"Holding the Line AgainstPhiladelphia": Business,Suburban Change, and the Main Line's SuburbanSquare, 1926.-1950 StephanieDyer* DepartmentofHistory UniversifyofPennfylvania In recentyears, business historians have been grumbling about their marginalitywithin the historicalprofession, issuing rallying cries to integrate businessback into the main narrativesof history[Galambos, 1992]. Kenneth Lipartito'swell-known clirective to situatestudies of businesswithin their culturalcontext [Lipartito, 1995], thus bypassing the stmctural-functionalism thathas long dominated the subfield, is a necessarycorrective which should go a longway towards putting business historians on thesame page with trends in othersubfields of history.Lipartito's suggestion that business historians study the constructionand articulation of meaningsnegotiated by socialactors - of whichthe firm is just one player- bringsbusiness history directly in contact withthe consumers, workers, politicians, families, social groups and institutions thatpopulate the generalnarratives of history.In placeof the firm, he posits the studyof the marketas a siteof meaningmaking as a promisingapproach for thefuture of businesshistory. In additionto beingsites of discursivestraggles over meaning, markets have a literal materialdimension in that they are locatedin space.Phih'p Scranton'srecent outline of spatialtheory [Scranton,1996] recountshow economicgeographers view space as a variablealongside culture, politics, and economicsin the dynamismof socialprocesses - an approachwhich could provefruitful to businesshistorians who rarelyforeground spatial relations in theirwork. Among historians, the dialecticof spatialityand social rehtions has longbeen a standardtrope within urban history, whose case studies focus on the contestationand negotiationover meaning among various actors within a givenspatial unit such as city, neighborhood, community, parish, or region.Yet marketsare spatial units rarely used within urban history; as a consequence,the role of businessactors in shapingurban space has been relatively neglected

* Thispaper is drawnfrom a chapterof mydissertation, tentatively rifled "Decentering the ConsumerCity: The Business,Politics and Cultureof Retailingand ShoppingCenter Developmentin MetropolitanPhiladelphia, 1922-1980." Thanks to MichaelKatz, Roger Horowitzand John Smolenski for theircomments and adviceon this version,and to the HagleyLibrary for financiallysupporting this research. BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC HISTORY, VolumeTwenty-seven, no.2 Winter1998. Copyright¸1998 by theBusiness History Conference. ISSN 0894-6825.

279 280 / STEPHANIE DYER withinthe field.•Taking a cue from Liparfitoand Scranton,I believethat marketis a categorythat should be addedto thislist - a unitof analysisthat is crucialfor understanding therole of businessasagent in theurban environment. The followingis my attemptto writean urbanhistory that putsthe spatialconstruction and meaningof a marketat the centerof its narrative.I havechosen to followSally Clarke's lead in puttingintermediaries between businessand the broadersociety at the centerof my narrative- thosewho effectivelyserve as the culturaltranslators between the consumers'world and thatof the firm [Clarke,1997]. Within the category of businessintermediaries that havehad a demonstrableeffect on the urbanenvironment, few can com- pareto shoppingcenters - businesseswhich exist in consumerspace, whose primaryrole is to shapeand satisfy consumer demand. To a degreethat urban historiansare only now beginning to appreciate,shopping centers have served as primevehicles behind the transitionto a "post-urban"hAndscape in the twentiethcentury , the growthof whichhas been fueled by the continualmigration of fLrms,capital, and laboroutward from urbancentral businessdistricts [Cohen, 1996; Hanchett, 1996; Jackson, 1996]. Thus far, urbanhistorians have recognized shopping centers as part of an abstract economictransformation that shaped the landscape rather than a transformation in culturaland spatial meanings of markets.But as the first large-scale commercial developmentsin suburbanareas, developers, managers and storepersonnel were key prayers in transformingthe home/commercedivide thatdefined the cultural and spatial meaning of suburbia,allowing for an infusion of commerceinto suburban areas that created the modern American hAndscape.

