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THE POWER OF AN IDEA Edmund Bacon’s Planning Method Inspiring Consensus and Living in the Future by Gregory Heller Class of 2004

A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in the American Studies Program

Middletown, CT April, 2004 To Myra Heller my grandmother, who taught me to love the city, and to Ed Bacon who taught me how to express that love.

2 Acknowledgements

I offer my deepest gratitude to Ed Bacon, a man who has been my teacher, inspiration, co-worker, and companion. I am grateful to him for the uncountable ways he has affected my life and shaped my future. I am also grateful for the tremendous impact he has had on Philadelphia: the beautiful city I call home.

I would like to thank my parents, Janis Weiner and Douglas Heller, for their endless love, support, and encouragement in all of my endeavors. I also thank my father for our discussions about Ed Bacon and city planning. A number of the ideas in this thesis were developed over drinks with my father. I would like to thank my brother, Robert Heller; my grandmother, Ester Weiner; my grandfather, Jack Heller; my aunt, Roberta Weiner; and Nancy Parsons for their love and support. I also give my thanks to Tarsah Dale for always believing in me.

There are several people who have had a particularly strong impact in shaping my perception of the city. These people have continually shared with me their passion for the city and urban experiences. Thank you to Myra Heller, Jonathan Schmalzbach, Paul Yoon, Adam Heller, Noah Isenberg, and Andrew Hohns.

Many thanks to Elizabeth Milroy, my dedicated advisor. I look forward to our next collaboration.

I am grateful to Shari Cooper, Philadelphia’s Northeast Community Planner. I learned much of what I know about the Northeast through my work with Shari. More importantly, she is singlehandedly bringing life and new hope to a number of Northeast Philadelphia neighborhoods and countless residents.

I would like to thank Cynthia Horan and Joseph Siry, two professors who have significantly guided my understanding of the urban environment. I also owe a debt to Ruth O’Brien, without whom I may never have met Ed Bacon.

I offer my thanks to Irving Wasserman for making the Far Northeast a reality. I thank him also for his ongoing assistance in my research. I thank Alexander Garvin for his advice in my discussion of Ed Bacon and Robert Moses, and for carrying on Ed Bacon’s legacy through his work.

Finally, I would like to thank my friends, who have been so supportive during my year with Ed Bacon and through the writing of this thesis: Kate Lucas, Liz King, Jackie Lane, Jeremy Best, Mike Gilles, Kate Patterson, Kristin Kyrka, Colin Bumby, Annika Brink, and Molly Dengler.

3 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 3 Illustrations 5 Introduction 8 1. Philadelphia’s Urban Legend 16 Existing Literature 26 Bacon’s Reputation 34 2. The Independent 43 3. Living in the Future 59 4. Symbolic Historical Memory 79 Starting with William Penn 86 The Extension of the Grid 91 5. Planning the Far Northeast 96 Bacon’s Vision 100 Inheriting the Concept 103 Political Battle, Design Solution 107 Garages in the Front 111 6. Ed Bacon’s Planning Process 114 The Organizing Concept 115 The Message of the Land 116 Symbolic Historical Memory 118 The Biological Paradigm 119 Imaging the Future 120 Refusing to Be Categorized 121 The Collective Unconscious 122 Democratic Feedback 124 PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING 126 THE PLANNING PROCESS 127 7. The Reaction 128 Mistakes and Responses 128 Modern Planning Movements 133 Top Down? 135 8. Inspiring Consensus 139 Mediating Consensus 139 The Collective Unconscious 143 Bacon and Moses 145 9. The Far Northeast Today 151 What Went Wrong? 155 Epilogue: Hope for the Future 159 Appendix: An Interview with Edmund Bacon and Irving Wasserman 162 A Note on Sources 176 Bibliography 177 Notes 186

4 Illustrations

The illustrations in this thesis are integrated with the text, throughout. I inten- tionally do not provide descriptive captions because I want the illustrations and text to interact and complement each other, instead of behaving as separate entities. In order to comply with U.S. Fair Use Copyright Laws, I include captions with the illustration’s source. I also include a figure number, for reference with the following list.

Figure A.1 “Evolution of a Two-Page Spread” 11 Diagrams created by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon; Penn Holme Plan from George Tatum, Penn’s Great Town, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961. Figure 1.1 “Philadelphia’s Edmund Bacon” 16 Time, 84:19 (6 November 1964). Figure 1.2 “Bacon’s Impact on Center City” 18 Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Plan for Center City,” 1963. Figure 1.3 “Looking into an Urban Crystal Ball” 19 Wharton Account, 19:2 (Winter 1980). Figure 1.4 “Reviving East Market Street” 22 Edmund N. Bacon’s Personal Papers; Ed Mauger, Philadelphia Then and Now (Thunder Bay: San Diego, 2002), 31. Figure 1.5 “Bacon’s Penn Center Concept and Penn Center Today” 25 Bacon Papers; Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), 528. Figure 1.6 “Philadelphia’s Changing Skyline” 37 Mauger, 42-43. Figure 1.7 “Bacon’s Design for Independence Mall” 38 National Park Service. Figure 1.8 “A Public Toilet Beside Independence Hall” 38 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure 1.9 “Bacon’s 1932 Architectural Thesis” 39 Bacon Papers. Figure 1.10 “Robert Indiana’s Love Sculpture” 40 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure 1.11 “Bacon Skates” 40 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure 2.1 “The City as a Body” 48 Pietro C. Arani, Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 2000).; Tatum.; Composite by Bacon and Heller. Figure 2.2 “Bacon’s Chinese Inspirations” 52 Edmund N. Bacon, Design of Cities (New York: Viking, 1967), 266; Dennis Cox/China Stock; Emil Schulthess, China (New York: Viking, 1966); Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Figure 2.3 “Creating a Connection” 54 Delaware Vally Regional Planning Commission, “Historic Preservation,” 1969.; Bacon Papers.

5 Figure 3.1 “The Time-Space Machine” 69 Photograph taken by Ezra Stoller in Bacon Papers. Figure 3.2 “Children Plan” 71 Photograph taken by Ezra Stoller, in Bacon Papers. Figure 3.3 “The Better Philadelphia Exhibition Model” 71 Photograph taken by Ezra Stoller, in Bacon Papers. Figure 3.4 “Model Detail” 72 Photograph taken by Ezra Stoller, in Bacon Papers. Figure 4.1 “A Gleaming Triumph” 80 Life, 24 December 1965. Figure 4.2 “Symbolic Historical Memory and Penn’s Landing” 81 Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Electronically edited by the author. Figure 4.3 “The White Paper Syndrome” 85 Garvin, 155; The Evening Bulletin (17 May 1941). Figure 4.4 “Philadelphia and Liberties” 87 Walter Klinefelter, “Surveyor General Thomas Holme’s ‘Map of the Province of Pennsilvania,” Winterthur Portfolio, 6 (1970): 48. Figure 4.5 “Penn’s and Holme’s Organizing Concept” 88 Diagrams by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon. Figure 4.6 “Thomas Holme’s Portraiture” 89 Tatum. Figure 4.7 “City Hall” 90 Mauger, 118-119. Figure 4.8 “Crossing the Schuylkill River” 93 John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 265. Figure 4.9 “Proliferation of the Grid” 95 Rand McNally and Co.’s Business Atlas and Shipper’s Guide, 1901. Electronically edited by the author. Figure 5.1 “The Far Northeast Before Development” 96 Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Northeast Philadelphia and Why, 1928. Figure 5.2 “The Benjamin Franklin Parkway” 97 David B. Brownlee, Building the City Beautiful (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989), 36-37. Figure 5.3 “Plan for Riverside” 98 Reps, 345. Figure 5.4 “Radburn, N.J.” 99 Mary Lou Williamson, Greenbelt: History of a New Town (Norfolk: Donning, 1997). Figure 5.5 “Adapting the Penn Plan” 100 Diagrams by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon. Figure 5.6 “The Far Northeast Organizing Concept” 101 Diagrams by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon. Figure 5.7 “Irving Wasserman, Damon Child, and Edmund Bacon” 104 Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

6 Figure 5.8 “Interlocking Cul-de-sacs” 106 Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957. Figure 5.9 “The Morrell Tract” 109 Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Figure 5.10 “The Far Northeast: In Theory and in Practice” 110 Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Preliminary Far Northeast Physical Development Plan,” 1955; Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957. Figure 5.11 “Cul-de-sac” 111 Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957. Figure 5.12 “Garages in Front” 112 Photograph taken by Shari Cooper. Figure 6.1 “Organizing Concepts” 115 Diagrams created by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon. Figure 6.2 “Preserving the Stream Valleys” 117 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure 6.3 “Bacon at Work” 120 Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Figure 6.4 “Market East Plaza” 123 Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Market East Plaza,” May 1958. Figure 7.1 “Public Housing” 129 Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., American Civilization (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), 219. Figure 7.2 “Le Corbusier’s Future” 130 Garvin, 154. Figure 7.3 “Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Drive Apartments” 130 Boston College, “A Digital Archive of American Architecture,” available online at http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267. Figure 7.4 “Hope VI” 134 Universal Companies, available online at http://www.universalcompanies.org. Figure 8.1 “Robert Moses” 146 Robert Caro, The Power Broker (New York: Vintage, 1975). Figure 9.1 “Houses of the Far Northeast” 152 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure 9.2 “Strip Mall” 153 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure 9.3 “Fences” 154 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure 9.4 “Prairie of Automobiles” 155 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure 9.5 “Christmas in the Far Northeast” 158 Photograph taken by Gregory Heller. Figure B.1 “Bacon in a Stream” 161 Bacon Papers. Figure B.2 “Development Tracts in the Far Northeast” 163 Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957.

7 Introduction

Growing up in and around Philadelphia I knew of Ed Bacon long before I had heard of his movie-star son, Kevin. To many Philadelphians, Ed Bacon, the city planner who shaped modern Philadelphia is a local legend. In 2001, I arrived home from my sophomore year of college, after spending a semester in Germany, inspired to write my senior thesis comparing city planning in Berlin and my hometown. I planned to base my thesis on a concept I called “symbolic historical memory,” the meaning of the built environment over time, and how it affects the present.1 Philadelphia and Berlin are both historical cities in their own contexts, and in both cases the memory of that history continues to resurface in debates over modern architecture and planning. Naturally, anyone who is serious about city planning in Philadelphia has to talk to Ed Bacon, so I wrote him a letter asking permission for an interview. He agreed, and we set a date. At the time I was working as an intern at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Everyone there was impressed that I was going to meet the master, himself. Those who had worked with him, those who knew him, and those who only knew of his reputation all offered advice. One planner who knew Bacon well told me, “Ed is a very difficult person. Don’t argue with him. Pretend that you know nothing about city planning and just agree with what he says.” Thankfully I did not take that planner’s advice. Bacon loves nothing more than to be challenged with new ideas by someone who is willing to fight for those ideas. I arrived at Bacon’s townhouse on Locust Street in Center City and rang the bell. Bacon opened the bright yellow door that contrasted so sharply against the paint- ed black brick of his home. The 92-year old former city planner wore a pale yellow, collared shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He smiled and told me to come in. Inside he offered me a seat on the yellow sofa that spans two walls of his living room. I had brought along all sorts of tape recording equipment, microphones, and pages of notes

8 that I had prepared. But Bacon was not interested in an interview. He asked me why I was interested in symbolic historical memory (I told Bacon abut my thesis topic in my letter). I recounted my time in Berlin and my comparison between that city and Philadelphia. We spoke some more, then he offered to take me to lunch. The two of us walked around the corner to a nice restaurant called Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We ate lobster ravioli and mushroom soup, continuing our conversation. Suddenly, Bacon asked me, “What are your plans for your future?” I told him I intended to graduate from college, then to probably pursue graduate school for planning or architecture. Bacon nodded and remarked, “Now I’ll tell you my plans for your future. I want you to spend a year helping me write a book on city planning in Philadelphia.” He told me he was amazed by my interest in symbolic historical memory—a topic that was crucial to his work but that he believes nobody is discussing seriously. Bacon probably saw my expression of shock, and told me he would let me think his proposal over. We returned to Bacon’s house and I conducted the interview—the original purpose of my visit. The interview went fairly routinely. I returned home that night to think things over and realized that there was really no choice at all. I called Bacon the next day and told him I would take leave from college and work with him for a year. I visited Bacon in his home a day later to talk out our plans more fully. The first thing he said when I walked in the door was, “You know, your interview was really not very good.” And thus began an extraordinary year that has thoroughly changed my life’s course, and probably Bacon’s as well. During our work together, Ed (we quickly shifted to a first-name basis) loved to tell visitors the story of how he decided to work with me for a solid year just from the three words: “symbolic historical memory.” He explained, “I had Gregory Heller’s letter suspended over the waste basket, where it would have joined all the rest, when suddenly I was struck by symbolic historical memory. What normal twenty-one-year-

9 old would be thinking thoughts like that?”2 From September 2002 to September 2003 I came to Ed Bacon’s house every day, and we worked often late into the night. The book, as it turned out, was not really a memoir, not really an autobiography, not really a history of city planning. It was something else entirely, that quite frankly cannot truly be categorized. Bacon explained to me that he wrote his first book, Design of Cities (Viking, 1967), by laying out all of the illustrations first, and then filling in the empty spaces with text. We wrote our book in a similar way. I have training in graphic design and layout, an invaluable skill as it turned out. Bacon and I would discuss new ideas over breakfast. Then I would head upstairs and using Photoshop and Quark graphically create the page that we had discussed. I would print it out as Ed finished breakfast and read that day’s Philadelphia Inquirer. We would then spend hours changing the page—adjusting colors slightly, altering photographs, or designing diagrams to make exactly the right statement. Much of the time we created a sequence of pages with nothing but illustrations, laying out concepts that connect to tell a story. Once we finished a whole section we would work on the writing. Sometimes Ed asked me to go home, draft the text, and not return until it was finished. Other times we would work concurrently in our separate offices in Ed’s home, and then compare versions. On yet other occasions we would write the text together, talking out loud as I typed up our thoughts. Finally, sometimes Ed would use a handheld tape recorder I bought for him, and talk for hours. Then I would transcribe his words and use parts of them as the text in the book. The book discusses several of Bacon’s projects, laying out the facts as Bacon remembers them of how each was planned and built. The projects all interconnect into one volume without chapters. Every two-page spread tells a complete thought (text never continues onto the next page after a spread). We wrote the book in third person, but interrupted throughout with first-person narratives by Bacon or myself.

10 The images below show the evolution of a sample two-page spread. This one started with Bacon’s hand-drawn concept. Next I made a preliminary image. Then we laid out the images on a page, adjusted colors and placement, and added text.

Figure A.1 (Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon; Penn Holme Plan from George Tatum, Penn’s Great Town, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961)

11 We held interviews with a number of Ed’s coworkers, contemporaries, and those who carried on Ed’s projects after his retirement. We traveled out to Chester County to meet with architect Vincent Kling, who worked with Ed to create the concept for Penn Center. After the interview, Kling drove us across his vast estate in one of his several fast cars, then gave us an organ concert in his custom-built barn. We interviewed world-famous architect I.M. Pei, who designed the high-rise towers in Bacon’s Society Hill design. Landscape architect Irving Wasserman flew up from Florida just for an interview to discuss his design for Philadelphia’s Far Northeast. We went to bustling 30th Street Station twice to meet with Bill McDowell, the man who helped complete Bacon’s Gallery mall. We even met with Bacon’s daughter Elinor who, for a time, ran the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Hope VI program, to gain insight in the field of housing renewal. We spent the afternoon with city planner Alexander Garvin, met with renowned architect Robert Stern, and had a surprise visit one day from another famous architect, Rafael Viñoly. We conducted about 15 interviews. They enriched the book and added a host of voices. Bill McDowell and Alexander Garvin wrote essays for the book. After speaking with a number of people who worked with Bacon during his 21-year career and since, and hearing about their experiences with him, I can say with certainty that I worked with Ed Bacon better than anyone except a select few. Bacon is an intellectually stimulating and demanding person to work with. It was wonderful for me, but also very tiring. He will not put up with someone who does not come up with his own ideas. To Bacon, a person and his ideas merge into one entity. If your ideas are no good, he has little tolerance for you on a professional basis (on a personal and social basis he is gracious and charming).3 In one interview, Bacon was asked, “Do you feel that you were especially effective because of who you are, as opposed to purely the quality of your ideas?” He answered, “Well, I think it’s a dumb question, they’re all inseparable.”4

12 Bacon insists on being challenged. I challenged him. As a result, we did engage in some heated arguments. Sometimes I conceded. Other times he did. Still other times we made a compromise solution that allowed us to keep on working. Whenever Ed said something I disagreed with, I told him so, and he would argue right back. Bacon is renowned for his argumentative and (these days) cantankerous personality. In extreme cases our arguments led to Bacon yelling obscenities, throwing newspapers at the wall, and knocking over chairs. I never yielded to his temper, and more often than not I would go home with the argument unresolved, and arrive in the morning to have either Bacon or myself admit the other was right. Bacon and I had a contract written up by lawyers, laying out my job, salary and other terms, but that was really only important in the circumstance that he were to die during that year. Despite our 71 years in age difference we were companions for one another. We ate lunch together every day, either at restaurants or in Bacon’s house. After a long day, Bacon opened a bottle of wine or whiskey and we drank and talked about all sorts of things—my family and girlfriend, the Tour de France, politics, Bacon’s life stories. I accompanied Bacon to movies, lectures, concerts, and dinners out. I met all of his six children, and several of his six grandchildren. One weekend he invited me to his family’s country home, where I spent several days with him, his son Michael, and Michael’s wife Betsy. Bacon, in turn went to dinner on several occasions with my grandmother, mother and father. Though he was 92, Bacon did most things for himself (by choice), including food shopping. Often he insisted I not do too much for him. He did let me run some errands, take out his garbage and buy him wine. On a few occasions I had the honor of spending time with Ed and his son Kevin. The two of them have a wonderful relationship. Because they are both so famous and accomplished in their fields, they have a clear mutual respect. At the same time, their worlds are so far apart, that I believe they hold this respect without really

13 understanding the other’s world. With regard to the book, Ed saw my role as completing a picture as seen through a stereopticon—a viewing device that takes two separate drawings or photographs and merges them, to the viewer’s eye, into a 3-D image. Ed saw me as the force that would take his life’s work and add an element of youth and hope, while addressing the way planning is taught in the present. In a short piece he wrote, Bacon imagined a fictional dialogue:

Bacon: I think American civilization at the present time is in a very decadent state. Our president is chatting over tea about how many Iraqi he is going to kill…The way we are going there will be bombs bursting in air…Our flag will still be there but there will be nobody left to see it. Heller: Bacon is an embittered old man and understandingly so. We of the coming generation have not yet made our mistakes. Let us learn from the past and set a new direction.5

Bacon also saw my role as a translator, of sorts. In one essay Bacon wrote, “Since I think three dimensionally, and mostly with my body, I have difficulty con- veying to other my thoughts through the usual medium of words and numbers.”6 He explained to me that he had been trying to write this book for more than ten years, unsuccessfully, because he could not properly communicate his concepts. One day I arrived at Ed’s house and found a handwritten note on my chair that read, “Gregory Heller puts into noble words my pedestrian ruminations,” signed “Edmund Bacon.” During my year with Bacon I chose to audit classes in the University of

Pennsylvania’s Department of City and Regional Planning. At one point I held a seminar in Bacon’s home with ten planning students whom I met over that year. The discussion that night was fascinating. Some of the students were unwilling to budge from their world view. But others discovered the continuing relevance of Bacon’s planning method. They also discovered how much it differed from the method they were taught at the university. All this from a man who, they were taught, had lived beyond his time. I too learned about Bacon’s method and was staggered to realize how much

14 sense it made, yet how much it differed from anything that was actually being taught or practiced in the field. Bacon’s method is the topic of this thesis. Because of the limited time I had to write this, I only include one of Bacon’s projects here: the Far Northeast. It is the most straightforward in understanding Bacon’s method. I hope that this thesis provides a basis for me to write a more substantial work on this topic, including other projects as examples. They are interconnected and when presented in the right way, create ever-more complex examples that give deeper insight into understanding how Bacon’s method worked. For now I have to be content merely scraping the surface of this subject. I left Bacon in September of 2002, to return for my senior year at Wesleyan University. We finished a pretty solid book, but Bacon decided he wanted to continue making changes. He hired two friends of mine to help him continue the project—Jen Posner, a graduate planning student at Penn, and Bryan Winters, a professional graphic artist. Upon my departure I told Bacon that I wanted to write my thesis on his planning method. He was ecstatic and said that he looked forward to seeing it published as a companion to the memoirs. Of course I don’t want to let him down, and so, the following is the beginning of that companion.

15 1. Philadelphia’s Urban Legend

Edmund Bacon had greater impact on the planning and development of his hometown than any individual except Robert Moses in New York and Daniel Burnham in Chicago. –Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t

Ed Bacon is Philadelphia’s urban legend—widely renowned, criticized, honored, and often misunderstood. During his 21-year tenure as Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Bacon initiated and oversaw project after project that put Philadelphia on the map, and now define the essence and character of the City of Brotherly Love. Today Bacon has become a local celebrity, but having retired over 30 years ago, he is also something of a mystery in his hometown. Many people today know of him, but do not know exactly what he did. Nonetheless he continues to vocalize his ideas. To the applause of his disciples and the constant headache of his critics, Bacon refuses to disappear quietly into the night. While at the helm of the City Planning Commission, Bacon’s work was already recognized as important and profound in scope. In 1964, Bacon’s face graced the cover of Time magazine. Inside that issue, the cover story reported, “[Bacon’s] total dedication to his special art and to his native town—plus an impressive gift of gab—is changing the look and feel of the town that was once the butt of comedians as the sleepiest city of them all.”1 In 2002, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mark Bowden assured us Figure 1.1 (Source: Time, 84:19, 11/6/1964) 16 that Bacon’s accomplishments are still considered just as significant as they were in 1964, if somewhat controversial. He wrote, “[Bacon] did more than anyone since [Philadelphia’s founder] William Penn to shape Center City into what it is today, for better or for worse.”2 That “for better or for worse,” hints at another side of Philadelphia’s “urban legend,” a mass of criticism that attacks the final result of Bacon’s projects as well as a reputation that simultaneously defines Bacon, while it continues to haunt his legacy. But, more on that later. First, let us look at Bacon’s achievements. The list of Bacon’s projects is a survey of Philadelphia’s major development in the 1950s and 60s: • In 1950, railroad tracks running on a massive, masonry wall cut through the heart of Philadelphia’s downtown. Based on Bacon’s vision, this “Chinese Wall” was torn down, and replaced by a complex of office buildings and a below-ground rail terminal and shopping concourse. Today Penn Center is the base of Philadelphia’s entire business district. • As early as 1954, Bacon proposed building an urban shopping concourse to revitalize the deteriorating East Market Street. In 1977, the Gallery at Market East, America’s first enclosed, downtown shopping mall was built, and later served as the impetus for further development including two hotels and a new

convention center.3

• Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood holds more eighteenth-century

structures than anywhere else in America.4 In the early 1950s the neighborhood was in sad shape. Over the next 15 years Bacon worked to revitalize Society Hill, convinced others to restore the houses. Bacon also designed a system of open spaces through the neighborhood. Architect I.M. Pei designed high rise apartments as the anchor for the revitalization. Today Society Hill is “one of

the nation’s best known urban renewal projects.”5 It has also been called “one

of the handsomest residential districts in the United States.”6

17 • Bacon completed the city’s great boulevard, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (under construction since the turn of the 20th century), and planned the city’s waterfront development, Penn’s Landing, as well as the community of Eastwick, much of the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, and the city’s highway system. • Bacon created a design concept and revolutionary process to guide the hous-

ing development of the 24,000 acres of Philadelphia’s Far Northeast.7 The illustration below shows the scope of Bacon’s projects in Center City, as well as their interaction with one another. The darkened areas are, from the left, Penn Center, Market East, Independence Mall and Society Hill, and Penn’s Landing. Bacon also completed the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (top left), and planned the highway system seen here.

Figure 1.2 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission)

In light of his great contributions to Philadelphia, it is surprising that there is so little written about Bacon. As compared to other important planners—Robert Moses or Daniel Burnham, for example—Bacon is hardly discussed in planning literature.8 Bacon is not well understood because his method is much harder to grasp, and

18 there is significant confusion surrounding what he actually did and how he did it. This confusion arises from a subtle method that Bacon applied throughout his career, successful in achieving great change, but also quite vulnerable to distortion. Bacon is often characterized as a visionary. In a 1980 issue of the University of Pennsylvania’s business school magazine, Wharton Account, an article on Bacon is titled, “Looking into an Urban Crystal Ball,” and shows a cartoon of Ed Bacon posed as a seer, peering at City Hall tower.9 Long-time Philadelphia journalist, and editor of City Paper, Howard Altman says in one article, “I have always been a big fan of Ed Bacon, a brilliant man with the unique talent of having a vision and being able to make it real.”10

Figure 1.3 (Source: Wharton Account, 19:2, Winter 1980) 19 Bacon always began with a single, compelling “organizing concept.” He created a vision based on the individual characteristics and needs of an area. Once he created his concept, Bacon then used innovative ideas, his “gift of gab,” and his political know-how to communicate his vision to the public mind within the body politic, what Bacon calls the “collective unconscious” (note: Bacon’s use of this term is quite different from that of psychoanalyst C.G. Jung11). Once others understood Bacon’s ideas well enough, they often accepted them as their own, and went on to make Bacon’s concepts a reality. Instead of using personal power, money, or existing support, Bacon’s planning method relied on the power of an original idea to inspire others. It is a subtle process—so subtle that if anyone had realized what Bacon was trying to do at the time, it likely would not have worked. Only in retrospect can one take a project, altered and built upon by many people, and follow its genesis back to Bacon’s mind. In an interview with journalist Liz Holmes, Bacon explained that his method works in opposition to the current trend in planning that he calls “mediating consensus,” in which the planner’s job is to passively foster agreement between groups. Bacon calls his method “inspiring consensus,” in which the planner’s job is to create a vision, and to inspire others with that vision to the point that they accept it and make it the basis of their work.12 Sometimes this process worked so well that along the way, people forgot the idea originally came from Bacon. For example, Bacon created the concept for Market

East around 1952, 25 years before it was actually built.13 One writer recounted seeing Ed Bacon at the opening ceremonies of the Gallery at Market East, in 1977. He recalled, “it was in [Bacon’s] early visions of our future city that the concept of Market Street East first took shape,” then added, “In all the speeches made this morning I cannot recall his name having been honored or even mentioned. A prophet without honor in his own city?”14 Bacon is, of course, always elated when he receives his due applause. Whether he is honored or not, though, it is clear that he was able to get

20 things done when his ideas were adopted and built by others. Importantly, Bacon’s method is rooted in the “biological paradigm,” that the city is a living thing, that grows over time.15 He paid great attention to the underlying forces in the reality of the city, and gave very little credence to economic analysis and market studies.16 Bacon’s course was to view the City as a growing body, and if part of that body was ailing, and experts claimed a market did not exist, then he would create a new market that no one could have anticipated. The best example of this phenomenon is, once again, Market East. In 1960 the City engaged market analyst Larry Smith to perform “economic studies” of commercial development at Market East.17 The report came back that there was no market. Bacon did not listen. As late as 1974—three years before the Gallery at Market East was built as a joint venture between the Rouse Company and the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority—people were still questioning whether commercial development was even possible on east Market Street. One Evening Bulletin article asked, “is there an imaginary line along Broad St. in center city that creates a no-man’s land for commercial real estate development east of Broad?”18 Nonetheless, the Gallery was built in 1977 and several years later its extension, Gallery II was built. Years later an article in the Philadelphia Business Journal called the Gallery “a huge commercial success...one of the most financially productive shopping malls in the country at the time.”19

The Gallery was the first of many projects to be built along East Market Street; over the ensuing 25 years a number of others followed. In 1984 a 32-story skyscraper was built next to the Gallery, designed by Cope-Linder and Bower, Lewis, Thrower, Architects. In the mid 1980s a Philadelphia developer restored the old Lit Brothers department store and reopened it as the Mellon Independence Center. In 1993 the obsolete Reading Railroad train shed was converted into the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the “largest public construction project undertaken in the state of

21 Pennsylvania.”20 In 1998, Loews Hotel transformed the old PSFS bank building into a luxury hotel, reviving this architectural treasure.21 The revitalization of East Market

Street has been profound and continues today.22 The illustrations below show the inte- rior of the Gallery, and a view down current East Market Street, with the new convention center in the foreground.

