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In 1988, the National Park Service listed 4548 Market Street on the National Register of Historic Places
At the turn of the 20th century, a tiger at the Philadelphia Zoo.
By 1990, the predominant share of West Philadelphia’s residential landscape was home to African Americans.
Andrea Zemel, of the Graduate School of Fine Arts, orchestrated the collaboration between Penn undergraduates and high school students that designed and handcrafted these two sculpted columns on the southeast side of University City High School.
“The hands are tightly bound, but the hearts are being broken,” noted a Penn undergraduate in her visual journal.
A distinctive feature of the Black Bottom Mosaic Mural was this map of the former neighborhood, highlighting its commercial and communal vitality.
This evocative detail in the Black Bottom Mosaic Mural recalls the trauma of displacement experienced by Black Bottom residents as their homes were demolished by urban renewal fiat to clear a path for building the University City Science Center.
This photo shows the completed Mosaic Mural at the time of its April-May 1999 installation.
This photo shows the partially completed installation—applying the glazed ceramic tiles to the low wall in front of University City High School’s main (36th St.) entrance.
This UCHS student glazes fired tiles to give them “shine and luster” preparatory to wall installation.
Penn student’s “visual journal,” showing businesses and clubs of a bygone era in the Black Bottom; compiled from oral history interviews for the Black Bottom Mosaic Mural map.