A ShoppingCenter Growsin Suburbia

SuburbanSquare, a shoppingcenter located in the Main Line section outsideof ,serves as an importantearly example of thiscultural andspatial transformation, being one of thefirst shopping centers in thenation andthe first major center located outside the political boundaries of a largecity. As describedby RobertFishman [1987], the Main Line at the turn of the centurywas the model of the"classic railroad suburb," a bedroom community locatedalong the main line of thePennsylvania Railroad and wholly dependent on Philadelphia'seconomy for work and consumergoods. For muchof the nineteenthcentury, it hadbeen an areaof farmsand large country estates for Philadelphia'selite. Beginning in the 1870s,the PennsylvaniaRailroad and otherdevelopers began rampant hand speculation in the area, offering Philadel- phia'sprofessional class attractive houses on smallerparcels of landfor useas

• Outsidethe excellentwork of William Cronon [1991] and a few others,urban historianshave given short shdft to therole of businessin urbanprocesses, being content to presumea degreeof abstractionand unity of meaning,intent, and action among business actorsthey would nevertolerate for institutions,social groups, or other actors.Recent surveysof urbanhistory barely mention business as a concernfor the field [Gilfoyle,1998; Abbott, 1996;Hays, 1993]. HOLDING THE LINE AGAINST PHILADELPHIA / 281 theirprimary residences, which proved popular to thoseseeking a safehaven fromurban commercialism and social diversity. The popularizationof the auto- mobileby theearly twentieth century extended the reach of suburbandevelop- ment throughoutthe Main Line'scountyside. Population figures for Lower MerionTownship, the Main Line'spremier township and the areain which SuburbanSquare was established, illustrate the rapidgrowth of the MainLine: in 1870,the township's population was 4,886; by 1920,it hadincreased to 23,866.2 Where Philadelphia'sprofessional class went, the workingclass fol- lowed.The influxof suburbanitesinto the Main Line required the presence of a laborpool to providethe urban amenities demanded for suburbanstandards of living:greater employment of constructionworkers to buildhomes, servants to staffthem, and an ever-growingnumber of serviceand goods providers. The dramaticincrease of theseworkers necessitated developing lower-income housingdistricts in thevicinity for thosewho could not affordthe expensive regionalrail commutesfrom Philadelphia. This housing began clustering near the tramstation in the SouthArdmore section of LowerMerion Township, alongsidean increasing number of smallbusinesses such as groceries, laundry, tailoring,and shoerepair shops. By 1922,26% of new constructionin the townshipwent to stores,apartments, and twin homes for thesevarious service providers,and the SouthArdmore section began developing a distinctly commercialcharacter and urbanlevels of populationdensity and traffic congestion) Ironically,the material realities of suburbanexistence demanding urban levelsof consumptionincreasingly came into conflict with suburbanites' long- standingcultural ideas of separatinghome from commerce.Lower Merion Townshipsuburbanites became increasingly worried about the rapid growth of theSouth Ardmore commercial district near their affluent neighborhoods. The growingdisjunction between their culturalimage of suburbiaand the com- mercialgrowth it spawnedgalvanized suburbanites to actively try to shapethe landscapeto meettheir image of bucolicresidential splendor. In 1919,the Main LineCitizens Association invited city planner Frederick Law Olmsted,Jr. to evaluatethe necessityof planningin LowerMerion. Olmsted's report raised concemsfor the futureof the MainLine as a high-classresidential district in the wakeof continuingcommercial growth and recommended zoning and planningfor the area as urgentlyneeded. 4 Lower Merion residentsand politicianswasted no time in actingon Olmsted's recommendations; assoon as the StateLegislature empowered townships to regulatedevelopment, they leapedon the opportunity,enacting building codes in 1919and creating a zoningcommission to draft an ordinancein 1923. Residentsdiscussed the possibilityof townshipplanning throughout the 1920s,long before it became legalin 1929in thestate of .

