Robert Parsky

Robert (Bob) Parsky came to Philadelphia in 1965 to work for Stonorov and Haas Architects. The day he moved into his rented apartment at 262 S. Fourth Street, the building next door, on the corner of Fourth and Spruce Streets, was being demolished. In the next block of S. Fourth Street, there were only three or four occupied buildings. A couple of years later, Bob and his first wife bought 348 S. Fourth Street from the Redevelopment Authority. Bob was not put off by the condition of the building. It was, in fact, precisely what he wanted. He says, “I wanted a shell, and the fact that it was wide open inside, I was able to do with it what I wanted to do…. It was the challenge that a 20-something architect wanted.” He describes some battles with the Redevelopment Authority and his difficulty getting a mortgage. He held down his job at Stonorov and Haas, took on jobs designing renovations of other houses in the neighborhood, and acted as his own general contractor on the renovations of his own house. He wanted to restore the Flemish bond façade of his house. He collected – half a dozen at a time – hundreds of bricks with glazed headers from the ruins of buildings that had been demolished to make way for the houses that were about to be built on Lawrence Court. Bob observes, “There was an extreme enthusiasm in the neighborhood based on the fact that people were building their places and rebuilding a city and going to then live in it… There was a vibrancy, and there were really wonderful people living here at that time.”

Transcript

DS: This is an interview with Robert Parsky. The date is May 5, 2008 and the interviewer is Dorothy Stevens. The location is 116 Delancey Street, Philadelphia. Go ahead.

RP: I came to Society Hill in late May or early June 1965. I came here from New Haven, Connecticut, where I had just completed my Master’s in City Planning [at Yale University]. I came to Philadelphia to work in architecture and city planning. I moved to 262 South Fourth Street, which is just off the corner of Fourth and Spruce. My first wife [Dihanna Parsky] and I lived in an apartment that occupied the basement and first floor.

DS: You rented?

RP: I rented from John Jaworski, who is one of the old-timers in this neighborhood. His father, whose name I have just forgotten, really ran the apartment buildings (1:00) at that time, and John was a young man working for RCA. I came to Philadelphia to work with Oskar Stonorov, at Stonorov and Haas Architects, who were involved in both city planning and architecture, which I wanted to do. I did my architecture at Penn State, graduated in 1960, worked in Washington, D.C., for two and one-half to three years, then went to graduate school at Yale in City Planning and then came to Philadelphia. That’s my introduction to Philadelphia.

I remember the day I came to Philadelphia, which was literally the (2:00) day after graduation. I moved here – 262 S. Fourth Street. I remember that the building next to 262 was being torn down that day, at the corner of Fourth and Spruce. We walked down the street and saw that there were about three or four occupied buildings on the block between Spruce and Pine Streets.

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©2008 Project Philadelphia 19106™. All rights reserved.

About the Interview

Interviewer
Dorothy Stevens
Transcriber
Cynthia J. Eiseman
Interview Location
116 Delancey Street
Interview Date
May 5, 2008
Interviewee
Parsky, Robert
Narrator Type
Redeveloper - Restoration
Oral History Sources