Ken Parker—Of Granary Building Fame and More

Ken Parker, one of the early design gurus of Philadelphia and a pioneer in transforming the Fairmount neighborhood, was back in town today for a big birthday celebration.   What should be celebrated are some of his Philadelphia milestones. For one, he bought an old, unused cement Granary Building and put his design studio, KPA (Kenneth Parker Associates), on the ground floor and a spectacular penthouse for himself on the top.

His innovative firm, with a bit of sleight of hand (keep reading) landed such jobs in the 1970s as the interior of the then-new FMC building and a then-new building at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, among others. His visionary ideas were written up in Philadelphia Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Architectural Digest.
My husband and I met Ken in 1972 when we bought a house he had designed at 1 Pigs Alley in Fairmount, two doors down from where he was then living.  (Pigs Alley was a tiny lane behind our house and his, off of 24th and Perot Streets where there had once been an abbatoir.)

In foreground, the Granary building

We never knew until hearing Ken speak today that he had brought in the neighbors to make the office look busy the day the president of FMC, Ray Tower, came in to seal a deal for KPA to design the interior of the  225,000-square-foot building.
"It's called 'papering the house,'" Ken said. FMC thought they were contracting with a successful, established, "mid-sized" firm when instead it was tiny and just getting going.

Among the neighborhood characters he had brought in that day was Tony Rappa, a rotund, aging Italian who spent most of his days stoop-sitting on Perot street. 

Fortunately, the FMC president didn't stop to ask Tony questions, but also sitting at a drawing board, looking busy was a medical technician and chef, Ray Moderski. "At the bottom of the steps, Mr. Tower took a left instead of a right and he walks back to Moderski," Ken recalled, "And he says, 'What are you working on?'" Ray, who had been drawing a stick-figure version of a house,  says, "Here is my dream house. Here is the living room...."

Kitchen at the Granary

We were fortunate enough to get invited to Ken's penthouse at the Granary a few times, with its lush rooftop conservatory, it’s all-white kitchen in the round, and its luxurious hot tub with its extraordinary view of Philadelphia's skyline (at a time when City Hall was still the tallest building). He threw fabulous parties there. It had a "Gatsby kind of image," Ken recalled, a scene often written up by the press.

Ken's hot tub with city view

"I’ve had a wonderful life," Ken said to the crowd gathered for his 80th birthday. “I’ve loved and I’ve been loved....   "I'm proud to say I lived a respectable life as a gay man when it was not as accepted as it is, thankfully. ...
"I see today as caramelized walnuts on top of a multi-tiered cake which has been my happy life."
Ken continues his design work now in California. You can see it here.