U.S.Population Census 1870, 1920. Bureauof MunicipalResearch, The Government ofLmverMerion To•2nship (Philadelphia, 1922). Ibid. 282 / STEPHANIE DYER

Residentsand politicians weren't the only forces actively trying to plan and shapethe township'sfuture. In 1926,a realestate syndicate consisting mostlyof Main Line businessmenin the fieldsof realestate, banking, and financebegan laying plans for a shoppingcenter near the growingSouth Ardmorecommercial district. They acquired a 7-acretract, the Dixon estate, just north of the Ardmoretrain station.They planneda fully diversified collectionof shopsand services,including a bank,post office,telephone company,food markets, retail stores, a departmentstore, professional offices, anda movietheater - in all, 52 storesin theoriginal plans. While the diversity of shopsin the centermay seem familiar, other elements were quite different from shoppingcenters of the postwarperiod. Unlike the familiardesign of a freestandingbuilding with interiormalls, this shoppingcenter replicated the layoutof a downtownstreet, complete with an eight-storyoffice building - a veritableskyscraper in the low-lyingfarmland of LowerMetion Township) The syndicateplanned to constructindividual buildings block-by-block, expandingit in phasesover a numberof years,and approachingindividual firmsto join the centeras buildingspace became available. Unlike the highly visiblepromotional strategies of the postwarshopping centers, the syndicate madeno attemptto identifythe development asa discreetcommercial center; it lackeda unifyingname, conducted no advertisingcampaigns in eithertrade or commercialpublications, and held no promotionalevents. The piecemealnature of thecenter's development, in conjunctionwith a lackof promotionalactivity from the syndicate, ensured that no oneoutside the syndicateand the township building inspector knew the extent of theixplans. 6 Nonetheless,the shoppingcenter buildings presumably would have attracted attention becauseof their location at the entrance to North Ardmore, a neighborhoodof affluent estatesand large homes borderingon South Ardmore.By the mid-1920s,commercial development in North Ardmore becamea hot-buttonissue when a scatteringof storesand gas stations began croppingup alongits highways over the objections of arearesidents. 7 Since the township'szoning ordinancewas not completeduntil 1927, no legal mechanismexisted for curtailingspot commercialgrowth, of which the shoppingcenter's buildings would seem merely another example. By the time the townshipzoning maps were finalized,they reflectedconditions of boundarymixing in North Ardmorethat violatedthe intendedcategorical

s UnlikeRichard Longstreth [1997, 1997a], who seesSuburban Square as a community- sizeshopping center, I will arguehere that the centerwas intended to serveas a regional center,though lacking in sizeby the definitionsof shoppingcenter categories developed in thepostwar period [Baker & Funaro,1951]. 6Newspaper retrospectives have pointed to majorconflicts over the shopping center in the 1920s[Main l_•'ne Times ca. February 1950, Pht7ade•hia Inquirer ca. 1979, Suburban Square clippingsfile, HistoricalSociety of LowerMetion Township, PAl but I havefound no evidenceof sucha high-profileconflict in localnewspapers or public records from the 1920s. 7 In a 1926appeal, PA SuperiorCourt disallowed the useof the existingTownship buildingcode to regulateanything beyond building materials and construction,thus necessitatinga zoning ordinance to engagein suchregulation [Our Town, Nov. 27, 1926]. HOLDING THE LINE AGAINST PHILADELPHIA / 283 homogeneityof zoning, listing the shopping center property as a commercial zone within a residential zone.

Public Relations,Public Meanings:Managing CulturalConffict Between Spaceand Market

