Philly’s infamous Norman Blumberg towers tumble in CDI blast.
When they were built in 1967, the 510-unit Blumberg projects – two low-income high-rises, a third set aside for senior citizens, and a cluster of low-rise apartments – were billed, like so many other high-rise projects, as a modern solution to inner-city poverty.
But within a few short years, the towers came to typify all that had gone wrong with the public-housing policies of the 1960s – a symbol of misguided urban planning, concentrated poverty, and official neglect writ large.
By the 1990s, newspaper reports on Blumberg read like dispatches from another planet. A 1991 Inquirer feature on the Philadelphia Housing Authority’s police force described “crackheads and pipers staggering and scurrying in the hallways past children playing in slippers.” The officers patrolled the units “floor by urine-reeking floor.” They found a dead cat in a corner.
But now they are no more.
This weekend, CDI did what CDI does best, levelling the twin blocks and ridding the Philly skyline on a constant reminder of its troubled past.
Read more here, or view the video below:
