- On this episode of Movers & Makers FDR park in South Philadelphia, re-imagined its future with an ambitious plan, a museum where furniture and sculpture are one in the same, skate parks help communities reinvigorate public space, and a tamal pop-up to support Latinx food workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic.

(lively music) Hey everybody welcome to the show.

Andrew Erace here from my personal backyard at FDR park.

The lakes, as we called it growing up, has played a significant role in my life from playing childhood sports here to learning how to drive a car, but never did I realize how important this park would be until COVID, when I rediscovered it as an escape from the uncertainty that surrounded us.

FDR park saw a surge in visitation during 2020, and after 100 years since its inception, it's finally getting the attention it deserves.

Today's episode introduces you to people and places making meaningful experiences through recreation and food despite current obstacles.

(soft music) (gentle piano music) - FDR park is a very historic park.

It was built about a 100 years ago in the early years of the 20th century.

And it was actually our very first and only Olmsted Brothers designed park in the city of Philadelphia.

Frederick Law Olmsted is the patriarch of landscape architecture.

He designed some of the most famous and beautiful parks in the country including central park in New York, and really believed in the power of parks to play a role in democracy, in connecting people.

To each other and to the natural world.

And believe that parks inherently should be equitable spaces.

The idea of creating a public park like this one at FDR was really about giving all residents, all citizens access to a beautiful public space to congregate and relax in and recreate in.

Right across from us is the beautiful boat house.

And this was one of the original buildings from the sesquicentennial.

Built in the early 1920s.

That is really just a picturesque site and creates a beautiful view shed for people to be able to view the lakes.

This has always been a park that's incorporated athletic recreation.

You have two fields in the back of the park that are managed by the Phillies.

And then we have over 20 picnic sites throughout the park.

And this facility where we are right now the American Swedish Museum is a fascinating museum and a wonderful place to learn the Swedish history here in the United States.

Of course, there's also the skate park.

(fun music) Which is, you know, it depending on who you are not the prettiest part of the park but pretty beloved by the skating community.

The Olmsted brothers did not design a skate park into the park, but it is a very cool and pretty iconic in its own way.

(gentle music) - FDR park is the largest park in South Philadelphia.

And I think it almost perfectly reflects the incredibly vibrant mixture of people call South Philadelphia home.

I think you see here in the park the layers of immigration that South Philadelphia is hosted.

You see all those cultural impressions made here.

You see our Italian-Americans who call this park home for generations here.

You see newer immigrant communities, Southeast Asian communities that have called South Philadelphia home since the 1970s.

This park is an incredibly significant gathering place not just for Southeast Asians who live in Philadelphia but the diaspora throughout the whole region.

In recent years we've seen Mexicans and Latinos being increasingly part of the park story.

Soccer is their main utilization that their community gathers for around here.

I think it is incredible in this day and age to find public spaces where so many different people are here together, sharing, embracing, stewarding, and participating in the same thing.

- I grow up in South Philly.

I've been in South Philly for 40 years already.

So this is my second home.

And it's really nice.

I come from Cambodia and a lot of market people are Cambodian.

There's Laos, Thai, Vietnamese, and now Indonesia come and Filipino.

I started about 15 years already.

I have Asian fruit and vegetable especially this year because the restaurant is not open.

A lot of people come to get all different kind of food.

- A 350 acre park, like this accessible to public transit, accessible to major highways, accessible on foot to surrounding neighborhoods and complexes.

It's really unique to us and Philadelphia.

We don't have many of these.

Not everybody knows about it.

And therefore its value is really underestimated.

The master plan gave us an opportunity to do an extensive amount of community outreach.

We spent almost a year talking to thousands of people.

We engage the friends of FDR Park that are just an extraordinary stewardship group that has championed this park for decades but hasn't seen the investment that they've wanted to see.

And we presented that plan to the public.

And now we're in the process of implementing that plan.

And I think it really will change the face of this park in a positive way.

- 100 years ago, South Philadelphia below Oregon Avenue was this.

It was a world of water and a grass.

Punctuated occasionally by a hill or a homestead that changed in the beginning of the 19th century, both as we've dug the Broad Street subway that fill all coming from North Philadelphia from center city from South Philadelphia was being brought down here to raise the ground to make solid land, to build new neighborhoods to build new parks like this.

