Hilton Garden Inn Philadelphia Center City

1100 Arch Street

Picture from their website. This was the best fucking picture they could get of it. Anyone notice what's been cropped out?

               This building is a damned eyesore. I hate buildings with parking garage pedestals. I hate buildings that needlessly straddle over roads. I hate buildings with slightly asymmetrical frontages. If your ever drew a picture of the image above, it would look like you fucked up the perspective because the facade on the right side is slightly closer to the street than the left side. Not only that, this is the GOOD side of the building! It is more often seen showing it's extremely bare ass all the way down 11th street:


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Go ahead. See how far south on 11th street you need to go for the Hilton's dirty ass not to be visible.

              In 2000, the city was in the need of hotel space for the first time in years. The Republican National Convention was coming to town, and the city was afraid of losing hotel business to cheaper hotels in Cherry Hill and Valley Forge. The Redevelopment Authority owned the land under the Gallery II parking garage, which was put there in 1977 to accommodate the tens of thousands of people they foolishly thought were going to drive to the Gallery from the burbs. They offered up the virtually unused parking garage for development of a hotel. Hilton took the bait and knocked together a four-story addition right on top of an already butt-fugly 11th-street-straddling parking garage in time for the convention. It was such a piece of shit that it needed a total renovation by 2004.
                Even Google Earth hates this building. All the other buildings are in 3D and this Hanging Garden of Dick-Cheese is flattened like a pancake:

Google doesn't love you and Jesus kicked your ass.

                They include that crappy Greyhound station and not the Hilton. Some Google exec must have gotten stuck in traffic behind the Chinatown bus while inside the Dark Tunnel of Doom known as 11th street underneath this pile of dogshit. Then he went back to Googleland, kicked the door down on the dorks making Google Earth and said, "Fuck that building. That one, right there. It's a good thing I had that toilet installed in my limo! Now clean up these door pieces all over the floor, you dirty piles of shit!"
                I hope this building becomes a Lost Building of the Week, except that it'll be a Butt-Fugly Lost Building of the Week. Hey! That's a good idea!

Butt-Fugly Lost Building of the Week

The Scottish Rite Temple

150 North Broad Street

Scottish Wrong Temple

             
                I never thought I would like a crappy parking garage better than the building it replaced. Look at this Great Wall of Kilt Skidmarks. What the fuck were these Scottish dudes doing that they needed a temple that could withstand a nuclear blast? The Scottish Rite Temples in other cities are cool-looking. What the fuck went wrong here? I don't often say "Glad this fucker's gone" but...