It wasonly when Strawbridge & Clothier [hereafter S&C] announced in 1929that they would build a branchstore in theshopping center that public attentionfocused on thescale and scope of thedevelopment. The S&Cbranch wasthe firstundertaken by anyof Philadelphia'sdepartment stores; at 40,000 squarefeet (less than a quarterof theaverage anchor store in today'sshopping malls)it wasone of the largestand mostprestigious suburban department stores then in existence. The decision to build the branch wasn't at S&C's initiation,but ratherat the behestof the syndicate,which by then had incorporatedas the SuburbanCompany. Although S&C had considered changinglocations within center city Philadelphiaas earlyas 1922,the fir'm neverconsidered moving outside the city nor buildingbranches. Nonetheless, Philadelphiadepartment stores recognized as earlyas the 1920sthat their primarymarket of affluentPhiladelphians were leaving the city for thesuburbs, particularlythe Main Line [Lief,1968]. The SuburbanCompany's offer was a relativelycostess experiment in branchstore building that gave S&C an oudet in an areawith an existingconsumer base, provided the land, built the storeto suit,and charged only 2.5% of salesin rent.8 S&C agreedto join thecenter, as well as a similardevelopment the SuburbanCompany was planningin Jenkintown,a suburb north of Philadelphia. S&C'sarrival brought an unprecedenteddegree of publicawareness to the shoppingcenter that had unpredictable results. By the 1920s,department storeshad longutilized public relations and had evolvedvery sophisticated techniquesfor bringingpublic attention to theirrole in localareas. Philadelphia storeswere leadinginnovators in this;John Wanamaker pioneered the art of departmentstore public relations, developing a discourse on departmentstore managementas important civic leaders and the storesthemselves as centers of communityactivity that becamewidespread by the 1920s [Leach,1993; Fullerton,1990]. S&C, as Wanamaker's main competitor, developed their own versionof the civic discourse,presenting their Quakerfounders as honest, public-mindedbusinessmen who workedfor the commercialgrowth and communalbetterment of Philadelphia[Lief, 1968]. In theirpromotions for the MainLine branch, S&C simplytransported this civic discourse to the suburban locale,giving no considerationto the cultural meanings suburbanites associated with the suburb/citydivide. S&C presidentHerbert Tily publiclyannounced thatthey chose Ardmore "because that section is a rapidlygrowing one" and the store"would give addedimpetus to Main Line business,"utilizing a discourseof businessdevelopment as progressthat would have been

Leasebetween Suburban Company and S&C, Sept. 17, 1929, S&C Papers Box 3. 284 / STEPHANIE DYER recognizedas a generalgood for anyurban central business district. 9A pullout sectionwhich ran in localweekly papers foresaw the departmentstore as "the cornerstonein the foundationof the cityof the future,"just the beginningof intensifiedcommercial development in Ardmore.m Beyonddiscursive strat- egies,the disseminationof advertisements for the newstore in newspapers throughoutgreater Philadelphia signaled that S&C saw Ardmore as a commer- cialcenter serving not justLower Merion Township but a marketconsisting of the entirewestern suburbs of Philadelphia.One ad showedthe department storeas the metropoleof the Main I_,me,"accessible to everyonein the Main Line andits adjacentand nearby communities," and advised elite women that they no longerneeded to go downtownto buy qualitygoods? A 1931 institutionalad presented a futuristic vision, showing the downtown S&C store andits Ardmore and Jenkintown branches united in onegiant urban center? ConfirmingS&C's metropolitan aspirations, more than 11,000people from throughoutPhiladelphia and the suburbsvisited the Ardmorestore on openhagday. •3 The storeproved an instantsuccess; so muchso that justtwo monthsafter its openhagS&C decidedto expandit by severalthousand square feet[Lief, 1968]. Both S&C and the Suburban Company had seriously under- estimatedthe potentialdemand for a suburbandepartment store among suburbanconsumers - particularly women - andthe extent to whichit would displacetheir trips to Philadelphia.The store'spopularity showed the malleability of the suburbanhome/commerce divide, as many suburbanites had no problem adaptingto usingsuburban commercial districts requiring shorter commutes from their homesthan city shopping.In the wakeof S&C'ssuccess, the SuburbanCompany began efforts to expandtheir Ardmore center by acquiring more propertyin North Ardmore.They evenbegan advertising to attract investment,appropriating S&C's redefruition of Ardmoreas the commercial centerof the Main Line in a circularto potentialinvestors which claimed that suburbanites"now...stop and shop in Ardmore"rather than go to Philadelphia.TM This redefirfitionof Ardmoreas a metropolitancommercial center did not unmake the suburban home/commerce divide, but shifted its lines of demarcationto includecommercial outposts in suburbiathat were acceptable to suburbanites - at a distance. Suburbanites who lived in Ardmore did not acquiesceto thisredefruition of theirarea, but continuallyfought to maintain andpreserve home/commerce boundaries. Concerned that encroaching com- mercialgrowth made their residential property increasingly worthless, North Ardmoreresidents redoubled their efforts to controland shape the landscape throughgovernmental channels. The shoppingcenter's expansion efforts becametheir principaltarget. Hemmed in by the zoningordinance, the