Over the last hundred years river levels and sea levels have risen.

The park has begun to sink and these marshes are beginning to reemerge again, just on their own.

What's really incredible about this park plan is it's not denying those changes in climate and environment.

It's not fighting against them.

It's embracing them.

That's why the beginning of this FDR master plan starts with the restoration of 40 acres of tidal marsh.

To see that kind of ecological restoration in a way that's open to the public.

That can be a part of South Philadelphia is really incredible and it's exciting to be a part of it.

- It was so wonderful to see at our community meetings and open houses and our focus group, such a diverse group of users participate and tell us how they use the park and what they'd like to see for the future of the park.

So I think it really speaks to how our city has evolved and what the future of our city is.

And that is how do we embrace this amazing diversity of users and really how do these public spaces serve as a vehicle in a way for us to connect with each other and meet people that perhaps we wouldn't interact with on a day-to-day basis.

You can do that at a park like FDR.

(soft music) (calming music) - He was inspired by nature by the things he saw around.

The twist in a tree.

The shapes of branches.

By just the organic flow of things.

He's recognized as the founder of contemporary studio furniture.

When Wharton died, we felt that this just couldn't be broken up.

That it just had to be shared with the public.

And so we set about making it into a museum.

We've kept it very much as it was when Wharton lived here which would be without cases and signs and things.

So that people can get the experience of being in the artist's studio.

It's great.

- [Ruth] Wonderful.

- [Bob] We appreciate every bit of it.

- [Ruth] Yes.

- [Bob] Yes.

- [Ruth] We don't want to move anywhere else.

- [Bob] Some people have to die to get paradise.

We just have to stay alive.

- Bob was the initial director of the museum and Ruth was sort of the lifeblood of if you will.

And they determined right off the start of the museum to allow people to walk through and maybe even run their hands over some of the pieces, you know, carefully.

Which was just unheard of in the museum community back in those days.

- [Bob] Wharton Harris Esherick was born on a hot, sticky July 15th, 1887.

At 3926 Lopas Street in West Philadelphia.

And as a child, was fascinated with drawing.

Drew on every scrap of paper in the house.

He was convinced he was going to be an artist when he grew up.

- [Robert] And he went to a series of manual arts schools.

And then eventually the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he studied painting.

Probably halfway through that experience he felt he needed to find his own style, so he actually quit the academy and ventured off on his own.

Wharton married Leticia Nofer who was also a Philadelphia.

They were very artistic minded.

She was into dance.

They moved out here because I just wanted to be away from the city.

- [Ruth] I came along in 1922 My older sister, Mary, born in 1916.

I also have a younger brother, Peter who came in 1926.

- [Robert] But it was a very bucolic life out here running around naked, growing their own food.

- When my first went to public school in fourth grade they said, "Oh, you come from that nudist colony up there."

Well, my parents liked nudity and in the country and it was all fine.

- [Bob] 1919 Leticia had become interested in progressive education.

And off they went to Fairhope.

Leticia studied the teaching methods while Wharton painted.

He had an exhibition of his paintings and for that he needed frames.

And so he made some frames in the carpentry shop and began carving designs on them.

Well, now that he had this carving tools he could make woodcuts.

Well then with his carving tools he began carving furniture.

Well people would come to his little studio to look at the paintings and the woodcuts and they'd eye his table or chairs and want to buy those.

He felt, well if I can't earn a living painting or printing woodblocks maybe I can earn a living making furniture.

(lively music) And by 1926 and 27, the Whitney Design Studio in New York had become interested in his work.

Once Wharton was being recognized by the museum he felt he needed a bigger studio at a place where he make larger pieces.

And so he went up the hill, behind the house and started a new building up there, the studio.

- The studio today looks very much like it did when Esherick lived here.

The bedspreads are on the bed.

The artwork is on the walls.

Esherick was interested in this idea of an object of a building needing to seem as though it came out of the landscape.

The object needs to be in conversation with its surrounding.

Twists, curves, stretching forms, reaching upward.

And that really links back to this idea of natural growth.

- Recently, last December, we were the recipient of a large endowment gift from the Windgate charitable foundation.

Primarily in response to a campus planning process that seeks to reunite the home that Wharton originally lived on on Valley Forge Mountain with the studio that serves as the museum flagship building.