Figure 1.4 (Sources: Top, Bacon Papers; Bottom, Ed Mauger, Philadelphia Then and Now, Thunder Bay: San Diego, 2002 ) 22 The Gallery is a good example of how Bacon followed the biological paradigm and did not listen to numbers or market analysis. The other side of the biological paradigm is that Bacon saw the city growing over time. He responded to Philadelphia’s history of form in his concepts, and often this went all the way back to the city’s original plan by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme. In his 1963 Center City Plan, Bacon explained William Penn’s plan, then outlined the city’s development since, finally connecting the city’s growth to his proposals for the future. Bacon wrote, “The present plan for the future of Center City is a logical outgrowth of the historical development of this area since the creation of the first plan by William Penn in

1682.”23 In light of these various elements of Bacon’s planning process, the aim of this thesis is to review and assess Bacon’s working method and its results. Many of Bacon’s projects traveled through multiple, complicated stages and took a great many years to come to fruition. Market East, for example, had five different architects over its 25 years of development. I will use Bacon’s design for the Far Northeast as the topic here, because it is the simplest example to see Bacon’s root “organizing concept,” and to follow how Bacon communicated that concept to the “collective unconscious,” to let others develop it over time. There is also a clear connection to William Penn’s plan that shows how Bacon created a connection to the past, to guide the future. I will argue here that Bacon’s planning method was successful in getting things done, but because Bacon had to separate himself from his vision, his method was vulnerable to obscuring the “organizing concept” in the process. In Bacon’s method, others inherit Bacon’s visions and make them the basis of their own work. For this reason, the success of Bacon’s visions depends on the people who implement them. Bacon has become far less connected to his ideas than other innovators. Even with other famous architects and planners, we know what they did. Daniel Burnham

23 designed the Columbian Exposition, Chicago’s “White City.” Robert Moses conceived of Jones Beach, the Triboro Bridge, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, and brought the United Nations to New York (among other things). Burnham and Moses were connected with their projects from beginning to end. Burnham was actually the architect, and Moses was famous for personally overseeing every detail of his visions.24 Bacon, on the other hand, let go at some point, and allowed the idea carry itself. His is an unintuitive method, and one that required a good amount of modesty, perhaps learned from his Quaker ancestors. As a result of his method, Bacon became far less connected to the end projects, sometimes leading to confusion regarding his actual role. Society Hill is often considered Bacon’s greatest success. It was also the project in which the people who took ownership of Bacon’s idea implemented it most closely to Bacon’s original vision. At the 50th anniversary of I.M. Pei’s Society Hill Towers, Pei and Bacon, the guests of honor were riding in an elevator with a group of prominent Philadelphians. During the descent, one woman turned and said to Bacon, “I know that you had something to do with Society Hill, but I don’t really know what it was.”25 One of the problems, when reviewing Bacon’s work, is that when Bacon is associated with projects, he is naturally connected to the end product, and not his original vision. In his book, City Life, urbanism professor Witold Rybczynski wrote, “The long term effect of ponderous, inward-looking complexes such as Philadelphia’s Penn

Center…on the surrounding street life was deadening.”26 Elsewhere Rybczynski called

Penn Center one of Bacon’s “pallid accomplishments.”27 Penn Center today is indeed a collection of dull high-rise buildings, facing into a blank courtyard, over a train station buried in a basement. However, very few people know (or remember) that Bacon’s original concept, the one that convinced James Symes, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, to build Penn Center in the first place, involved a broad pedestrian concourse, passing beneath the level of the street, open to the sky and lined with

24 shops, restaurants, and gardens. Bacon designed a progression of spaces inspired by the system of movement of the Forbidden City in Beijing. It was a totally different concept than the one that was built. Once others accepted the idea as their own, and worked toward its realization, they changed it substantially. There was indeed very little Bacon could have done to fight the changes to his concept.28 Such alterations to Bacon’s visions became the fate of most of his projects, to varying degrees. Penn Center was probably the project that strayed the most from Bacon’s original concept The illustration on the left shows a drawing of Bacon’s original Penn Center concept, looking west along the below-ground pedestrian concourse. The photograph on the right shows Penn Center today (looking east), with Bacon’s below-ground concourse covered by a roof.

Figure 1.5 (Sources: Left, Bacon Papers; Right, Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t, New York: McGraw Hill, 2002.)

The critical aspect of Bacon’s planning is his grasp of what I call symbolic historical memory. There is a long precedent of planners and architects needing a blank slate to carry out their work. Renowned French architect Le Corbusier proposed clear- ing most of the existing structures in Paris to create a new, workable city. Louis Kahn proposed a similar concept for Philadelphia. Frank Lloyd Wright drew plans for a utopian city, built anew in the desert. Even Robert Moses who worked within the com-

25 plicated structure of New York viewed the existing city more as an impediment than a guide.29 In contrast, Bacon’s visions, while new creations, were responses to the existing history and structure of the city. Everything he built responded to William Penn’s plan, and everything that has come since. This is all part of the biological paradigm. The city is a growing entity. Planning needs to respond to the past, not erase it. It seems so clear, yet Bacon is possibly the only major planner or administrator who recognized it. This is what truly sets Bacon apart, and is also the aspect of Bacon’s work most often ignored or unrecognized.

Existing Literature

I began this chapter with a quote by Alexander Garvin, comparing Bacon to Daniel Burnham and Robert Moses. While all three individuals have had a profound effect on their respective cities, there is significantly less written on Bacon than on the other two. Both Burnham and Moses have numerous biographies and dozens of other writings on their work. True, Bacon is the only one of the three still alive, but Moses saw two biographies published in his lifetime. Bacon has no biography and no major published work devoted to his achievements. Perhaps this fact is due to the confusion surrounding what Bacon actually did; perhaps it is a result of the subtlety of his planning method. Whatever the reason it does seem strange that a man once considered the nation’s premier city planner, who had his face on the cover of Time magazine, is bare- ly discussed in planning literature. Bacon’s treatment may have to do with how he is viewed from the outside as opposed to how he is viewed by those who know him and have worked with him. Planner Denise Scott Brown told me that every time she has seen Bacon he has been accompanied by a student. Since he retired from the City Planning Commission in

26 1970, he has had a handful of students. All of them (as far as I can tell) have become steadfast disciples. Those who have spent time with Bacon have listened to his stories, and his explanation of how he worked. They have come away inspired, and amazed that for 21 years in public office Bacon was able to keep his successful method a secret. Bacon’s disciples who have written the most about him are David Clow, John Guinther, Madeline Cohen, and Alexander Garvin. Alexander Garvin is an architecture professor at Yale University, he sits on the New York City Planning Commission, formerly headed the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (that oversaw the design process for Ground Zero), and is the primary coordinator for New York City’s 2012 Olympic bid. He wrote a book titled The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t, a veritable bible of city planning principles. The first edition was published by McGraw Hill in October, 1995. At that point Garvin had not met Ed Bacon. His subsequent conversations and interaction with Bacon thoroughly shaped the second edition (published in 2002). In the “Preface to the Second Edition,” Garvin wrote:

One of the great joys that came from the initial publication of The American City is my friendship with Ed Bacon. I met him the year the first edition was being published. In the ensuing years he has spent hours explaining his work and telling me anything and everything that is important about planning cities. If I was in awe of his achievements when we met, I am now a thunderstruck disciple.30

I heard Garvin give a talk at a meeting of the board of Liberty Properties Trust in Philadelphia in 2003. The entire speech was about the importance of the “organizing concept,” the foundation of Bacon’s planning process, and how it shaped Garvin’s design for the New York City Olympics. Garvin is one of the few people I encountered during my time working with Ed Bacon who truly understands what Bacon did, and to a degree how he did it. In The American City Garvin provided the reader with a glimpse at Bacon’s method in his chapter on “Comprehensive Planning.” Garvin told the story of Bacon’s role in Philadelphia’s reform movement, and

27 recounted Bacon’s interactions throughout several of his projects that shaped Philadelphia. Garvin concluded that “by remaining an integral part of Philadelphia’s planning process for three decades, Bacon himself becomes the focus of the city’s

‘collective consciousness.’”31 Garvin began the section on Bacon by criticizing a current trend in planning, in which: “Every day in every city people launch proposals that do not originate within the planning profession. They sidestep strategies for municipal expenditure and vision of the good city in order to proceed with those proposals that have sufficient political support to engender action.” He then argued that Bacon’s work in Philadelphia is proof that “widespread citizen participation in the planning process need not produce sad results. The trick is to involve all the participants in an ongoing city planning process.”32 Clearly Garvin holds Bacon in very high regard, and views his planning process as one that is still relevant and necessary. John Guinther is a “political writer” who authored several books including Breaking the Mob (with Frank Friel, McGraw Hill, 1990), on the downfall of a Philadelphia Mafia family; Brotherhood of Murder (with Thomas Martinez, McGraw Hill, 1988), the story of “the most violent secret racist society in America, The Order;” and The Jury in America, a report on the effectiveness of the nation’s jury system.33 In 1982 he wrote Philadelphia: A Dream for the Keeping (Continental Heritage Press), an illustrated history of the city. In 1996 he wrote a book titled Direction of Cities, after spending several years meeting with Ed Bacon. In the “Author’s Note,” Guinther explained:

The writing of Direction of Cities was made possible by the collaboration of Edmund N. Bacon, the city designer and architect. Over a period of more than two years, we met to talk about the nature of cities…I [will] attempt to describe Bacon’s philosophy and place it within the context of the history of American cities from the earliest days to the present time.34

Direction of Cities is the most significant published work on Bacon’s planning method. To a large degree Guinther grasped the essence of Bacon’s process:

28 In Bacon’s model…coalescence is created by the ferment the idea causes, so that it is ultimately freely accepted…[S]trong and valid ideas for the city’s future, once let loose in the marketplace, will have a cohering effect on enough elements in the society to establish purpose.35

Guinther also related a number of Bacon’s major assertions about the planning profession. For example, he cited the faulty separation of university programs into different disciplines (architecture, community planning, physical design), when in order to effectively plan a city or design a building one must see them all intertwined. Guinther wrote, “the architects among them, because they haven’t been taught to consider space as a continuum in which people exist and have needs and responses, see land only as a place to situate a design.”36 This is one of several cases where Guinther argues in support of a major element of Bacon’s philosophy. Guinther’s book makes it clear that Bacon entirely won him over. Unfortunately, the great failure of Direction of Cities is to really draw attention to Bacon’s method, lost in Guinther’s attempt to relate it to “the history of American cities.” After the introduction and first chapter, he expanded his scope beyond Philadelphia, but continued to insert stories and lessons from Philadelphia throughout. He discussed topics from Tammany Hall and the machine-rule in New York, to Detroit’s 1977 Renaissance Center. Perhaps Guinther felt that he could effectively present Bacon’s method for the first time in planning literature, and also relate it to the history of cities, all in one volume. Perhaps the publisher felt a book just on Philadelphia would not be marketable. Either way, the combination of Guinther’s two aims makes the book’s purpose unclear, and dilutes the focus of his argument. What could have been the first real look at Ed Bacon has already been forgotten. Madeline Cohen, a professor of Art History at Philadelphia Community College, wrote her doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania on Bacon’s

Washington Square East projects in 1991.37 The dissertation, titled “Postwar City

29 Planning in Philadelphia: Edmund N. Bacon and the design of Washington Square East,” exhibits painstaking research and careful attention to detail. Cohen’s dissertation is a valuable addition to the body of work discussing Philadelphia’s postwar planning. To assist her research, Bacon allowed Cohen free access to his archives, and she put many of them into their current semblance of order. Over the course of that year she recorded a number of interviews with Bacon. Although it was not the focus of her dissertation, she attempted at several points to outline this extraordinary and elusive planning method that made Bacon so successful. Cohen wrote:

A specific design had to be a solution to an actual situation and visualized completely, in order that it stimulate the imagination of Philadelphia’s leadership as well as the general public and unite them together in a common cause for civic and neighborhood improvement.38

Later she elaborated:

For Bacon, the physical plan could not be introduced for the first time at the end of the planning process…Bacon saw design as the first step…of a ‘design process.’ Having established a preliminary physical image, Bacon then worked with the realistic limitations imposed on the project through the course of its development…Bacon’s city planning was based on a designed image but he was not committed to a single unchangeable solution…Bacon oftentimes was able to convince the necessary players of the value of the plan…he aroused the public’s interest and secured the government backing.39

Cohen’s description of Bacon’s method is apt, however, much like Guinther, she lost focus (or rather she returned to her real focus). Her work is, after all, an art history dissertation, and as it fulfills the mould of an art history text, it abandons the examination of Bacon’s method and does not effectively recall its lessons as they apply to the actual events that led to the planning of Washington Square East. Though a marvelous recounting of historical events, Cohen’s dissertation does not effectively present Bacon’s method, or create a medium for its communication. David Clow was Bacon’s teaching assistant at the University of Pennsylvania. He subsequently worked with Bacon to produce a series of films in the 1980s called

30 Understanding Cities, in which Bacon narrated and explained the planning concepts in London, Rome, Paris, the American city, and the city of the future. Apparently Clow put together a series of interviews with Bacon and other writings that he hoped to have published as Conversations with Edmund N. Bacon, but as yet it has not been published.40 He wrote an article called “The Show that Got Philadelphia Going,” on the

1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition for which Bacon was co-designer.41 This article was published in Philadelphia magazine in May 1985. In 1987 Clow presented a well- researched paper on the Exhibition to the Second National Conference on American Planning History. In that paper, Clow revealed some of the lessons he learned during his time with Ed Bacon:

It must be dramatically apparent to the planning profession that the public craves an understanding of the future, but all too often planners are unable to communicate clear ideas about it. Thus planners distance themselves from the people whose future they are supposedly planning, creating a dangerous schism between planners and citizens.42

Later he described the importance of what Bacon called in Design of Cities the “design idea.” Clow created his own definition for what Bacon described:

A “design idea” is a three-dimensional image of a city, real or fantastic, which fully involves a participator’s full range of senses, and does not appeal exclusively to the intellect. Whether a plan, a model, or a built design, it contains the seeds of its own continuity in its power to motivate individual participators and stimulate further design and individual processes, thereby extending itself over space and time.43

While he tried to apply this message to the Better Philadelphia Exhibition, Clow also revealed that he understands the foundation of Bacon’s entire planning method: the organizing concept. Garvin, Guinther, Cohen, and Clow are the people who have worked with Bacon, been inspired by his extraordinary process, and have attempted to describe it in the context of their own individual projects. None has written something outside the scope of these projects. As a result there is still no biography and no work devoted entirely to examining Bacon’s method. His process remains elusive, and largely mis-

31 understood. Nowhere is this more clear than in the writings of those who have not worked with Bacon. The prime example is David Brownlee, an art history professor at the

University of Pennsylvania.44 He wrote Building the City Beautiful (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989) on the construction of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Museum of Art. After documenting 100 years of work to develop the Parkway, he attacked Bacon in the epilogue as the man who destroyed the “unimped- ed parkway vista and the generously proportioned public square that had cost so much effort and money.”45 He failed to note two important facts, however. First, Bacon was responsible for acquiring and completing the physical design of the Parkway, as set out by its architect Jacques Gréber. Secondly, Brownlee did not mention that Gréber, himself, reviewed and endorsed Bacon’s proposed changes to the Parkway before they were implemented. Brownlee is one of several authors who briefly introduce Bacon merely to decry his work and blame him for the ills of Philadelphia. In Joseph S. Clark, Jr.’s chapter in Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, he blamed Bacon for building terrible highways and selling out to real estate interests, turning what could have been solid, new neighborhoods in the Far Northeast into what could become “a slum of the future.”46 This trend of Bacon bashing was likely started in 1968, when, two years before Bacon’s retirement, Philadelphia magazine (July, 1968) ran a scathing cover story by Nancy Love on how “Ed Bacon’s dream of the City Beautiful has turned out to be a nightmare.” It is astounding that those who have spent significant time with Bacon in the past 20 years are all converted disciples, while other writers so clearly show the lack of understanding that surrounds Bacon’s work and method. There are still a few other works that discuss Bacon, but not critically. In The Evolution of American Urban Design (Wiley-Academy, 2003), David

32 Gosling spent several pages addressing Bacon in the context of a history and outline of architect Louis Kahn’s work. Gosling briefly recounted Bacon’s role in planning Penn Center and Society Hill, although he continually returned to Kahn. For example, Gosling credited Kahn with the creation of the “green way” system that Bacon used in Society Hill:

Kahn’s ‘green way concept’ first appeared in his proposals for the South West Temple Redevelopment Area. Green ways, under Bacon’s guidance, formed the spine of all residential projects in Center City. Without Bacon, Kahn’s ideas would have been lost.47

Gosling’s discussion of Bacon was brief and unrevealing, though he did make one astute observation that “[Bacon] chose powerful design ideas which, even when compromised, were strong enough to create a new sense of urban environment.”48 Throughout the book, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Temple University Press, 1987), John Bauman discussed Bacon as Director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, then as Director of the City Planning Commission. Bauman addressed Bacon’s work in the context of its philosophy and how it affected housing and redevelopment. He exhibited a good understanding of Bacon’s background and influences, including what Bacon learned from Eliel Saarinen at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, as well as his role in Penn Center and Society Hill. Bacon’s work on Independence Mall is documented in Constance M. Greiff’s book, Independence: The Creation of a National Park (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987). In The Last Landscape (Doubleday, 1968), William H. Whyte spent two pages heaping praise on Bacon’s design for the Far Northeast, including an image of the plan. Several professional publications have also dealt with Bacon’s work. The Community Builder’s Handbook (Urban Land Institute, 1968) used Philadelphia’s Far Northeast Plan as an example of “the advantages of developing according to a city plan.”49 An Architectural Guidebook to Philadelphia, by Francis Morrone, discussed

33 Bacon’s role in planning Penn Center. There is a good oral history published on Bacon’s long-time friend and inspiration, Walter Phillips. The book, titled Walter M. Phillips: Philadelphia Gentleman Activist (Portraits on Tape, 1987), is a collection of interviews by Phillips’ friends and co-workers. The first in the book is a marvelous interview with Bacon, revealing much of the influence that shaped Bacon’s career. These are the major pieces of literature discussing Bacon and his work. For most people it is a goodly amount of attention, but not for someone as significant as Bacon. While there are a number of works that discuss Bacon’s contributions, there is no major published volume that deals adequately with Bacon’s work or his planning method. Bacon’s contributions are still significantly misunderstood, and as a result the body of literature about him is quite meager. Bacon is often mentioned only in sections, and authors deal with Bacon more out of necessity than out of interest. As is seen by the writings of Bacon’s disciples, those who have the chance and care to listen, discover the true importance of Edmund Bacon. Bacon’s method is astounding and yet so intuitive, responding and interacting with the history and forces that really affect the urban environment. Bacon’s method shaped the face of an entire city, but the world has yet to discover the true secret to Bacon’s success.

Bacon’s Reputation

At the height of his career Bacon was a local celebrity—associated with the renaissance of Philadelphia’s downtown. He was so well known that the press reported his opinion on a variety of everyday issues. One article, published in the Evening Bulletin, took up two columns explaining Bacon’s view on America’s grade school art curriculum. The article reported, “you’re not going to get much creativity, [Bacon] said, when you inhibit a child’s artistic development by forcing him to draw stick men and little round pumpkins.”50

34 Of course Bacon’s fame was significantly boosted when, in 1964 and 1965, Time and Life published cover stories on Bacon and credited him with transforming the face of Philadelphia. In 1965 the White House recognized Bacon as a national leader in planning, inviting him to attend its conference on Recreation and Natural Beauty. This was an initiative organized by Ladybird Johnson, with such national leaders as Lawrence Rockefeller in attendance. Bacon’s selection may have had to do with his reputation as a planner who based his work on preserving structures rather than tearing them down. As Time magazine put it, “Bacon’s vision cherishes the old and adapts it to the new.”51 This sentiment seems to have shaped Bacon’s national image. After retiring from the City Planning Commission, Bacon went on to work as Vice President for a planning firm, Mondev, U.S.A. In 1971 he was awarded the American Institute of Planners’ Distinguished Service Award. During the 1970s and 1980s Bacon won more than ten honorary degrees, and the prestigious Philadelphia Award, and gave uncountable lectures at the invitation of municipalities across the country. In 1991, Bacon received the University of Illinois’s Plym Distinguished Professorship in Architecture, and subsequently taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Organizations across Philadelphia continue to invite Bacon as the guest of honor or keynote speaker. Today, in 2004, although he has been retired for 36 years, the 93-year-old former city planner is still a household name in his city. His national fame has faded considerably, and while locals continue to respect and honor him, his ideas about modern planning issues are not taken as seriously as they once were. Throughout his career, and since, Bacon has taken on a reputation as a fighter, stubbornly sticking to what he believes is right, no matter who challenges him. When he was younger this aspect of his personality made him a forceful administrator. Berton Korman, President of Korman Companies, one of Philadelphia’s major developers, recalled of Bacon, “No one was going to fight with this man. It wasn’t worth

35 it.”52 Bacon is known for always saying what he believes. In one interview Bacon said emphatically, “I never gave a tinker’s damn what anybody thought about me.” Bacon has always been a free thinker, had his own ideas, and never failed to push for those ideas in any way he could. As early as 1968 Bacon was already under attack. In her Philadelphia magazine article “Paradise Lost,” Nancy Love criticized Bacon’s emphasis on design over social issues, as well as the effects of his stubborn approach and personality. She wrote:

The Philadelphia Planning Commission attracts the country’s most brilliant young talents. They all want to say they’ve worked here. Most don’t stay very long. The frustration and inertia drives out the good ones. Those who do remain long enough seem to vegetate and become Bacon yes-men.53

From that point on Bacon would receive as much criticism as praise as he continued to make his opinions known. His fighting personality rubbed some the wrong way, and others faulted Bacon with the less-than-perfect end results of his projects. Yet others mistakenly characterized Bacon as just another administrator from a misguided era of planning that displaced residents, built high-rise projects, and catered to the rich. These critics viewed (and view) Bacon as living beyond his time, and ignore the core principle of his method: the individuality of each project, responding to the realities of the city. Bacon believes there is no cookie-cutter way to revive cities. This element of his philosophy set him apart from most of his contemporaries. Without his official position, it became harder for Bacon to win battles. In the 1980s Bacon undertook a major feud with developer Willard Rouse who wanted to built a skyscraper breaking down the “gentleman’s agreement” Bacon had enforced to maintain City Hall as the tallest structure in the city. The Bacon-Rouse battle made headlines in all the local newspapers for over a year. Eventually Rouse won, a two skyscraper complex (Liberty Place) was built, and others followed.

36 The photographs below show Philadelphia’s skyline in the 1930s and today. City Hall is at the center in both photographs. In the lower image, One Liberty Place is the second tall building from the right.

Figure 1.6 (Source: Ed Mauger) 37 In the late 1990s Bacon criticized the National Park Service’s redesign for the area surrounding Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. In 1968, while at the Planning Commission, Bacon had placed double allees of trees to frame Independence Hall, making sure that no modern structure would be built abutting the national shrine. The illustration at right shows Bacon’s design. Figure 1.7 (Source: National Park Service) The plan the Park Service proposed in 1996 cut down one of the allees of trees and replaced it with a modern pavilion for the Liberty Bell. Bacon was enraged. Uninvited, he hired a team of 15 artists and model makers, designed his own plans, and displayed them in an exhibition. The Philadelphia Daily News published a full-page, color rendering of his plans in a special section of the newspaper. Once again Bacon was in the news, and once again he lost the battle. Adding insult to injury, the Park service’s final design added an element that enraged Bacon further, symmetrically balancing the new Liberty Bell pavilion with a public restroom, shown below, directly across the street from Independence Hall.

Figure 1.8 (Gregory Heller) 38 In 1999, Philadelphia’s Center City District proposed a redesign of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to improve traffic circulation and make the space more lively. Bacon disagreed with it vehemently. He believed it would worsen traffic flow, and destroy the natural setting that made the space so popular. Through op-ed sub- missions, photo renderings and advertisements Bacon fought the proposed redesign. A May 19, 1999 article in the Weekly Press, titled “Bacon Outraged by Parkway Plan,” explained Bacon’s opposition in-depth. So far the new Parkway Plan has not been implemented. One final example of Bacon’s continued participation in civic life is LOVE Park. In 1932 Bacon designed a “New Civic Center for Philadelphia” as his architecture thesis at Cornell University. Part of his design was a park at the westernmost terminus of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, seen at the left side of Bacon’s thesis drawing, below.

Figure 1.9 (Source: Bacon Papers) In the 1950s Bacon proposed the idea to Mayor Dilworth. Bacon recounted the following exchange:

I went to Mayor Dilworth and I showed him my idea…The Mayor, when I presented it to him, was in the company of his Commissioner of Streets. So he turned to his commissioner and said, “Well, what do you think?” And the commissioner said to him, “Mr. Mayor, if you do that all traffic in center city will come to a complete standstill.” So the mayor said, “Good, I’ll do it.” And he did.54 39 The City dedicated and opened John F. Kennedy Plaza in 1967. In 1976 artist Robert Indiana loaned his LOVE Sculpture to Philadelphia for the bicentennial. After the loan ended, LOVE was removed, but citizens made such an outcry that the City bought the sculpture and reinstalled it on its Figure 1.10 (Gregory Heller) pedestal in the park, thus giving the plaza its nickname: LOVE Park.55 During the 1980s, by an accident of history, skateboarders discovered the park, and over time LOVE Park became the world’s most famous skateboard park. Its fame brought ESPN’s X Games to Philadelphia for two years in a row, and much of the X Games exhibitions were staged at LOVE Park. Just before the 2002 X Games, Mayor

John Street enforced a skateboarding ban at LOVE Park, to significant protest.56 In October of 2002, at 92-years of age, accompanied by the park’s architect, Vincent Kling, Bacon stood in LOVE Park surrounded by the press, and said:

This is discrimination of the worst sort. Philadelphia against the youth of the world. It was here, in Philadelphia in 1776, that the leaders of our country stood up to the King of England and told him to go to Hell. I make no claim to be a leader, but, by God I am a person and I stand up to Mayor Street and tell him to go to Hell and stay there until he sees the light and changes his ways by going to LOVE Park each day with a smile on his face and a warm welcoming handshake to greet the skateboarders of the world.57

Bacon finished his speech to great applause. He then put on a hel- met, picked up a skateboard, and with two assistants holding his arms, pro- ceeded to skate about fifteen feet

toward the LOVE Statue.58 Figure 1.11 (Gregory Heller)

40 These examples provide a picture of Ed Bacon’s remarkable character, firm resolve, and controversial personality. Even his critics admit that he is an asset to his city. Bacon continues to fight for Philadelphia in any way he can. He has done so much in his lifetime that the Philadelphia Inquirer has had to rewrite his obituary, since it was first drafted in advance in 1982.59 Bacon is alive and kicking, and will not let anyone forget it. And until the day he dies he will not stop fighting for Philadelphia. Recently Bacon has been considerably angered and saddened by the destruction of his projects: most notably Independence Mall. At one point, in his disgust, he wrote an essay titled, “Why You Should Die Before You Are 85.” More than witness- ing the “destruction” of his work Bacon feels that he is no longer respected. I asked him once, “how can you feel that you are no longer respected, if you are constantly written about, honored, and given awards?” Bacon replied something like this: “I don’t care about people honoring me; I want them to respect my ideas.” The individual’s idea is the strongest force in Bacon’s life, the key to his ability to get things done, and also his life’s torment, when his ideas are not taken seriously. Bacon’s stubborn, fighting personality has significantly shaped his career, got- ten a lot of things done, but also gained him a reputation. “Look, you’re not going down in the history books because people liked you,” Berton Korman remarked, “You’re going down in the history books because you did the job. Did a hell of a job.

Philadelphia was a model! I was proud to be a part of it.”60 Others do not see Bacon the same way. Denise Scott Brown, told me in conversation that Bacon is a “bad, bad man.” She argued that he subdued anyone who tried to work with him, and has had a negative effect on modern Philadelphia. Paul Levy, the Director of the Center City District (the victim of Bacon’s wrath against his Parkway plan) told me that while Bacon has made enormous contributions to the city, his attitude continues to annoy people, and prevents them from taking him seriously. In his old age some current City officials view Bacon as a legend, but one who

41 has perhaps lived passed his time. In a Philadelphia Inquirer article, titled “Though Old-Fashioned Bacon’s an Asset to City,” Mark Bowden wrote, “yesterday’s visionary is today’s relic: Today some of Bacon’s accomplishments are considered failures.”61 Even in 1968, this attitude was beginning to surface. Nancy Love quoted Philip Klein, “Bacon is the greatest city planner in America today, but he’s out-lived his usefulness to the city.” She continued, “many others who have worked with Bacon have said it off the record.”62 Today Edmund Bacon’s reputation gains him a strange combination of ene- mies and idolizers, grateful citizens and those of a new generation, for whom he is first and foremost the “Rosa Parks of skateboarding.”63 As Bacon walks down the street he always receives more than a few acknowledgements. In public he is simply too much of a legend, not to mention a venerable one, to attack blatantly. In private there are those who respect and seek to emulate him, but there are others who wish he would go away, one way or another. As long as Bacon is alive, Philadelphia is lucky to have him. He has always been an advocate for his city and will continue to be as long as he is able. Unfortunately, because of his subtle method and forceful personality, Edmund Bacon will not be truly appreciated or understood in any meaningful way in his lifetime. This is a shame because his method is a successful and democratic process, still entirely relevant, that empowers its participants. Planners have much to learn if they would take a close look at how Bacon’s method actually functioned. Someday the world will have a chance to review Bacon’s life and work objectively, and apply his lessons to the great benefit of our cities.

