'Death of Venus' may remain on city wall, L&I rules
In a decision that surprised even the artist and her patron, a city appeals board yesterday ordered that a popular mural painted in a Center City historic district without a permit should be allowed to remain.
In a decision that surprised even the artist and her patron, a city appeals board yesterday ordered that a popular mural painted in a Center City historic district without a permit should be allowed to remain.
The four members of the Board of License & Inspection Review voted unanimously to overturn a decision by the Historical Commission ordering that The Death of Venus - which Dee Chhin painted on the side wall of a red-brick Victorian townhouse at 410 S. 15th St. about six years ago - be taken down.
"I'm just happy that it's over," said Chhin after the board announced its decision. "Finally I can focus on something else that is not so controversial."
"I'm shocked. This has been six years in the fighting. I am just amazed," said Michael Sher, the Center City real estate broker who hired Chhin to paint the mural on the building he manages for owner Philip Steinfeld.
Board Chairman Anthony P. Rabutino did not explain the panel's unanimous decision, announced after eight minutes of deliberations following an 80-minute hearing.
Assistant City Solicitor Leonard F. Reuter said he would talk with Historical Commission officials and litigation staff in the Law Department before deciding whether to appeal to Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.
Reuter said the city has 30 days to file an appeal.
Sher said he commissioned Chhin to paint the mural on a stuccoed portion of the building's side wall along Waverly Street in part because he wanted to discourage graffiti vandals from tagging the wall.
Officials at Peirce College, whose campus is across 15th Street, noticed the mural and, on learning that Sher and Chhin did not have a permit, complained to the Historical Commission.
The commission then cited Sher because the 1850 brick townhouse is in an area - the Rittenhouse-Fitler Residential Historic District- where the exteriors of buildings may not be altered without permission. The district was created in 1995 to preserve the character of the old residential neighborhood.
Lawyer Harry J. Sher, who represented his brother, argued that the wall on which the mural was painted was stucco - not an original part of the architecture - and that the painting affected none of the ornate brickwork, such as the corbeled, or stepped, brick chimney that rises above the mural.
But Rabutino seemed more puzzled about why the Historical Commission allowed the mural to remain unchallenged for four years.
Through the vagaries of Philadelphia zoning law and the bylaws of the Historical Commission, Chhin's mural wound up being granted "interim approval" for four years before Sher had to apply for an extension.
The appeals panel's decision was not made any easier by the fact that, in that four-year interim, "Death of Venus" had acquired its own following in the neighborhood and beyond. The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, which has added 2,700 murals around the city, began including the mural on its tours even though Chhin was not part of the program.
Four people testified in support of the mural, saying it reflected the diversity of the "Bohemian neighborhood," and no one opposed it.
Chhin herself is an example of the diversity. Now 35, Chhin, a transsexual, emigrated from refugee camps in Thailand with her mother in the early 1980s after surviving mass killings by the Khmer Rouge in her native Cambodia.
"This mural means a lot to me," Chhin told the review board. "I tried to incorporate elements of the Avenue of the Arts and it's the only work I painted live, just painted it wet as I went along. . . . To have to see it painted over red would just break my heart."
See examples of murals in the city created by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program via http://go.philly.com/muralEndText
