DAG's Submission to the Roundhouse Symposium - The Roundhouse Reimagined: A new life for The Roundhouse: An opportunity for a New, Intercity Bus Station

Presented at the recent Save the Roundhouse Symposium, hosted by the Preservation Alliance and Docomomo Philadelphia, our proposal reimagines the historic Philadelphia Roundhouse as a cultural, transit, and pedestrian hub — reconnecting Chinatown to the Historic District along Race Street.

THE ROUNDHOUSE, REDEVELOPED INTO A CULTURAL AND TRANSIT HUB

A cultural, transit, and pedestrian connector, the Roundhouse, reimagined as part of a mixed-use development including Philadelphia’s interstate bus station will serve as a magnet for activity and help to link Chinatown to the Historic District along Race Street. 

Located proximate to I-676 and I-95, and already owned by the City of Philadelphia, the site is an ideal candidate for redevelopment as a bus station. 

Once the perimeter walls are torn down, the round east and west spaces will offer the transparency and interaction between the building and the street that has been lacking throughout the building's life. Between those prominent corners and the proposed lobby pavilion and gallery/connector, the re-imagined Roundhouse can provide Philadelphia with a wonderful new cultural asset, partnered with a critically needed bus station and dense multi-family housing. 

Culture Hub 

It is a tragedy that Philadelphia, our nation’s most historic city, does not have an active city museum. We are all deprived following the closure of the Atwater Kent. Elsewhere on this extended site, the African American Museum is looking for a new, upgraded facility after plans on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway fell through. 

Blocks away, members of the Chinatown community have looked to the old Greyhound Bus Station as the site of a future Cultural Center as part of “The People’s Vision for Market East”. Each of these three, or some combination thereof, could repurpose the Roundhouse into an institutional space for positive equitable change, taking what is an important and beautifully constructed piece of architecture and transforming its legacy. 

Bringing the front door closer to Race Street via a new lobby pavilion and opening the western end of the building creates multiple generous entry points, and discreet lobbies, allowing for a multi-use occupancy on the upper floors. These improved and highly transparent uses, along with a shared indoor/outdoor café in the eastern section of the ground floor plan would create much needed activation of the building’s entire street frontage. 

Central to this proposal is the desire to create thriving third spaces where everyone, including neighbors, tourists and residents can gather informally and as part of programmed activities spread across the site from the external park spaces to the terraced café, and the gallery/connector space connecting the Roundhouse to the bus station. 

Bus Station 

When he met with the DAG community in March of 2025, Jessie Lawrence, the city’s director of planning and development, accurately described the arrival to any transit hub, like a bus station, airport or train station as a visitor’s handshake with a new city. 

He’s right. Buses serve a significant swath of the population from long-distance travelers to those looking to make quick trips up and down the Northeast Corridor, and everyone in between. We have world-class facilities at Philadelphia International Airport and 30th Street Station. Continuing with stop gap measures that lack humanity for bus travelers is not an option. 

We have studied many sites, as have others. For any bus terminal to be successful, we believe that the primary criteria that must be met are: 

1. Minimal travel distance between the interstate highway system and the site, limiting city street disturbance and congestion. 

2. Proximity to additional public transit options, such as regional rail, subway, and city bus routes. 

3. The ability to provide the critical amenities, such as restrooms, shelter, food and beverage, and storage lockers. 

Such sites exist, with the city-owned Roundhouse as a prime example. With a global focus on Philadelphia right around the corner, Philadelphia could move bus operations to the Roundhouse in the short term (Phase 1) with minimal work to repave the parking lot and clean up building’s interior, while a longer-term, mixed-use development strategy including a terminal (Phase 2), like the one we have proposed, will provide bus passengers with comfort and dignity, and Philadelphia with a vital piece of infrastructure of which we can be proud. 

With Philadelphia looking forward to hosting the world next year for our nation’s 250th anniversary, any solution that resembles the current conditions on Spring Garden Street where visitors who arrive by bus and are dumped onto a remote sidewalk is unacceptable. That is no way to welcome someone to Philadelphia and hardly the handshake we should be extending as we look to show off the best of our city. 

To keep the focus on cultural uses and maintain the levels of transparency and activity, the location of the bus station is proposed beneath the new mixed-use development, not in the Roundhouse proper, providing a separation of uses, though with significant mixing of visitors in the lobby pavilion and gallery/connector. 

Race Street as a Connector 

As part of the reuse of the Roundhouse, a critical eye must also be turned to Race Street which, even after recent improvements, including the addition of a protected bike lane, still serves as a high speed on ramp for I-676 and I-95. With Chinatown and the Historic District less than two blocks away in either direction and Franklin Square caddy-corner to the site, an additional road diet, including increased focus on pedestrian crossings on the three-block stretch of Race Street from 6th to 9th Streets. 

Between the recently opened PATCO Station, Chinatown Station, and access down 8th Street to the L (former Market-Frankford Line), the site is well served by transit and easily accessed. Locating the bus station entry at the corner of 8th and Cherry Streets was intentional to position a major access point where traffic flow from the south, including Market East, would make it easily encountered, while also providing easy access from the north, through the main Roundhouse doors. 

By locating the bus station in the new mixed-use development at the rear of the site, Cherry Street maintains its use as a small, service street, both for buses to the north, but also as a back of house service space to additional future development on the lot to the south. 

Transforming the Roundhouse’s Legacy 

In redeveloping the Roundhouse, our strategy acknowledges the building’s traumatic legacy and uses it as a starting point to return the narrative to the communities that were most harmed by its presence. Once a fortress-like symbol of police brutality, systemic racism, and displacement, the Roundhouse can be reimagined as a space of healing, accountability, community and advancement — transforming a site of trauma into one of reconciliation and progress. 

Special thanks to Owen Sacco and LRK, including 2024 summer interns Yuan Ji and Iris Chen. 

The DAG Steering Committee 

To read more about the symposium, visit the following links to the related Billy Penn article by Meir Rinde highlighting our work, and to the Save the Roundhouse website, where all submissions can be viewed.

Billy Penn Article - CLICK HERE

Save the Roundhouse Symposium Submissions - CLICK HERE