42 2. The Independent

I developed at an early age a fierce sense of independence and indifference to what other people thought of me, which persist to today. I do not look to anyone outside for corroboration or support of any kind. Yet living in a sealed off future has its rewards. There is nobody there to tell you it can’t be done. – Edmund Bacon1

One day over breakfast Bacon told me that he sees his life’s course as a sequence of I Ching. His grandson Nathan, who lives and works in Thailand, happened to be visiting that day. Nathan explained to me that the I Ching is an ancient Chinese system of divination, also known as the “Book of Changes.” For centuries the I Ching has used a series of 64 hexagram characters to help people make difficult decisions. Bacon interrupted and told me that he does not compare his life to the fortune telling aspect of the I Ching, rather that he sees his life as a series of individual choic- es, each leading to and connecting with each other. Bacon’s series of decisions led to life experiences that shaped his philosophy, character, career, and world view. Bacon’s method and philosophy do not make sense in isolation—only in the context of the full picture of the man and his ideas. The following is not a biography of Bacon’s life; instead it is an overview of the decisions and ensuing discoveries and influences that came to dominate Bacon’s mind and body. These episodes and decisions in Bacon’s life are the foundation for understanding his planning method. Bacon took lessons away from these decisions that in turn, through his work, he transmitted to the entire populace of Philadelphia.

• • •

Edmund Norwood Bacon was born in West Philadelphia on May 2, 1910. Bacon recalled, “I was born in a home with no electricity.” His father, Ellis Bacon, made a good living as a printer at J.P. Lippincott and Company. Bacon’s family owned two houses, one a brick, twin house on Baring Street in West Philadelphia, and the

43 other a country house, outside the city. Bacon had two older brothers and a younger sister. His relationship (or lack thereof) with his siblings profoundly shaped his early development:

The family was really a closed circuit when I came into it. There was my mother, my father, and there were two sons…and they referred to my brothers before I was born as, “the boys.” When I was born they simply continued, so as I grew more conscious of my surroundings here I was in a family with “the boys”—my two older brothers—which assuredly did not include me... Norwood [myself], and then my dear little sister, Lydia. And most assuredly I was not that. So really I had no status or role in the family structure, and this, I think, almost from infancy, embedded in my mind, I was an outsider.2

Bacon saw himself, in fact, as part of a larger family including four cousins who lived nearby. Bacon recalled that, like his siblings, none of his cousins paid much attention to him either:

The seven of them very clearly regarded me as an outsider and did not include me in their inner circle machinations. So I learned, almost from infancy never to depend on any way on anybody outside myself for any support whatsoever. So therefore I developed a fierce sense of independence.3

Because he was ignored by his siblings, cousins and peers, Bacon said, “I was thrown on my own resources for my entertainment and amusement for the whole wak- ing hours.” His friend gave him a printing press, and Bacon published a newsletter out of his house, as well as greeting cards, and “labels for jam jars.”4 He raised his own chickens and sold the eggs to his mother.

All his life since, Bacon has been devising his own methods and concepts, paying little regard to the opinions of others. Still, there is another element of Bacon’s internal character that allowed him to let go of his concepts, passing them off to others. Perhaps this quality has to do with his Quaker upbringing. Modesty and simplicity are core values of the Quaker religion, and Bacon grew up in a family of strict, ninth-generation Quakers. Bacon explained, “My ancestors came over the same year as William Penn.” He continued:

44 My father imposed severe rules of conduct on us children, especially on Sunday. We were not allowed to play tennis, nor any game, especially cards (there was a family debate as to whether the game “Old Maid” was cards)…For nine generations everyone, including little kids, had attended the Sunday Meeting for worship5…and sat for one hour in silence occasionally punctuated by a message from God transmitted by one of the members6…One Sunday my sister, about five years old at the time, complained of feeling sick and so was left home alone as the rest of us went off to meeting. In the middle of the silent worship a little figure opened the door of the Meeting House. There up the aisle came my little sister…to get there my sister had to cross several streets, on a major traffic street, and to find the meeting house. It shocks me in retrospect that, in my Mother and Father’s value system, going to meeting was more important than taking care of their child.7

Later in life Bacon’s sense of independence clashed with his Quaker background. He stopped going to meeting, and he was the first in his family to ever marry a non-Quaker: “the family has strictly married only Quakers up to all my ancestors, because if any Quaker marries outside of meeting—that is, a non-Quaker girl—they were immediately expelled.”8 Despite his dislike for some aspects of his Quaker upbringing, he nonetheless recalled of Quaker meeting, “it was very hard on little children to ask them to sit still for so long a period. Yet in retrospect, it was wonderful conditioning to build a life on…the discipline was unrelenting.”9 Bacon’s selfless ability to allow others to inherit and take credit for his concepts may be a result of his Quaker upbringing, but it may also have to do with a backlash from life as an outsider, what Bacon described as “an almost obsequious desire to please other people.” Bacon remembered one experience from his youth when his brothers did pay attention to him:

I made...a very lovely stone house…And on it I put a fine roof of two shingles. My brothers who had paid no attention to me in my life up to that time, saw my house, and it was the fourth of July, and they asked if they could put their firecrackers in and explode it to pieces. And I was so delighted by their attention that I said, “yes of course. So I had the pleasure of seeing my little structure blown to smithereens.10

Since that time Bacon has allowed other people to take ownership of his concepts, and to take full credit for their realization. This quality is partly responsible for the success of his planning method. Accordingly, the projects turned out differently than how Bacon had initially envisioned them. Sometimes, as in the case of the

45 redesign of Independence Mall, this same quality resulted in him seeing his beloved projects “blown to smithereens.”

• • •

Bacon’s character not only emerged from his sense of himself as an outsider, but also from his ability to make his own decisions, irrespective of existing rules, precedents and the advice of others. He did not blindly accept the rules given to him. From a very early age Bacon learned the benefits of breaking the rules when he felt they should be broken:

I went to Friends West Philadelphia School…I was sitting dutifully, as a good student in the ground floor first grade classroom looking out the window, and there I saw a woman with some students and a balloon man came along and she bought all the students balloons. I was very envious. I learned that these were the bad children and that principal had decided based on an ancient Quaker concept, that when people are bad they should be separated from other people, and, as with prisoners, put in solitary confinement. They would repent of their sins and be good forever after. So she had the idea that she would separate the bad children that they would feel isolated and then if you buy them balloons that they would feel like babies and repent of their sins. Well I said, “That’s for me.” So I quickly took such action as was necessary—and I don’t remember what it was—to be transferred to the bad children’s class. In the bad children’s class we were totally isolated from all teachers and supervision, whatsoever, we developed a wonderful society of our own in midair. We leapt from desk to desk and had a superb time.

Bacon explained the lesson of all this: “It was a great learning experience: that violating a proper code of behavior was very rewarding, and that I never forgot.”11

Years later this lesson resurfaced as Bacon applied it to his profession. In 1952, the Pennsylvania Railroad announced that its “Chinese Wall,” the massive masonry structure, carrying elevated tracks, was coming down. At the same luncheon where the Railroad made this announcement, Bacon presented his vision for what should replace the “Chinese Wall,” replete with images of beautifully crafted, transparent three- dimensional models. The “Chinese Wall” was private property, and therefore the professional precedent said that it was beyond Bacon’s province, as an employee of the City, to plan for the site’s reuse. Because of this fact, Bacon recalled:

46 The American Institute of Architects… and the American Institute of Planners…both told me that it was totally unprofessional for me to make a plan of property I didn’t own, and that if I persisted in doing it, they would expel me from their professional society. So I said simply, “heck with you!”12

Bacon has always followed his own ideas, and his own feelings of what is best for Philadelphia, rather than adhering to predetermined rules, or the limitations placed on him by job descriptions and professional societies. Had Bacon not ignored the warnings of the A.I.A. and A.I.C.P., Philadelphia would be a very different place. Years later, his vision for replacing the “Chinese Wall” became the impetus for Penn Center, now the foundation for Philadelphia’s entire downtown business center.

• • •

As I mentioned earlier, the biological paradigm has heavily shaped Bacon’s life and worked. There is one experience in Bacon’s youth that he views as the most significant in developing the connection between the city and his body:

When I was a little kid, about eight years old, I wrote to the Mayor of Philadelphia, asking permission to ascend City Hall Tower. I think I am the only little boy who ever did this. Permission granted, I found myself at the feet of a very large [statue of] William Penn. There we were, just the two of us, William Penn and I, alone together, higher than anybody. At our feet lay Penn’s bustling city, his two great boulevards, Broad Street and Market Street, stretching out from us in the four cardinal directions, from their intersection directly below us. Suddenly I felt these two arteries intersecting in my gut, giving me a new center. This sensation has never left me, giving me a sense of purpose and direction in everything I have done since. This was not an intellectual thing. This was a body thing. What a way to learn history!13

The point is, urban design is not an intellectual achievement, it is a bodily experience that that physically affects the senses of city dwellers. Bacon’s body is his way of understanding the world. Throughout his career, Bacon admits that his guiding force came, not from numbers analysis, but from the feeling of his body moving through space. Every day people living in the city are bombarded by a constant flow of sen-

47 sory experiences. The sound of fountains, the water splashing one’s face, the feel of grass or pavement, the combination of different architectural types, a winding route between houses, emerging into a courtyard. The city constantly affects the senses, and consciously or not, the people who experience the city develop a perception based on their sensory experience—the collective unconscious. More than just considering sensory stimuli, Bacon views the entire city as a living, breathing organism. As I mentioned before, when the analyst said there was no market potential for revitalizing east Market Street, Bacon persisted with his vision. He viewed Market Street, divided by City Hall, as the arms of the city, and if a person’s arm is injured, the solution is to heal it, not to amputate. Bacon’s ability to constantly treat the city as a living thing, came from his underlying biological paradigm. Having worked with Bacon, I came to understand that this comparison of the city to a body is not just rhetoric, it is the foundation for Bacon’s entire life’s work. Bacon and I created the illustration below to express this concept. We overlaid Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing with the Penn-Holme plan and Bacon’s projects.

Figure 2.1 (Sources: Pietro C. Arani, Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 2000.; Tatum. Composite by Bacon and Heller)

48 In a 2001 interview, Bacon phrased it most aptly:

I reject completely the idea that is currently the dominant idea about city planning, that your ideas come from the manipulation of numbers. I have no interest in numbers at all and they never mean anything to me in my method of thought. I think that what you are taught in college about city planning, is that city planners first of all analyze the situation. Well I think analyzing is for the birds. No idea ever came out of analysis. You might as well not waste your time on it. You need to feed your brain computer with the facts of the case. But the facts of the case are not numbers. The facts of the case are the reality of the physical sensory stimuli that assault your senses, sequentially experienced in musical fashion. I completely reject the mechanical paradigm. My paradigm is entirely visceral, physical body, and I for some reason am very sensitive to my body as a functioning element, and it actually supplies me with the raw material for which I turn into thoughts, which I laboriously turn into physical realities, and which I subsequently very carefully communicate.14

Market analysts try to anticipate the future by creating five or ten-year projections. But these projections are based on current trends. What they cannot anticipate is human will. Bacon asserts that individuals have the ability to create change and turn a trend on its head. A market analyst may project that a rundown area will continue to deteriorate if he sees no salvation in sight. However, time after time, Bacon bucked trends and created markets where none existed before, and none was anticipated. A decade after retiring from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Ed Bacon narrated a series of five films on urban design. The Paris film is by the far the most memorable. In one dramatic scene, to the amazement of passersby, he walked straight across the Tuileries Gardens, wading through the middle of the fountains, in his suit and tie, then continued his brisk walk, in a straight line, after emerging on the other side. Ed Bacon has always experienced the city with his body and has always based his planning on that bodily experience.

• • •

Bacon’s parents sold their country house and the family moved to the suburbs. Bacon went to high school at Swarthmore Public High. There he wrote a play, mod- eled on Greek theater called “Peonius and Ariadne,” that the school performed at his

49 graduation. In the play, Bacon dealt “with the question of: what is the meaning in our lives of the future?”15 Bacon likely did not know at the time that he would spend the rest of his life dealing with the notion of the future, and how to realize the future he envisioned. At the time Bacon graduated from high school, there was a major rivalry between the architecture programs at the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University. Bacon chose Cornell because he wanted to get out of Philadelphia and escape from his family, not to mention he “loved the beautiful country and the isolation [of Ithaca, New York].”16 Bacon began his architectural studies at Cornell in 1927. In college he took only one course on city planning, taught by landscape architect Gilmore Clark.17 Bacon said, “the only thing I learned from that course was that city planning was impossible.”18 Several years later Bacon was fortunate enough to be invited to dinner by world-famous city planner Sir Raymond Unwin. Discussing Bacon’s future, Unwin suggested he become a city planner. Bacon remembered, “I thought that was the dumbest thing I had ever heard.”19 Although he was trained in architecture, Bacon soon began to think like a city planner. In 1932, as his senior thesis at Cornell Bacon designed a “Civic Center for Philadelphia.” Instead of thinking in terms of individual buildings he conceptualized an entire area within the urban environment. Bacon explained:

Being young, brash and full of testosterone, I smashed down City Hall completely, and that gave me…an empty center block for me to do my architecture on…The Parkway at that point went straight through to City Hall corner, dividing the open block into two useless triangles. I conceived the idea of stopping the diagonal, and developing there a beautiful park, which would be a wonderful place to perceive the grandeur of the Parkway and how it related to what I proposed around the area, with several buildings making a composition for the [new] City Hall. I put at the critical point, at the center of this new plaza, a vertical element. We called them votive columns in those days, and it was a rather odd, classical idea, but nonetheless it was there. In my mind it served the very important function of marking the point of juncture of the central termination of the Parkway…the diagonal of the Parkway, binding it into the orthogonal of the William Penn Plan.20

50 I related the story earlier of how Bacon proposed this idea to Mayor

Richardson Dilworth in the late 1950s.21 This park became LOVE Park, and the votive column became the park’s great fountain. Thankfully the rest of Bacon’s 1932 plan was not built, and City Hall still stands. Bacon won the Sanderson Medal for his thesis design. He admitted that he did not know it at the time, but later discovered that Jacques Gréber indicated a votive column on exactly the same spot, in his original plan for the Parkway. Bacon graduated in 1932 during the depths of the Great Depression. There were few architectural jobs available. Bacon used $1000 he inherited from his grandfather to sail across the ocean and see the world. He first went to England, where he bought a bicycle. He cycled through England and France, then along the Grande Corniche to Rome. Bacon recalled the rest of his travels:

In Rome I thought well I’ll quickly go back home. So I put my bicycle and my luggage in the basement of the American Academy of Rome, where I suppose it still is, and I just hopped over to Greece with a friend, because it was so close. My friend hated the primitive delights there, but I had a superlative time. So I thought, well I’m right next to Turkey and the Islamic culture, so before I go home I’ll just hop over for a little trip. And I went to Istanbul and I saw the incredible magnificence of the Feast of Ramadan in Aya Sofya—something that you or your whole generation will never see again. But then it got cold and I discovered that it was cheaper to go to Egypt than to buy a coat. So off to Egypt I went. I wanted to go up to Abu Simbel, but I couldn’t afford the Cook’s boat, so I made a deal with Arab captain to take me up and row me up with his crew, which cost less than a day in the Cook’s boat. But when I returned from that magnificent adventure I suddenly decided now I am through with romance. I want to get down to brass tacks, and get a job and earn my living. And by a wild coincidence, at that moment I met a missionary from Shanghai and he told me in Shanghai there are jobs in architecture. So I counted my money and I had enough to get to Shanghai on a third-class Japanese boat with $35 left over. I walked the streets of Port Said for two days, struggling with my decision. Then suddenly a light came, “well you can’t possibly tell the consequences of either, so I might as well follow my impulses,” so I jumped on a Japanese boat and I sailed down the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean and the Chinese Ocean. I cursed myself for the decision because I thought the Chinese culture I totally hated, got nothing but gold dragons. But I did arrive in Shanghai with $35 which had become smaller and smaller and smaller as I approached. I did get an architectural job [with American architect Henry Killian Murphy]. I did go to Beijing, China. I did see the imperial, palace of the Forbidden City of Peking. And there I learned everything about architecture, and I came back, unbelievably inspired by what I saw. And nobody knows it’s true, but I made Philadelphia into a Chinese city.22

51 In China, Bacon designed a number of houses and even an airport (unbuilt), but most important were the lessons he learned about space and movement. Bacon’s organizing concept for Society Hill was based on a Chinese tea house bridge. He based his concept for Penn Center on the spatial system of the Forbidden City. The illustrations below compare Bacon’s Philadelphia concepts and their Chinese influences.

Figure 2.2 (Sources: Clockwise from top left, Edmund Bacon, Design of Cities, New York: Viking, 1967; Dennis Cox/China Stock; Emil Schulthess, China, New York: Viking, 1966; Philadelphia City Planning Commission) 52 Bacon wrote the following of his experience in the Forbidden City, after walking through the first two courtyards, arriving in the final courtyard, before the throne room:

As a dumb American I was astonished to realize that the dimensions of the Throne Room building I was in were slightly smaller than those of some of the pavilions I had passed through to get there. How could this experience of standing before the throne of China be so overwhelming? Suddenly and powerfully I realized that it was not because of the size of the structure, rather it was because of the position of this structure as the crescendo of this powerfully musical symphonic sequence of buildings and courtyards I had gone through to get there.23

In another interview Bacon explained how he later applied this lesson:

All of the intensity of the experience is done by the manipulation of sensory stimuli—colors, rhythms, movements, and so forth—and that is exactly the principle I used in all my work in Philadelphia, where I never thought in terms of structures at all. I only thought about what are your feelings as you move through these passageways that I have created.24

Bacon paid close attention to movement and space, and had the ability to interconnect projects in one location with the rest of the city. For this reason, the entire residential area of Society Hill has a flowing system of greenways, winding through, linking up with Independence Mall and Washington Square. From Independence Mall, the system leads to Bacon’s below-ground passageways connecting 8th Street to 20th Street and Penn Center. The coherence and interconnectedness of Bacon’s concepts inspired others to take projects that could have been stand-alone buildings and link them up to Bacon’s system. For example, in Society Hill, architect I.M. Pei admitted that he designed the placement of his buildings to respond to the form of Bacon’s greenways, leading up to them.25 In 2001, architect Robert Stern was commissioned to design a building on JFK Boulevard, in the city’s business center. Since Penn Center was built, new skyscrapers have risen, disconnected from Bacon’s below-ground passage system. However Stern recognized the importance of connectivity, and created a dramatic entrance to his

53 building from the below-ground system. The firms of John Bower and Cope-Linder were commissioned to build new structures around Market East, and all of these are very much linked to Bacon’s original systems of below-ground movement. For this remarkable sense of connection, Philadelphia has China to thank. The illustrations below show the Society Hill Towers (the heavy line traces the path of Bacon’s greenways), and “The Link,” Bower/Cope-Linder’s connection between the the below-ground Gallery and Market East Station, the street level, and the above-ground Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Figure 2.3 (Sources: Left, Delaware Vally Regional Planning Commission, “Historic Preservation,” 1969; Right, Bacon Papers) • • •

Bacon returned to Philadelphia in 1934, where he worked as a draughtsman with the firm of W. Pope Barney.26 During this time, Bacon discovered the Cranbrook Academy of Art, a school in suburban Detroit, built and run by renowned Swedish city planner and architect Eliel Saarinen. Bacon wrote Saarinen a letter, describing his edu-

54 cation, his travels, and architectural background. He also laid out the design concepts he felt strongly about and wished to develop. Bacon’s letter was rather long; below are excerpts to provide some of its flavor:

[I] pursued the five-year architectural course in pretty much the usual manner…and received Tau Beta Pi and Phi Kappa Phi, for whatever they may be worth…I traveled leisurely in England, France and Italy…mostly sketching, living, learning of people, absorbing the tenor and quality of life in those places…In Egypt I achieved the consummation of my romantic quest with a voyage up the Nile…At this point I feel strongly a new need to explore more deeply into the knowledge of these of [sic] experience, and into myself…Color in particular, I should like to know more about. I have long thought it should be an integral part of form composition…China completely revolutionized my sense of form. Instead of thrusting aside space, as do the shouldering domes and towers of the Western world, the Chinese are humble before space, and treat it with profound respect.27

According to Bacon, solely on the basis of that letter Saarinen accepted him into Cranbrook. Bacon thoroughly enjoyed his time there, “living for one solid year in a total dream world of nothing but beauty and wonder, and the incredibly beautiful campus of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the wonderfully beautiful presence of

Eliel Saarinen and his wife.”28 Saarinen did not influence Bacon so much with his individual ideas, as much as with his overall philosophy. Foremost was Saarinen’s constant comparison between the city and a body or other living thing. Saarinen wrote: “Now, the process of town- building…must be to bring organic order into the urban communities… Fundamentally, also, this process is analogous to the growth of any living organism in nature.”29 Also, Bacon recalled that Saarinen taught him to look beyond individual projects and areas. One must view everything in the city overlapping and interconnected: “design doesn’t stop at boundaries.”30 More than specific lessons, what Bacon learned from Saarinen was the spirit of how to treat the city. Bacon, in fact admitted that Saarinen “never taught me anything. He simply transmitted to the very core of my being his whole life’s philosophy.”31

55 • • •

In 1937, the leaders of Flint, Michigan, a nearby industrial town, invited Eliel Saarinen to conduct a traffic survey with Works Progress Administration (WPA) funding.32 In his stead, Saarinen sent Bacon. Suddenly Bacon was thrust out of the utopia of Cranbrook, into a gritty, working-class city. He toured the town and observed the terrible working conditions. He also witnessed the famous 1937 Flint sit-down strike, organized by Walter Reuther and the United Autoworkers Union. The traffic survey was a WPA project, meant to provide employment during the Great Depression; as such, Bacon managed a team of 80 “down-at-the-heel men.” Here for the first time Bacon really began to exercise his independent personality, and his tendency to make his own rules:

I set to work on my traffic survey and I looked at the guidelines, which were given to me by the federal government, which I was supposed to follow, which simply put people out on the street who counted the number of cars and put them on a map, and that was the end of it, and what was the purpose of the whole thing? I saw Flint as having five focal centers: AC Sparkplug, Fisher Body, Chevrolet, and Buick and in the center, center city. And I saw the whole traffic as a fluctuation back and forth every day of people in these five directions, and therefore I recorded this. And so I had the information, out of which to design a plan, because I could design a plan of highways and actually calculate, because of the incredible labor I had, the number of drivers who would be deflected from the other routes and would follow it. In the middle of my work, along came representatives of the Federal Government in Washington, and they said to me sternly, “Young man, you have not followed the guidelines of the United States Government, and you are now fired.” So I said, “alright, but I might remind you that I’ve already spent two million dollars, and there is nobody in the world who can take over my job now and finish the survey, because I am the only person in the world who knows the technology that I’ve created.” And so they looked a little sheepish, and went back and were never heard from again.33

In a letter to his parents, dated November 22, 1937, Bacon wrote, “Traffic survey still just about to be published, and still just about to startle the world. But the world seems to be able to stand the wait.”34 After the survey was released, the Junior Chamber of Commerce was so impressed with Bacon’s work that it awarded him its “Distinguished Service Award,” for being Flint’s outstanding leader for the past year.

56 After the traffic survey, Bacon turned his attention to the city’s inadequate worker housing. In Flint, developers would build flimsy shacks and sell them to workers, on contract. That is, if the worker defaulted on one month’s payment, the developer would foreclose on the house and the owner would be evicted. All of the auto- motive plants paid their workers by the hour, and so, during the months when General Motors changed over its model, the employees did not work at all, were not paid, and were often forced to default on their mortgages and were evicted. Bacon recalled:

[I] visited a family the day before Christmas Eve. The tree was lighted, the stockings were hung. The sheriff was coming the next day to evict the family because the father had not received any money from General Motors for weeks and could not make the last payment on his contract.35

It was a constant cycle, year after year, and Bacon was determined to change it. By that time, Bacon became acquainted with Catharine Bauer, the creator of modern-day American housing policy, and was inspired to take action. He formed the Citizen’s Housing Council, and put together a housing survey. While working on that survey, Bacon met his future wife, Ruth:

The privileged people on Long Island thought it would be an interesting experience to send their debutante daughters out into the real world and see how the other half lived. So they organized this group of those young ladies from New York and Long Island to Flint Michigan, to have the experience of seeing the social problems and so forth that were there. And one was assigned to me to help me in my housing survey. Well I wanted a certain girl, but she didn’t want me, so then this other girl came along in a black skirt and she wanted in, so I grumpily agreed. But within two months we decided to be married.36

After putting together the housing survey, Bacon convinced the mayor of Flint to apply for a $10 million federal housing grant. Together Bacon and the Mayor went to Washington and returned with $3 million for affordable housing. The realtors in Flint, however, recognized the threat Bacon presented to them. They pressured the city’s leaders not to accept the public money:

I was called a Communist on the floor of Flint City Council because of my support of a federal program for subsidizing housing of the lower-income families and I was deeply hurt by that. So, I gathered together with a little confederation of, I think, six people, and we were

57 able to wangle the situation so that there was a plebiscite of whether or not to do the public housing project. And we thought of course 90% of the people in Flint, Michigan are really very oppressed low-income people and of course they’ll vote for this. But alas and alack, when the polls were counted, all the people visualized themselves as President of General Motors and our reform was roundly defeated.37

The Junior Chamber of Commerce that awarded Bacon its Distinguished Service Award the previous year was so embarrassed that it did not award the honor at all the next year. Bacon was quietly fired and instructed to leave Flint. The business leaders ran an article in the Flint Journal explaining that Bacon was leaving because he found a new job elsewhere. Bacon submitted a letter to the editor explaining that he had been fired, but the business interests controlled the paper and would not print

Bacon’s letter. In 1939 Bacon left Flint and returned to Philadelphia, “a beaten man.”38

58 3. Living in the Future

In order to do my planning I had to escape into the future and shut the door so there was nobody around to tell me it couldn’t be done…The one inevitable fact about life is that the future will be the contemporary reality. The second fact is that the future will be as we make it for better or for worse. – Edmund Bacon1

From an early age Ed Bacon was preoccupied with the future. As a child, Bacon wrote an article for the newsletter he printed, predicting mobile telephones. In high school his Greek play dealt with the issue of “what is the meaning in our lives of the future?” In 1938 Bacon met a fellow Philadelphian, Walter Phillips, a Princeton- educated lawyer who showed him a remarkable concept of how to live in the future. In the I-Ching sequence in which Bacon views his life, his exposure to Walter Phillips’ vision, and decision to stay in Philadelphia were the most important experiences in setting out his life’s path, and Philadelphia’s future. Walter Phillips was born and raised in Torresdale, an upscale, suburban-type area of Northeast Philadelphia. His family was well-to-do, having made its money selling bread and provisions to the Union Army during the Civil War. For this reason, the family mansion was called the “Bake House.”2 Bacon and Phillips were introduced through Walter’s sister, Louisa, whom Bacon met at a party in Philadelphia. Bacon recalled Louisa “thought her brother would be very interested in my concerns, so she arranged for us to meet…And we needless to say found vast areas of common interest and so I asked him to come to

Flint.”3 Phillips did come and Bacon secured him a job at the Flint City Planning Commission. Bacon was Secretary of the Commission at the time, and the two of them worked together until 1939 when Bacon was “thrown out of Flint in disgrace.”4 Bacon and his wife Ruth, recently married, “used a wedding present we had and traveled abroad a little while and I came back to Philadelphia, a beaten person with his career in shambles.”5 Bacon did not plan on staying in Philadelphia, which he

59 “regarded as a hopelessly backward place.”6 Bacon recalled, “My first thought was to get out of this dump as fast as I could.”7 But Phillips had other plans for Bacon and found a way to get him to stay. He hired Bacon and their mutual friend, architect Oskar Stonorov, to design him a house in Torresdale. Phillips also found Bacon a job as Managing Director of the Philadelphia Housing Association, an organization that Time called “one of the earnest but powerless organizations that existed in many cities across the land before cities realized that their inner renewal and reshaping was not just a matter of esthetics but of vital budgetary economics.”8 Bacon remembers the

Housing Association as a “do-good organization for housing for the poor.”9 While studying at Princeton Law School, Phillips was appalled at the political structure in Philadelphia. Since the latter part of the 19th century Philadelphia had been run by the “corrupt and contented” Republican machine that held the city “in a stranglehold for almost eighty years.”10 Phillips returned home to join a reform movement in 1939, attempting to end the Republican rule and draft a new charter for the city, reallocating powers within the government. In 1937, the Democratic General Assembly appointed a 15 member board to recommend a new city charter. Led by businessman Thomas Evans the “Charter

Reform Movement” gained significant popular support.11 Bacon remembered this reform attempt working on the “rather naïve idea that all you had to do was tell the ordinary people what to do and they would do it.”12 The committee drafted a “Charter Bill” which was introduced into the General Assembly, passed unanimously through the Senate, but was defeated in committee in the House. Harrisburg Republicans pressured local leaders to quash the bill, and Philadelphia returned to politics as usual, corrupt and contented.13 Instead of giving up, Phillips changed his strategy and created what Bacon has called, “one of the most remarkable visions of any person…I know in history.”14 After the failure of the charter reform, Phillips met with three other lawyers, Murray H.

