The Father of Modern Philadelphia
Edmund Bacon and the (un)making of a city
The following excerpt is a nonfiction essay from Christopher Pierznik’s newest book, Philadelphia, a collection of stories, essays, and other tidbits related to the nation’s fifth-largest city now available now in paperback and Kindle.
“By the year 2009, no part of Philadelphia is ugly or depressed.”
- Edmund Bacon (1959)
From our first breaths and our first steps, our parents are there with us. They are the ones nurturing, teaching, providing, and illuminating the path. They are the ones that we look up to, the ones with all the answers. As such, it’s not easy to admit that parents aren’t perfect. We always know this to be true, of course. We hear our mother apologize for a mistake or our father tell us how he was wrong about something he was so sure about, but it still never dawns on us that they could be making huge, sweeping mistakes that can negatively impact us for decades.
The same is true for parents of cities, so it’s fitting that the “Father of Modern Philadelphia” will be known for his children, both personally and professionally. The father of six children, including actor Kevin Bacon, Edmund Bacon was also the patriarch for the City of Brotherly Love, serving as Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for over two decades from 1949 to 1970. During this post-war boom, Bacon was hailed, along with Robert Moses in New York City, and Edward Logue in Boston, as architects of the era of urban revitalization, to the point that he was even featured on the cover of TIME on November 6, 1964, with the headline “Urban Renewal: Remaking the American City.”
Bacon has been credited for doing wonders for the city in the years after World War II. He believed in the timelessness of the brick row house and oversaw the preservation of Society Hill while also dreaming up the blueprints for what would eventually become Independence Mall, JFK Plaza, and Penn Center. He vociferously believed in the power of the American city and defended its virtues to any and all that were willing to listen (and even to those that were not very willing).
With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is becoming clear that his big ideas were doomed by both the faith he had in himself and his work as well as his inability to see how the city — and the world — was changing. “What Edmund Bacon never fully grasped,” University of Virginia professor Guian McKee wrote, “was that in the complexity of urban reality, design itself could be an instrument of destruction as well as salvation.” He claimed to value citizen input — and there are various accounts that seem to prove he actually listened — but he oversaw the city within a hierarchical structure that allowed him to think big ideas and have others implement them without much pushback (unless it was financial). This produced mixed results.
His decisions generally benefited Philadelphia in the present, but doomed it for the future. He made two enormous errors in judgment that stunted the city’s progress and have only become more glaring with each passing year. First, he was vehemently opposed to any building eclipsing the top of the William Penn statue above City Hall, becoming a major force in the “gentleman’s agreement” that kept all buildings under the watchful eye of Penn. This led to an exodus of business as companies that longed for offices that would dot the sky fled to more hospitable cities like New York and DC to build their skyscrapers. This continued until 1985, when those in charge finally realized that to compete with other cities City Hall could no longer be the tallest structure and plans for Liberty Place were approved, and by that point the city was already decades behind and has yet to catch up.
(Two interesting notes about the historic 1985 groundbreaking of what would become Liberty Place: (1) though he lost the fight, Bacon did show up and took part in the ceremony, a classy thing to do; and (2) the event took place the same day as the MOVE bombing. Leave it to Philly to offset a medium step forward with an enormous step backwards.)
Bacon’s other major miscalculation was actually several errors rolled into one. He believed strongly in the power of the automobile and, as such, supported a plan to encircle Center City in a series a four highways, a plan he inherited from his predecessor Robert Mitchell. Three of them were built and now the city is suffering because of it — fortunately, the fourth, the Crosstown Expressay (I-695) never materialized. They’re all bad — the Schyulkill Expressway (I-76) was obsolete before it was completed, primarily because it is situated between a mountain and a river, and though the Vine Street Expressway (I-676) is thankfully much less obtrusive than originally designed, it still bisects the center of downtown — but the Delaware Expressway (I-95) is by far the worst and the one that has hurt Philly the most.
A concrete monstrosity that runs along the city’s eastern edge, “I-95 acts as a physical and psychological barrier. In Center City, a sunken 10-lane segment forms a 380-foot canyon separating Penn’s Landing from Old City. In Northern Liberties, the road and its ramps present a concrete wall, blocking both access and views. And in South Philadelphia, Kensington and Port Richmond, I-95 runs on an elevated viaduct supported by concrete pilings. Traffic flows beneath, but the highway’s dank underbelly discourages strollers and decimates the value of nearby homes.”
Though he was warned of the havoc and headaches 95 would cause,especially along the waterfront, Bacon was adamant that an expressway was the most important element to the growth of the city, particularly since he failed to recognize changes in the economy and society as manufacturing and factory became extinct just as urban blight began to take hold. He believed it would be the car that would dictate everything, not gentrification or brunch or casinos. In short, “Bacon was wrong…No other factor has shaped the fate of Penn’s Landing over the last three decades as much as the construction of the Center City portion of I-95, completed in 1979.”
I once believed that the rule dictating that no building could be taller than City Hall is what led to Philadelphia’s mid-to-late 20th Century decline, but I now see that the shuttering of factories combined with white flight that was really the leading cause. However, that was true in many areas. In truth, it was the construction of those expressways, especially I-95, that doomed the city, not only the waterfront or Penns Landing or Port Richmond, but all of it. They could always build skyscrapers and they did — putting them all behind Penn so that it remained a fun little factoid about the city and its founder still gazing at where he arrived. Businesses and residents could always return and they have, albeit in different forms. These were mistakes and problems with solutions. Thus far, the same cannot be said for 76 and 95. Those are two heavily traveled thoroughfares that cannot simply be destroyed or replaced or, in the case of 95, covered up easily. Walking from Old City to the water necessitates crossing over a noisy, ugly highway via walking bridges that are fine, but not exactly beautiful and the city either can’t or won’t cover up most of it, even though the original plan was to cover six blocks from Pine Street north to Arch with buildings and parks so that the highway would barely be noticed. Now that millennials and retirees have brought cash back to the city, spurring the first population growth in a half-century, and have shunned their cars for other forms of transit, many people are wondering what can be done to minimize the issues — both practically and aesthetically — that these concrete boulevards bring.
Fathers often believe they know what is best and some even try to dictate the path that their children will take over the course of their lives, but each child is an individual with his or her own thoughts, feelings, ideas, and plans, some of which may interfere with those of their parents. Edmund Bacon believed the automobile signaled the future of Philadelphia and felt that he knew what was best for the city. His children and grandchildren, however, are determined to forge their own path.
Christopher Pierznik is the author of seven books, all of which can be purchased in Paperback, Kindle and Nook. A former feature contributor and managing editor of I Hate JJ Redick, he has written for a variety of other sites including XXL.com. He works in finance and spends his evenings reading and drinking craft beer. His dream is to be a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. You can like his Facebook page here and follow him on Twitter here.
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