Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City PDF
Preview Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City
Imagining Philadelphia This page intentionally left blank Imagining Philadelphia Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City Edited by Scott Gabriel Knowles UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Philadelphia Copyright(cid:1)2009UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsusedforpurposesofrevieworscholarly citation,noneofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformbyanymeanswithoutwritten permissionfromthepublisher. Publishedby UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4112 PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData ImaginingPhiladelphia:EdmundBaconandthefutureofthecity/editedbyScott GabrielKnowles. p. cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-0-8122-2078-0(alk.paper) Includesindex 1.Cityplanning—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia—History—20thcentury. 2.Philadelphia(Pa.)—Forecasting. 3.Bacon,EdmundN. 4.Bacon,EdmundN.— Politicalandsocialviews. 5.Cityplanners—Pennsylvania—Philadelphia—Biography. 6.PhiladelphiaCityPlanningCommission—Biography. 7.Cityplanning—United States—Casestudies. I.Knowles,ScottGabriel. HT168.P43E56 2009 307.1(cid:1)21609748110904—dc22 2009008430 Contents Introduction:RevisitingEdmundBacon’sVisionfortheCity 1 1. PhiladelphiaintheYear2009 8 Edmund N. Bacon 2. SalesmanofIdeas:TheLifeExperiencesThatShapedEdmund Bacon 19 Gregory L. Heller 3. AUtopian,aUtopianist,orWhatevertheHeckItIs:EdmundBacon andtheComplexityoftheCity 52 Guian McKee 4. StayingTooLongattheFair:PhiladelphiaPlanningandtheDebacle of1976 78 Scott Gabriel Knowles 5. PhiladelphiaintheYear2059 112 Harris M. Steinberg Afterword 145 Eugenie L. Birch Notes 151 ListofContributors 171 Index 173 Acknowledgments 177 This page intentionally left blank Introduction: Revisiting Edmund Bacon’s Vision for the City When Philadelphia’s iconoclastic City Planning Commission director Edmund Bacon looked into his crystal ball in 1959—imagining his city fiftyyearsinthefuture—hesawaremarkablevision,Philadelphiatrans- formedinto‘‘anunmatchedexpressionofthevitalityofAmericantech- nology and culture.’’ In that year, Bacon painted a word picture in an essayforGreaterPhiladelphiaMagazine,‘‘Tomorrow:AFairCanPaceIt,’’ originally titled ‘‘Philadelphia in the Year 2009.’’1 He saw a vision of a city remade in time to host the 1976 Philadelphia World’s Fair—an eventthatwouldnecessarilytakeplacealongsidethenationalBicenten- nial celebration of that year. Basing his optimism on the success of the Better Philadelphia Exhibition of 1947 and his knowledge of previous world’s fairs, he was undertaking one of the great sales pitches of his longcareer:theBicentennialandaPhiladelphiaWorld’sFairascatalysts foragoldenageofurbanrenewalinamajorAmericancity.WhatBacon did not predict was that Philadelphia was about to enter a long, bitter period of economic decline, population dispersal to the suburbs, and racialconfrontationandviolence,andthatby1976thenationwouldbe farlessinclinedthanusualtocelebrate,withthememoriesofWatergate and Vietnam still fresh. As such, Bacon’s ‘‘2009’’ essay comes to us as a time capsule, a message from one of the city’s most influential and controversialshapers,openingthewaytodiscussionsofwhatmighthave beenandhowcertainpiecesof Bacon’svisionhaveinfactmaterialized intheinterveninghalfcentury. ‘‘Philadelphia in the Year 2009’’ opens with a brief history lesson, a paeantothelong-lastinggeniusofQuakerfounderWilliamPenn’sgrid designforthecity.ThenBacondeliversusto thecityofthe future,the Philadelphiahepredictscanandmustrisefromapost-Depression,post- war inertia—from the old industrial city. Among the many projects he describesintheessayareWashingtonSquareEast,‘‘buttressedbyacon- tinuous band of good housing extending from the Delaware to the SchuylkillRiver,’’andtheDelawareRiverMarina,‘‘amagnetforvisitors ...thepointofdepartureforthelaunchesthattakevisitorstotheNavy Figure1. MapofPhiladelphiabyThomasHolmeandWilliamPenn,1683.CourtesyoftheRareBookandManuscriptLibrary, UniversityofPennsylvania. Figure2. Mapofproposed1976PhiladelphiaWorld’sFairGrounds,PhiladelphiaCityPlanningCommission,1964. CourtesyoftheArchitecturalArchivesoftheUniversityofPennsylvania.
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