Weekend demo | Scene Through the Lens

Philosophers tell us we humans are hard-wired to create, and we have an innate desire to tinker, build, grow or make stuff (like pictures?). We also seem to enjoy watching wrecking and razing.

Over the years I’ve stood with many other sidewalk spectators, fascinated as a wrecking ball slowly dismantles a building. (This is where you might expect to see a reference to Cyrus or Springsteen, if I were interested in like or click metrics).

But like pay-phones, typewriters and slide rules, the wrecking ball has mostly disappeared.

That didn’t stop me from spending a few hours yesterday watching the hydraulic excavators, metal cutting shears, and grapples demolish the existing concrete covering I-95 in Center City, between Chestnut and Walnut Streets.

It was the second weekend this month that all the lanes on one side of the interstate were closed so contractors could work on this beginning part of the $329 million Penn’s Landing cap project to create a nearly 12-acre park waterfront park over the interstate. My colleague David Maialetti covered the earlier closure and demolition.

The construction of Interstate 95 in the 1960s and ‘70s cut off Philadelphia from its riverfront. The new park hopes to reconnect the city, extending over the highway from Front Street to the Delaware River.

There are two more planned closures. One more each is planned for I-95 North and I-95 South. No other dates have been announced, but PennDot said they would occur on weekends over the next few months

Since 1998, a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color: