Cherry Street Pier brings an artist-driven model to waterfront public space

This weekend, a 99-year old, 55,000-square-foot former warehouse and shipping pier that has sat empty for decades will reopen to the public as Philadelphia’s newest mixed-use public space on the Delaware River. The renovation of the Cherry Street Pier by the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (DRWC) will be celebrated on opening day, October 12, and with a three-week-long arts festival, Festival for the People, curated by Philadelphia Contemporary.

“Cherry Street Pier is the seventh public park that the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation has built according to the Master Plan for the Central Delaware,” says DRWC president Joe Forkin. It’ll also be DRWC’s very first covered space that will operate year-round. “This pier will create a new model for public space — one where the creative community is essential to the mission of the space,” Forkin continues, calling the space an “inclusive, educational, exciting, and collaborative” connection between the city and the waterfront.

At an August 22 preview event for the pier, City Representative Sheila Hess called it “an innovative development of public space.” She noted that cities are judged on how they support their most vulnerable citizens: spaces like the pier, with easily accessible, interdisciplinary public programming, are another chance to boost educational outcomes alongside economic development.

From shipping to studios

In addition to an outdoor garden, exhibition areas, a bar and dining venues and a bazaar-like market for local artisans and vendors, the Cherry Street Pier will feature 14 artist studios representing a diverse range of local artists working in various mediums. According to DRWC, “The artist studios were intentionally created to be completely public facing so that all visitors could see how art is made, and so that the artists could meet and interact with new audiences.”

The studios themselves are built into converted shipping containers, which sit like giant building blocks on the south side of the pier, fitting in well with the repurposed industrial aesthetic. These small but adaptable rectangular rooms, each with their own lighting and electrical outlets, make versatile homes-away-from-home for resident artists.

In other words, visiting the pier means getting to watch the creative process as it unfolds and many opportunities, both formally and informally, to interact with the artists in residence in real time. The range of arts represented is comprehensive — from painters to filmmakers to fiber artists to poets to photographers to theater artists and multimedia artists. In addition to the artist studios, the pier was built with space for performances and exhibitions. You can check out the first artist cohort and learn more about each of them here.

Festival for the People

There are lots of reasons to come check out the new pier — and during the next three weeks, The Festival for the People, focused on what contemporary art can be, will be a special draw. It’s happening on Cherry Street Pier and Race Street Pier, right next door. Installations, videos, and live events will be organized by three weekend themes: analog culture (October 13-14), embodied culture (October 20-21), and digital culture (October 27-28). A huge range of special programming will run from 1pm to 7pm on each weekend day of the festival.