Chambersburg greets visitors with ethnic restaurants and a new plaza with an obelisk.
By: Ilene Dube
In the lazy hazy days of late summer, when the cicadas’ crescendo seems to rise with the heat, there’s great comfort in the shade of a London Plane tree. Its massive arms embrace us in shadow. Even the slightest breeze sets its dry leaves flickering, making the brain think "cool."
"A clone of the native Sycamore, the London Plane is the number one urban survivor because it can take the heat," says landscape architect Alan Goodheart. "When they grow up, they create a canopy over the area."
There’s a 70-something London Plane watching over Agabiti Plaza in Trenton’s Chambersburg. A colony of young new trees, with the characteristic "peeling" bark, is ready to fill in.
At the other end of the plaza when in Rome, call it "piazza" is a stainless steel obelisk, paying homage to John A. Roebling, the German-born engineer who invented the wire rope that would be used in his design for the Brooklyn Bridge. Roebling’s firm was just a few blocks from Agabiti Plaza.
"The cables that hold up (the Brooklyn Bridge) on big stone piers are beautiful and not hidden," says Mr. Goodheart. "It’s metal in your face taking traditional material and putting it to use in a way that you can see what it can do."
Mr. Goodheart has done the same here, taking an obelisk, traditionally made of stone, and crafting it out of metal. Children ride their bicycles through the obelisk’s fountain, drenching their clothes. Others remove T-shirts and flip-flops altogether and sit inside its cascading water, a refreshing break on a summer day. Mothers sit on stylized stainless steel benches as their toddlers play in the water and a butterfly flutters by.
Chambersburg has long been a destination for Italian dining, although in recent years some of the restaurants have been switching over to Latin American cuisine. "(Italians and Hispanics) are Mediterranean people who are accustomed to central gathering places like this," says Mr. Goodheart, who designed what he refers to as an "outdoor living room and kitchen" with Yonkers, N.Y.-based partner Lee Weintraub.
Several years ago, Mr. Goodheart, 64, a Princeton resident, reconnected with long-time colleague Mr. Weintraub, landscape architect for the Department of Planning and Development, Trenton, from 1973 to 1978. The two were bidding on a lighting and signage study for the Chambersburg restaurant district. Jean Shaddow, director of Natural Resources for the City of Trenton, was seeking to spruce up the district with a focus on Roebling Avenue, the "spine" through the restaurant district, according to Mr. Goodheart. Today it includes streetlights and banners to welcome visitors. There’s even a logo incorporating a "C" for Chambersburg and a knife and fork.
But the park at the intersection of Roebling and Whittaker Street had been neglected. Formerly the site of the Washington School, which was torn down and rebuilt several blocks away in 1940, it had rimless basketball courts and outdated playground equipment. An old, diseased London Plane tree had to be torn down. So with a budget of $750,000, Ms. Shaddow brought in Messrs. Goodheart and Weintraub to make it a showplace.
Mr. Goodheart designed the "World’s Fair" benches in stainless steel with hoops and cup holders, Mr. Weintraub designed the stainless chaise lounges, and both collaborated on the obelisk/fountain that is lit up at night. Mr. Goodheart compares it to a porch light left on that says "welcome." It is both like a modern metal sculpture and a lighthouse, or beacon, especially when lit.
Stainless tables have industrial blue lights coming out at an angle and are surrounded by curved benches. Mr. Goodheart says he’d been told by neighborhood residents that on hot summer nights, people come out and barbecue in the park. The surrounding rowhouses have no back or front yards, so Agabiti Plaza is their community living room. Even litter is a sign that the park is being used, Mr. Goodheart points out.
The plaza had its official opening party in the evening Aug. 18, with Mexican music and jazz and food provided by Marsilio’s and Sal De Forte’s restaurants. In the 1980s, the park had been named for Ottavio "Tommy" Agabiti, who had been active in local baseball and community activities, and the Agabiti name is inscribed in the obelisk. Armando Agabiti, Tommy’s father, worked for Roebling Works, and Tommy’s son, also Armando, was at the opening party, along with his two sons.
A day before the party, Mr. Goodheart heard a complaint from a resident that she believed the park was being used by the wrong type of people for the wrong reasons. "But even while she was complaining, she was in the park, using it," he said.
Antonio Falvo runs a tailor shop just across the street from Agabiti Plaza. "He often sweeps his sidewalk and cleans up in the park," says Mr. Goodheart. "It’s his front yard." That’s the kind of community involvement it takes.
Mr. Falvo returns to his hometown, Soveria Mannelli, in southern Italy every August. In his shop, where Mr. Goodheart goes for a cup of espresso whenever he’s in the neighborhood, Mr. Falvo has a postcard of the obelisk and piazza in Soveria Mannelli. Mr. Goodheart calls Mr. Falvo his "regular consultant and community contact," and says it is piazzas with obelisks like this in Italy, France and Mexico that inspired him and Mr. Weintraub. "When my wife and I go traveling, we look for places like this," he says.
But even Mr. Falvo has reservations about some of the people who may "loiter" in the park.
"Some people are resistant to change," says Eric Jetzt, a horticulturalist for the Division of Natural Resources. "They liked it quiet and empty, the way it was before." Mr. Jetzt maintains the ivy bed that adds an element of green to the urban setting.
"People will learn to use it and be more comfortable here," says Mr. Goodheart. "If you occupy it, it will be used by those who will care about it."
In choosing stainless steel as the material for the furnishings, Mr. Goodheart says he consulted with a physicist to make certain it wouldn’t be too hot to sit on. "The stainless steel will age well; it’s weather resistant and easy to maintain, and reflective of the industrial history," he says. "And it sparkles in the sun."
Sitting on one of the chaise lounges, a breeze blows sprinkles of water from the fountain. "My other stuff doesn’t look anything like this," says Mr. Goodheart, who was one of the key architects behind last year’s Writers Block in Princeton. (He won a New Jersey American Institute of Architects honor award for that project.) He earned a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1967, and has served on Princeton’s Shade Tree Commission and the board of Isles, among others. Some of his projects have included playgrounds for Princeton Montessori and Littlebrook schools, and courtyards for Princeton University Press and the Upper Elementary School in West Windsor, as well as a terrace and meditation walk at All Saints Church in Princeton.
He has done book and exhibit design, and has had shows of his paintings, photographs and drawings. His paintings are featured on postcards for the Frog and the Peach restaurant in New Brunswick.
The new Arts Council of Princeton building, designed by Michael Graves, will have a terrace designed by Mr. Goodheart on Witherspoon Street. "There will be a very colorful garden, above a seat-high retaining wall on the south side of the building (Paul Robeson frontage)," he says. "This landscape is not a show piece; it’s a carefully planned setting for Michael Graves’s building. If it works as I expect it to, visitors will say how beautiful the building is and how much they enjoyed their visit, and maybe mention the flowers that are in bloom."
Agabiti Plaza is on Roebling Avenue and Whittaker Street, Trenton. From U.S. 1 South, bear right onto 129 South and follow signs to South Broad Street. Turn left onto South Broad Street, cross over 129 and continue to Roebling. Turn left on Roebling. The water on the fountain runs 10 a.m.-10 p.m. in warm months. Blue and yellow lights, reflecting the colors of Trenton, come on at dusk.