And it also gives us capacity to do more fundraising, programming and to reach out beyond the literal walls of the studio and start to expand our audience base.

The intimate nature of our tours means that when people come through, they're interacting physically with the sculptural element of the entire building.

So while that's wonderful, it's been a real hindrance in us staying open during COVID.

And we very much look forward to having visitors back on site.

- [Bob] Today he's recognized as the leader of art furniture.

And he'd been the guiding light for the new artists working in wood.

- [Interviewer] Did you realize that your father was maybe a little different than everyone else?

- No, no.

I never realized that.

He worked.

Your father worked.

My father worked.

- [Bob] Now most parents object to their children growing on the wall.

Ruth was encouraged.

(soft music) (relaxing music) - They say that an artist is his own worst critic.

Anyone in the trades is always going to think about a way that it could have been better on their behalf you know, or maybe this ramp should be over there.

You know, it's sometimes when you've been through the trials and tribulations with every day maybe at the end, you feel slightly unsatisfied.

But when you see, you know, it packed to the max every day it's really easy to see it for exactly what it is.

It's a public skate space, that's being used.

- 5th Pocket SkateParks is a company that designs and builds public and private skate spaces.

My name is Jesse Clayton and I'm co-owner of 5th Pocket Skateparks.

- My name is Sloan Palder and I'm co-owner of 5th Pocket Skateparks.

People will ask me what I do for a living.

And I'll tell them that, you know, me and my business partner own a skate park construction company.

And people will say, there's work out there for that?

And to be honest, like every day, there's more and more work to be done.

These guys right here called a skate floats.

And it's actually a, these are old skateboards that we've used and repurposed.

So I always get a kick out of it.

Cause it's, it's crazy to me, you know to, full circle thing.

Here we are.

Now we're using skateboards, you know, to shape and float concrete, to skateboard on.

Concrete it's definitely not an easy material to work with.

It's heavy, it's a chemical reaction.

It's one of the materials, that the clock's ticking, as soon as it shows up.

You know, with that said, it's a battle.

So, you know, when you're done it, there's nothing more satisfying than standing away from the piece and staring at and being like, "Holy look, what we just did."

You know what I mean, look at we just did in a couple of hours.

- The reality is nobody wants to do this work Like we do, but like we've had so many guys that have come and worked with us and they just can't survive in the environment because it's like, these are, you know, this is the fun part.

I think a lot of public spaces are kind of like a little homogenized, a little standardized, a little you know, I don't want to like use a negative word but like kind of stale.

Whereas like skate parks if done by someone who really puts, you know a good amount of effort into it, they can really be like fascinating and pretty incredible public spaces.

When we design it's like, we want to kind of mimic the features that have always been popular in skating.

So popular features in skating are going to be backyard swimming pools and urban style features.

So ledges, stairs, handrails.

So really it's like providing the features that like a natural urban landscape would give you but taking away all the drawbacks.

You know from being a kid there's definitely a shift in public attitude.

I mean, I started skating in my teens.

I'm 38 now.

And you know, I've been tackled by police officers as a young kid.

Now the chief of police is going to all the meetings and we work with him on public safety.

So it's like, yeah, there's definitely a shift in the public perception of it.

- We constantly get the questions about what can our kids do.

And you know, we have kids that aren't playing little league baseball or basketball and this is an activity that they can participate in and stay healthy.

And it looks like they have a great deal of fun doing it.

- My name is A'vier Ryan Sanchez.

I've been skating for three months exactly.

Almost a hundred days.

It's just fun, like it's painful not to land a trick but right when you land it's awesome.

- For me, skating is my passion.

It's a time to learn, time to meet people, a time to share your experience with others.

Our skate park in Lansdale is honestly one of the best examples of going beyond all sorts of barriers.

People from every single demographic you can think of have already stopped by sometimes regular here almost any time in the day, especially after school you can see kids that are just starting and also people that are skating into their fifties.

- A lot of the times it's kind of a boys club when you show up somewhere and no one will say that you have to prove yourself, but it's kind of like a feeling of trying to show off and like prove that you belong there too.

But this park is definitely different in the sense that like the first day I came here, everyone was so welcoming.

And like, just trying to get to know you and they don't treat you any different if you're a girl.

