After artists were kicked out of Rittenhouse Square, I fear for its future

Recently, three visual artists — NEEK, NZ One, and Ginger — were kicked out of Rittenhouse Square by police officers, who confiscated their artwork.

Why did the police confiscate the artwork? If it is illegal to sell art on the street without a license, why not give a warning and let them keep their art?

Rittenhouse Square has always been a part of my life, long before the neighborhood and anything around it was called “Rittenhouse,” a relatively recent affectation. The arrests of the artists reminded me of when hippies were arrested during two raids in Rittenhouse Square in 1967, while Frank Rizzo was the police commissioner.

Comparing the latest incidents to something that happened almost 60 years ago, I look at Rittenhouse Square and see how much it has pivoted.

» READ MORE: Philly artists get kicked out of Rittenhouse Square by police, say artwork is damaged

While Rittenhouse Square has been a tolerant meeting place for diverse people for many years, it has evolved into a less tolerant place. In 2017, the city enacted a ban on “wall sitting” in the square as a way to reduce loitering (it was ended after public uproar). In 2022, Friends of Rittenhouse Square, the nonprofit that maintains the park’s grounds, swapped the more than 150 benches in the square for new models that include a center armrest, which makes it harder for people experiencing homelessness to sleep there.

Communities shift and change. I understand that. But an integral part of any community is the art community, which has been a major presence in Rittenhouse Square for as long as I can remember. It is one of the few places left where artists of many backgrounds can interact and communicate with each other and with the broader community.

Over the years, different groups of people in Rittenhouse Square have been targeted by the city, from people experiencing homelessness to young people, LGBTQ people, and people of color.

I don’t want to see artists and the artistic community added to that list.

When I was a child and we lived nearby, my mother regularly took me and my older brother to Rittenhouse Square. I have a special memory of walking with my mother while she was wearing a chic pair of black patent leather spike heels, and I would sing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”; the ruby slippers on most black and white television sets looked black, so my mother’s shoes looked like the ruby slippers to me. My brother and I played with the statues of the lion and the goat. The square’s lawns had “Keep off the grass” signs then. I can still picture the large colored lights on the Rittenhouse Square Christmas tree.

I started going to Rittenhouse Square again as a teenager in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when I was interested in hippies.

One summer day when I was 16 years old, I met a Puerto Rican drag queen in the square and discovered the underground gay world. It was like putting on new glasses, which revealed to me, for the first time, the invisible gay community. At that time, the square was divided: north of the fountain was the straight side, and south of the fountain was the gay side. Many people crossed over.

As a transgender person of color, who had been severely bullied and punished, it was a liberating revelation to finally meet other people like me in Rittenhouse Square.

The first Philadelphia Gay Pride March started in Rittenhouse Square in 1972. I volunteered as a marshal. It used to be normal in Center City for many people — Blacks and whites, gay and straight, poor, middle class, rich people, artists, and bohemians — to live congenially around Rittenhouse Square and in Center City. But about 20 to 30 years ago, the neighborhood around Rittenhouse Square started changing.

Between 1991 and 2015, I lived in my late father’s rental property on 22nd Street below Bainbridge. When I walked up 22nd toward Spruce, the same white woman would approach me and ask what I was doing there. Repeatedly. After I sold the house in 2015, I lived at 20th and Spruce Streets for two years. Again, white people would come up and ask what I was doing there, and what I did for a living, without introducing themselves or asking my name.

I didn’t mention I was born on that street — Spruce — at Pennsylvania Hospital.

I no longer saw drag queens hanging out in Rittenhouse Square. At about the same time, the squirrels disappeared, replaced by rats. One Sunday, I saw an elderly white woman complaining to a police officer about an elderly Black man who had fallen asleep sitting up on a bench. I pointed out to the officer that other people — white, seemingly middle class — lie out on the grass all the time, and no one threatens them with arrest.

Rittenhouse Square has changed before, and it may change again.

The neighborhood and what is now called Rittenhouse has changed, becoming expensive and exclusive, not necessarily better. That may not last. Rittenhouse Square has changed before, and it may change again.

I sincerely hope that the square keeps part of the identity I saw growing up: a place for people of many backgrounds, including artists, to interact and communicate. It’s one of the few places left in Philadelphia where that is still possible.

It would be sad to see that possibility lost.

Cei Bell is a writer and artist living in West Oak Lane.