9Phila&•hia Inquirer, Sept. 22, 1929,S&C Papers Volume 77. •oArdraore Chronicle, May 9, 1930,S&C Papers Volume 77. n Sode•y,May 1930,S&C PapersVolume 77. •2Phila&•hia Inquirer, Oct. 31, 1931,S&C Papers Volume 77. •3Our Town, May 16, 1930. •4I•tegti•y B#lleti•, Nov. 1930,S&C Papers Volume 78. HOLDING THE LINE AGAINST PHILADELPHIA / 285

SuburbanCompany privately recruited neighboring property owners willing to selltheir land to petitionthe Township Board of Commissionersto have their propertycommercially rezoned. In an earlyexample of whatwe havecome to callNIMBYism, more than 250 "prominent"Ardmore residents protested the appeal,which the Commissionersdeclined) s as they did everysubsequent rezoningrequest on lots neighboringthe shoppingcenter throughout the 1930s.In thismanner, local residents effectively contained the shopping center to its originalproperty line and protectedthe values- both culturaland material- of their properties.These neighborhood protests over shopping centerzoning directly influenced the 1937 Lower Merion TownshipPlan, which recommendedthat the Townshipcut its existingcommercial zoning nearlyin half,from 124,800feet to 64,300feet36 Residentsweren't alone in protestingthe shoppingcenter's develop- ment;they foundcommon cause with the shopownersin SouthArdmore's commercialdistrict. Needless to say,local small business owners had different concernsthan residents: they were not categoricallyopposed to commercein theirmidst - justto competitionfrom the branchesof Philadelphiastores and chainstores. Yet it wouldbe wrongto seethe shopkeepers'motivations as materialas opposed to theresidents' cultural opposition; as recent scholarship hasshown, the pervasive anti-chain store ideology of smallbusiness during this perioddid not necessarilyreflect the actualpolitical-economic conditions of smallbusiness [Monod, 1996; Bean, 1995]. Nor did Ardmoreshopkeepers' accusationsof chain-storeinfiltration accurately reflect the compositionof the shoppingcenter: while it did includePhiladelphia-based branches and chain storeslike A&P, it hada diversemix of businessesincluding many local bus- inesses.*Here again,space was the crucialissue. South Ardmore merchants viewedthe North Ardmoreshopping center as a competingcommercial center ratherthan an extensionof one comprehensiveArdmore commercial district servinga regionalmarket; thus, they disparaged local businesses that closed theirshops in SouthArdmore in orderto openon theNorth side of thetracks. Thesemerchants actively sought to preserveand enhance South Ardmore as themain shopping district for LowerMerion, even forming their own associa- tion to work collectivelyto bettertheir interests: the ArdmoreRetail Merchants Association,with the militant-sounding acronym ARMA. ARMA's promotional activitiesreveal their conception of SouthArdmore as servinga verycircum- scribedlocal market. In 1931,ARIMA undertook an advertisingcampaign to increaselocal awareness of the potentiallynegative economic impact of the Philadelphiabranches and the chainpresence, encouraging consumers to patronizelocal Ardmore business, "where you have your home, where your interestsare, where your children go to school,and where everything you value most is centered. "•7

•5Main Line Dai,ly Times, Dec. 12, 1930. •6 LowerMerion Township Planning Commission, A Planfir l•wer MedonTownsh• (LowerMerion, 1937). •?Main l•e Dai.•Times, Sept. 14, 1931. 286 / STEPHANIE DYER