There's a couple that come here.

Everyone here, it feels like a family.

If you start coming every day you start to get to know everybody else who comes every day.

And when you show up, everyone will be excited to see you.

And it's really nice.

(audience cheering) (lively music) - When you're gonna inspire a kid to use public space and be creative and physical and all the social aspects sharing and all that stuff.

It's like, it's so undeniable.

I mean, you can't do it with the pre-fab stuff.

You just can't.

It falls so vastly short.

You build the community with the park.

And if it's a good park, you're never going to have to like argue proof of concept.

It's going to be so blatantly right in your face.

You can go and just see for yourself how everybody is just like their dials are turned up to 10.

(soft music) - COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on Philadelphia once thriving food scene.

Many undocumented workers who are essential to this industry were left without any economic relief.

In today's profile we meet Chef Ana Caballero who founded Proyecto Tamal to provide financial assistance to Latinx restaurant workers and their families.

- At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants across the country were working skeleton teams to stay afloat.

And a lot of their employees went on unemployment.

But this was not the case for many of the Latino workers of the restaurant industry because they are mostly undocumented.

These people were unable to get any kind of government assistance during this time.

And that was something that was very severe.

I saw this situation of course play out in real time here in Philadelphia where I have lived and worked for several years and decided to do something about it.

(speaking in Spanish) (soft guitar music) - Proyecto Tamal is the name of my project, and it was a project with a specific mission, which was to put money into hands of Latino cooks that had lost their jobs partially or entirely during the pandemic.

The way we did this was through a weekly tamal sale.

I would host a rotating cast of cooks during the weekend.

I still continue to, and these people collaborate with me in making the menu for the tamal sale.

And then thanks to donations for the purchase of ingredients, we were able to like cover all the costs and not have to pull anything out and give all that money to the participants.

And that was more or less a thousand dollars per person we were giving out.

So it was a good chunk of money which I thought was kind of like similar to like the stimulus check, you know was kind of like where my brain was.

(Spanish music) (speaking Spanish) - Lamb Barbacoa is something that isn't traditional in tamales but Camelia's family is really, really talented at making this recipe, which is basically lamb marinated with a bunch of dry chilies and herbs, and then slow cooked.

I'm really excited about this because you usually don't see lamb in tamales.

Tamales were kind of the perfect medium for this project.

They are a masa based food that has flavors mixed into it or stuffed with flavors like seasoning, meat, whatever.

And it is wrapped in a leaf, a corn husk or banana leaf, and then steam.

So it's a little pocket of like steamed goodness.

It's starchy, it's saucy, it's meaty a lot of times or has vegetables.

So in that way, it's kind of like a canvas, right?

What makes our tamales particularly special is that we use fresh nixtamilze masa for the base.

It is corn that has been soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution and then ground into a corn dough.

That dough then gets mixed with butter, or lard, salt, some form of stock.

And that kind of gets whipped into this like super rich, beautiful batter that, you know, you put down on a corn husk and that's your tamal.

We raised up to $80,000 since we started for Latino cooks in the city.

Work more or less with around 70 of them.

You know, and put out over 43 different tamales.

We really drew from their backgrounds from their knowledge to kind of like, you know enter this space, enter this platform and show the supporters, the people buying tamales what they know.

These people live here.

These people work in the city.

A lot of them make American food or flip burgers.

And this is a spot where like we can ask them about where they come from and their backgrounds and what they know.

On another hand it's a perfect quarantine food just pull one out of the fridge and steam it and it revives and it comes back to life.

It gets soft and you can have something really delicious and very comforting during a time that we need that comfort.

And I like as well that because we're drawing from all these different regions where the cooks are coming from, you kind of mind travel as well to those places and that as well as like on a psychological and emotional level, very, very nice during quarantine.

(speaking Spanish) (soft music) - With the critical months of the pandemic behind us, Ana Caballero has closed this chapter of Proyecto Tamal.

You can find an online archive of this project as well as information on their future plans and to keep up-to-date with all of our stories give us a follow on Instagram and YouTube Looking forward, we hope to see more safe opportunities to enjoy the wonderful cultural and natural resources around us.

I'm Andrew Erce and I'll see you next time for more Movers & Makers.

(upbeat music)