60 Shusterman, Roger Scattergood, and Johannes Hoeber to discuss the creation of a new civic group. On January 18, 1940 Phillips held the first meeting of an organization he created, called the City Policy Committee.15 He brought together about 80 of his friends and acquaintances, all starting out in Philadelphia politics or business. Every two weeks the group met at the Quaker Lady Tea House and Phillips had city administrators come to talk to the young people about municipal affairs. Roger Scattergood, one of the original four who formed the City Policy Committee recalled:

At first sight the time might have seemed inauspicious for creation of yet another civic group. The proposals for a new City Charter for Philadelphia had been defeated the previous spring. The political leaders responsible for this had won the November elections. The City of Philadelphia had practically no borrowing capacity at a time when public improvements were desperately needed.16

This is exactly the part of Phillips’s concept that Bacon finds so extraordinary, that “Walter really believed in the future and I flatly say that practically nobody in the world really does.”17 Phillips created a future in his imagination where the government was reformed by all of these young people he knew. This was not a future that Phillips envisioned for tomorrow, or next year; it was a future that he saw 20 years hence. He resolved that he would train these young people now, and get them used to working together. Then 20 years later when they were all in positions of power they would bring about a reform together, because they had been working with each other for so long, with Phillips’s future in mind. Bacon once told me that he believes almost everyone sees the future in one of two ways: either as something that can be changed tomorrow, or as something so far away that there is no sense even thinking about it. Bacon sees Phillips as one of the rare people who could imagine something in that far off future, then in his mind work backwards through time and devise a way to make the future real. Phillips created a connection from his imagined future to the present, then made that path a reality

61 • • •

Phillips kept Bacon in Philadelphia so that Bacon could play a major role with the City Policy Committee. Bacon acknowledged, after initially wanting to flee Philadelphia as soon as he could, it was Phillips’s vision of the future that held him fast in Philadelphia:

The change of heart that occurred, is completely and solely the spirit of Walter Phillips. That man with that vision, and I repeat that I’ve never seen anything like it since. He penetrated my soul with his vision. I made the resolve that come Hell or high water, I would never budge out of this city and that I would put my life’s blood on the line to make it as good as I could, and I’ve not deviated one inch from that up to the age of 92.18

Bacon became the first Vice Chairman of the City Policy Committee, and

Chairman of its Sub-Committee on Planning.19 Bacon believes that while Phillips formed the group, he provided its focus. Bacon explained, “I…immediately embarked on my purpose which was to focus and centralize the efforts of the City Policy Committee on getting a new City Planning Commission and an effective city planning program going.”20 At the time, Philadelphia did have a planning commission, though it was relatively inactive due to the corrupt government that, according to David Clow, “used public works projects as political bargaining chips to serve its own ends.”21 As a result, since its inception in 1911 the Planning Commission “had received inadequate attention from the city government and city groups.”22 As Bacon described it, the Planning Commission “hadn’t done anything but meet once a year and have the secretary record that they had met, then adjourned.”23 In 1941, Walter H. Blucher, then Director of the American Society of Planning Officials, said “Philadelphia is the only big city in the country that is not doing an effective job of planning.”24 The failure of the Planning Commission to get anything done led to Bacon’s insistence that a new one should be established, to serve the needs of a modern metropolis. Under Bacon’s leadership, the City Policy Committee made city planning its 62 “main theme of interest.”25 The Policy Committee formed a “joint committee” with two other groups of young people, the Junior Board of Commerce, and the Lawyers’ Committee on Civic Affairs, to create a formal report on the current ineptitude of the

City Planning Commission.26 Through his work in Flint, Bacon got to know people in high positions in the nation’s top planning organizations: The American Institute of Planning, The American Planning and Civic Association, and the Society of American Planning Officials. Bacon believed that “the best way to introduce the concept of planning into the public consciousness of Philadelphia, was to have…the 1941 Conference on Planning in Philadelphia.” The three organizations agreed, providing the City could raise a $1000 subvention fund. The members of the City Policy Committee raised most of it themselves. Bacon recalled his attempt to collect a donation from the current chairman of the City Planning Commission, prominent Philadelphian millionaire, art collector, Peter A.B. Widener:

[I] called up the house…and asked to speak to Mr. Widener. The call was received by Widener’s butler. [I] asked when [I] might speak to Mr. Widener, and the butler said, “Mr. Widener will return at his pleasure and convenience.” But finally he did give us, I think, $40.27

Eventually the group raised the $1000 and the planning organizations agreed to host their conference in Philadelphia. About 30 different organizations sponsored a major luncheon for the conference, attended by Mayor Lamberton and other city officials.28 Bacon remembers the momentousness of the occasion: “The luncheon was held with great pomp in the beautiful ballroom of the Bellevue Stratford Hotel, with all of the balconies filled with thousands of Philadelphia leaders there to learn about city planning from we, the upstart young.”29 At that luncheon, City Policy Committee member Henry Beerits stood and “made a ringing speech.”30 Beerits, “in very simple terms declared what nobody had the courage to do before, that although we had a city planning commission it wasn’t doing anything, and a modern city, in order to fit in

63 with modern-day requirements, needed a city planning commission and we recommended that one be appointed by the mayor.”31 It had been Bacon’s job to select the keynote speaker for the conference, and he chose Hugh Pomeroy, Chief Planner of the Westchester County Planning Commission, previously Director of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission, whom he had heard lecture previously, “about city planning as good business.”32 The City Policy Committee had recently taken “sharp issue with Mayor Lamberton’s rejection in May 1940 of $19,000,000 of Federal money for public housing.”33 Nonetheless, Bacon cautioned Pomeroy to avoid the subject altogether in his speech.34 Bacon remembers the scene of Pomeroy’s keynote speech vividly:

I happened to be standing behind the speaker’s table for some reason. The first thing that Hugh Pomeroy did was to go up to the mayor, sitting in the facing table, to shake his finger beneath the mayor’s nose and say, “and you, Mr. Mayor, are responsible for the slums of Philadelphia because you turned down the $19 million of public housing money.” Well my soul sank to the bottom of my feet and I was so horrified that I ran out of the room and went out to my country house and shouted at the trees for two days. And of course I thought my career was totally ruined because…the $19 million [was something] The Philadelphia Housing Association had been very much in favor [of]. My fellow workers could very hon- estly have thought that I betrayed them and told him to say that.35

Bacon returned to Philadelphia to find quite the opposite was the case. Mayor Lamberton told Bacon and other members of the City Policy Committee, that while “his view of the Virginia Ham [i.e., Pomeroy] was rather dim…he felt that we had a good idea of getting on in doing some effective city planning.”36 Lamberton encouraged the Joint Committee to put together a final report explaining its recommendations and budget for a new Planning Commission, and submit it to his office.37 Bacon recalled:

We typed it all up in beautiful fashion and with elation we mailed it to the mayor. We picked up the paper in the morning and overnight the mayor had been killed. What had happened was he was riding with his daughter and slammed the door shut with his overcoat in the door and she dragged him down the street and he died.38

The death of Mayor Lamberton was a terrible blow to the Joint Committee’s

64 progress. Bacon remembers Lamberton as a true aristocrat, and a man of intelligence. His successor, Bernard “Barney” Samuel, was a different story. Formerly the President of City Council, Samuel was “a small-time ward politician from South Philadelphia,” who gave a less-than-favorable response to the idea of a City Planning Commission. According to Bacon, when he and other members of the Joint Committee approached Samuel with the report intended for Lamberton, Samuel responded, “Do you mean to tell me that somebody is going to tell me what I can build at 16th and Shunk Streets?

Out of my office!”39 Samuel’s rejection of the Planning Commission was “an indica- tion that the Republican Party bosses who ruled Philadelphia were opposed, too.”40 The group could no longer rely on the support of the mayor and had to find a new way to establish a City Planning Commission. In his capacity as Director of the Philadelphia Housing Association, Bacon helped form the Fair Rent Committee to protect laborers coming to Philadelphia to work at the Naval Yard or Frankford Arsenal during World War II.41 Bacon recommended Judge Nochem Winnet to Mayor Samuel as head of the Fair Rent Committee, and the mayor appointed him. In exchange, Winnet informed Bacon that he owed him a political favor. Bacon asked Winnet to introduce a City Planning ordinance into City

Council.42 Winnet had Council President Frederick Garman introduce the bill, but he introduced it “by request,” political code for “don’t take it seriously, boys.”43

In order to get the bill through Council, Bacon knew that he needed a “widespread campaign that would result in communications from all parts of the city and all neighborhoods to the members of Council.”44 The previous year, an “out-of-town planner” named Robert Walker gave the City Policy Committee some advice: “For a planning commission to succeed it must go to the people and engage their support.”45 This is just what Bacon and the members of the City Policy Committee did to get the Planning Commission started. With the funding and staff of Bacon’s Housing Association, and the tireless

65 work of “a sainted woman” on Bacon’s staff named Florence Conlin, the Joint Committee set out to collect as much support as it could for the Planning Commission. The group went to diverse neighborhood, civic, and business groups, “from the T-

Square Club to the Busy Bees of Mayfair.”46 Before each organization, Bacon’s group had to explain what city planning was. For example, “Florence went out…and talked to the Busy Bees of Mayfair about how they should have a budget, just like they have a budget in their own house, talking to the women who ran the households.”47 In all,

80 groups across the city ended up supporting the Planning Commission bill.48 There was an unspoken custom that once the letters on each councilman’s desk reached an inch high, the bill would be given a hearing in Council.49 The various groups around the city showed their support for the Planning Commission by submitting letters. They did reach an inch high, and eventually Council held a hearing. Bacon’s group gathered representatives from all of the city organizations and packed them into the Council chamber. It was a diverse group of “men with their col- lars backwards, ladies with knitting bags, and people of strange races and colors.”50 The first to testify against the bill was George Elliott, Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce. At the time, “Planning…was considered socialistic by con- servatives.”51 Elliott testified “that this group of motley people behind him were all agents of Moscow…and that if they adopted this ordinance the City of Philadelphia would be taken over by the government of Moscow.”52

Just at that moment, the enormous figure of Edward Hopkinson, Jr. entered the room. Hopkinson, descendent of Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was one of the most respected and obeyed men in Philadelphia. As one journalist put it, “Hopkinson was as close to a deity as Philadelphia had.”53 A hush came over the room and Elliott “looked up and swallowed hard and said, ‘well, gentlemen, here is my chairman, perhaps he should continue this testimony.’ So Mr. Hopkinson sat down and in a very quiet voice said, ‘I think this is a good idea,’ and

66 left.” The City Planning ordinance passed on December 3, 1942. Unbeknownst to the members of Council, both Bacon and Phillips had approached Hopkinson in the previous weeks about using the City’s budget surplus for a City Planning Commission. However, “neither he nor Bacon could tell if they had made any headway” until the day of the hearing. Bacon admits that to the day Phillips died they had never resolved which one of them influenced Hopkinson to come and testify.54 After the bill passed, Councilman Crowson, the member of Council with “most of the votes in his pocket,” made a speech and said, “in my fifty years of City Council I have never seen so diverse a group of fine, outstanding citizens as is repre- sented here today.”55 To this day Bacon wonders, “was the reason that Council adopted the ordinance that they had been so scornful of before, the diversity of people we had brought, or the undisputed power of Mr. Hopkinson. But in this case they happi- ly coincided.”56 So it was that the Ordinance passed, creating a City Planning Commission, composed of:

Nine members, who shall be appointed by the mayor…one member to be a member of the City Council; two members to be heads of City departments, one of them to be the Director of Public Works and one members to be a member of the Board of Education; and five members to be persons of suitable qualifications who hold no office, position, or employment of profit under the City or County governments.”57

The Joint Committee (which later became the Citizens’ Council on City

Planning) made recommendations to the mayor for the five citizen members.58 Bacon recalled:

We, the young kids, called together all of these diverse organizations with largely divergent purposes, and we all agreed on a slate of five people for the citizen members which we sent to Mayor Samuel, who as you know was part of the old Republican regime…And lo and behold three of the five appointees were what we had recommended to Mayor Samuel: Edward Hopkinson, Jr., Robert Yarnall,…a fine Quaker business leader, and Joe Burke, a union organizer of the builders’ union. And so, the Commission started.59

Edward Hopkinson, Jr. became the Commission’s first Chairman and Robert

67 Mitchell became the first Executive Director. The City Planning Ordinance gave the Commission the ability to hire a technical staff and the mandate to create city maps, zoning changes, and “a program and an estimate of the cost of the various projects and improvements which it recommends that the City undertake during the six calendar years next ensuing.”60 This six-year “Capital Program” was a tool that Bacon took advantage of years later, when he became Executive Director. Inspired by Walter Phillips’s ability to live in the future, Bacon used the Capital Program as a means to implement his visions. He would include items in the fifth or sixth years, far beyond what other city officials were concerned about in the present. Time would pass, and eventually the fifth and sixth years would come along. Then, the same city officials discovered Bacon’s visions, once considered pie-in-the-sky dreaming, suddenly written in the official Capital program for the City of Philadelphia.

• • •

On December 9, 1943, Bacon resigned as head of the Philadelphia Housing

Association to enlist in the United States Navy.61 Bacon’s strict Quaker ancestors had always abhorred war, but Bacon explained that his “hatred of Fascism was such that

I, alone, violated this tradition.”62 Bacon became the first of nine generations of his family to join the military, rising to the rank of Quartermaster Second-Class while serving on board the U.S.S. Shoshone in the South Pacific.63

While at war, between the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Bacon received a surprise letter from Oskar Stonorov, the architect and friend with whom he had designed Walter Phillips’s house in Torresdale.64 Stonorov was a disciple of the great French architect Le Corbusier, and wrote one of the first books on Le Corbusier’s work.65 Stonorov was an accomplished architect of his own right, who had worked at times with Louis Kahn. 68 A year previous, Stonorov, Robert Mitchell, and Walter Phillips had attended a planning show in Chicago. At one point they were sitting at the bar, “sipping whiskey,” when Stonorov came up with the idea to create an exhibition showing how

Philadelphia could look by the year 1980.66 Bacon recalled:

There was a sentiment that if we can only win the war, everybody would be good for ever after…[It] was a very temporary state of mind…[and Stonorov thought] that we would capi- talize on it and give a vision to the city of Philadelphia of a really wonderful future where it takes world leadership and where it really attacks its gut problems and where it really does inspire new development.67

Stonorov wrote to Bacon inviting him to be co-designer of the exhibition. Still in the South Pacific, Bacon conceived the first piece of that exhibition, something he later called the Time-Space Machine. Through side-lit, transparent panels, layered over each other, it showed “the historical growth of Philadelphia and the problems of aging. Then, using [effects achieved with] mirrors it showed how neighborhoods can be restored.”68 The photograph below shows the Time-Space Machine as it was built.

Figure 3.1 (Ezra Stoller)

69 After Bacon was discharged at the end of 1945, he set to work with Stonorov making the exhibition a reality. Fundraising was slow and difficult, but eventually Edward Hopkinson, Jr., using his almost magical ability to get things done, procured the necessary funds: $150,000 from the City, $100,000 from business leaders, and $100,000 from Arthur Kaufman, who also agreed to provide two floors of his

Gimbel’s Department Store for the exhibition.69 The Better Philadelphia Exhibition opened in 1947, and over its two-month display attracted over 340,000 visitors!70 Visitors entered to a giant image of the 19th-century city overlaid on the present-day cityscape. Next came Bacon’s Time-Space Machine. Then there was an enormous map of the city with every project that the Planning Commission had on the six- year Capital Program marked on the map with a light. People could see what the City was working on in relation to their own house and neighborhood. Other displays included a life-sized model of a row house yard where Bacon’s wife, Ruth, ran a day- care service over the duration of the exhibition. Another room exhibited a series of car- toons by artist Robert Osborne, showing children planning a football play and other scenes demonstrating the need for planning in everyday life. A series of model buildings and utilities with actual price tags attached to them made the scale of the public expenditure more comprehensible. Perhaps the most significant part of the exhibition was a room of models and drawings made by students from elementary to technical high school. Bacon and Stonorov went to 13 schools and invited classes to participate. They provided the schools with materials. The results were impressive and inspiring. Younger children designed the perfect playground with clay and pipe cleaners. Older students created complicated models of revived neighborhoods. A student from a school for mentally challenged children created a model of his slum neighborhood so realistic that, according to Bacon, “you can practically smell the stench of garbage.”71 The photograph on the next page shows one display of children’s work.

70 Figure 3.2 (Ezra Stoller) The exhibition’s climax was a model of downtown Philadelphia, shown below, 33 feet by 14 feet in scale. Created by model makers Sam and Leonard Abrams, it was meticulously crafted with 45,000 buildings, 25,000 cars and buses, 12,000 trees and cost $50,000.72 The model first showed Philadelphia exactly as it was in 1947. Then, narrated by a speaker’s voice, one section of the model lifted up and rotated to reveal a future, envisioned by Stonorov, Bacon, Michell, and Louis Kahn. One-by-one, 13 sections rotated until the entire model changed to that of Philadelphia’s future. Then all-at-once the panels rotated back to the familiar present.

Figure 3.3 (Ezra Stoller) 71 Figure 3.4 (Ezra Stoller) No one realized it, but the entire future portrayed in that model was imaginary. The exhibition’s creators split up the design, and each added his visions to the landscape. There was no actual plan to build Kahn and Stonorov’s complex of buildings to replace the “Chinese Wall” (top-right of the above image), Kahn’s high rise apartments along the Parkway (top-left), or Bacon’s greenway paths through what is now Society Hill. David Clow has explained it best: “Considering the meticulous detail with which the future was portrayed, it seemed as if the design for Center City was a fait accompli…It wasn’t so. There was no downtown plan at the time. The magnificent model was a magnificent conjecture.”73 As visitors left, overcome with hope and inspiration for a bright new future, they were handed a blank piece of paper. As they entered a final, black-light-lit room, a “secret” message from Mayor Samuel appeared on the paper: “It is you, the Philadelphian, upon whom we all depend…The exhibition suggests how to achieve a better Philadelphia. The cooperation of you, the people, is vital to its realization.”74 Let us not forget that Samuel was the mayor who rejected the Planning Commission in the first place, and was still beholden to the corrupt Republican machine. He likely had little actual interest in city planning, but the exhibition fell conveniently a month before the mayoral election. In that election Samuel defeated reform candidate Richardson Dilworth. It was perhaps just retribution that “Samuel 72 spent most of his last term trying to stay above grand jury investigations into City Hall corruption, probes that arose out of Dilworth’s charges of vice and theft, and brought down the Republican machine with Joe Clark’s election in 1951.”75 A number of the projects specified in the downtown model were actually built in one form or another. More important than the specific ideas introduced in the Better Philadelphia Exhibition, however, was how it inspired the hundreds of thousands of visitors. The exhibition explained what city planning was, why it was needed, and excited people enough to create a force that would continue to support the visions of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission for years to come. The Commission would someday be considered the finest in America. Planners would flock from all over the nation to work with Ed Bacon, in what Time called “the most thoughtfully planned, thoroughly rounded, skillfully coordinated of all the big-city programs in the U.S.”76

• • •

After the Better Philadelphia exhibition, Robert Mitchell hired Bacon for the Commission staff, where he started work at “a very lowly scale,” as a Planner III. When Mitchell left in 1948 to teach first at Columbia then at the University of Pennsylvania, Ray Leonard took over the directorship, and turned his old position as head of Land Planning to Bacon. But Leonard died shortly thereafter of leukemia. Though Bacon was next in succession, he was happy doing design work and did not want the administrative responsibilities that came with the job of Executive Director.77

Bacon explained the ensuing situation:

I suggested to Mr. Hopkinson that he arrange a seminar on the future of city planning, selecting the six most prominent directors of planning commissions throughout the country, and that they would meet in Philadelphia for a day to discuss the topic. The members of the Planning Commission and [Hopkinson] would be there to observe them in action, out of which they would select the superior one and offer him the job…Well, Mr. Hopkinson did exactly as I asked him to do, and it went along swimmingly. Then I went into the room and

73 looked down the table, and suddenly said to myself, “Do you mean to tell me that one of those dumbheads is going to be my boss?” So next morning I informed Mr. Hopkinson after he had paid all those people and sent them home, that I had decided I should be the director, myself. And Mr. Hopkinson, being a gentleman of fantastic proportions, quietly said, “I’ll arrange it.”78

In this way, Edmund N. Bacon became director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission in 1949. For the first seven years of Bacon’s tenure, Edward Hopkinson was his Chairman. The two of them made a perfect team. Hopkinson was a man so powerful and so well-regarded that he could get practically anything done. Bacon was a man with vision and ideas of the future, working to make his future a reality. Hopkinson completely supported Bacon’s ideas, and perhaps his contribution explains the great success that Bacon saw from the beginning of his work at the Planning Commission. Bacon recalled of his work with Hopkinson:

In my entire life’s career, I have never met a man of the unfailing, utterly true-blue aristocra- cy of him…In my whole relationship with him he never understood a thing I did, I don’t think. But he decided he would support me and he supported me come Hell or high water, and he never ever deviated from that, even though he didn’t understand really what was going on.79

Bacon believes that Hopkinson was “powerful not because other people made him so; he was powerful because of his own view of himself.”80 It seems incredible that Hopkinson, this great public figure would support Bacon, a young and relatively unknown and unproven planner, so steadfastly. Perhaps it has something to do with a very basic element of Hopkinson’s character. Bacon has always followed the biological paradigm; instead of seeing things as analytical and able to be assessed logically, he views the world as a living organism. This life view led Bacon to entrust people entirely with his ideas because of an intuition he had. Perhaps Hopkinson was moti- vated by the same biological paradigm and the same intuition. After all, Bacon noted to me on several occasions, there was nothing Hopkinson loved more in the world than his rose garden.

74 • • •

To finish the story of how the young people in Philadelphia assumed power we need to let Bacon go for a moment. As mentioned earlier, in 1947 a man named Richardson Dilworth, a lawyer returning from the War, ran for mayor on the Reform ticket. He lost the election to Mayor Samuel, but for the first time in many years made an impact, as his campaign revealed many of the cases of corruption that surrounded the Republican machine.81 Dilworth was involved peripherally with Walter Phillips’s City Policy Committee, but his good friend Joseph Clark was more directly involved. Clark and Dilworth were both from aristocratic families, were both Democrats, and were both devoted to reforming Philadelphia politics. At the same time, they were also

“regarded as representatives of the old patrician tradition.”82 This gave them a toehold into the establishment that many brash, young reformers did not have. After Dilworth lost the 1947 election, City Council created a Committee of Fifteen to investigate some of the corruption that Dilworth unearthed. The Committee was able to pressure the Republican Council to introduce several bills into the General Assembly creating a Charter Commission and setting the stage for charter reform. The compromise Lord Home Rule Bill was passed by Council and approved by Governor James Duff on April 21, 1949. The bill was an artificial show of action, and at first it appeared Mayor Samuel and Council President Frederick Garman could simply appoint Republican machine lackeys to the Charter Commission. However, around this same time, a forward-looking Republican economist, Robert “Buck” Sawyer, employed by the Bureau of Municipal Research, was rapidly recording substantive data on the extent of the government’s graft. He leaked his findings to the Evening Bulletin, thus assuring that

Mayor Samuel would not disband his efforts before he could finish.83 Based on Sawyer’s findings, a number of powerful local businessmen formed an organization

75 called the Greater Philadelphia Movement (GPM). Backed by the power of Philadelphia’s major corporations, GPM effectively pressured Samuel and Garman to appoint qualified appointees to the Charter Commission.84 Dilworth and Clark were elected city treasurer and controller, respectively in 1949. After their victory, they began a more aggressive attack on the corruption of Philadelphia’s government system, and supported the Charter Committee in drafting a new city charter that would affect real change in the municipal government.85 The new charter was drafted by three prominent lawyers including Abraham L. Freedman, one of the original members of the City Policy Committee.86 There were still barriers from the public, as “the reformers had to convince the electorate that merely electing better persons into office would not be enough, and that the old form of government invited the corruption even of good men and contributed to machine control.”87 After a series of highly successful public hearings in 1949 and 1950, the Chamber of Commerce donated $80,000 toward the campaign and the city’s major newspapers, the Inquirer and Evening Bulletin endorsed the new charter. A report by the Committee of Seventy, a political watchdog organization, recounted:

On April 17, 1951, in a light election (a forty percent turnout), 259,397 citizens of Philadelphia voted for the new Charter, and 159,607 voted against it. Thus approved, the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter went into effect on January 7, 1952.88

The new charter was called the Home Rule Charter because it transferred power from the state to the local government—the Mayor and Council. The Charter “created a strong-mayor form of government and a relatively weak city Council…[and a] strong merit system.”89 In order “to assure the City the fullest possible benefits of home rule,” the Charter specified that “the executive and administrative power of the City, as it now exists, shall be exclusively vested in and exercised by a Mayor and such other officers, departments, boards and commissions as are designated and authorized in this charter.”90

76 In the same election that passed the Home Rule Charter, Joseph S. Clark was elected Philadelphia’s first reform mayor by 124,000 votes.91 A majority of City Council elections also went to Democrats, and so, “for the first time in generations the city of Philadelphia had a Democratic mayor and administration.”92 Clark and his successor, Richardson Dilworth, changed the way things were done in Philadelphia. The government was now run by “a new type of administrator…the professional as opposed to the political appointee,” and the people Clark and Dilworth chose for non- elected positions were largely ones who had similar visions of reform.93 A significant number of these people were, in fact, originally members of Walter Phillips’s City Policy Committee: Dilworth became District Attorney, Robert Sawyer became Managing Director, Lennox Moak was made Finance Director, Bacon of course became Director of the City Planning Commission, and Clark’s entire cabinet was comprised of members of Phillips’s City Policy Committee.94 It can be argued that Clark’s appointment of like-minded people was similar to what the Republicans had been doing for years. Unlike the members of the Republican machine, however, the members of Phillips’s group were all aiming at reform. Further, the new charter created requirements for civil service, creating safeguards, and ending much of the Republican machine’s corrupt practice of hiring unqualified cronies. Clark instituted further equity in city hiring, making sure that the city employed qualified African-Americans. Clark’s actions “opened the way…for the rise of hundreds of thousands of African-Americans from poverty to the middle class, long before such trans-class migrations became a national goal of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.”95

While Clark did make a number of appointments, he was never able to gain support within the existing government structure, because of his rejection of the machine’s methods of patronage. John Guinther wrote, “Clark…looked with disdain on ward leaders and committeemen, and wanted as little to do with them as possible. As a result, he was unable to make the inroads necessary to create an organization

77 loyal to him.”96 With the new Home Rule Charter in place, a reform mayor and Council, and a large number of these formerly young idealists in positions of power, Walter Phillips’s vision came to be. It took about 20 years, but Phillips did indeed create a connection to his future. By living in the future, Phillips retained a strong vision and the ability to connect that vision to the present. Meanwhile, Bacon was busy getting things done, concurrently creating his design concepts for Penn Center, Society Hill, and the Far Northeast. Bacon believes that Clark never trusted him, while he boasts that Dilworth and he worked together wonderfully.97 Nonetheless, Bacon denies the argument that he was successful because of the reform movement. He argues that his productivity from 1949 until 1952, under the Republican machine proves otherwise: “The idea that you have to wait for a reform movement to do decent planning is totally contrary to my experience.”98

• • •

I have now reviewed the significant events in Bacon’s life that shaped his philosophy and experience leading up to his tenure as Executive Director. I can now effectively explain Bacon’s planning method and follow the journey of an idea from Bacon’s mind to reality. One of Bacon’s first projects was the design of the residential region of the Far Northeast. His planning process as it relates to the Far Northeast is the topic of the rest of this thesis. All of Bacon’s projects began as a three-dimensional system of order and movement that he calls the “organizing concept.” The organizing concept must come from the creative mind of an individual; however, one cannot create a concept in a vacuum. It must respond to the real circumstances around it, the history of the built environment. I call this concept “symbolic historical memory,” and, as I will show, it is the critical basis for Bacon’s organizing concept in the Far Northeast. 78 4. Symbolic Historical Memory

There is such a thing as listening to the music of the past and deriving your master- work from it. – Edmund Bacon

Bacon has argued that his “organizing concepts”—his creative visions for the future—came from his mind with no precedent. Throughout his life, Bacon never cared what anyone thought about him or his ideas. Still, while Bacon’s ideas came from his own mind, they were based on a vast understanding of the realities of Philadelphia, the circumstances of a particular place, and the history of the built environment over time. I call this concept “symbolic historical memory.” For example, in William Penn’s and Thomas Holme’s original 1682 plan for Philadelphia, they laid out a “Centre Square,” and Penn specified that public buildings should be erected there. Two-hundred years later, the City Hall was built on that same spot with a massive tower. Bacon believed it was important to keep the tower the tallest point in Philadelphia, to physically, as well as symbolically mark the central spot that Penn specified. In the 1950s, Bacon planned Penn Center as a series of buildings, placed in sequence with an open, sunken pedestrian concourse passing beneath them. As in the Forbidden City in Beijing, the experience increases, until passing beneath the final building (Chinese gate) one is met with the stunning sight of City Hall Tower (the Imperial Throne Room). During the course of its planning and construction, the design of Penn Center was altered and Bacon’s open concourse was covered over. Nonetheless, in the end the plan retained the basic emphasis of a journey, with City Hall Tower as the climax. For his design of Penn Center, not only did Bacon respond to his architectural knowledge of Beijing, but more importantly, to the symbolic historical memory of Philadelphia. He viewed City Hall tower as the focal point of the entire city and expressed that

79 emphasis in his design. For this reason, the entire experience of Bacon’s Penn Center was based around the journey leading up to City Hall tower, as shown in the image below, from Life magazine.

