Enter: New Freedom District
Enter: New Freedom District
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In many ways, African Americans have a rich legacy of resistance and cultural expression in West Philadelphia, especially through the arts and religious institutions. During the Civil Rights Movement (or Black Freedom Movement) of the twentieth century, several leaders made important speeches and visits to the 19104 zip code. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech called “Freedom Now” that is memorialized on Lancaster Avenue. Malcolm X would come to teach at The Nation of Islam (NOI) mosque nearby. In direct conversation with this speech and other discourses, the place identity “New Freedom” emerged on the weekend of May 16 and 17, 2015 when the New Africa Center / Muslim American Museum & Archive located at 4243 Lancaster Ave hosted a commemorative event themed, ‘Honoring our Past with a Vision for the Future’.
Abdul-Rahim Muhammad, the conceptual progenitor and community leader who serves as Executive Director of the New Africa Center and Islamic Cultural Preservation and Information Council (ICPIC) stated on their website:
“The term New Africa was introduced to us by the late Muslim American leader, Imam [Wallace] D. Mohammed, he stated, ‘New Africa: represents a new mind, a new thinking, a new spirit and a new life for black people in America. We are not from the Motherland anymore; we are Africans living in America – ‘New Africans.’”
Further, on Saturday May 16 at 1pm, ICPIC commemorated the late international leaders El-Hajj Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X) 90th birthday and Imam W.D. Mohammed’s 40th year anniversary of leadership by placing a mock Pennsylvania Historical Marker at 4218 Lancaster Ave in their honor. This PA marker was actually designed by our now Undergraduate Fine Arts Chair, Matthew Neff. Later, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission placed an official marker nearby for this.
The “New Freedom” concept has been widely endorsed by elected officials and the existing organizations that are listed as one of the twenty-eight (28) sites on the “New Freedom District Tour” – currently, an online experience and a self-guided brochure.1 The boundaries are loosely defined by Mr.Muhammad as: “the lower part of Lancaster Ave from 48th Streets to 32nd Street and its surrounding area as the Historic New Freedom District.” In 2022, Mr. Muhammad provided the following map that has informed the interim period of work.
While revering the past, however, NFD is an idea aimed to intervene in the developmental futures of the area. According to ICPIC’s vision and working plans:
“Our long-term goal is to develop an Avenue on the Arts West [emphasis added]…. We will utilize the vacant lot and buildings at 4237, 4239, & 4241 Lancaster Ave. and construct a completely new 5 story multi-purpose facility. The 1st floor will be an expansion of our 4243 Lancaster Ave New Africa Center/Muslim American Museum & Archive along with a Cafe, the 2nd floor will be our New Africa- Business, Arts & Technology Centers. For the 3rd, 4th & 5th floors, we will develop new apartment units for low income or senior citizens. This multipurpose facility will serve as an anchor for the development of a new mixture of businesses and apartment units along Lancaster Ave from 4245 to 4255 along with utilizing the urban green space at 4234 to 4240 as a New Africa Freedom Square”.
Besides the New Freedom concept, other place identities at work here include a simple use of “Lower Lancaster Avenue” or “Lancaster Avenue.” The most common users of this identity are the People’s Emergency Center (PEC, which is rebranding as HOPE-PHL – pronounced ‘hopeful’ in January 2023), whose community planning strategies have been adopted and endorsed by the City of Philadelphia’s Planning Commission. Their 2012 “Make Your Mark” plan was being updated in 2021 through 2022 and also endorsed the NFD cultural concept
Key Findings from Spring 2022 Design Research
Key Findings from Spring 2022 Design Research
Since initial contact in December 2021, the partnership between Dr. Matt Kenyatta and Mr. Abdul-Rahim Muhammad of ICPIC evolved into an urban design and cultural research course in 2022. Through a “storyscaping appraisal” process using mixed-data and mixed-methods research on the Lancaster Avenue corridor’s economic and cultural ecology, eight graduate students identified several kinds of spatial opportunities and social needs that traverse both planning and architectural design to shape and contour the possibilities for an Arts District / Cultural Corridor to thrive in West Philadelphia’s Lancaster Avenue. Many of these are summarized in greater depth in a July 28, 2022 memo that Dr. Kenyatta shared with Mr. Muhammad and the Netter Center for Community Partnerships.
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