Penn in the Snow

15 Feburary

Even though the university was closed, some intrepid lab members fought their way into work on Thursday. Bin Zhang was one of them. Between the train station and the lab she took lots of pictures, sending her ten favorites along to us in an email the next day.

Here are my four favorites from her collection.

Here's what we see from near the entrance to our building if we face Spruce Street. This is 36th Street, a pedestrian walkway through Penn's campus. The building on the left is, I think, the alumni center. I can't say for sure. I've only been inside a few times. There used to be a fancy restaurant in there (maybe there still is), the sort of place you only go if someone you work for is paying.

Here's one of the prettiest buildings on campus: Logan Hall. Only it's called Cohen Hall now because Ms Cohen gave gobs of money to Penn a few years ago. We old heads can't get used to the name change. It's Logan Hall, dammit. To the left of Logan Hall is another building that looks almost identical; in this picture it looks like part of Logan. Anyway, that's College Hall. Charles Addams, cartoonist and artist, drew College Hall, which ended up being the model for the Addams Family TV show.

It wouldn't be Philly if there weren't a Love sculpture somewhere. Meh. But the tourists like it.

If you stand outside of our building at the corner of 36th and Spruce Streets, and look southwest, you'll see the Quad, the oldest dormitory on campus. The gate on the left straddles a pedestrian walkway. To the left of the gate is where we work. It's a 1920's-era brick number, with vague hints of Art Deco, but it's mostly just boring. The Quad makes for a better picture. In the lower left corner you can see part of the Johnson Pavilion, where I worked immediately after graduation and again from '98 to '04. Behind that you can just make out the top of one of the newer Penn science buildings, the very obviously temporarily-named "Biological Research Building II/III." Penn is clearly waiting for two donors on that one. Wanna swap, Ms Cohen?

We commuters walk to 30th Street Station to catch our trains. This is a picture from just outside the station, looking into a parking lot we used to be able to cut through. Anyway, on the right is the edge of the station's west entrance, in the center is the SEPTA train platform, and the tall building behind it all is the Cira Centre.

Thanks, Bin!