Figure 4.1 (Source: Life, December 24, 1965)

Another example of responding to symbolic historical memory has to do with the planning of Philadelphia’s Delaware riverfront, Penn’s Landing. Bacon commissioned architect Robert Geddes to make a physical plan for the site. Geddes was a Philadelphia native, hired by University of Pennsylvania Fine Arts School Dean Holmes Perkins, in Perkins’s rebuilding of the school’s faculty. Geddes worked for Vincent Kling, Bacon’s partner in designing Penn Center, and later formed his own

80 firm, Geddes, Brecher, Qualls and Cunningham. He also worked with Bacon as chairman of the Advisory Board of Design for Society Hill.1 Geddes came to Bacon with a design for Penn’s Landing comprised of several interlocking hexagonal shapes—according to Bacon, probably inspired by Pierre L’Enfant’s design of Washington D.C. Bacon told Geddes to “put the plan in a draw- er,” then to look at a map of Philadelphia, and starting at the Schuylkill River, to follow his finger across the city, along Penn’s major axis, Market Street, eventually reaching the Delaware River and Penn’s Landing. Geddes apparently followed Bacon’s instructions, and returned with a new plan—not a hexagon in sight. The new design featured a slightly curving embar- cadero, connected to the axis along Market Street and responding to the river and the linear Penn-Holme grid. The illustration below shows all of Center City, with Market Street traced with a dark line, leading to Penn’s Landing, outlined in the foreground.

Figure 4.2 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission, electronically edited by the author) 81 By responding to the symbolic historical memory of the city, Geddes created a plan that was about Philadelphia, and worked in harmony with the rest of the city. Bacon phrased it well in his book, Design of Cities: “Architecture is the articulation of space so as to produce in the participator a definite space experience in relation to previous and anticipated space experiences.”2 As far as I am aware, there has been no significant discussion on the topic of symbolic historical memory in the field of city planning, and nobody has before used the term. There are several authors writing on related topics. Historian Gary Nash wrote a book called First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). The topic of this book is quite different from what I am discussing. Nash looks at the way history is recorded and how its record shapes our perception of events over time. He wrote, “Indeed the Philadelphia story could have been written another way; in fact, it has been rewritten many times...Today, the long look backward by historians is renovating the public recollection of the city’s past.”3 Nash looked at historical archives, artwork, written records, and how events are passed on and remembered in different eras. Though different from my discussion of symbolic historical memory, Nash’s book points out that history is not static; the past changes significantly as we understand it in the present. This notion very much affects the memory that will shape the city of the future, based on the meaning of the past. Memory is a popular topic today, with plenty of terms used to describe different ideas. Most discussions of memory have to do with monuments or remembrance of a particular event. Other discussions address the topic of “collective memory,” something representative of an entire people or group, reflecting its time and values, or the legacy of an event. Symbolic historical memory, conversely, does not have to be collective (though it certainly can be). It is redefined and interpreted by different people. It can even refer to an individual’s vision of urban form. The important point, however, is that it responds to the past built environment.

82 The closest thing to a discussion of symbolic historical memory is Brian Ladd’s book, The Ghosts of Berlin (University of Chicago Press, 1997). Ladd took a look at specific events during the Prussian, Weimar, and Nazi eras of German history and how their memory shaped the present generation’s struggle to rebuild Berlin. The book is fascinating, since Berlin, unlike Philadelphia, has a dark and terrifying past that cannot truly be forgotten, yet many wish not to remember. One important aspect of symbolic historical memory is that it is ever-changing. At any period in time we have a different interpretation and understanding of historical events. The meaning of the Liberty Bell is an apt example. In 1751 the Pennsylvania Assembly issued an order for a bell to hang in its new State House (now Independence Hall). The Bell arrived in 1752, cast by the London Whitechapel Foundry, but cracked immediately and was recast by two colonists, John Pass and John Stow. The bell hung in the State House tower and rang for special events, including King George III’s coronation, the repeal of the Sugar Act, the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and for the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 8. It did not ring on July 4, because that was merely the day the Declaration of Independence was sent to the printer and dated (it was neither signed nor read on that date). In 1846, on Washington’s birthday, the bell suffered the famous crack that put it out of commission. The first time the State House bell was referred to as the “Liberty Bell” was in a poem in an 1839 edition of William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist publication, The Liberator.4 That is, the “Liberty Bell” name was coined as an anti-slavery statement. For years, tourists have flocked to the Liberty Bell and interpreters have explained its importance as a symbol of United States independence. Only recently has the bell’s past as a symbol of the Abolition Movement resurfaced in interpretations. Currently a debate is raging in Philadelphia over the fact that the National Park Service built its new Liberty Bell pavilion over the site of the former Executive

83 Mansion, while Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. More precisely, the door to the Liberty Bell pavilion was built within several feet of the site of George Washington’s slave quarters. Someone who knows only the Liberty Bell’s connection to the Declaration of Independence may not understand how the bell and George Washington’s slaves are related. Once one understands the historical connection between the Liberty Bell and slavery in America, this controversy takes on far more meaning. The point is, people’s understanding of history and historical associations shape the way they view the meaning of symbols, and this shapes the way these symbols affect the future. Philadelphia’s City Hall today is hailed by architects across the country as an architectural treasure, but it was not always so beloved. In fact, fairly soon after it was built there were calls to tear it down. There were several failed cam- paigns to rid the city of a building that was seen as architecturally sloppy and that filled up the space that William Penn specified as an open public square. Even Ed Bacon proposed tearing down City Hall in the 1950s, though he wanted to retain the tower. He now admits that this was one of the major mistakes he made in his career.5 Whether one views City Hall as fulfilling Penn’s original intent or negating it depends on the historical circumstances. Today a proposal to tear down City Hall would not be tolerated, though a proposal to rip up Independence Mall and Penn’s Landing appears more than welcome. Symbolic historical memory therefore changes over time, according to an individual’s ideas about history and the meaning of the city. Bacon continually used the city’s symbolic historical memory to guide his visions. This phenomenon has to do with one of the core elements of Bacon’s philosophy: planning is a continuous process that creates a connection between past, present, and future. So much of the planning today disregards the past and sees a clean slate as the only way to plan. As a result, planners and architects across America take a site where some aspects worked and others failed and instead of incorporating the

84 new and the old, tear down everything to start anew. Bacon calls this phenomenon “the white paper syndrome.” The finest example of the white paper syndrome is perhaps architect Louis Kahn’s vision for Philadelphia. In preparation for the National Planning Conference in Philadelphia in 1941 the Evening Bulletin asked Kahn to express his vision for the future of the city. Kahn created the frightening drawing, shown below, in which he removed every existing structure and rebuilt the city with high-rise towers and superblocks. Kahn put the new City Hall in Fairmount Park, and ignored every contribution to the City since its inception, as well as its original design. The Bulletin article read:

[Kahn] looks at Philadelphia and finds it inadequate in this age. So he has mapped out a futurama Philadelphia…Mr Kahn describes it this way. ‘The drawing I have made…shows an ideal use of the Philadelphia site as a functioning metropolis. Existing buildings have been removed entirely.”6

As I mentioned earlier, French architect Le Corbusier set the precedent for this kind of vision, with his concept for Paris in 1925, proposing to destroy much of the existing city to create room for his design, shown below.

Figure 4.3 (Sources: Top, Garvin, p. 155; Bottom, The Evening Bulletin, May 17, 1941)

85 Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned his own town of the future called Broadacre

City, considered an “agrarian alternative” to Le Corbusier’s Paris.7 Wright envisioned his town built in the empty desert with every resident receiving an acre of land and a single-family house. Recently, architect Paolo Soleri designed and actually built Arcosanti, an “urban laboratory” in Arizona. Seeking to cure the ills of the existing city, Soleri presents a complete alternative, built from scratch.8 Even Robert Moses, who worked within an existing metropolis, constantly viewed the city around him as an impediment, rather than as an inspiration. Lincoln Center, for example was built as a complete unit, after the bulldozing of an entire neighborhood. Moses often said,

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”9 Bacon recognized that the White Paper Syndrome cannot be the basis for city planning.10 The city is an accumulation of ideas over time, each responding to what came before. Therefore Bacon saw his work as a continuation from William Penn and everyone since who has contributed to the urban landscape. Much of Bacon’s work began with William Penn, and as I continue to examine Bacon’s design for the Far Northeast, I will begin with William Penn, and Bacon’s perception of Penn’s vision for Philadelphia.

Starting with William Penn

In 1681 William Penn directed his commissioners to pick out 10,000 acres in

Pennsylvania that were “most navigable, high, dry, and healthy.”11 Here he indicated he would locate his new city of Philadelphia.12 He specified that the streets must be

“uniform” and that the “Market and State houses” should be at the city’s center.13 Penn envisioned a “greene Country Towne” with spacious lots around the city houses, and where shareholders would receive both land in the city and in the outlying

“Liberties.”14

86 However, things did not work out as Penn originally planned. In 1682 Penn’s commissioners purchased a two-mile-long, one-mile-wide tract stretching between the

Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers.15 Because of the relocation, far less land could be given to each shareholder in the city than Penn originally intended, somewhat dimin- ishing the idea of a “greene country towne.”16 The map below shows the land dedicated for Philadelphia and the surrounding liberties.

Figure 4.4 (Source: Winterthur Portfolio, 6, 1970, p. 48)

Penn’s instructions described the basic idea for the shape of his new city, but he entrusted his surveyor Thomas Holme with Philadelphia’s physical design.17

Holme’s design was likely based on precedents in English and Irish town planning, and was probably shaped by Holme’s knowledge of the proposed designs for London after the great fire of 1666.18 The Penn-Holme Plan for Philadelphia is recognized as one of the most significant city plans in colonial America. According to John Reps, “In no other colony, with the possible exception of Georgia, did the related problems of city and regional planning receive such attention.”19

87 According to Bacon, Thomas Holme’s plan for Philadelphia can be broken down into the following mutually dependent principles:

1. First, Holme laid out a major axis—High Street—spanning the two rivers. In this way he transformed Philadelphia from a city between two rivers to one connecting two rivers. 2. Then he crossed it with a second axis—Broad Street—at the city’s watershed. 3. He planned a ten-acre center square at the crossroads of these two axes. 4. Holme placed four “lesser” eight-acre squares in the city’s four quadrants to be laid out “like the

Moorfields in London.”20 In this way, each area

of the city would be based around a green park.21 From the start, Philadelphia was based on a system of open spaces. 5. Finally, Holme filled in the plan with a series of gridded streets, running with respect to the

major axes.22

In planning Philadelphia, Penn and Holme created a system of open space, residential space for development, and a system of orientation that related to the two rivers. When taken together these principles interlock to form a beautifully successful whole.

Figure 4.5 (Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller) 88 Figure 4.6 (Source: Tatum)

The Penn-Holme Plan paid attention to the topography of the land, responding to the two rivers, and placing a grid only where there was relatively flat land. In Holme’s portraiture, shown above, one can see tributaries flowing into the gridded area. This is evidence that the land was not completely flat, but it also may have been an asset at the time to have water sources near residential areas. There are several other factors that indicate the careful attention Penn and

Holme paid to topography. The city was placed at the shortest point between the two rivers, and the north-south axis was placed on the watershed.23 In 1799, the city’s first pumping station was located at this “centre square.” The hilly, stream-covered areas around the city comprised the land set aside as the Liberties. Holme’s plan even shows a hill in the north-west, labeled “Fair Mount.” In Penn’s lifetime the city’s development, starting at the Delaware River, bare- ly reached eight blocks inland.24 Two centuries later, the city’s development met up

89 with the slower growth on the shore of the Schuylkill River, completing the city’s form as Holme laid it out. Time after time, throughout Philadelphia’s history, new developments have responded to the city’s original plan. For example, in 1871, the City broke ground for its new City Hall, built at exactly the spot that Penn laid out for the city’s public buildings, two hundred years earlier. This is evidence that the original plan was still guiding the city’s development long after Penn and Holme were gone. The structure was designed by John McArthur, Jr., with Thomas Ustick Walter. Alexander Milne Calder designed the ornamentation and the massive statue of William Penn that took two years before the City could devise a way to transport it to the top of City Hall’s massive, 548-foot tower.25 The statue was a fitting tribute to the man still recognized as the city’s founding father.

Figure 4.7 (Source: Mauger)

Bacon felt that “center square” should be both the physical and symbolic center of the city, with City Hall tower as the focal center in the skyline. At a time when other cities were erecting ever-taller skyscrapers, Bacon ensured that the statue of William Penn atop City Hall remained the tallest point in Philadelphia, enforced by a gentleman’s agreement.

90 Only in 1987 did the city authorize construction of the first skyscraper to top City Hall, thus obscuring, in Bacon’s perception, William Penn’s vision. The height limit was broken, “perhaps,” muses Francis Morrone, author of An Architectural

Guidebook to Philadelphia, “because there are no longer gentlemen.”26 In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Penn-Holme Plan was significantly altered by the Benjamin Franklin Parkway—a grand boulevard connecting the downtown to Fairmount Park, named for the same “Faire Mount” noted on the original Penn-Holme Plan. Penn was continually fascinated by the “Faire Mount” and first tried to establish a vineyard there. After the failure of “Old Vinegar,” Penn pursued the site for an estate that was never built.27 Eventually this site became the city’s new waterworks and reservoir, still later, and on top of the mount the city built its art museum, finished in 1928.28

The Extension of the Grid

After the American Revolution, Philadelphia’s land and Liberties were turned over from Penn’s Land Office to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and sold to raise revenue.29 Suddenly, “what had been an economic and social administration for the benefit of the Penn heirs became a political administration for the benefit of democratic voters and settlers.”30 Despite the loss of unified control of the land, the area within the Penn-Holme plan continued to develop as originally laid out. This was evidence that Penn and Holme’s vision “retained continuing life of its own,” pervasive in the minds of legislators and builders.31

The result of this municipal takeover was an explosion in the creation of new roads. Because of the “rapid auction by the legislature…designed to bring immediate revenue to the Commonwealth, led to a substantial reduction in relative land values.”32

As a result, speculators could buy it up and build rows of cheap housing.33 The sur-

91 rounding liberties, not guided by the power of a compelling design, were overrun by new development. Over the next century, builders likely tried to continue the form of the Penn Plan, by building in a gridiron system of streets. However, they failed to realize that the gridiron was only one of several co-dependent design principles that made the

Penn-Holme plan so successful.34 One of these principles was the fact that Penn wanted his city placed on flat, solid land, where a grid made sense. The Liberties and surrounding countryside were swampy, hilly, and covered in streams; they were not appropriate sites for gridiron. When William Penn first founded Philadelphia, he outlined the boundaries of the city and the Liberty Lands. Over the next two hundred years a series of new regions were incorporated into Philadelphia County. These included Southwark (1762), The Northern Liberties (1803), Spring Garden (1813) Kensington (1820),

Penn (1844), West Philadelphia (1844), Richmond (1847), and Belmont (1853).35 Each district handled its own administration, public services and policing, and surveying and laying out new streets. As time passed it became clear that it would be more advantageous for all of the districts in Philadelphia County to share a tax and government structure, to have consistent surveying of roads, and matching police reg- ulation.36 Further, the city currently could not well support its level of services, and an increased tax base seemed an apt way to address the problem.37

After much debate and several failed attempts to consolidate the districts, on March 11, 1854, the state of Pennsylvania passed a law authorizing the consolidation of Philadelphia and surrounding townships into a single 130 square-mile metropolis contiguous with Philadelphia County, thereby also greatly increasing the tax base.38 After consolidation, the City formed a Department of Surveys, with a Chief Engineer and Surveyor in charge, citywide. Additionally, each of twelve districts had its own surveyor, a member of the citywide Board of Surveyors, to coordinate roads that

92 crossed districts and to regularize the establishment of new streets and planning.39 As industry boomed in the end of the 19th century and early 20th century,

Philadelphia became known as the “workshop of the world.”40 Immigrants poured into the city. Between 1870 and 1890, Philadelphia grew from 300 to 18,000 Italians. Between 1860 and 1930, Philadelphia’s African-American population increased from

22,185 to 222,504.41 During that same time (1860-1930) the city’s total population grew from 565,529 to 1,950,961.42 A massive number of industrial jobs required an increased demand for workers’ housing, and more than ever before, developers built endless blocks of gridiron across the face of the expanded city. These were not tene- ment slum apartments, but block after block of identical row houses, building upon

Philadelphia’s reputation as a “city of homes.”43 Early maps, like the one on page 87, show early extension of the gridiron pattern stretching west of the Schuylkill River, indicating that from early on the city was intended to grow past its original boundaries. The map below shows P.C. Verlé’s 1802 projection of new street systems across the Schuylkill. Verlé was obviously influenced by Pierre L’enfant’s plan for Washington, D.C., and laid out a concept other than unbroken gridiron. The actual development of West Philadelphia was much more reg- ularized than Verlé’s design.

Figure 4.8 (Source: John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965, p. 265) 93 Nonetheless, Penn, who emphasized country and city property, and Holme, who so carefully designed Philadelphia around open space, never intended a blind extension of gridiron street pattern over the entire surrounding countryside. Imposing a gridiron street pattern on land that is not flat requires filling in the valleys and covering over streams. The builders often enclosed the streams in massive, concrete sewers. On several occasions, as these sewers weakened over time, the weight of the land above them became too great and the sewers collapsed, with the buildings above crashing to the ground. There were several collapses before 1950, but the most disastrous were to come.44 In 1949, as Bacon became director of the Planning Commission he saw huge tracts of land in the city’s Northeast under immediate threat from the fast-growing housing industry. Bacon looked back to the message of William Penn’s plan in an effort to stop the gridiron and plan a new kind of urban neighborhood. The 1901 map on the next page shows the city overrun with new gridiron streets (darkened). Penn’s original city is the rectangular, light area, just below the first “L” in “Philadelphia.” The light area at the top, left is Fairmount Park, and the very large, light area at the top, right is the Far Northeast.

94 Figure 4.9 (Source: Rand McNally and Co.’s Business Atlas and Shipper’s Guide, 1901. Electronically edited by the author)

95 5. Planning the Far Northeast

Edmund Bacon: when you came was the whole idea of the opportunity that the Far Northeast had for experimentation, was that already there or did you invent it? Irving Wasserman: I inherited it.1

In exchange for Thomas Holme’s service, William Penn gave him 1,646 acres of land that Holme subsequently sold to speculators for farming. This land, north of the Pennypack creek became the region known as Philadelphia’s Far Northeast.2 When Ed Bacon became director of the City Planning Commission in 1949, this was one of the areas he focused on. With so much of his energy devoted to the downtown, why was Bacon interested in this rural region in the far reaches of the city? The answer is, it was one of the few largely undeveloped regions left in Philadelphia, and he believed it stood on the brink of disaster. He knew well the region’s beautiful topography; after all, his ancestors, the Comlys, settled on 500 acres of land there.3 He also knew there was a housing boom. Not just in Philadelphia, but across the nation, developers created suburbs and new communities to accommodate the prosperity of Postwar America. In Philadelphia, developers had built gridiron right up to the Pennypack Creek, for decades the unspoken boundary of the city’s growth. The photograph below shows the Far Northeast around 1928, still largely farmland.

Figure 5.1 (Source: Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Northeast Philadelphia and Why, 1928) 96 But, by 1949 pressure was building to press on beyond the Pennypack Creek and spread the gridiron into the Far Northeast. There was a lot of money to be made, and without any intervention there was no reason why the new development would be anything but gridiron with rowhouses. Bacon believed the gridiron was “like can- cer…the endless and brainless repetition of a fragment of a whole,” destroying nature, and losing the beautiful coherence of William Penn’s original concept. He set himself to the task of halting the gridiron, and “changing the beast of 300 years.”4 He knew there must be another way. Bacon encountered several major barriers. First, there was little or no precedent within Philadelphia for any urban environment other than gridiron. In Philadelphia, the city’s great diagonal boulevard, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, appears an early departure from the grid. However, while the Parkway extends diagonally through the grid of Center City, it is not so much a variance of the grid, as a response and extension of it. The Parkway connects the “Faire Mount” noted on the original Penn-Holme Plan, with the “Centre Square.” It is orthogonal, and was built so as to be integrated into the grid at its Eastern Terminus. Much of the momen- tum behind the Parkway’s realization came from the desire to extend Fairmount Park through to the urban core, in keeping with the gridiron system of streets. In fact, throughout the struggle to build the Parkway, one of the major arguments against it was the danger of extending the “baneful influence” of Philadelphia’s gridiron street system into the surrounding hilly countryside.5 Jacques Gréber’s 1919 watercolor plan below clearly show the connection between the Parkway and the existing city grid.

Figure 5.2 (Source: David B. Brownlee, Building the City Beautiful, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989) 97 Indeed, the gridiron was the guiding force in early nineteenth-century development, and was the only method of planned development in Philadelphia. Elsewhere in the country there were examples of suburban deviations from gridiron design, built as a response to the Garden City movement, begun by the writings of Englishman Ebenezer Howard. One of the most famous of these early, American suburbs was Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux’s 1869 Riverside, shown below. Near Chicago, Riverside is a 1,600 acre town designed with curving roads, entwining nature into the residential streets.6 Another example is Clarence Stein’s 1929 Radburn, New Jersey, shown on the next page. Stein designed the town around a “superblock” concept, with enclosed residential clusters around cul-de-sacs.7 Also notable is John

Nolan’s 1921 Mariemont, Ohio, built as an idealistic setting for factory workers.8

Figure 5.3 (Source: Reps, p. 345) 98 Figure 5.4 (Source: Mary Lou Williamson, Greenbelt: History of a New Town, Norfolk: Donning, 1997) All of these examples, while deviations from the grid, were also clearly designed as suburbs—with large, decentralized lots and small populations—and not as urban environments. Olmstead and Vaux designed Riverside with single-family lots, about 100x200 feet in dimensions.9 They specified a minimum 30-foot setback from the street.10 Stein planned Radburn for only 3,100 residents, using mostly single family homes.11 He named it “Radburn: A Town for the Motor Age.” Mariemont was built with a density of 6 or 7 per acre.12 The fact remains, there was absolutely no precedent for a deviation from the grid, in keeping with an urban environment. Ed Bacon was friendly with Clarence Stein, and thought he could create a vision for the development of the Far Northeast. Bacon invited Stein to Philadelphia, entertained him for several days, took him to the Far Northeast, and paid him hand- somely for his consulting services. After three days, Stein told Bacon “it’s impossible,” and returned home to New York.13 Why could Stein not come up with a concept? The answer is likely the lack of urban precedent. Bacon knew he needed a system of spatial movement and organization for an urban environment. He thought he could buy such a vision, but after Stein was unable to deliver what he was looking for, Bacon realized he would have to create it himself.

99 Bacon’s Vision

Bacon’s new street pattern was a direct adaptation of the Penn-Holme Plan for Philadelphia. At its roots the Penn-Holme Plan was about creating communities, with a system of spatial orientation, and a relation to a system of open spaces. However, it was a concept for flat land, between two rivers. Bacon created a concept with those same attributes, however, appropriate for land along the curving stream valleys of the Far Northeast. By its nature, the grid in the Penn-Holme Plan turned every street into a through street. That system was based on 17th-century traffic, but in the twentieth century, heavy automobile traffic overcrowded residential streets. Bacon sought to address this problem, in his new kind of neighborhood street pattern. He took a segment of the Penn-Holme grid, and cut off every second street, as illustrated below. Instead of having one through street after another, there would be one through street with small, looping streets wrapping around it. In this way he created residential enclaves with streets that no one would use, except when bound for one of the houses along it. Then Bacon curved the entire orthogonal grid, so that it fit in the stream valleys of the Far Northeast.

Figure 5.5 (Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller) 100 Based on this residential pattern, Bacon worked out a design derived from the topography of the land, based on circular and loop streets, within the borders of the preserved stream valleys. The design was based on several principles: 1. In illustrating these principles I will start with the topography of a stream valley. 2. Bacon knew that the streams and stream valleys must be saved. Bacon had the idea that the city would mandate the land alongside the streams be dedicated as public space. 3. Bacon developed the idea of a hierarchy of streets. There would be a system of highways, connecting the Far Northeast to the grid of the rest of the city. Next there would be a branching system of arterials. 4. The arterials would feed into circular streets, and wrapped around these would be the residential loop streets. Bacon envisioned dense row houses, curving around the loop streets. These design principles created a cohesive design for a way to plan an urban neighborhood that was not gridiron.

Figure 5.6 (Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller) 101 As I mentioned, the first barrier was the lack of precedent. Bacon solved it by creating a whole new concept. Now Bacon ran into a second political barrier: the City Planning Commission did not have the authority to plan the course of new streets. An agency under the Department of Streets, the Board of Surveyors, established with the City’s consolidation in 1854, had been carrying out that responsibility, placing new streets, and regularizing the old ones.14 Its chief was an elderly man named Fred Thorpe, who had been carrying out “absolute, czarist control” of the Board’s actions

“for a whole lifetime.”15 Bacon approached Thorpe with his concept for the Far Northeast. No one will ever know what Thorpe thought of the plan or why he did what he did. Bacon believes that Thorpe, “that old gent, was really intrigued by this little kid coming in and giving him a different picture.” Remarkably, after that meeting, Bacon added a provision in the new Home Rule Charter that stripped the power of the Board of Surveyors. According to Bacon, Thorpe did nothing to intercede, and in fact, in the coming decade, the Board of Surveyors cooperated in a design process totally coordinated by the Planning Commission.16 The Home Rule Charter of 1951 stated: “The City Planning Commission shall prepare regulations governing the subdivision of land and submit them to the Mayor for transmission to Council. The Commission shall approve or disapprove plans of streets and revisions of such plans, and land subdivision plans.”17 With this control over the development of land, Bacon then authored a document called the Subdivision Ordinance—a guide that regulated the development of the Far Northeast, and elsewhere in the city. It defined how land was to be subdivided, how new streets were to be planned, and how developers were to go about building on this land. The ordinance was introduced into Council in April 1954, and passed unanimously on May 27, with an attached note from Mayor Clark, stating, “In our present fight for urban renewal, we must prevent the construction of the slums of the future…before any vacant land

102 is rezoned to permit modified row house construction, the attached ordinance should be enacted.”18 The ordinance specified, “Streets shall be logically related to the topography…[and] shall be laid out as to discourage through traffic; however, the arrange- ment of streets shall provide for the continuation of existing or proposed major streets or highways.”19 These elements are clearly straight out of Bacon’s design concept. The Subdivision Ordinance also included the instructions for something unprecedented: “proposed streets shall conform to the requirements of a general plan of the area as developed by the Commission.” While the Board of Surveyors only oversaw the creation and alteration of streets, this statement gave the Planning Commission the ability to create a physical plan for the entire Far Northeast, that developers had to adhere to. This process was unheard of at the time and is largely unheard of now.

Inheriting the Concept

In 1953, as Bacon sought to build up a competent staff, he hired land planner

Wilhelm von Moltke from architect Eero Saarinen’s office.20 The next year he hired a young landscape architect, straight out of Harvard architecture school, named Irving Wasserman. Von Moltke was Wasserman’s supervisor, but as it turned out, Bacon gave

Wasserman the sole task of designing the physical plan for the Far Northeast.21

Wasserman trained under renowned landscape architect Hideo Sasaki at Harvard, and was quite competent; still this was a challenging task for a young designer. Wasserman recalled that when he came to the Planning Commission, Bacon and von Moltke explained the Far Northeast concept to him, in-depth. They showed him illustrations and described the concept.22 He “inherited” the concept and from that point on worked toward its realization. He recalls that Bacon occasionally stopped by

103 and “looked over my shoulder,” but he never really guided the physical plan, nor made any major revisions.23 Throughout his career Bacon continually passed on his ideas to others, and trusted them entirely. In this way the plan for the Far Northeast became far more than Bacon’s idea; it became a physical reality separate from its creator. The photograph shows Wasserman, Damon Child, and Bacon examining a model of Society Hill.

Figure 5.7 (Philadelphia City Planning Commission)

Wasserman arrived in 1954, and by the year’s end he had designed a Master Subdivision Plan for the entire Far Northeast. He took Bacon’s theoretical concept and plotted it out to fit with the stream valleys, existing roads and developments. In January 1955, the Planning Commission published the plan along with descriptions of

104 housing density as well as recreation and commercial development in the region.24 The plan specified the Far Northeast’s proposed density of 15 units per acre, as compared to other areas with row homes of 16-26 units per acre, and areas with semi-detached houses, ranging from 7-12 units per acre.25 Now comes the remarkable part of it: with Bacon’s provision in the Subdivision Ordinance that developers must check to see what the Planning Commission has prepared, he ensured that the entire area would be planned as a whole. There would be no more piecemeal building, dictated by developers. Developers were used to submitting plans and having the Planning Commission take a passive role, as the agency in charge of merely reviewing plans. Instead, the developers in the Far Northeast found the Planning Commission taking an active role, telling them exactly what they had to build.26 The process went as follows: The Planning Commission showed the developers the Master Physical Development Plan. As Wasserman put it, “The builders, land owners, would come in and meet with the Planning Commission—mainly myself— and we would hand them a plan.”27 The developers had to return to the Commission with a preliminary plat—a design plan of their specific area with any changes they wanted the Commission to consider. The changes then went before a Review Board, consisting of a Planning Commission staff member, the Streets Department, Traffic Engineers Department, Sewer Department, and Water Department. Since he created the Physical Development Plan and knew the area better than anyone else, Irving Wasserman served as de facto Chairman of the Review Board.28

Developers came before the Board and presented their changes. The Review Board decided which changes to keep and which to reject. The Streets and Sewers Departments planned their detailed engineering work to fit the development and then the developer could complete its final plat. Once the final plat was approved by the

Planning Commission, construction could begin.29

105 The street concept in the Far Northeast was the first major deviation in Philadelphia’s history from a standard gridiron. As such, there were several barriers that Wasserman had to overcome along the away. The different agencies on the Review Board had varied opinions on the new design. Normally a developer has to hire its own engineering company to plot out streets and sewers. In Philadelphia, at the time, the Streets and Sewers departments did this work for the developers. They initially were wary of loop streets, cul-de-sacs and other new kinds of designs, fearing inefficient and expensive dead-end sewer lines.30 Eventually Wasserman was able to convince them that his street system was practical. Utilizing public easements, the Sewer Department was able to link up the sewer lines between cul-de-sacs.31 According to Bacon, Wasserman created a concept called “interlocking cul-de-sacs,” where two dead-end streets connect like a jigsaw puzzle, so that they can share utility and sewer lines.32 Wasserman’s interlocking cul- de-sacs are shown in the plan below.

