Among the large, impressive relics at Second Chance are five polychrome terra cotta friezes, each about 11 feet long and 19 inches high. Elaborately decorated with zigzag and floral motifs in glossy blue, green, brown, tan and black glazes, they look as if they were made yesterday.
Their excellent condition is attributable to the fact that they were mounted inside the Philadelphia Civic Center, above the auditorium portals, and not exposed to the weather. Designed by Philip H. Johnson and built c. 1930 in high Art Deco style, the Civic Center had many friezes both inside and outside the building.
Terra cotta (“burnt earth” in Italian) is a clay material used to decorate buildings since ancient times. According to terra cotta expert Susan Tunick:
By the mid-1920s, architectural terra cotta came to be used frequently by forward-looking architects for a number of different reasons: it is fireproof, lightweight, readily available, and economical; it could also be used to create striking aesthetic effects. The use of colored glazes increased dramatically by the mid-1920s, when fashionable new shades such as peach, lime-green, lavender, and ebony were introduced. Metallic lusters, the result of an expensive double firing process—wherein a coating of liquid silver or gold was added to an already-glazed piece that was then re-fired at a lower temperature—were also developed. The interplay of such colored and textured glazes was used to both accentuate a building’s architectural form and highlight its low-relief ornament. (“Art Deco Terra Cotta,” Art Deco Society of New York, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2017, https://www.artdeco.org/art-deco-terra-cotta).
As a native Philadelphian, I’m familiar with the Civic Center, or Convention Hall as it was known in my youth. During its heyday, from the 1930s to the mid-sixties, it hosted Democratic and Republican conventions (1936, 1940, 1948), a campaign rally featuring President Lyndon Johnson (1964), and concerts by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (1964, 1966).
Linda Rabben is an author, anthropologist and human rights activist. She has worked for nongovernmental organizations as a writer, researcher and public speaker. Since 2015 she has been an associate research professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland. Linda has published 10 nonfiction books and has given talks about human rights issues to more than 80 groups in the US and other countries. In 2021 Linda and her husband moved to Baltimore, where she enjoys walking in her neighborhood, meeting her neighbors and shopping at Second Chance. She is now doing research on the social history of stained-glass windows in Baltimore homes, churches and institutions…and much more.