The SuburbanCompany did not passivelyendure criticism of its shoppingcenter, but simultaneouslysought to assuagelocal protest and expand theirmarket tb_rough political moves and various public relations strategies. In November1930, the firm beganpublishing their own dailynewspaper, The Main Line Dai•y Times,edited by former Wanamakeradvertising director GordonCilley. Under Cilley, the Timesfunctioned as a pointof entryinto the local public discoursearound commercial growth throughits editorials; moreover,it literallyhelped to createa commonMain Line marketby cultivatinga readershipbase from townshipsand boroughs all alongthe Main Linefor shoppingcenter advertisements. The SuburbanCompany also entered the frayof localpolitics when one of itsboard members, H.T.B. Runk, ran for townshipcommissioner in 1931.Runk's candidacy elicited much criticism from otherlocal newspapers, who sawhim asa puppetfor the shoppingcenter; but the Timesdismissed such claims as back-biting? Runk won, guaranteeingthe SuburbanCompany a voice for commercialgrowth among the commissioners. Lesssuccessful were the Suburban Company's promotional contests and events.Despite being patterned on thoseutilized by deparmaentstores to gain goodwill within local communities, the shopping center deployed its promotions in a heavy-handedmanner that was alwaysexplicitly connected to increasing salesand hcked any substantial connection with community symbols or functions. In the most obviousand crassattempt to promotelocal identification and acceptance,the SuburbanCompany ran a contestasking local residents to pick a namefor the center.Suspiciously, the winning entry hailed from far-offShort Hills, ;it was "Hestobeen"Square, a bizarreword that combined portionsof the namesof the firm'sthree principal developers - hardly house- holdnames among Main Liners. The SuburbanCompany proudly advertised its intentionto usethe name for a multitudeof HestobeenSquares tb_roughout the Philadelphiametropolitan area? Yet after an initialinstitutional advextising campaign,all referenceto thename was dropped. S&C andother stores in the centerfailed to usethe namein theiradvertising; nor did the localpress use it when reportingon the shoppingcenter. The namechoice is an important signifierof the misstepsthe SuburbanCompany made in theirpublic relations strategieswhich, while trying to invokea communitydiscourse, never acknow- ledgedthe perspectivesof local residentsnor renderedthe type of non- remunerativecommunity service functions that made urban department stores suchfixtures in theircommunities and helped to developtheir markets. The failureof the center'spromotional strategies to changeentrenched localattitudes against the centerbecame apparent when its charteredbank, usedby the SuburbanCompany to œmanceits real estateprojects, collapsed during the nationalbanking crisis. The July 1932 closuredevastated the SuburbanCompany since the shoppingcenter was not generatingenough revenuein rentalincomes to payoff its mortgages.Unlike current shopping centerleases, the SuburbanCompany store leaseshad no provisionsfor

MainLine Dai.& Times, Sept. 16, 1931. MainLine Daip Times,Dec. 15, 1931. HOLDING THE LINE AGAINST PHILADELPHIA / 287 minimumrent, and its percentagerental revenues dropped severely during the Depression.Several Suburban, Company officers with outstandingpersonal loansfrom the collapsedbank declared bankruptcy and left the firm;one of themwent to prisonfor embezzlingfrom the bank.The shoppingcenter and theJenkintown center then under construction w•re placedin receivershipof the firms'creditors. Three stores in the shoppingcenter, the entire Jenkintown development,and the Main Line Dai• Timeswere sold to pay off bank depositors.Trustees removed the currentSuburban Company officers and named the center'sarchitect, Frederick Dreher, as interim manager.The financialcollapse and the scandalswhich rockedthe SuburbanCompany generatedmuch high-profile negative publicity in the localpress, inciting one Ardmoreweekly to condemnthe firm for its irresponsiblemanagement and extensive"real estate manipulations. "2ø

The CulturalWork of PublicRelations: Redefining the ShoppingCenter as a Community Space

When its receivershipended in 1936,Dreher became president of the newlyreformed Suburban Company and resumed ks earlierexpansion plans. But Dreher'sefforts immediately ran into the samewall of oppositionfrom townshipcommissioners as earlierrezonmg attempts. 2• By the late 1930s, Ardmoreresidents, small business owners, and politicianshad successfully constructeda legal boundary around the center that would prevent it fromever expanding.If the firm was ever going to changethis situation, they desperately neededto developnew public relations strategies to help integrate the shopping centerinto thelocal landscape of eliteresidents to thenorth and shopkeepers to the south.In so doing,the firm revisitedearlier efforts to utilizea com- munitydiscourse, but in a refinedmanner that incorporated the perspectives of thelocal community. First, Dreher sought to puta personalized,public face on the shoppingcenter, and so decided to finda nameacceptable to the center's merchantsand easily identifiable by localresidents. In consultationwith a local merchant,Dreher settled on thename "Suburban Square," emphasizing identi- ficationwith the area's suburban geography rather than being an urban center. Next,Dreher began speaking out on oneof themost pressing issues to Ardmore'slocal merchants: automobile parking. Ardmore's rise as the Main Line'scommercial center meant worsening traffic conditionsin the South Ardmorebusiness district, and local merchants were desperate for solutions. Dreherbecame the leadingproponent of parkinglots as a way to relieve congestion,pointing to SuburbanSquare's own parkinglots as a modelto follow.Under his guidance, the Township developed a plan for creatinga series of free publicparking lots in SouthArdmore? Dreher's leadership on the parkingproblem demonstrated to areamerchants that he sawthe shopping