Figure 5.8 (Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957.)

The Fairmount Park Commission presented another complication. A major element of Bacon and Wasserman’s aim in the Far Northeast was to preserve the stream valleys as public space. Sam Baxter, the Commissioner of Water, proposed the idea of adding a provision that developers had to dedicate a certain amount of land along the stream valleys to the City. Wasserman and Bacon favored the idea and added

106 such a provision to the Master Plan. Initially they hoped the Fairmount Park Commission would take control of this dedicated land along the stream valleys, and maintain it. At the time, however, the Park Commission was out of money and could hardly pay for the land it had. Eventually, the officers of the Fairmount Park Commission realized the future importance of this open space, and how it would enhance their status in the city, and accepted the land.33

Political Battle, Design Solution

Underlying Bacon’s struggle to break the course of 300 years of gridiron development was a political battle over zoning. In the 1940s, builders constructed block after block of gridiron rowhouse developments. These rowhouses were defined as “D” zoning—that is, an unlimited number of houses in a block, with 14 or 16 foot house widths. The residents of the Far Northeast felt just as strongly as Bacon about stopping the flow of gridiron, but these residents thought the solution would be suburban-style, semi-detached “C” zoning.34 Bacon knew that he was trying to design a new type of urban community, not a suburb. At the density required for an urban character, C zoning made no sense. There would be a small, useless strip of land between semi-detached houses, and the homes would be so close together the neighbors could peer into each others’ living rooms.35 Bacon thought the answer was to create his new street designs, lined with D- zoned rowhouses curving along the loop streets. He believed the combination of quiet, looping streets, coupled with the density of an urban neighborhood would “create most excellent communities.”36 The residents of the Far Northeast heard about the D zoning and envisioned an endless desert of gridiron. In 1953, Bacon proposed rezoning the first tract in the Far Northeast, the Morrell Tract, as D. Residents showed significant opposition. Bacon

107 mourned, “If proposal is turned down I think one of Philadelphia’s best chances for really progressive housing for middle income group will have been lost.”37 The neighborhood opposition turned out to be so great that Mayor Clark vetoed Bacon’s D-

Zoning Ordinance.38 Now Bacon was confronted with a major barrier to his design concept. He could have tried to challenge the residents, or take on the Mayor politically. Instead he conceived a design solution to a political problem. He created a new zoning classification that allowed for rowhouse blocks, like D zoning, but with wider house widths, and a limit of ten per block. He called his new classification “C-1.” It was a compromise between C and D zoning, but really C-1 was much more similar to D zoning. The name was important, however, because it gave the impression that it was a type of C zoning. The Citizens Council on City Planning worked with a number of community groups in the Northeast to gain support for C-1. The C-1 Zoning Ordinance was approved by the City Planning Commission on December 22, 1953, and became the foundation for much of the new housing development in the Far Northeast. As Wasserman created the physical plan for the Far Northeast he zoned the new areas C-1, and thus, ensured some aspects of the urban neighborhoods Bacon intended. The C-1 zoning turned out to be much more appropriate for the Far Northeast than D zoning. It required a maximum of 10 houses to a block. Between each block it called for a 20-foot “breezeway” giving access to the stream valleys that were dedicated as public space.39 Any more than 10 houses to a block would not have allowed a significant number of breezeways. As it turned out, the looping streets often did not allow for even 10 houses in a block, and the number was often six or eight. In this way, C-1 zoning created manageable block sizes with plenty of open space between them. The photograph on the next page shows the Morrell Tract, one of the first developments in the Far Northeast with C-1 zoning.

108 Figure 5.9 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission)

109 As he set to work on the Master Subdivision Plan, Irving Wasserman clearly understood Bacon’s design concept. In the 1955 Preliminary Plan he drew out a first draft for the area, with cluster after cluster of circular streets and loop streets wrapping around them. Between the Preliminary Plan and the Master Subdivision Plan, Wasserman changed the landscape considerably. Many of the circular streets were cut in half and many of the loop streets became cul-de-sacs. Wasserman explained that often a full circle would not really fit, and so they were halved to better fit with the topography and streets. The images below show a segment of Wasserman’s Preliminary Plan, at left, and the corresponding section of the Master Plan, at right.

Figure 5.10 (Source: Left, Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Preliminary Far Northeast Physical Development Plan,”1955; Right, City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957)

110 The cul-de-sacs, however, were simply Wasserman’s preference. He believed they “leant themselves more to the geometry of the rowhouse.”40 Wasserman argued, as one travels down a cul-de-sac street, one sees a house at the terminus of the view. Along a circular loop street, because the houses are angled along it, one’s view terminates

Figure 5.11 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission, in the space between houses. The image “Annual Report, 1957) to the right shows a cul-de-sac street with a block of houses terminating the view. Wasserman’s partiality toward cul-de-sacs became more evident farther north in the development of the Far Northeast.

Garages in the Front

For much of the twentieth century, Philadelphia row houses were built with garages in the back, and rear-alley access. Since the Far Northeast was designed to fit the topography, instead of on gridiron, rear garages made no sense. The beautiful feature of Bacon’s concept was that people could have backyards, with stream valleys and nature running behind their houses. Rear garages would have destroyed the potential to enjoy those backyards.41

Bacon noticed new housing developments on Long Island with front garages, sunken below the level of the front door.42 Cars drove down below the house into the garage, thereby taking up no space in the house and leaving the rear open for backyards. Bacon took this idea to the major developers of the day, and presented them with the idea of front garages. The builders laughed at Bacon and told him that no

111 housewife would ever take her garbage out through the front door.43 Bacon and Wasserman discussed the idea of front garages, and how logical it was. Wasserman consulted with a small-time developer named Norman Denny, who agreed to try out the concept and built front garages on Robindale, one of the earliest C-1 developments.44 Overnight the market changed, and a rear garage was never again built in the Far Northeast. The photograph below shows the front garage concept.

Figure 5.12 (Shari Cooper)

The front garages were the third major element that shaped the development of the Far Northeast, along with Bacon’s new concept of street designs, and C-1 zoning. Together these elements created a new type of urban community, designed to respond to nature. After the passage of C-1, the development of the far northeast was rapid. A number of developers built new housing, but the most significant were Hyman

Korman and A.P. Orleans.45 Developers Geldman and Curcillo built the Morrell tract, the first major C-1 development, with houses selling for $10,990. The Korman companies built its first C-1 houses six months later, selling for $11,290. Third-generation builder Berton Korman said that in those days they could put up a house in 28 days,

112 and expected only $200 in profit, per unit. With the bureaucracy in the Streets Department holding up the construction of new roads, Korman Companies built the streets themselves, so that they would be ready at the same pace as the houses.46 Korman advertised on TV and in full-page newspaper ads (techniques rarely practiced at the time), and sold 1,100 houses the first year of C-1. Other developers tried all kinds of strategies to sell the new homes. Norman Denny, the developer who first tried the front garage idea, also boasted a car in every garage. That is, a free

Rambler came with the sale of a new house in one of his developments.47 The other major builder of the time, A.P. Orleans, decided to develop in the Far Northeast quite late. According to Korman he never thought the houses there would sell. In fact Korman’s father, previous president of his company, never believed the houses would sell either, because of the novelty of the concept. In a recent interview, Bacon queried Korman: “Isn’t it amazing that people accepted it [C-1 zoning with garages in front]? I mean there was no precedent.” Korman replied, “If something is basically right, people will buy it. People are not stupid.”48 By the end of the 1960s, Bacon’s idea for the Far Northeast had finally come into being. It was vetoed by the mayor, reintroduced into Council, re-planned by the Citizens Council on City Planning, designed by Wasserman, adjusted by the Review Board, and built by a significant list of developers. It was a complicated process, through which Bacon’s idea gained an identity all its own as it traveled into reality. In this way, Philadelphia expanded to the edge of its boundaries, while, at the same time, the 300 years of endless gridiron development was ended in Philadelphia, forever.

113 6. Ed Bacon’s Planning Process

Recent events in Philadelphia have proved incontrovertibly that, given a clear vision of a “design idea,” the multiplicity of wills that constitutes our contemporary democratic process can coalesce into positive, unified action on a scale large enough to change substantially the character of a city. – Edmund Bacon, Design of Cities1

Having reviewed Bacon’s life influences and chronicled the building of the Far Northeast we can now begin to gain a sense of Bacon’s planning method. An architect designs a building. A developer builds houses. Bacon’s role is less clear. In the Far Northeast, Bacon did not create the physical plan; Irving Wasserman did. Bacon did not build or design the houses; developers like Korman and their architects did. So what did Bacon do? And how did he do it? The answer is, Bacon created the underlying concept and communicated that concept well enough to inspire others to accept it as their own and make it the basis of their work. Of all of Bacon’s projects in Philadelphia, the Far Northeast most clearly shows the foundation of his planning method: the “organizing concept.” Typically the job of the director of a planning commission is as an administrator, yet Bacon’s role was far more than that.2 To quote Bacon:

It is generally accepted that the administrator is a “transparent” type of person, who has no very specialized directive or purpose of his own, but who has the “drive” to bring to reality the plans and proposals of the other group, “the technicians.”3

Bacon continually assumed a variety of roles to create and communicate his concept as a three-dimensional reality. In this chapter I will show how Bacon’s method followed a very subtle, organic process. The following are the major concepts of Bacon’s method, that, within the context of the Far Northeast, form a full picture of how Bacon worked.

114 The Organizing Concept

Bacon always began with an idea, a vision that would act as a foundation for the rest of the process. He calls this idea the “organizing concept,” a clear system of spatial order and movement, articulated through design. The organizing concept is the crucial first step on the journey toward creating a project. It is the guiding force that gives meaning to design. The original plan for Philadelphia was devised by William Penn and Thomas Holme according to an organizing concept of several connected principles: the main artery connecting two rivers, the crossing artery at the watershed, the center square, the four “lesser” squares at the heart of four neighborhoods, the system of gridded street orientation. The organizing concept is the totality of these interdependent principles: “Each depends on the other. Alone each is dead.”4 In the Far Northeast Bacon devised an organizing concept that would encour- age the development of distinctly urban communities, in a form other than the gridiron. He envisioned a hierarchy of streets, then laid out a system of residential clusters, sited to respond to the curving topography of the stream valleys. The concept called for dense housing, laid out in a way that is urban, but would maximize the sense of nature, preserved behind the houses. Together these principles formed the Far Northeast organizing concept.

Figure 6.1 (Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon) 115 Bacon stated, “All valid city planning must start with an organizing concept. Anyone who purports to be a city planner must be able to create and communicate an organizing concept. Without an organizing concept city planning is just busy work.” In the Far Northeast, Bacon first thought that he could buy the organizing concept from Clarence Stein. After Stein insisted it was impossible, Bacon recognized he had to create the concept himself. The next step after creating the concept is to communicate it to others. What happens if the planner’s concept is not a good one? No one will be inspired by it, no one will accept it as the basis of his or her own work, and it will not get built. Before I explain how the idea is communicated, we’ll look at where the concept comes from.

ORGANIZING CONCEPT: A clear system of spatial order and movement, a totality of several principles that serves as the foundation for the planning process.

The Message of the Land

The organizing concept is a new idea in the world, created from the mind of an individual. But it is not created in a vacuum. The organizing concept must respond to the realities of the topography to integrate the man-made with nature harmoniously. As discussed earlier, William Penn specified that his city should be built on solid land and along a navigable river. From the very start, Philadelphia’s form was derived from the land. The plan itself was based on a major street connecting the two rivers. Subsequent generations missed the point that Philadelphia’s original plan was derived from the form of the land. The gridiron outside of Center City becomes con- fusing, losing its orientation system. The various incidents of housing collapses show the practical faults of imposing gridiron over hills and streams, and from a quality of life standpoint, the gridiron destroyed miles of nature that could have been incorpo-

116 rated into the urban landscape, enjoyed by many generations of city dwellers. In the Far Northeast, Ed Bacon sought to create an organizing concept that would respond to the area’s specific topography, and maximize the benefits of that topography. He not only planned the housing clusters based on the form of the stream valleys, but through dedication of the stream valleys and C-1 zoning with garages in the front, made sure that these natural assets could be enjoyed for many years. The photographs below show houses in the Far Northeast bordering land along a stream valley, maintained by the Fairmount Park Commission.

Figure 6.2 (Gregory Heller)

MESSAGE OF THE LAND: The form and meaning of the natural environment. The organizing concept must respond to this message in order to create a connection between the manmade and natural environments.

117 Symbolic Historical Memory

When creating an organizing concept, a planner must not only respond to the message of the land, but also to the legacy of the man-made elements in the urban landscape, through history. The best example of symbolic historical memory is the story I related earlier of architect Robert Geddes creating a design for Penn’s Landing, after absorbing the spirit of the Penn Plan and generations of architecture responding to its form. The opposite of a plan responding to symbolic historical memory is what Bacon calls the “white paper syndrome.” As I mentioned earlier a number of major architects and planners, from Le Corbusier to Louis Kahn, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Robert Moses, have viewed the city as an impediment, rather than an inspiration. They envisioned either a new city on empty land, or demolished the existing urban landscape, to start anew. Many planners still believe the only way to create a new design is by tearing down the old and starting over. The white paper syndrome is misguided, terribly destructive, and ignores the wonderful quality of the city: that it is an accumulation of interacting ideas over time. Effective city planning must understand and respond to the work of those who previously contributed to the shape of the built environment. Thus it becomes the duty of civic leaders and concerned citizens to make sure that architects and planners are not allowed to impose their creative will, at the cost of hundreds of years of history and hundreds of individuals’ interconnected ideas that created the city. Since each organizing concept must respond to the individual nature and history of a particular place, there is no cookie-cutter way to create an organizing concept. Each must be crafted as an individual, custom creation.

Symbolic Historical Memory: The history of the built environment over time that influences the present and guides the future.

118 The Biological Paradigm

Bacon saw his role as laying down the roots, the underlying structure, then allowing architects to extend his concepts into the sunlight. He created the roots of the Far Northeast concept, then let Wasserman cultivate his concept into built structures. The developers, in turn, created the houses, the face of the project that we all can see. The biological paradigm guided Bacon’s life’s work. Perhaps he absorbed this concept from Eliel Saarinen. More likely it was always part of him—an inherent physical reality of how he sees the world and not an intellectual realization. Bacon thinks with his body and responds to the city, not as a mass of numbers and figures, but as the living, growing reality that it is. He sees a rundown section not as an area that can only be revived if the market analysis says it is possible, but as an ailing part of a body that has to be revived (and can be revived), no matter what. As part of the biological paradigm, Bacon believes that in order to revive a city you have to start with the heart. The energy will then extend outwards into the neighborhoods. For this reason he devoted much of his work and major projects to Center City—Philadelphia’s heart. He is sometimes criticized for having spent too much time on Center City, ignoring the rest of Philadelphia.5 His work in the Far Northeast shows that this is not entirely the case. Many credit Bacon with the revitalization of Center City, but few will connect him to the renaissance many other Philadelphia neighborhoods are experiencing today. During his career, Bacon’s visions led to the revitalization of several neighborhoods within and just beyond Center City. Many of the neighborhoods seeing new growth today lie immediately adjacent to those areas, and have absorbed their energy as it extends outwards.6

The Biological Paradigm: An inherent tendency to experience the world bodily. A way of viewing the city as a living, breathing organism, rather than a static entity that can be explained through numbers.

119 Imaging the Future

Almost nobody believes that there really is a future. Those who claim to be futurists are mostly technologists, playing. Those who take it seriously are immediately branded ivory tower dreamers, and therefore irrelevant to real life. Yet the future is the one immutable reality. It is coming with indomitable force. It is going to determine every aspect of our lives, or our deaths, for that matter. And we systematically pretend it is not there. I have spent most of my life projecting in detail what I wanted different parts of Philadelphia to become. Now…I can look back and see, in precise detail, how the present reality of Philadelphia compares with or deviates from my fifty or sixty year-old predictions of what it would be.7

Bacon stresses the importance of three-dimensional models because of their effectiveness in allowing people to really understand an idea as part of their three- dimensional reality.8 Bacon used three-dimensional models, circulated his drawings in the media, spoke to prominent citizens. He made designs of his proposal for Penn Center and placed them in the center of the great hall of Wanamaker’s department store. Bacon’s most significant exercise in imaging the future was the Better Philadelphia exhibition. Many planners view the creation of a plan as the end of the process. Bacon realized it was only the beginning.

Figure 6.3 (Philadelphia City Planning Commission) 120 Of course, an organizing concept is dead if it sits in a person’s brain. The planner has to communicate it to others to inspire them with his vision. People are inspired when they can imagine the reality of the future vividly. Inspired by Walter Phillips, Bacon devoted his life to living in the future, creating the future, and working backwards to the present, to get us there. He always believed in the future and was never afraid of it. He created concepts years before they were needed (or would be taken seriously), ignored people who laughed at him or did not believe in his future. More often than not the skeptics found themselves living in Bacon’s future when it became reality. Bacon’s ability to live in the future, and to communicate that future, largely explains why he was so successful.

Imaging the Future: Communicating the organizing concept in three-dimensional form that people can see and imagine as part of the reality of the city.

Refusing to Be Categorized

Bacon created planning concepts, wrote reports himself, went to meetings with community groups, and played a host of other roles usually delegated by the Planning Director. Bacon walked the streets of run-down Society Hill, leading wealthy women on tours to convince them that it was possible to live there. Bacon recalled, “We’d walk past the dead cats, step over the garbage and trash…[and] amidst all this trash and mouldering piles we had about five rehabbed houses. The effort was all to communicate the idea that you guys could live down here.”9

In the 1960s, the administration of Temple University hit a standstill in negotiations with African-American community groups over a proposed university project that residents felt would damage their neighborhood. Bacon stepped across racial and social barriers and worked out a solution, himself. When Bacon’s staff member, Morton Hoppenfeld, dropped off an unfinished

121 draft of a city plan on Bacon’s desk, and left to take a new job, Bacon threw it away and wrote the “1963 Center City Plan” himself. Bacon wrote, “when a community meeting was beneath the dignity of a staff member, I would take it myself.”10 He wore many hats and changed them on a regular basis. Bacon did not see his job simply as an administrator or physical designer, and did not separate site planning, physical planning, architecture, and community planning (the separate disciplines of today). All were interconnected in his view, and all were his responsibility in order to communicate his ideas and get them built. “I con- sistently refused to be confined or categorized within any particular role, title, function or position, external or self-image,” Bacon recalled, “from the humblest person who cleaned up the floor to the most powerful visionary. I played all of these roles with equal zest as circumstances warranted.”11 Bacon’s ability to dodge categoriza- tions partly explains why others have such a hard time understanding exactly what he did. Bacon did whatever it took.

Refusing to Be Categorized: Ignoring the standard roles and duties dictated by a profession or society, taking on whatever task needs to be done.

The Collective Unconscious

According to Bacon, the “collective unconscious” is the public’s understanding of the urban environment.12 It is the set of ideas that the public has about how the urban environment looks, acts and functions. Every day, as people walk through the city, they create their own ideas and pictures in their mind about their environment. As people read the news or talk to friends they receive other notions that shape their view of the city. When an idea is powerful enough to make its way into the collective unconscious, people become able to see it as part of the city they know, and therefore it has the potential to be built.

122 The process of an idea entering and becoming rooted in the collective unconscious is subtle, and there are infinite ways it can happen. People get their ideas from their own experiences, from the media, from discussions with friends, from the way they perceive the urban environment. The revitalization of Market East is a good example. When Bacon proposed the idea in the 1950s nobody took him seriously. Mayor Clark in the analyst who reported there was no market for retail development. Even by the early 1970s, Bacon’s idea was still doubted. Nonetheless, boosted through images in Time and Life, the revitalization of Market East slowly seeped into the public’s collective unconscious and became associated with the reality of Philadelphia. Once rooted in the collective unconscious, an idea gains independence from its creator and takes on a force all its own. In 1977, twenty-five years after Bacon created the organizing concept, and seven years after his retirement from the City Planning Commission, his Market East plan was built as the Gallery, the first urban shopping mall in the nation. Shown below is Bacon’s 1958 plan for “Market East Plaza,” the seed that led to the creation of Market East and the Gallery.

Figure 6.4 (Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Market East Plaza,” May 1958) 123 The Gallery sparked the revitalization of East Market Street that now includes several major hotels, department stores, and a new convention center. All of this took place in a rundown section of the city that supposedly had no marketability. Today Market East’s revitalization is taken for granted to the point that people forget the Gallery was its foundation. The real problem was not whether the market was there, but whether people believed the revitalization was possible—whether the idea was rooted in the collective unconscious. In the Far Northeast, when Bacon approached the builders about moving the garages to the front, they told him no housewife would take her trash out through the front door. Bacon and Wasserman knew their idea made more sense, so that there could be backyards to enjoy the nature. They convinced Norman Denny to actually develop houses with garages in front. Struck with the intuitiveness and superiority of the reality, no builder in the Far Northeast built back garages again. Sometimes someone even has to see the reality before it can become rooted in the collective unconscious. In one way or another, the planner must image the future in a way to inject the organizing concept into the collective unconscious.

The Collective Unconscious: The public mind of the populous and body politic, with conceptions and ideas of the urban environment already rooted. The planner must inject the organizing concept into the collective unconscious in order for the concept to become part of the known possibilities of the urban reality.

Democratic Feedback

In Bacon’s method, the planner begins the planning process with an organizing concept. However, the organizing concept will probably not get built the way the planner originally conceived it. This is a fact that many planners and architects, viewing themselves as artists, will not accept. However, the planning process is organic and subtle and cannot be controlled by one person. Numerous people will likely contribute

124 to a concept before it is built. This is both the beauty and the danger of Bacon’s planning process. As the planner injects the idea into the collective unconscious and works with different individuals and involved groups, the concept will be changed. Democratic feedback is the process by which the planner responds to others’ changes, to bring the organizing concept from an idea to reality. In Design of Cities, Bacon showed an elaborate diagram with an explanation of “democratic feedback.”13 This is the crucial step once a concept is in the collective unconscious, that transforms it from an idea to a reality. In the Far Northeast, the process of democratic feedback was simple. First, after community pressure, Mayor Clark vetoed the D Zoning Ordinance, leading to Bacon’s creation of C-1. Then Wasserman inherited the idea and altered it, adding cul-de-sacs, for example, where Bacon wanted loop streets. Then through the Board of Review, Wasserman made further changes after developers came back with alterations they desired. The end result was guided by the structure of the organizing concept, though it differed from Bacon’s original vision. In the case of Penn Center or Society Hill the democratic feedback cycle was much more complicated. There were numerous constituencies, review boards, community groups, and business interests, who accepted the organizing concept as their own (after it became part of the collective unconscious), and altered or reworked the concept to their own specifications. Through the democratic feedback cycle the organizing concept undergoes a transformation. It begins as an idea from the single mind of the planner. As it insemi- nates the collective unconscious, many others take ownership of the idea and make it their own. The idea’s originator may be entirely lost in the process.

Democratic Feedback: The process by which outside actors alter the organizing concept to transform the concept from a planner’s idea to their own reality.

125 PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING

In order to be a city planner one must be able to create an organizing concept. T Making the future real is achieved by inseminating the collective unconscious with an organizing concept. T That is: A planner makes the future real by getting people to understand his/her idea as if it were their own. T Through the feedback cycle, the planner’s idea actually becomes their own. T The greatest proof of the power of an idea is when the planner is forgotten by the end of the process, but his vision gets built.

126 THE PLANNING PROCESS

1. Conceive the organizing concept responding to the individual realities of an area.

2. Communicate the physical design of the organizing concept.

3. Inject the three-dimensional aspects of the concept into the collective unconscious.

4. Set into motion the democratic feedback cycle to allow actors to translate the three-dimensional design into built projects.

5. Extend the organizing concept to nearby areas and repeat the process.

127 7. The Reaction

City planning has reached the end of a cycle. What is needed is a really dynamic and creative fresh start. –Nancy Love, Philadelphia, July 1968

Ed Bacon’s planning method always started with an “organizing concept,” an original idea. It began with an idea and ended with a built project. This may sound intuitive, but it is, in fact, the opposite of what is often practiced today. Since the 1960s, the planning profession has launched a backlash against what was perceived as top-down planning—imposing ideas on an unwilling populace—thought to have been carried out by administrators like Bacon and Robert Moses. The result of this backlash is a new, widely adopted planning process that Bacon calls “mediating consensus.” This method discourages planners from creating visions and redefines the role of a planner as a passive mediator, in order to empower the public. I will argue in this chapter that, despite popular belief, Bacon’s method was, in fact, highly democratic and empowering. I will also show that the mediating consensus approach is not only misguided, but is actually far less democratic than Bacon’s method. It gives the illusion of participation, but really hinders grassroots efforts to guide or influence the planning process. Neither Bacon nor Moses was ever able to single-handedly impose any idea. As Bacon recognized, the collective unconscious of the public is the force that carries any idea to reality. A planner’s success depends on his or her ability to interact with the collective unconscious.

Mistakes and Responses

The planning efforts of the 1950s and 1960s are largely associated today with their most visible results: high-rise housing projects, massive highways cutting

128 through downtowns, ghettoization, and “white flight” to the suburbs. Major civic improvements started in many cities during the 1930s when, like Bacon’s WPA traffic survey in Flint, Michigan, cities across the nation put WPA money into improving their downtowns. The federal government passed a series of acts, starting in 1934, to address the housing problems of the Great Depression. This 1934 act was the first to address low- income housing, creating the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). It was followed by an act in 1937, creating the United States Housing Authority. Next came the Federal Housing Act of 1949, containing the infamous “Title I” that gave cities the ability and financial means to clear huge tracts of “slum” neighborhoods and build civic projects and public housing in their place. Another act in 1954 was the first to use the words “urban renewal,” changing the focus from just housing to a large-scale endeavor, broader in scope.1 Under the auspices of the 1949 act the Federal government hoped for the creation of 800,000 new units of public housing.2 Most of this housing ended up in inner cities, and to save cost and space most of them were built as isolated high-rise projects.3 One example is New York’s Penn Station South Housing Project, shown below in a 1963 photograph.

