10 February 2015

Big ship gets some big money


Bob Stewart has an article in the Philadelphia Daily News about a local icon:
A South Philadelphia resident since 1996, the record-setting, iconic ocean liner SS United States (photo) constantly needs funding to stay afloat. Well, an anonymous donor just buoyed it with $250,000.
"We're singing from the rooftops, or whatever a maritime version of that would be," Susan Gibbs, executive director of the SS United States Conservancy, said yesterday.
The massive ship (it's as long as the Comcast Center is tall) remains docked at Pier 82 on the Delaware River. The owners constantly stave off the threat of the ship being scrapped. The monthly maintenance costs are around $80,000.
Gibbs believes that donations like this could spur more of the same. "Some potential donors may have been sitting on the sidelines worried about what direction we were going," she said. "We're keeping our fingers crossed. We have momentum building."
The donation comes on the heels of a preliminary redevelopment agreement announced in December of 2014, which provided three months' worth of funding.
Initially the funds will be used to develop a shipboard museum. But the organization has other plans, Gibbs said, including "digitizing records, like passenger logs, to tell the ship's story."
There have been questions about where the ship may end up if it is fully restored. Gibbs told the Daily News last year that "the leading prospects are in New York City."
"No specific site has been determined," Gibbs said yesterday, acknowledging that some Philadelphians have "firsthand ties to the ship." Gibbs' grandfather, William Francis Gibbs, a Philadelphia native, designed the ship.
For now, the group is exploring locations for another temporary exhibition similar to the one it had last summer at the Independence Seaport Museum at Penn's Landing.
As for why someone would want to remain anonymous in donating to the cause, Gibbs said she does not know and it does not matter. "Some people just want to do nice things without getting recognition," she said. "But people are posting 'God bless anonymous' on my Facebook page."
Rico says that's a nice (if anonymous) thing to do.

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