2oMain la'ner, July 29, 1932,Dec. 16, 1932. 2•Ardmore Chronicle, Main la'ner,Nov. 19, 1937. 22Main lane Times, Jan. 24,1946. 288 / STEPHANIE DYER

centerand SouthArdmore not as competitors,but as part of a unified commercialcenter serving a rapidlyexpanding regional market. He began speakingto variousbusiness groups in supportof creatingan associationto work for the commoninterests of Main Linebusiness, and became founding directorof the Main Line Chamberof Commercein 1945.Even ARMA joined thenew organization, putting aside its resistant localism. 23Dreher was a pivotal figurein finallyuniting Main Line business around a pro-growthstance during the 1940sthat supportedthe integrationof suburbancommercial centers like Ardmoreinto a regionalmarket. Simultaneously- and contradictorfly - Dreher did muchto ameliorate residents'anxieties over the shopping center by publiclycoming out in favorof limitedgrowth. In 1940,Bonwit Teller, a leadingretail women's clothing ftrm with storesin New York and Philadelphia,purchased hnd acrossfrom the Squareto builda store.When the specialty store appealed to theLower Merion TownshipBoard of Commissionersto havethe plot commerciallyrezoned, theywere met with the usualpetitions, letters, and testimonials from residents and local merchants;in addition,Dreher spokeout againstthe re.zoning. Drawingupon his publicrole as trafficcongestion expert, he testifiedthat becausethe area akeady experienced critical levels of automobileuse, he could not supportanother commercial development in the vicinity. TM Dreher was not a disinterestedspeaker; he himselfhad offered to buildBonwit Teller a storein the shoppingcenter in 1938,only to be turneddown. as Nonetheless, the move publiclydemonstrated the Suburban Company's willingness to viewlocal devel- opmentissues from a resident-centeredperspective, raising concerns for quality of life thatshowed an allegiance to thearea beyond expanding their market. Dreher's 'willingnessto view the development issue from the community's perspectivepioneered a strategyof suburbanshopping center community relationsthat becamecommonphce in the postwarperiod, successfully con- vincingmany suburban residents that shoppingcenters could occupy a space that bridgedthe suburbanhome/commerce divide by situatingthe shopping centeras a newkind of publicspace in whichsuburban values of domesticity werebalanced against commercial growth and continued urban development. Unlikethe earlierSuburban Company, Dreher willingly utilized space in the Squarefor non-remunerativepurposes and genuinepublic services. During World War II, SuburbanSquare effectively served as the centerof the Main Line'spatriotic homefront activities. Dreher gave free spacein the Squareto theAmerican Red Cross for theirMain Line Headquarters and helped to raise nearly$600,000 for the organization?He soldgovernment war bondsand stampsin his stores,and allowed the shoppingcenter to be usedfor patriotic parades.After the war, the Squarecontinued to serveas a centerfor

