Dylan Gottlieb on Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and The

Gregory L. Heller. Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 320 pp. $39.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8122-4490-8. Reviewed by Dylan Gottlieb Published on H-Urban (September, 2013) Commissioned by Robert C. Chidester (The Mannik & Smith Group, Inc.) In the summer of 2002, Wesleyan University deed, in the following decades, Philadelphia trans‐ junior Gregory Heller sent Edmund Bacon--Phila‐ formed itself from a deindustrializing backwater delphia's foremost postwar planner--a letter. into a vibrant magnet for creative-class types. Soon, he was sharing lunch with the aging archi‐ While Bacon's analogues in New York (Robert tect, considering an offer to become Bacon's per‐ Moses) and Boston (Edward Logue) have been the sonal archivist. Before the check arrived, Heller subject of academic and popular histories--most had decided to take a year off from college to help notably Robert Caro's magisterial The Power Bro‐ Bacon write his memoirs. Heller was twenty. Ba‐ ker (1974)--Bacon and his hometown remain un‐ con was ninety-two. derstudied. Heller's book goes a long way towards Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building remedying that problem. of Modern Philadelphia is the product of that col‐ Bacon's chief talent, Heller argues, was not laboration. Equal parts history, biography, and ur‐ his architectural genius, but his ability to shep‐ ban planning case study, the book's timing is ide‐ herd plans through a maze of competing political al: It is among the frst full-length treatments of and community interests. This skill proved essen‐ Bacon, and one of only a handful of monographs tial, since Bacon never wielded absolute control on Philadelphia's postwar period. This is surpris‐ as Philadelphia's redevelopment czar. But in his ing, since the city was the locus of some of the twenty-one years as executive director of the City era's most imaginative and complex urban design Planning Commission, he learned to work the initiatives. As Heller writes, Philadelphia "se‐ levers of soft power: frequent media appearances, cur[ed] the second-most federal urban renewal celebratory public exhibitions, and back-channel funds, after New York City. In the mid-1960s, no wrangling proved just as effective as frontal as‐ city ... eclipse[d] Philadelphia's national renown saults on mayors and their administrations. Ulti‐ for its planning and redevelopment" (p. 2). In‐ mately, Heller holds up Bacon as a model for plan‐ H-Net Reviews ners and stakeholders looking to "glean important Bacon moved back east in the early 1940s. His insight on how to impact the implementation timing was felicitous: Philadelphia, like many old‐ process" (p. xiv). Today's urban policymakers er cities, was transitioning away from a system of might want to take a page from Bacon, especially political patronage and cronyism towards more his balancing of community, business, and politi‐ professionalized--even technocratic--forms of gov‐ cal interests. Bacon's life--and this book--are best ernance. The new urban liberalism required understood, then, as a fruitful case study for an scores of planners and bureaucrats; Bacon and a audience of planners. Other readers (particularly cohort of New Deal veterans answered the call. As academic historians) should expect neither a rich‐ part of the newly created City Planning Commis‐ ly textured story of one man's life nor a compre‐ sion, Bacon faced his frst challenge: developing hensive and authoritative history of postwar Phil‐ appealing housing for urbanites who would oth‐ adelphia. Nor will they fnd any traces of the erwise have forsaken the city for the suburbs. One Sturm und Drang of social history--or, for that early attempt, in Philadelphia’s booming Far matter, a particularly deep engagement with is‐ Northeast, was envisioned as a creative redesign sues of race, class, and gender. Those concerns of the subdivision. As Heller describes, Bacon aside, Ed Bacon is a worthwhile addition to our "borrowed the best elements of the urban grid understanding of city planning, institutional poli‐ system--rowhouses, walkability, sense of commu‐ tics, and urban redevelopment. nity, predictable system of streets--and combined Heller opens with a bildungsroman of Bacon's them with new planning principles that limited formative years: a middle-class childhood in West traffic fow in residential areas and preserved the Philadelphia; an architecture degree at Cornell; a environment" (p. 79). Bacon conserved natural trip to Shanghai in 1933; the early mentorship of streambeds and woodlands. He arrayed single- designers Oskar Stonorov, Eliel Saarinen, and family homes tightly, preserving a human sense of Lewis Mumford. Bacon came of age at the height scale. But private developers who worked with of the New Deal. Local and state governments the city soon balked; they refused to tailor their were fush with federal funds, and the planning new