Figure 7.1 (Source: Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., American Civilization, London: Thames and Hudson, 1972, p. 219) 129 Figure 7.2 (Source: Garvin, p. 154) These high rises were not just built out of thrift, but were in fact endorsed by progressives of the day, who had the misguided belief that these projects were the best solution for the good of the inner-city poor. Projects across the country were based on modernist architectural and planning principles like the towers and superblocks of Le Corbusier’s drawings, as shown above. The projects also attempted to copy a mini- malist architecture like that of German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the current vogue. The image at right shows Mies’s 1948 Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago. Using these concepts, reformers thought they could treat the poor as the rich, and give them the first glimpse at the future of the American city.4 These high-rise projects continued to be built well into the 1950s and 1960s, but ultimately they were a mistake, and have become “breeding grounds for crime and van- dalism.”5 Too often they were built cheaply with substandard utilities, and were not ade- Figure 7.3 (Source: Boston College, “A Digital Archive of American Architecture,” available online at quately maintained, simply forcing the poor http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/) 130 into new slums. One of the most documented of these failed housing projects was Chicago’s Cabrini Green, built in 1955 for 10,000 residents. The construction was poor and the buildings quickly began to fall apart: “broken elevators do not get fixed, staircases become garbage dumps, and broken windows remain unreplaced.”6 Over its 40 years of existence Cabrini Green became the site of horrific crime—murders, snipers—and has been compared to “violence-ridden Sarajevo.”7 The problems of public housing projects continue to plague our cities and the unlucky poor who call them home. In A Prayer for the City, journalist Buzz Bissinger recounted unbelievable living circumstances in public housing projects discovered by an audit in Philadelphia in 1993. Bissinger wrote:

Infestations of roaches were common. Shower, tub and sink faucets that would not shut off. One unit had…a rotting subfloor in the kitchen, a second-floor bedroom ceiling that had caved in because of leaks in the plumbing and large holes in the living room walls…a household of five slept in one bedroom…the mayor himself talked about [units in which]…sewage and excrement came through the sink.8

These conditions sound more like those in the New York tenements con- demned by Jacob Riis in his groundbreaking 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, not the conditions of public housing in 1993! The problems of public housing extended beyond their physical conditions. They packed the poor together as if they were an inferior species, and fenced them off from the rest of society. Oftentimes they were meant only as temporary means for people who were then evicted as soon as they made a certain income. There was no sense of ownership, or community, and the living conditions were horrific. It is no wonder that across the nation these projects failed to fulfill their intended result of uplifting the poor and providing adequate housing for them.9 In American Civilization Bacon noted that “the really powerful opposition to wholesale clearance in cities and conse- quent social disruption came only after the program moved out of the area exclusively confined to low income housing.”10

131 Though public housing was the most highly criticized result of postwar planning, there were other factors that later became part of the critique of that era. Federal funds gave cities the ability to build highways through their downtowns. Coupled with a historically racist real-estate industry and cheap suburban homes that seemed to promise the American dream, the 1960s and 1970s saw a significant decline in urban populations around the nation. The story of urban decline has been told and retold, and

I do not need to go into its details here.11 Urbanists like to place much of the blame on the automobile, but the real story is much more complicated; the underlying causes for racial segregation and ghettoization in the American city are still widely debated (and unresolved).12 The failure of public housing projects, population loss, and the creation of new ghettos have subsequently been blamed on the planning philosophy of the time, and laid on the shoulders of those administrators who carried out this policy. Public housing is the most widely criticized result of that period, and is the basis for the ensuing reform of the planning process. The first to carry out such a self-proclaimed “attack on current city planning and rebuilding” was urbanist Jane Jacobs in her book, The Death and Life of Great

American Cities.13 Her argument was that “from beginning to end, from Howard and Burnham to the latest amendment on urban-renewal law, the entire concoction is irrelevant to the workings of cities.”14 She argued her point by describing the failed high- rise housing projects, pervasive slums, the dominance of automobiles, unfriendly, unwalkable blocks, and other examples of city planning blunders. Jacobs criticized professional planners, and asserted that “the processes that occur in cities are not arcane, capable of being understood only by experts. Many ordinary people already understand them.”15 She did not actually call for a public planning process, but her criticism of planning experts who ignored the needs of the people they were planning for provided a foundation for the current public planning movement.16

132 Jacobs’s arguments are critically important and still relevant as she offered a solution by “setting forth different principles.”17 She decried the public housing projects, stressed a focus on street life, and explained that the interaction of people makes the urban environment vibrant. She even admitted that “my attack is not based on quibbles about rebuilding methods.”18 Nonetheless, she has became the founding force for a backlash against what is perceived as “top-down” planning. Planning programs and urbanists began to interpret her message to mean that the planning processes of Moses, Bacon and others was flawed and needed to be reversed by disempowering administrators and empowering the public.

Modern Planning Movements

The late 1960s saw President Johnson’s War on Poverty, with a new series of programs (including Model Cities and Community Block Grants) targeted at America’s urban areas. However, Richard Nixon ended Model Cities, and the Reagan and Bush presidencies of the 1980s ignored cities altogether and withdrew much of the remaining government resources for municipal governments.19

Meanwhile, several new movements were afoot in the planning community. Beginning in the late 1980s a group of planners created the New Urbanism, to “reform all aspects of real estate development.”20 Founded by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater- Zyberk, and others, the New Urbanism seeks to renew interest in city living by documenting and duplicating the successful elements of existing urban design.21 It is responsible for a host of new communities across the country, including Florida’s Seaside and the controversial Celebration, a town owned and operated by the Walt

Disney Company.22 Others have established more new concepts in city planning during the 1990s, including the smart-growth movement—advocating government limits on sprawl, and

133 maintaining existing farmland and natural features—and the sustainable development movement—to create more environmentally and socially conscious means of town planning and building. In 1989, the U.S. Congress formed a commission to address the nation’s public housing problems. The efforts of this commission became the Hope VI program, carried out during Bill Clinton’s presidency. Hope VI initiated a resurgence in the federal government investing in America’s cities. Administered by the Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Hope VI creates public-private partnerships that demolish high-rise housing projects and build mixed-income, lower-density housing units on the same location. Hope VI is the first major program since Model Cities to pay attention to America’s cities.23 Unfortunately, as of the writing of this thesis, HUD has reported it plans to cut the program’s budget significantly and phase it out in the near future.24 The images below show one Hope VI endeavor, the Martin Luther King projects in South Philadelphia. At the top are the original high-rise housing projects, and at the bottom are several of the new, mixed-income development units.

Figure 7.4 (Source: Universal Companies, available online at http://www.universalcompanies.org/) 134 After the September 11 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center, New York City organized a public planning process to decide what to do with the “ground zero” site. Because of the nation-wide repercussions, for the first time in many years city planning has been solidly at the forefront of the nation’s attention.

Top Down?

While this new interest in city planning is positive and long-awaited, these new movements brought along with them the ideological scars of the slum-clearance, high- rise, public-housing era, and have sought to not only reform the nature of planning, but the process as well.25 This “reform” of the planning process is somewhat misguided, especially in the case of Philadelphia, because it blames a top-down process for public housing and other mistakes of the era—a correlation that does not hold up. Administrators like Moses and Bacon are blamed for ignoring the constituents they are supposed to be serving. As Caro argued in The Power Broker, Moses’s top- down method allowed him the power to impose projects that ignored African- Americans, the poor, and neighborhood interests. In a scathing critique, Caro wrote, “After a building program that had tripled the city’s supply of playgrounds, there was still almost no place for approximately 200,000 of the city’s children—the 200,000 with black skin.”26 It makes sense, based on this argument, that the way to solve the problem is to strip power from the administrator and empower citizens. However, as I will show later, Moses was not, in fact, the almighty power broker Caro portrayed, and relied on the public’s support for much of his success. Similarly, Bacon has also been accused of not paying attention to the poor and to minorities. For example, in Nancy Love’s Philadelphia cover story, she wrote:

William Penn had made his mark, and now after all those years, a second city planner was making his. At least, that’s the way it was, once upon a time. Suddenly, all sorts of dragons were rising up to take it away from him [Bacon]. There are these people in the ghettos with

135 their demands for black power and the right to undo the mess that planning and renewal have made of their lives…Ed Bacon was used to the principle of the squeaky wheel. But that was no longer just a squeak out there. It was getting harder and harder to put a dab of oil here and a dab there and then get on with what was really important—the shaping of his city—center city, and the devil with all the rest.27

In my time working with Bacon I have heard much of this kind of criticism. Typical of this consistent misperception of Bacon is an M.I.T. paper, titled “Vision and Blindness: Edmund Bacon’s 1963 Plan for Center City Philadelphia.” The author wrote:

[Bacon’s 1963 plan] further marginalized minority populations and reinforced spatial segregation…The plan did not proceed out of a process that engaged those whom it would most affect, and it was not sensitive to the needs of its surrounding communities.28

The author cited Society Hill, specifically, in which a number of existing residents were displaced to make way for the wealthy who invested their own money in restoring the area’s Colonial housing stock. While such criticism against other administrators may or may not be on-target, in the case of Bacon it severely misses the point. Each of Bacon’s organizing concepts responded to an individual area and distinct set of needs. In Society Hill, Bacon explained that he saw America’s largest collection of 18th-century houses falling into disrepair. The City could not afford to restore the houses itself, and in order to save them and revitalize the area, Bacon sought to instill in the minds of the wealthy that they really could move from large estates to tiny townhouses. Bacon was a critic of slum clearance, and Society Hill has been cited as the first instance in which a large- scale urban renewal area was treated by a program of revitalization, instead of clearance.29 Bacon’s concept worked in Society Hill, but would not work elsewhere, nor would it be appropriate or desirable in other areas. Critics like to cite Society Hill because it is a case of Bacon displacing residents. However, few recognize that Bacon did coordinate projects and planning in a number of largely African-American areas in

136 West and North Philadelphia in which he neither displaced residents, nor sought to change the area’s demographics.30 The M.I.T. paper also recounted another common accusation, that Bacon turned East Market Street into a shopping concourse for the rich.31 In 1957 the Vice Chairman of the planning commission, Philip Klein, said “Market Street [East] is becoming a row of empty warehouses.”32 There was no existing community there, as in the case of Society Hill. Bacon’s vision became the Gallery mall, and it did jump- start a major renaissance of East Market Street. However, anyone who visits the Gallery today knows that it is far from a shopping enclave for rich, white folk. The Gallery attracts people of all classes, and in a city that is 43% black or African- American, the Gallery is one of the few places downtown where anyone would ever know it.33 As Bacon likes to say, the Gallery has become “the people’s palace.”34 Interestingly, I have recently heard several arguments that the Gallery should be torn down because it hurts the “good business” atmosphere on East Market Street (which probably means upper-class and white). Aside from the racist and classist sentiment of this statement, it seems that people have forgotten the Gallery was the reason for the area’s economic success, in the first place. Bacon is also blamed for Philadelphia’s high-rise housing projects; however, he continually criticized those projects and at several points in his career proposed mixed-income, scattered site housing programs as an alternative.35 These programs were, unfortunately, never implemented. These facts are largely overlooked, perhaps because people would like to be able to fit Bacon into a mold with other administrators of the era. I do not mean to say Bacon did not make mistakes. He admits it would have been a mistake to tear down City Hall, leaving only the tower, as he proposed in his original Penn Center concept. He also acknowledges the harm the Cross-town Expressway (never built) would have inflicted on Center City. Bacon is maligned for installing I-95 and for the lackluster

137 appearance of Penn Center’s architecture. These faults may have been judgment errors on Bacon’s part, or may have been created as others inherited Bacon’s visions and worked toward their realization. The fault, however, is not the planning process that the M.I.T. paper falsely calls “entirely top-down and non-transparent.” Bacon’s process was indeed the opposite. In the next chapter I will explain mediating consensus more fully and show how it compares to Bacon’s method. I do not argue here that Philadelphia is perfect, nor is Bacon’s planning method. However, when applied to the problems of today Bacon’s method is still relevant, and in fact necessary for us to understand if we truly want a democratic planning process—one that empowers its participants.

138 8. Inspiring Consensus

At the beginning of a good design…are not forces, but…a creative idea held up as a vision, the power of the plan. –Wolf Von Eckardt, The Washington Post, November 28, 19651

We are in an age of renewed interest in city planning, the first major resurgence since the end of Urban Renewal. As such, we need to assess where we are and how we proceed. In this pursuit, it is important that we recognize the effectiveness of Bacon’s method and the danger of the new practice of mediating consensus. Mediating consensus was created as a backlash against top-down planning. But those who criticize Bacon fail to see that his method was not top-down—instead it empowered its participants. Conversely, mediating consensus gives its participants the illusion of participation, while actually disempowering them, and settling for mediocrity. Bacon’s process has its flaws, but they are not because of too much control, rather they are the result of the planner losing control over the vision, as outside participants transform the vision into reality.

Mediating Consensus

While I worked at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission I met a number of planners who recounted the same experience: they created a plan, gave it over to a politician or community group, the plan was rejected, and they returned to the office frustrated. Chris Satullo, editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a veteran witness to hundreds of public planning projects and processes explains this phenomenon: “the truth is so clear to them [professional planners] they can’t help but get frustrated with the great unwashed who can’t see it as they do. Eventually, as their failures of listening and patience pile up, that frustration turns into an outright contempt for the public.”2 Satullo’s solution to this problem is the same one that planners across the coun-

139 try are embracing today: mediating consensus.3 When using this method, rather than proceeding from an idea, planners solicit ideas from the public. Community members work with architects and designers at planning workshops or charrettes (intensive design sessions) to put their plans onto paper. These plans are discussed and participants select one. The desired end result is a plan entirely created by “the public,” coached by experts who mediate to arrive at consensus. Mediating consensus is the current trend in city planning today. University of Pennsylvania Professors Eugenie Birch and John Keene wrote, “public participation, process-based decisions, conflict negotiation, and mediation are key elements of contemporary planning.”4 Prominent planning firm Kise, Straw, and Koladner outlines the beginning of its planning process as follows: “Phase I. Consensus Building and Goal Setting…the needs and desires of key community stakeholders, as well as the public, will be solicited to form the vision statement of the revitalization plan.”5 The Philadelphia City Planning Commission, the same one that Bacon guided for two decades, today states that its role is not to create city plans, but to “provide information, technical assistance and guidance as each community moves through the [planning] process.”6 In 2002, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Penn Praxis, the University of Pennsylvania’s design school field practice program, held a public process to develop consensus around a vision to redesign Philadelphia’s riverfront area, Penn’s Landing. This process came after a succession of developers’ failed attempts to redesign the site. All of these failed plans naturally were overcome by the white paper syndrome and demolished all existing structures, but that is to be expected these days. The Inquirer/Penn Praxis process began with a presentation by professors and experts on various waterfront designs, the history of Penn’s Landing, and what the public needs to consider in the design process. Then the floor was opened for com-

140 ments. Next came a set of public seminars, started with a presentation by the keynote speaker, renowned planner Denise Scott Brown. As she spoke, Scott Brown made it quite clear that she had a concept in mind, but did not reveal that concept. “We implored Ms. Scott Brown not to tell the group what ought to happen,” Satullo later explained to me, “because that would have had a chilling effect on dialogue.”7 Next, the hundreds of citizens who showed up were divided into groups in which they listed their thoughts about what Penn’s Landing should become. Among the members in my group was the Center City Community Planner from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. After sitting silent for an hour I asked him why he wouldn’t speak up—after all, he’s the one paid by our tax dollars to create city plans. He answered that he did not want to influence other people’s input. Next, the organizing groups selected a crew of citizen volunteers who worked with trained architects and planners, told them their ideas for Penn’s Landing, and the professionals made some quick drawings and plans. Following this charrette came a public presentation of the plans, and afterward came a discussion about the plans we had just seen. I was sitting there with Ed Bacon, in a circle with perhaps ten other citizens. Bacon raised his hand and the moderator called on him. Bacon began explaining about his new concept for a symbolic architectural statement as the centerpiece of a new Penn’s Landing development. The moderator cut the former Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission off in mid sentence, and explained that the day’s discussion was limited to talking about the charrette plans; no new elements could be added. In the end, none of the charrette ideas moved beyond that final presentation. Mayor John Street went ahead and put out a request for proposals to major developers in the region. The groups that organized the public process claim that while the results of the charrette will not be built, their underlying principles shaped the devel-

141 opers’ plans. I studied the developers’ drawings and plans and there is not a trace of the design ideas identified in the public process. I hope it is clear by this point that mediating consensus is the opposite of Bacon’s method. Bacon always began with an idea. Mediating consensus begins with no idea and hopes to develop one by asking people what they want, working through the collective interaction of the public. To quote Eugenie Birch, “There is rarely a new idea…Consensus forms around existing ideas, then political pressures allow them to be built. This is how we [planners] get things done.”8 Despite the applause for democratizing the planning process, many fail to see that when people are asked what they want and are expected to create a vision as a group, it actually disempowers each individual. Nobody is allowed to formulate a concept, and so the resulting plans are a conglomeration of many people’s scattered ideas, forced to work together. Instead of beginning with an individual’s coherent vision, the result is a mish-mash of disconnected parts—the lowest common denominator. Mediating consensus is meant to protect citizens from top-down planning, and administrators imposing their visions without public support. However it actually does the opposite; more than anything else, mediating consensus gives the public the feeling of participation, while actually rendering citizens powerless. In contrast, Bacon’s planning process was actually exceedingly empowering. He always began with an organizing concept, then communicated that concept so as to inject it into the collective unconscious. Once in the collective unconscious the connection between Bacon and his concept was severed. Participating actors took ownership of the idea and, through the feedback cycle, they transformed the idea into built reality, themselves. In Bacon’s process a group of outside actors was always responsible for the realization of his concepts. As I mentioned earlier, this sometimes led to people for- getting that Bacon conceived the idea in the first place. Bacon’s is a very subtle, but also very successful method because people are far more likely to work for their own

142 ideas than for someone else’s. Bacon was able to inspire people with his ideas to the extent that they believed the ideas were their own, and as they made changes and carried the concepts along the process, those concepts actually became their own. Bacon does not necessarily value his vision over anyone else’s. He simply creates visions he thinks are good, attempts to inject them into the collective unconscious, and if others agree on their quality, they may, without knowing it, accept the idea as their own. Clearly people other than Bacon are capable of creating concepts, otherwise there would be no future. Bacon’s method allows people to accept the best concept. He explains this idea in a brief essay on his plan for the improvement of Independence Mall in the 1990s:

How can I assert my plan as the best plan for Independence Mall without indulging in hubris? The answer is that my plan is the only plan we have so it has to be the best plan. Without some plan we cannot have a sensible consideration of the whole subject. My plan will continue to be the best plan until somebody comes up with a better one. Should this happen I will be the first to rise up and shout “HUZZAH, let’s get on with it,” and gladly throw my plan out with the trash. If this be hubris, I am for it!9

The Collective Unconscious

Bacon’s process requires a great level of modesty to be able to step away from an idea that you know is your own and watch others take credit for it. Bacon’s success in this regard may have its roots in his Quaker upbringing. It may also have to do with the political structure of Philadelphia. In Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, E. Digby Baltzell argued that Philadelphia’s Quaker heritage has led to a more modest and less visible leadership structure than in Puritan Boston:

A normative culture that stresses the desirability of hierarchy, class, and authority will instill in its members a far stronger desire and capacity to take the lead in both community building and community reform than a normative culture that emphasizes equality and brotherly love, explicitly rejecting the need for hierarchy, class and authority.10

At the same time Bacon’s independent nature clashes with his Quaker modesty. To anyone who knows Ed Bacon, the planning process I have described contrasts

143 sharply with his personality—argumentative and not always so modest. This is the great yin and yang of Ed Bacon, the two sides of the man. On the surface he was a forceful administrator, but underneath he exercised great modesty and discipline to get his projects built. The keys to Bacon’s process are a strong concept as the foundation, and the planner’s ability to influence the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is the single most important element in city planning because ideas that are rooted in it will have public support and therefore the potential to be built. The “community” is not capable of creating a collective vision, as mediating consensus believes. Any idea that emerges as group consensus was injected into the collective unconscious from some outside influence, ahead of time. It is impossible to find a public that enters a process without preconceived ideas that have inseminated themselves into the collective unconscious. For example, Inga Saffron, the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a series of articles before the Penn’s Landing public hearings, outlining the history, problems and potential of the city’s waterfront. In one article she blamed the city’s highway, I-95, for cutting off access to the river:

If Philadelphia expects major developments at Penn’s Landing and along the Delaware, it will have to face up to the barrier created by I-95. Otherwise, the city has little choice but to accept the site’s fundamental weaknesses and scale back its waterfront ambitions.11

Whether or not she is right, after that article, I-95’s effect of killing Penn’s Landing began to fill the media and public discourse. Naturally after being bombarded by experts telling the public that I-95 is at fault, when the public forums came along and the moderators asked the groups what they viewed as the biggest barriers at Penn’s Landing, no surprise, many people answered “I-95.” In the end the public process did not mediate consensus that I-95 was the problem. Instead Inga Saffron successfully injected I-95’s guilt into the collective unconscious. When people were asked what

144 they wanted, their answers were a series of preconceived ideas and reflections dug up from the collective unconscious. At the beginning of each public session, along the public process for Penn’s Landing, the organizers explained that the process was created to mirror the successful public process in New York for the World Trade Center site. A few months later I was traveling to a luncheon lecture with Bacon and Alexander Garvin. I told Garvin about the Penn’s Landing process and recounted the claim that it was based on the successful public process in New York. Garvin laughed out loud and said to me, “In New York we never asked people what they wanted.” The process to redesign “Ground Zero” was based on visions by some of the world’s renowned architects.12 Citizens were informed throughout, and in the end, the World Trade Center process indeed had the support of arguably the most vocal public in the world. That support allowed the process to run fairly smoothly. But the “public” never created any idea.

Bacon and Moses

Through his work designing the New York Olympic plans, and coordinating the World Trade Center planning process, Alexander Garvin has recently emerged as one of the most important planners of our time. He admits Bacon’s influence on his work, but an equally significant inspiration surely comes from another New Yorker,

Robert Moses.13 In his essay, “The Second Coming of Moses,” Garvin wrote:

Today, there is a gaping hole where the twin towers once stood. The entire world is watching New York, demanding that we create nothing short of the best new public place. We will do that—and more—if we understand correctly who Moses was, what he accomplished, how he did it, and then proceed in a very different way, one that suits 21st century New York.14

Garvin’s conception of Moses’s planning process varies sharply from the com- monly held beliefs about Moses, mainly resulting from Robert Caro’s massive biog-

145 raphy, The Power Broker. In the height of his career Robert Moses headed 15 city agencies and oversaw practically every new building project in New York City. He was the force behind Jones Beach, the New York and Long Island highway systems, Lincoln Center, Shea Stadium, Co-op City. He built the Triboro Bridge and brought the United Nations to New York. According to Caro, Moses held supreme power in

New York for a solid 44 years.15 Moses, shown at right, worked during two major periods of federal funding for American cities: The New Deal in the 1930s and Urban Renewal in the 1950s. He worked at a time friendly to urban development, but it is also true that he was able to do more with the federal funding than any other American city administrator. For example, no city used WPA funds as highly as New York and by 1936 “New York was receiving one-seventh of the WPA allotment for the entire country.”16 Caro argued that Moses’s success was due to his tremendous power. Moses had a gift for writing bills, finding loopholes in govern- Figure 8.1 (Source: Robert Caro, The Power Broker, New York: Vintage, 1975) ment documents, and in manipulating political actors to indirectly create the means toward his ends. In a 1939 article, Moses’s first biographer, Robert Cleveland, wrote, “It helps to an understanding of his activi- ties to know that Moses himself drafted the laws creating every position he has held or now holds.”17

With the support of Governor Al Smith during his four terms in office (1918- 1920, 1922-1928), and thereafter, Moses was able to gain a more substantive toehold

146 into positions of power. After Moses built the Triboro Bridge (1929-36) and established the Triboro Bridge Authority he collected the tolls and built up an enormous budget that he was able to use to build his subsequent projects. As an example of Moses’s supreme power, Caro recounted one episode in which Moses wanted to develop a toll bridge to replace the ancient ferry that crossed the East River. Impatient that the City was taking its time discontinuing the ferry, Moses one day ordered work crews to demolish the ferry terminal, while the ferry was in mid-journey. City officials frantically sought the help of Mayor Fiorello la Guardia, but even the mayor had no control over Moses’s men. Caro recounted, “La Guardia meanwhile contacted Moses and pleaded with him to call the contractors off.”18 The mayor ended up having to call the police to physically halt the ferry terminal’s demolition. According to Caro, Moses was able to win all his battles through the administrations of nine mayors and seven governors. Eventually political circumstances were such, and Moses’s public appeal waned enough, for the eighth governor, Nelson Rockefeller, to strip him of his power. Caro argued that Moses’s power was the single most important source of his success. With this power, Moses was able to build whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and did not have to listen to anybody. Caro wrote, “The only consideration that mattered was Robert Moses’s will. He had the power to impose it on New York.”19 Later he added, “It had been all too obvious that what he wanted was to be not the public’s servant, but its master, to be able to impose his will on it.”20

Caro described Moses’s method as one that ignored the public and critics and pushed projects through regardless of what anyone else thought: “Moses…would allow no analysis of community feelings, or planning considerations—no discussion of alternate routes based on such considerations.”21 This argument provided a strong basis for the current backlash in city planning that demands public participation and encourages a process in which the public creates plans while professionals simply moderate.

147 However, careful readers of The Power Broker will discover that Caro also made a more subtle argument—that Moses could not have done anything without the public’s support. This is a side of Moses that is often ignored in order to characterize him as an all-powerful administrator who could shove projects down the throat of an unwilling populace. However, this characterization misses the key to Moses’s success. Caro explained, “In part, because his success in public relations had been due primarily to his masterful utilization of a single public relations technique: identifying himself with a popular cause.”22 For example, Moses used the public’s existing support of parks and proposed a massive system of “parkways.” Of course they were actually highways, but to the public, Moses portrayed them as scenic routes and access to open space. Thereby he gained public support powerful enough to convince legislators and others that his ideas were indeed in their best interest:

As long as you’re fighting for parks, you can be sure of having public opinion on your side. And as long as you have public opinion on your side, you’re safe. [Moses says,] “As long as you’re on the side of the parks, you’re on the side of the angels. You can’t lose.”23

Later, Caro also argued that Moses lost his power as a result of actions that put him at odds with public opinion. The public was responsible for Moses’s sustenance and his downfall. Alexander Garvin disagrees with Caro’s assertion of Moses as an alimighty “power broker” who could impose his will, but agrees with the more subtle argument that Moses’s success is a result of his public support. Garvin argued that Moses’s planning method took existing public backing and manipulated it to support his ends: “Whenever possible, rather than compete with the very people whose support he needed and with whom he had to compete for funds, publicity, and public approval, Moses would adopt their agenda and work to implement it.”24 According to Garvin, Moses was much more vulnerable, and much more attentive to public interest than people generally believe.

148 In the vocabulary I have been using in this thesis, Caro argued mainly that Robert Moses used his power and money and IMPOSED CONSENSUS, building projects without listening to anyone, and forcing the entire populace to live in his vision. Meanwhile, Garvin argued that Moses RESPONDED TO CONSENSUS, taking values already held by the public and associating them with his projects to gain public support. These public values are, of course, in the collective unconscious. This point brings us to an important comparison with Ed Bacon’s method. Robert Moses, like Bacon relied on the collective unconscious, though in very different ways. Moses’s method took ideas already in the collective unconscious and attached them to his own concepts. Garvin called this, “implementing agreed-upon agendas.”25 Conversely, as I have shown, Bacon continually created his own organizing concepts and was able to communicate them in a way that he could inject them into the collective unconscious. Moses’s approach relied on existing support, while Bacon’s interacted with the collective unconscious to nurture support for his visions. After identifying this major difference between Moses and Bacon, Moses’s power does become relevant. Although he held public office, Bacon never had the power and money that Moses did, allowing him to oversee his projects from start-to- finish. Caro quoted one of the construction workers at Jones Beach:

[Moses] had the architects and engineers there, but he was the architect and the engineer of Jones Beach. He’s more responsible for the design of Jones Beach than any architect or engineer or all of us put together.26

As we know, Bacon never exercised this kind of control. His method relied on him injecting an idea into the collective unconscious then stepping away and letting others take ownership of the idea. It takes no power to create an organizing concept; the power lies in the quality of the idea and its ability to inspire others. Instead of mediating, imposing, or responding to consensus, through his entire life, Bacon has continually INSPIRED CONSENSUS.

149 Moses was the person who dredged an idea out of the collective unconscious and turned it into a reality. He was essentially acting on the second step of Bacon’s method. The result, however, is that Moses’s projects turned out much closer to his vision than did Bacon’s. Bacon’s approach of letting others take ownership of his ideas is both the great strength and weakness of his planning method. It is a strength because it was able to transfer an original idea from Bacon’s brain to reality. Few people in history have successfully done this without great power and control. On the other hand it also relegates the project’s physical form to other people. This is a scary concept for those who crave control and desire recognition. However, in order for Bacon’s method to work successfully he had to forego both. In order for planners to implement their ideas, they need to understand how to work with the collective unconscious, and how to rely on the power of an idea in the minds of others.

150 9. The Far Northeast Today

Oxford Circle. Torresdale. Bustleton. Frankford. Rhawnhurst. These are just a few of the neighborhoods that make up the much-maligned Great Northeast, where city- dwelling Philadelphians fear to tread. But the grand swath of land with a less-than- grand reputation is unfairly disparaged, and mostly by people who haven’t driven through it in years. – The Philadelphia Weekly, March 26, 2003

The Far Northeast is a wonderful example of Bacon’s organizing concept. It is also an apt example of how Bacon’s method is both successful and has weaknesses. It was successful in transforming the original concept for the Far Northeast into the reality of thousands of built houses and streets, designed around the natural topography. Like all of Bacon’s projects, the Far Northeast is a tremendous feat, and resulted from a methodology that is not at all understood. In Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (W.W. Norton & Co., 1982) former mayor Joseph S. Clark, Jr. devoted a significant amount of space in his chapter to dealing with Bacon’s projects. He was highly critical of the Far Northeast, which he wrote, “is not attractive, inviting a slum of the future.”2 Even Clark, who was Mayor during the building of the Far Northeast, believed that it was doomed. It is worth noting that in a

2002 interview, Bacon explained that Mayor Clark “never trusted me.”3 Now a half-century after it was constructed, the Far Northeast is not a slum. Far from it, the Far Northeast is Philadelphia’s middle-class stronghold, containing

162,038 people, in a city with 1.4 million people total. Taken as an average the Far Northeast had a negative growth rate from 1990- 2000 of –1.7. However, as a whole, the city saw a higher rate of population loss than the Far Northeast. The average median income in the Far Northeast is $43,150, and the average house value is $95,162. This compares to citywide averages of $30,809 for income, and $68,493 for house values.4 The Far Northeast is decidedly middle-class and is doing relatively well. 151 Bacon’s organizing concept laid out a design for a dense urban environment, akin to the rowhouse blocks of Philadelphia’s Center City, but in a form that responded to the topography. The segments of the Far Northeast that turned out closest to Bacon’s concept do create a cohesive neighborhood structure. Most development was planned with C-1 zoning, but the different developments range greatly in architectural style, as shown below, creating a stable, yet lively and diverse urban environment.

