To control the mood, Harrah's also insists on piping a strange droning music onto the slots floor. The ceaseless, atonal hum interferes with normal human conversation and sounds like a bad imitation of a Philip Glass composition. Not that the buzzing seems to bother the slots players, who keep their own internal time by patting the square play button on their machines.
Even though there's a nice variety of restaurants on the perimeter of the gaming floor - announced by loopy, Rat Pack- era typefaces - the majority of the tables stood empty Saturday night. Don't the players break from their rote exercise to eat?
Harrah's, which debuted in January, is the first purpose-built slots parlor to open in the Philadelphia area since the state legalized gambling in 2004. Though Philadelphia Park racetrack in Bensalem was also allowed to install slots, it's the newly minted Harrah's that offers a glimpse of what is in store for the city if two approved casinos, SugarHouse and Foxwoods, are built as planned on the Delaware. While neither will include a horse track, both will feature an identical program: 3,000 slot machines, an eight-story garage, one white-tablecloth restaurant, a range of budget dining, and a couple of bars.
The $420 million Harrah's building, designed by the Atlantic City casino specialists Sykes O'Connor Salerno Hazaveh, does offer some unexpectedly good architectural moments. The soaring glass wall at the high-end Cove restaurant is so sheer and effortless, it nearly melts into the sky. Held in place by a few metal clamps, the curtain wall utilizes the same system as the Apple store's new glass cube on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.