MainLine Times, Jan. 4, 1945. Main Line Times,March 20, 1941. Dreherletter to RaymondJohnson, Jan. 6, 1939;Albert M Greenfieldletter to Dreher,Jan. 9, 1939;Albert M. GreenfieldPapers Box 93 Folder37. MainLine Times, Jan. 15, 1944,April 20, 1944. HOLDING THE LINE AGAINST PHILADELPHIA / 289 communitysocializing and public events. Beginning in 1949and continuing for manyyears, the Square became the home of the"Devon Fair on theSquare," a fair connectedwith theDevon Horse Show, the largest charity event of Main Line Society.The fair drew30,000 visitors its firstyear, sealing the shopping center'ssocial as well as commercial importance at thecenter of MainLine life. One local commentator noted that the fair demonstrated "the naturalhess of thiscentralized suburban shopping district for communityaffairs. "27 Dreher'sattempts to positionSuburban Square as a middleground, a publicspace integrating the residential and commercial spaces of Ardmorelife succeededin deepening the local community's ties to thecenter, but failedto eraseArdmore's home/commerce divide. As Dreherrecognized, the center's acceptanceby localresidents remained hinged on itscontainment; consequently, at no time duringthe 1940sdid the SuburbanCompany back any zoning variancesto expandthe shoppingcenter. Instead, the SuburbanCompany undertookother projects on largerparcels of landin urbanareas and the new postwarsuburbs more amenable to commercialzoning. 28 No doubtthe lack of expansionpossibilities motivated the firm to sell the Square.Yet it is a testamentto the perceivedvalue the of the Squarethat despite its smallness,its age,and a commercialappraisal at $3.5million and declining in 1948,29 it sold for $5million in 1950.30 At the timeof its sale,Suburban Square was being hailedas '%vorldfamous 'm and "revolutionary"32 by localArdmore papers, havinggained a degreeof socialacceptance far removed from its origins.

Betweenthe Community and the Market: Businessand the Transformation of Suburbia

By thepostwar period, the Main Line had undergone radical growth and changethat remadeits classicsuburban landscape into somethingnew: a populousregion whose commercial and public spaces served not to makethe areamore like an industrialcity like Philadelphia,but to enhanceits local autonomyin orderto preserveits suburbanway of life- to continue"holding theline" against Philadelphia, in the words of JamesMichener [Michener, 1950, p. 46].Suburban Square was a keyelement of thisnew Main Line for Michener; he laudedFrederick Dreher as a progressivemerchant whose auto-friendly shoppingcenter and quality stores drew "Main Liners...from twenty miles to shopat his center,where they can get almostanything sold in city stores" [Michener,48]. Main Liners,including Ardmore residents, had embracedthe Squareas an ally in presewdngtheir suburban way of life;but thishardly meant

27Ardmore Chronick, April 28, 1949. 28City Line Center (1949) and Cheltenham Center (ca. 1952) in suburbanPhiladelphia; Dreheralso planned centers in Camden,NJ and Wilmington,DE that were neverbuilt [Longstreth1997a]. 29Jackson-Cross Realty, Appraisalof Suburban Square (1948), S&C Papers Box 34. 3oPhilade•hia Inquirer, March 15, 1950. 3•Ardmore Chronicle, Feb. 9, 1950. 32Main Line Times,March 16, 1950. 290 / STEPHANIE DYER theyfully embraced commerce in theirmidst or acceptedthe centeringof a regionalmarket in their backyard.Though shopping centers appeared else- whereon MainLine highways in thepostwar period, their arrivals were met by newrounds of protestover potential effects on propertyvalues, quality of life, andsmall business, countered increasingly byarguments for thenecessity of tax ratablesand tourism during the postwar period. The Main Line's long legacy of suburbanaffluence insulated the areafrom the sirensong of commercialtax ratablesthat seducedmany suburbs in the postwarperiod. 33 By the 1960s, Ardmore'scommercial center would be overshadowedbynearby King of Prussia, a commercially-dominatedareathat reflected the maturation of suburbanmarkets intocomplex regional centers, variously described as "edge dries," "technoburbs," or "centerlessdries" [Garrean, 1991; Fishman, 1987;Jackson, 1986]. The transitionto thisnew kind of urbanform was a longand contested processthat entailedchanging definitions of market and the suburban home/commercedivide. Throughout this paper, I haveattempted to showthat thischange in thebuilt environment was a culturalas well as spatial shift - and thatthe shoppingcenter, both as a placeand as a socialactor, was a decisive agentin the transformation.This is justone example of the myriadways in whichbusiness interacts with othersocial actors across time and space, having an impactoutside firms that goes from market exchange into thevery process of constructingour everyday landscapes of meaning.

References

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