design team members at prominent local wayfinding firm Cloud Gehshan.  

As a component piece of the Rail Park design, Cloud Gehshan developed a “ghost map” executed in perforated Cor-Ten steel, acting as a visual screen between the park and an adjacent property, contributing intriguing content as well. The conceptual map places last-century businesses like factories, dairies, stables, candy makers, and most spectacularly, locomotive builders, on the neighborhood grid. Supporting interpretive signage further illustrates the era when Callowhill was a thriving manufacturing hub, the “Workshop of the World.”

A meaningful piece of storytelling, the Rail Park wall is also a master class in graphic design, particularly in figure/ground composition and stencil lettering (seriously). It is also a prime example of leveraging a close relationship with fabricators, gaining the extra measure of precision manufacture in the final product.  

In 2020, the Rail Park was recognized with honors from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia. Kudos Cloud-Gehshan, and thank you for sharing a walk-through with fellow designers.

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