shopping centers to pedestrians. Momentum profession was beginning to assert itself as a force for a mass transit extension also fagged. The for social betterment. The transatlantic exchange Northeast, like Philadelphia’s suburbs, tied its fate of modernist ideals was in full swing; urban de‐ ever more tightly to the automobile. signers in Europe and North America were begin‐ In the 1950s, Bacon tried other gambits to ning to turn their attention towards public health, staunch the exodus of people and capital from crime, inner-city poverty, and disorder. Bacon's Center City. Penn Center, modeled on Rockefeller first project, in Flint, Michigan, was a series of Center in New York, was planned as a subter‐ WPA-funded studies that explored strategies for ranean marketplace and transit hub connected to downtown renewal. Drawing inspiration from the a stand of imposing glass office towers. Bacon Garden Cities movement and its Radburn princi‐ conceived the project as a public-private partner‐ ples--which championed a utopian vision of ship: Philadelphia Railroad, who owned the land, planned communities equally suitable for pedes‐ would provide fnancing; his office would pro‐ trians and cars--Bacon made the case for urban- mote and steer the development. Yet Bacon quick‐ style growth. Over the course of his career, he ly realized that the city government was in "a would struggle to juggle the same competing im‐ weak position … in dealing with private develop‐ peratives: automobiles against people, freeways ers and the business community" (p. 114). As costs versus sidewalks. mounted, his dreams of building a soaring monu‐ ment to civic life were dashed. Bacon was chas‐ 2 H-Net Reviews tened by the experience, concluding "in the end, without leaving the city. Others were less san‐ the city lacked real tools for enacting the public guine about the project. Local journalist Sidney good" (p. 114). Yet all was not lost: Even if Penn Hopkins, reflecting on Eastwick in Greater Phila‐ Center's viaducts remain riddled with vacancies, delphia Magazine in November 1964, jibed that it Bacon's scheme opened up Market Street for a "would not only siphon off the black overflow but skyscraper boom that arrived in the 1980s and would be a low visibility cul-de-sac into which the 90s. burgeoning Negro population could be stuffed."[1] More successful than Penn Center was Ba‐ The area's current occupants were also less than con's redevelopment of the Society Hill neighbor‐ enthused. From 1955 onwards, a multiracial coali‐ hood. In the postwar years, the historic environs tion of neighbors fought the city's redevelopment near Independence Hall had fallen to shambles. plans, arguing that the area was already integrat‐ Many knew it as the "Bloody Fifth Ward," infa‐ ed and by no means a slum. Unfortunately, the mous city-wide as "a violent slum" (p. 117). Yet Ba‐ nuances of this dialectic between city planners con grasped its unseen promise: he wanted to re‐ and residents get lost in Heller's telling. Relying store the colonial quarter, tempting middle-class on government documents, Bacon's letters, and a residents back from the suburbs. His plan gave smattering of newspapers, the narrative does lit‐ prospective homeowners fnancial incentives to tle to recover the voices of ordinary citizens[2] In fix up any home to its "authentic" historic appear‐ all, Heller's account of the Eastwick episode gives ance. Structures built later in the nineteenth and us a captivating glimpse of midcentury urban in‐ twentieth centuries--regardless of their architec‐ stitutional decision making. However, it falls tural value--were destroyed and replaced by mod‐ short as a feshed-out reckoning of Philadelphia's ernist row homes, clad in glass and brick. The ag‐ struggles over race and housing during the 1950s ing waterfront Dock Street Market was also lev‐ and 60s. For that, readers should refer to Matthew eled to build three sleek residential towers de‐ Countryman's Up South: Civil Rights and Black signed by I.M. Pei. By the 1970s, an influx of new, Power in Philadelphia (2006) and John F. Bau‐ mostly white owners moved in. However, their man's Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban arrival--and rapidly rising property values-- Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (1987). pushed out the neighborhood's long-standing In truth, Bacon never wholly embraced the African American renting population. (Later in sort of radical redevelopment later derided as the decade, pathbreaking Marxist geographer Neil "Negro removal." Instead he clung to idealistic no‐ Smith examined the gentrification of Society Hill; tions of racial tolerance and diversity--even if it Smith goes uncited in Heller's chapter.) meant stopping short of full integration. Sadly, The mid-1950s redevelopment of the Eastwick Heller fails to spend much time contemplating Ba‐ area--a racially integrated, working-class neigh‐ con's prejudices and assumptions.

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