Public 'art' to become SEPTA bus station

The public art project at 40th and Locust streets will be replicated and turned into numerous SEPTA bus stops next week, city officials announced yesterday.

Officials plan to install the SEPTA stops at locations such as College Green and outside Huntsman Hall.

So many people mistook the metal sculpture -- called Plateau -- for a bus waiting area that SEPTA decided to add versions of it as stops on a few West Philadelphia routes.

SEPTA spokesman Jason Gornitzky said that creating the stops will relieve overflow from several other busy stations near campus.

Plateau "is too perfect of a structure to not turn into a bus station," Gornitzky said. "It has the look and feel of public transportation, and with a little bit of advertising on it, you could have one sweet bus stop."

Plateau was completed in January and is the brainchild of New York artist Andrea Blum.

Blum said that she got the original idea for the piece from "mixing my mashed potatoes and forks and knives at lunch in the eighth grade."

While her artistic vision originally intended the piece to be a "meeting place" for students, community members and homeless people, Blum said she was pleased to turn the sculpture over to SEPTA.

"I always knew others would appreciate Plateau, and this is proof that modern art is not a sham," Blum said.

As payment, Blum will receive an undisclosed sum of money from SEPTA, as well as a lifetime supply of "Scent of Subway," the agency's trademarked cologne.

Several SEPTA regulars said they were eager to see the sculpture converted to a bus stop.

"I sit there five days a week and the bus doesn't come," West Philadelphia resident Aleksandra Markovich said. "My kids have to wait for me at home because I'm always late. It was so confusing."

But some city officials say the art is so revolutionary and thought-provoking that it should be preserved as a historical landmark.

The Philadelphia Society of Landmarks lobbied for a bill in City Council that would prevent any construction around Plateau for the next 100 years. It would also mandate that Penn install multiple copies of the sculpture around its campus within the next six months.

"Everything SEPTA touches turns to smelly sewer water; the last thing we need is a vile, cigarette-filled, ad-crazy bus stop," PSL Director Rachel Senturia said. "We really just want Plateau to be everywhere, so everyone can take in its glory."

The bill is currently backlogged in City Council while Philadelphia Mayor John Street plans to end homelessness.

SEPTA representatives said they will go ahead with their plan regardless of any City Council measures. Renovations on Plateau are set to begin next month.

As the debate between SEPTA and PLS rages on, Penn students pretty uniformly hate what they call "that metal thing across from Greek Lady," according to College senior Scott Ricketts.

"I hate Plateau almost as much as I hate the girls I used to live with -- one of them even tried to steal my microwave," College sophomore Susanna Flower said. "I hope SEPTA bulldozes it. Or them."

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