Figure 9.1 (Gregory Heller)

Still, a glimpse at the Far Northeast today reveals that much of it did not become the new type of urban environment Bacon envisioned. Bacon’s concept sometimes came through successfully with curving streets, cohesive neighborhoods, and well-maintained park land along the stream valleys. At other times the concept was obscured. Overall there are too many deviations from Bacon’s original concept, and the system of movement becomes lost. Today, a visitor to the Far Northeast sees blocks of rowhouses, but often cannot discern the order of the street designs. The loops are lost and often end in cul-de-sacs or winding roads with no clear purpose. The commercial areas did not at all turn out the way Bacon originally intended, and the stream valleys

152 are too often not well-maintained. Importantly, the automobile affected the developments in ways Bacon and Wasserman likely did not anticipate. The original plans of Bacon’s concept placed commercial centers at the core of each neighborhood cluster, within walking distance from the houses. However, during the region’s development, the commercial cores were abandoned. Businesses sprang up in suburban-type strip malls, as shown below, disconnected from the residential areas and too far away for people to walk.

Figure 9.2 (Gregory Heller)

Some of the stream valleys are well maintained by the Fairmount Park Commission; others are wastelands of garbage and empty beer bottles. Bacon and I took a trip to the Far Northeast and spoke to residents. One woman told us that the only people who use the land down by the stream valleys are delinquent teenagers who drink and do drugs. She prohibits her children from venturing down to the water. Almost all of the houses have fences around their yards. Several residents attributed this fact to the conflict with neighbors resulting from the density of the houses. One woman told us that her neighbor used to let his dogs use her yard as a toi-

153 let, so she built a fence. Another told us that the neighbor tried to build a shed on his property, and so he looked up the actual property lines and built a fence. Because of these fences the public access, the “breezeways” between the house groups are completely blocked off by two barriers abutting each other, ruining the whole notion of public access to the steam valleys. The photograph below shows one such row of houses with abutting fences.

Figure 9.3 (Gregory Heller)

The most noticeable feature of the Far Northeast today is the dominance of the automobile. I doubt that anyone—Bacon, Wasserman, the developers—imagined in their wildest dreams that middle-class families would someday own two or three cars. Such is the reality. In Center City street parking is quite limited (there are 4,700 residential permit street parking spots for 46,219 adult residents).1 Not to mention public transportation is sufficient so that cars are not necessary downtown. People are encouraged not to own cars, and so the limited parking is sufficient. In the Far

154 Northeast, without a decent system of public transportation and with a driveway and garage in every house, people cram multiple cars onto their properties Because the houses are not huge, a sizable number of occupants have turned their garages into downstairs rooms, with a standard house door in place of the garage opening. This leaves less space for automobiles, and pushes the second and third cars into the street. The effect is street after street crammed with cars, bumper-to-bumper. The Morrell Tract alone is about three-quarters of the size of all of Center City. The Far Northeast is expansive, and with some exceptions, much of it has become a prairie of automobiles. The photograph below shows one of many streets crowded with parked cars.

Figure 9.4 (Gregory Heller)

What Went Wrong?

So what went wrong in the Far Northeast? It cannot all be blamed on Wasserman’s cul-de-sacs. Bacon continually mentions to me his desire for a formal survey on whether residents in the Far Northeast prefer loop streets or cul-de-sacs. I think the results would be interesting, but the question is irrelevant. Bacon’s projects

155 have all been altered in some respect—some more than others. However, in the end, they do not fall apart; they remain cohesive systems because they were all founded on an organizing concept that continues to hold them together throughout the process. The fact that the Far Northeast developed into such a residential stronghold, despite its faults, I credit to Bacon’s organizing concept and his method that allowed a cohesive concept to guide the entire process. At the same time, Bacon personally had to separate himself from the concept at a certain point. Wasserman and developers took over the control of the concept’s fate.5 Their decisions largely defined the specific aspects that either succeeded or failed. Here are my conclusions of the decisions that most significantly hurt the Far Northeast. I must note at this point that I do not espouse any of these ideas as a template for good urban design, in general. City planning must respond to a particular area and set of circumstances. My observations here are limited to their relevance in the context of Philadelphia’s Far Northeast. First, C-1 zoning was implemented after some development already started. Traveling through the Far Northeast one can clearly see the developments that were built under C-1 and those that were not. There are whole neighborhoods of semi- detached (twin) houses, and along many of the major roads there are single family houses. This patchwork of different densities damages the ability of the area to have a singular image. In Center City all of the housing is of rowhouse blocks in dense urban communities, with shopping streets and parks interspersed. Center City neighborhoods, though each different in character, share an image of how people live and function. The Far Northeast does not have a cohesive image, and therefore attracts people who want dense urban living as well as those who want spread-out, suburban living. The two conflict often as developments meet. Next, the commercial areas were allowed to be developed like suburban strip malls. This not only ruins the urban image of the residential clusters, but makes an automobile an imperative. The lack of good mass transportation increases this trend.

156 The house designs with garages in front allow families to have two or three cars each, like in the suburbs, but with an urban density. This causes congestion and streets crowded with parked cars. Finally, the City required developers to dedicate the land along the stream valleys, but the City has failed to maintain this land. The park land managed by the Fairmount Park Commission is lovely. I wish all of the stream valleys were maintained so well and with good access. Wasserman told me that the City should have required larger tracts of land along the stream valleys be dedicated. Developer Berton Korman said he believes the problem is the abutting fences, and explained that the City should have prohibited two fences meeting and blocking the breezeways. Both of these are good notions. I do believe, however, that all things in the city travel in trends. Right now the residents of the Far Northeast do not utilize the stream valleys much. However, with some well-laid plans to maintain them better and develop proper trails and access, people may once again turn their interest to those public spaces and they may become the vibrant assets Bacon and Wasserman intended. On a final note, there are some extremely successful communities in the Far Northeast. In fact, this region contains an extraordinary phenomenon that displays how cohesive its neighborhoods actually are. It is one of the most remarkable urban experiences I have ever witnessed: When the garages were moved to the front, they created a small patch of lawn beside the front steps of every house. These seemingly useless patches of earth became the place where so many Far Northeast communities make magic. Each loop street seems to compete with the next for which can pack itself with the most lawn decora- tion. In the springtime entire loop streets plant the same color flowers. For Christmas, neighbors string colored lights across the street, spanning the entire loop. Thousands of lights flicker and mechanical reindeer look on as the Virgin Mary sits quietly behind

157 plastic elves embracing candy canes. The displays in the Far Northeast are a year- round pleasure, changing with the seasons. They remind passersby, “here lives a person who cares.” They are the work of an individual given emphasis by the company of hundreds of others. House-after-house, mile-after-mile, these displays powerfully shout to the world the human beauty and joy of neighborhood.

Figure 9.5 (Gregory Heller)

158 Epilogue: Hope for the Future

One humid afternoon in June of 2002, before I ever met Ed Bacon, I traveled to an area in the Far Northeast called Parkwood, with Shari Cooper, the city’s Northeast Community Planner. We were taking a survey of the area, looking for local assets and amenities. We walked along one block, then found an opening in the brush and penetrated the growth behind the houses. We discovered a flowing stream, surrounded by forest so thick that we would have had to bushwhack our way through. It was strange to think that we were still in the city. We retraced our steps and discovered another opening, farther along the road. This one was well-mowed, with flower beds planted along its border. Each house along the row to our left had a back porch, overlooking the path and the forest beside it. Here in this dense urban area we discovered an extraordinary system of connected open spaces. Along came a boy walking home from school along one of these paths. We stopped him and asked him how he liked living in Parkwood and if he used the paths often. He replied in a strong, local accent, that he liked living there and that he and his friends used the paths every day to walk to school or the store. Like the first time I emerged into Penn Center or the Gallery, or walked around a corner in Society Hill onto a greenway, when I first saw those paths in Parkwood I was struck by a sense of wonderment and also confusion. Where did this system of open space come from? Why is it not better maintained? I marveled at this wonderful part of my city that I never knew existed. I was confused because most cities when they have a mile-long stretch of below-ground passageways or an extensive system of parks along water they are cher- ished treasures, the kind that guidebooks extol as the city’s greatest assets. In Philadelphia they are often taken for granted, or perhaps they are merely misunderstood—much like their creator.

159 Edmund Bacon, Philadelphia’s urban legend, remains a local secret. But in Philadelphia he has refused to ride quietly into the sunset. He continues to assert his ideas in every major planning debate. His projects are often discussed, and because of the tremendous extent they shape Philadelphia, cannot be ignored. However, the process by which Bacon was able to have his visions built is not at all understood, and is hardly written about. In this age of public planning and mediating consensus, the planning profession is thumbing its nose at the individual and his idea. Yet, an individual’s vision has always been, and will always be the singular foundation for city planning. We live in an age defined not by individual leaders but by groups and institutions. This is a shame. The greatest quality of being human is our ability to create and express our ideas, to agree, debate or refute others’ ideas, and to be inspired by the power of a person’s idea. Once one understands Bacon’s method it is clear that planning based on an individual’s vision does not mean that the individual is imposing his vision. Indeed, the opposite is true. Bacon’s process actually empowers the public, and allows an idea to become the collective property of a group of actors. Bacon’s method is exceedingly democratic, yet it begins with an individual’s vision. In American Civilization Bacon wrote, “It may well prove that the most valuable contribution of American cities to world city development is the re-establishment…of a sense of place of the individual…and the principle that each person should have a hand in shaping his own environment.”1

The profession of city planning as well as the whole of our society has a lot to learn from Bacon. While I worked with Bacon he placed much hope in my generation. I do too. I have met a number of people in their twenties in Philadelphia who have real ideas and visions, and who are willing to act on those visions. I have met others who see the city as a living thing and are thinking about urban revitalization. I hope that

160 my generation will listen to Bacon and respond to the valuable lessons he has to teach. More than anything else, I implore my generation to learn from Bacon that you need to think for yourself. Bacon has shown how the power of an idea can shape an entire city. He has shown us how people can be inspired by an individual’s vision. Taking a cue from Walter Phillips, Bacon showed us that an individual really can live in the future, and really can make that future real. These are the reasons Bacon sees so much hope in my generation. After all, we still have time to live in the future before it actually arrives.

Figure B.1 (Bacon Papers)

161 Appendix: Interview with Irving Wasserman, Edmund Bacon, and Gregory Heller

October 10, 2002, Edmund Bacon’s home, Philadelphia (Recorded and transcribed by Gregory Heller)

Note: Irving Wasserman is the landscape architect who Bacon hired to lay out the physical plan for the Far Northeast in 1954.

B: And again the date. Edmund Bacon: When did you come to the W: ’54. planning commission? B: ’54. That was two years into the Clark admin- Irving Wasserman: Okay, the Planning istration. Was Penn Center going by the time you Commission job came up as the result of a civil got here? service exam that I took in Boston, and you called W: Penn Center was still to be torn down. Penn me at the Massachusetts Planning Agency (I had Station [Broad Street Station]. I was here when it a temporary job). was being removed. B: Oh, I called him. Did you hear that? B: Well in ’52 the last train went out of Broad W: Yeah, he called me, and he said, “come on Street Station, come to think of it. I was on that down. I want to meet you. You passed the civil train with my children. So you came down. service exam. Blah blah blah.” And I said, “who W: That’s right, I came down, and I think I was is this?” and you said, “Ed Bacon.” And I said, introduced to Willo von Moltke and uh… “Who are you?” I didn’t even know who he was! B: Willo von Moltke. He was my head designer. This was 1954, and I came down. He was a German aristocrat. He was the grandson B: Well was it my charming voice that attracted of the great general von Moltke. you? W: And do you know that also his brother was W: It was a job that was available. And do you involved in the attempt on Hitler’s life? know who told me I should take it? Hideo Sasaki. B: I didn’t know that. B: What! W: Yeah, his brother. And his brother was dis- W: Hideo Sasaki. covered along with all of the others and he was B: He did? executed. W: He said… B: Was he killed? B: Oh my goodness! He was a famous landscape W: Yeah. architect. B: My God! I didn’t know that. Oh I’m so glad W: He was my advisor at Harvard. I had just you told me that. Willo of course was a very inti- graduated the graduate school. mate friend of mine because he was… Well my B: Oh, you had just graduated, so you came right goodness. over from Harvard—right from Harvard to W: And Willo was my initial supervisor when I Philadelphia. came to the planning commission. W: I had two jobs available. One was in New B: What was the first job you worked on? York and one was in Philadelphia. And he said… W: Planning the Northeast. Hideo said, “Take the one in Philadelphia at the B: It was ’52. When was the ordinance passed? City Planning Commission. It’s great. You’ll be W: ’54. I started working in ’54. The zoning ordi- working with Ed Bacon, blah blah blah.” nance had just… When I arrived it had all really B: “Blah, blah, blah” is right. been passed. There had been an attempt at allo- W: So that’s how it happened. I came down. I cating C-1 zoning areas in the northeast. When I think it was in June or July and met you and came down the initial allocation of potentially decided to show up around August, I think. zoned areas was established.

162 Figure B.2 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957)

163 B: Good. Well do you have your drawings? entire area. Some of them were already in semi- H: Right here. detached and detached housing in here. B: We are interested to know about these draw- H: Yeah, we saw that. ings that Greg has. B: Yeah we did. Well… Oh, damn, I had a good Gregory Heller: Well this is from the question. What was it? I guess I can’t even Preliminary Plan of ‘55. That’s something you remember it. Well forget it. worked on, I assume. H: This is a map… W: There it is. Yep. Okay. Okay. W: I brought some stuff but… B: Now were those drawings already done before H: This is the area here. you came? W: This is all my design. I did these detailed W: No. I did them. designs. This is Denny, Parkwood, Morrell Tract. B: You did that. Well look at that diagrammatic This is built? I don’t know who built this. I think one there. Did you do that one? it was built after I left. W: It had been established, I think this was drawn B: Where’s Robindale on there? up as an illustration for a magazine for one of the W: Right here. annual reports. B: That’s the one that… B: Were you here then? W: Denny. W: Yes. B: Denny built. B: Did you supervise? W: Yeah, I have an aerial photograph. This is W: I supervised. where Denny started out, in Normandy. B: That drawing? B: Well in Normandy did he build houses with W: Yeah. the garages in the front. B: You did that drawing and you did that draw- W: Yes. Well, these were single family. ing? B: Oh, oh, oh. The first set of garages in the front W: Yes. I did those. was over there in Robindale by Denny. B: Well, by golly, Greg. There you’ve got it. This W: Yeah, and I have a photograph. was your conception? B: You have a what? W: Yep. W: I have a photograph slide. B: Where did you get the idea from? B: Did you inspire him to put the garages in W: You. front? B: Ah! Yeah! I hope you heard that. W: Yes. H: I heard that. B: Huh! W: And it was up to me to take this, then, and W: I said to him. I said to all of them… make it specific-this area here and this area here. B: Holy cripple! Most of these were part of the Master Subdivision W: I said to them, “We can’t put rear driveways Plan that I did. And these were just fill-in areas, in these houses because we don’t have gridiron. tentatively before the detailed… This became a We have basically units that swing around and we race track. This was the Parkwood development. should open up the rears to open space, garden, I have the detailed plan of the Parkwood devel- patios.” And they bought it. opment. B: This is all being recorded? Well I just have to B: Well we have a million questions to ask you, sit back absolutely stunned. But you know that but I think we were very interested in knowing once that was done the entire industry switched this particular thing. So why don’t we now hand over and never built a garage in the back. the microphone over to you, and why don’t you W: There was never any… This was a definite just explain to us how it all developed? deviation with rowhouse design. Opening up… W: Glad to see this. In my notes that I brought, I In fact the kitchens were taken from the back to am referring to this area where the C-1 or the the front, and the rear was the living room. And rowhouse communities were allocated-these most of these rowhouses have the living room in areas in here. They weren’t all allocated for the the back so they can open up into the gardens and

164 the patios. No driveways. That was a major, then you had a break. And the breaks were at right major deviation from the tradition of the builders. angles and curves, and so forth. And to put drive- B: Now how did you manage to get that idea? ways at the back of this kind of configuration, as W: Denny. against units that are lined up against a gridiron, is senseless. It’s expensive. It just doesn’t make B: Oh, I thought you said you told Denny. He told sense. So Denny, I think realized this right from you! the beginning and he accepted the notion of front W: I told Denny, that’s the way it would probably garages by virtue of saving a lot of money. work and he agreed with me. Additional paving in the back was expensive. By B: Well I asked you how did you get the idea for putting the short driveway to the front garage was what you told Denny? sensible, and the configuration of the streets and W: We got the idea because the driveways would loop streets and cul-de-sacs was supportive of have wrecked the circular idea, the U-shaped that idea. streets, the cul-de-sacs. All of that would not lend B: Well now, you tried that idea out on Orleans itself to rear driveways. And I recommended they and Korman before you went to Denny? do the front driveways. W: Orleans didn’t have C-1 land. B: And you did the actual negotiations yourself B: He didn’t have what? with the builders? And I wasn’t any part of that. W: He didn’t have the… At the time Orleans was True? building semi-detached twins and single family. W: Yeah. He did not have any of the Morrell Tract. B: And I wasn’t any part whatsoever of this B: Well what about Korman? amazing idea that you told Denny. W: Korman agreed. Korman was a follow up W: And Denny was demonstrating the fact that after Denny and the Morrell. He developed his C- the rear driveway was… front driveway, front 1 land after Denny and Morrell. garage was sellable. And therefore, developers B: Well Morrell preceded Denny. and builders in the future adopted that idea. So I have to credit Denny with demonstrating at the W: No, Denny preceded Morrell. initial… at the beginning the fact that… B: Denny was the first one to build? B: Well but I might remind you of the fact that W: Yes. you could never have done that with Orleans or B: Well I didn’t know that. So that you set the Korman. They already told me you can’t do that pattern with the Denny project with this entire because no housewife is willing to take her system in mind and you established the idea of garbage pail through the front parlor. Did you the garage in front before anybody else started know that? work. But I have this powerful impression. Well W: Yeah. maybe I went to Orleans and Korman and said, B: Greg, do you have any comments or ques- “Do the garages in front.” But Greg, it’s probably tions? all a mental illusion. H: Not yet. This is fascinating, though. W: Also Ed, Mac Guess, Eleanor Guess’s husband, wrote up an article about the interlocking B: But I mean, really Irv, what you have been cul-de-sac idea that I came up with. I just did this recorded there. You as a single individual have sketch at home. And it made a lot of sense. You changed the entire pattern of row housing in see this area… Philadelphia. B: Is it there? Was it actually built? Move over W: [laughs] closer because I can’t… Was that built before B: And it never went back to the old again. Denny or after Denny? W: No, it didn’t. W: After. H: Well, here’s my question. If no one was will- B: And that has the garages in the front? ing before Denny to build the garage in the front, W: Yep. why do you think it was that he was willing to do that? B: Oh well, Greg, are you getting this. This I absolutely did not know. This whole… Well, W: Greg, the nature of the configuration of there really could be a map where we show the units… You see units were maximum of ten units, sequence. Where is Denny on here? 165 H: Denny is up here. B: An executive of the Korman construction W: So glad to see this drawing. Who did this? company. B: City Planning Commission. This has all the W: I brought… There! There! This is my draw- buildings on it. The City Planning Commission ing. spends all their money on maps. They never use B: Well my God! If you want information just go their brains at all. But you remember we had, to that guy. Isn’t that amazing? compared to this, we had the most primitive tools W: This is my drawing. I did this drawing. to work with. B: Is this attributed to Mac Guess? Where’s your W: You see the nature of the groupings, whether photograph? Does it refer to you there? they are loops or cul-de-sacs, to put in a rear W: No. driveway—something like that—is stupid. It’s B: That’s the way they do. stupid and costly. So the front garage idea, which was written up in the Bulletin at the time by Mac W: You could see the way… you see this cul-de- Guess. I don’t know if you remember him. sac is one like that. And the grouping, you can see the way the interlocking arrangements work. B: Of course I do. He was an old son-of-a-bitch, [reading from article] This design developed by but I remember. the Planning Commission’s experts has been W: Yeah, you and he had some words. His wife adapted for Morrell Park. Among its features are Eleanor… privacy, elimination of through traffic, provision B: Worked for me, and her husband attacked me of living areas opening onto rear gardens. Now in the press all the time. those were my words. W: She was… She realized that there was a story B: There’s something. in the rowhouse idea and she brought Mac in, and W: You, for some reason, Ed, were aware that Mac interviewed me, and I scoured my records A.P. Orleans was a large land owner in the north- and files, but I couldn’t find the article. east, but A.P. Orleans did not develop initially B: Well what year was it? any of the rowhouse, C-1 areas. W: 1954 or ’55. B: So are you telling me the Denny tract preced- B: Well there, Greg, 1954 or 1955. His name was ed Morrell? Mac Guess. G-U-E-S-S, and it’s about C-1… Is it W: Absolutely. about C-1 zoning? B: Well I’m so staggered by the whole thing, I W: Yeah it… can’t even think, so I imagine I’ll shut up. B: Would it be your name? W: It was followed very quickly by Morrell. W: Yeah, my name and picture. I was in the B: Good old Morrell. Who built Morrell, do you paper. remember? B: Why didn’t you keep it, you nut? W: I forgot the names. A couple of young Italian W: I should have. I am a nut. builders. [Geldman and Curcillo] B: Now I do have to inject there, that I have so B: Oh, really? Young Italian builders did strongly the memory in which I visualize myself Morrell? saying to at least Korman, “Here is an idea which W: They bought the land. I think the Morrell tract I think you should go for.” And they said to me, was up for sale and Webber was the land owner, “No housewife in Philadelphia would allow a and Webber we were trying to convince to devel- house where she has to take the garbage out in op the C-1 loop idea, sold to these young devel- front… taking it through her front parlor.” opers and they were very happy to extend row- W: Was that Murray Izzard? He was the primary housing in the Far Northeast. They had been, to spokesman for… my knowledge, a traditional, rear driveway, 16- B: Well who were the other major builders? I foot-wide, rowhouse… C-1 said 18 is the mini- used the name Orleans, but that may have been mum width. Are you familiar with the zoning? wrong. Well anyway, I don’t remember if it was H: Yeah, a little bit. Murray Izzard. I would have thought not. Of W: I’ve got some notes in here. course he was on the Planning Commission. B: But do you think the widening to 18 feet was W: Yeah he was… a good thing or a bad thing?

166 W: A good thing. it was all in the paper. I think the builders decid- B: Were you instrumental in doing that or was I? ed they would accept it and they would file their W: That was you. I came and the C-1 zoning was plans in accordance with our designs. It wasn’t already established. So you were the one… easy. B: I hope you heard that. When you came was the B: Well, Fred Thorpe. Did you work directly with whole idea of the opportunity that the Far Fred Thorpe? Northeast had for experimentation… Was that W: No. already there or did you invent it? B: Was he alive then? W: I inherited it. W: Fred Thorpe was one of the close… I think it B: You inherited it. was assistant to Dave Small. W: When I arrived I was told that the areas for C- B: Absolutely. But he was head of the Board of 1 were already allocated in the Northeast. And Surveyors that had had total control of the street my job was to get into the details of the subdivi- plans since 1854. sion work. W: Yes, yes. B: But you weren’t given any suggestions about B: Did you have personal confrontations with how to do that. You created all that yourself. Oh I him? know what I wanted to ask you… W: Yes. W: The loop idea was already established. B: Did he object to what you were doing? B: Where was it? Oh, the idea was already estab- W: No. lished before you came. B: He didn’t? W: Yeah, that was you. W: No, he conceded and Al Moser, who took B: Ah now. Well, damnit, I love hearing that. Well orders from Fred Thorpe, went along with our Fred Thorpe had to approve all your plans. Did work. you know Fred Thorpe? B: My God! Well, you confronted him directly? W: I dealt with one of his underlings, Al Moser. W: Fred Thorpe didn’t come to Board of Review B: Oh, Al Moser. Was Al Moser cooperative or meetings. Al Moser did. resistant? B: But Fred Thorpe had absolute power under W: Ed, the board of review consisted of the this. streets department, sewer department, water W: Yes, yes. Thorpe… he was willing to go department, traffic engineer. I’ve got it all in my along. I don’t know if you had any private ses- notes. They were all resistant to the new street sions with him. system. They fought and they didn’t like cul-de- B: Well we do know. It was not long before you sacs. Why? Gridiron was all they were familiar came that the basic city charter said, and I wrote with. They didn’t like cul-de-sacs, the water this provision, that the legal placing of streets department, sewer department because there were must have the approval of both Fred Thorpe and dead sewer lines and water lines, and they were the Planning Commission, and by that I cut off fighting it. However, we kept harping away at the his power, socko, because he had been the simplicity of the layouts, and there was a hierar- absolute, total czar of street planning during the chy of street systems we were trying to impose entire gridiron period under the charter. and the gridiron didn’t fit the land. W: Wasn’t the subdivision code written at that B: Well that’s all true, but how the devil did you time? win the argument? B: Well we wrote it. I wrote it directly and I wrote W: Persistence and the realization that the City the provision that landowners must come to the Planning Commission designers were trying— planning commission before they made their you and Willo and I—were trying to introduce plans. something that fit the land. The other thing is stream valleys. The stream valleys had to be pre- W: The builders, land owners, would come in and served and we had to stay away from the stream meet with the planning commission, mainly valleys and concentrate the roads and preserve myself, and we would hand them a plan. the stream valleys. And when we came out with H: And how did they respond to that? this stuff, the publications, this sort of thing, and W: They accepted it. They were allowed to make 167 little variations. bility was to delineate where the lines of dedica- B: [laughs] It’s called review. tion should occur because it was very general and W: Some variations we left it up to them, if they was zip-a-tone pattern on the Master Plan. It was didn’t want to do a loop this way, extend the loop the detailed plan that established the line of a little longer. If they wanted two cul-de-sacs demarcation between residential and stream. instead of three cul-de-sacs. We made all kinds of B: Did you have fights about that? adjustments. W: Yep. H: Is that drawing over there pretty much what B: Did you win? you gave them? W: Yeah. W: No. This is the plan I gave them. I blew it up B: Holy crow! I mean what we have learned in… from the cover. Whyte’s cover. Have you seen Whoo! this book? H: In which year was the Master Subdivision H: Yes. Plan finally published? W: I took this drawing and I enlarged it. This is W: It was never really published. It became the the plan I developed and turned over of the guide to the… Every time a developer would Morrell tract. come in we gave him the detailed layout. We B: The idea of defining the drainage areas of the actually laid out the townhouses specifically. We stream valley, now that was already established showed them detailed layouts and we handed before you came? them. And they hired their staff—their engineers, W: Yeah. landscape architects—to file the preliminary plat, B: See I’m checking you about this. My recollec- based on our designs. As a matter of fact, based tion is that Sam Baxter (he was the Commissioner on our designs for the whole area. We did detailed of Water), you had to work with him, that he layouts… This area in here, I did all that, and this came to me and said, “in the far northeast we was Korman’s Parkwood. You see this area in should define the stream valleys’ borders that are here, I did this. That was my design. It was for a necessary for their drainage, to avoid putting builder by the name of… [pause] So many them in sewers,” and that we should require the names. My point is, in the far northeast we did all dedication by the property owners of that neces- the detailed layouts, regardless of whether they sary land adjacent to the streams before they were subdivision or C-1 or not. My point is the could get approval to do anything on their land. developers would come in and sit down with us and we did design. We did design. W: Except for one thing. The Fairmount Park Commission was to accept the land and they did- B: Were they engineering drawings or were they n’t want it. That was a hangup. The Fairmount architectural? Park Commission’s budget was shot. They didn’t W: They were layout land plans. They would hire have the capability of accepting land and main- their people to lay out, in detail and the streets taining it. And when they came to the realization department would do the city plans. And the city that their position in Philadelphia would be streets department would do the city plans. They enhanced by having additional land, they went up were responsible for engineering the streets and in the name, they decided to go along. But they designing the sewer system. They did all the were fighting the acceptance of stream valleys work. That was so atypical. Other planning com- initially. missions sit back and passively redline other B: Well do they own all that land now? drawings. We in the planning commission did the drawings. They were then turning back to us 90% W: Yeah, sure. of what we did. H: All of this color green on the map is B: Did you have fights with them? Fairmount Park. W: Yeah. B: But the… was it already accepted by the time you got here that the land was going to them? I B: How did you adjudicate fights? guess the first question was, who drew the bor- W: We enabled to go to bat for them before the der? Did you draw the borders of the land? You board of review. Board of review was a critical did that yourself? thing. We were their supporters because we did W: In the master subdivision plan my responsi- layout and design and we were their advocates

168 when it came to the board of review. When the mend for your area.” I would turn a plan over to plans came in it was practically what we had them and they would come back to us with a asked for and laid out, and if they were devia- detailed layout. And of course if they fit in we tions, we would probably go along with some would accept the preliminary plat. We would rec- minor changes. So we would go to the board of ommend that they be reviewed favorably by the review with these agencies and present them. The Board of Review and make changes that they builders were not at the board of review. We were required. We did not insist on the exact detail. We the presenters at the board of review. Builders tried to get builders’ plans to conform to the mas- never went to the board of review. ter, detailed layout that we did. B: Who was the board of review? B: Who appointed you the Chairman of the W: I ended up as sort of the chairman. Review Board? B: Who did? W: I wasn’t the chairman. I just acted as the W: I was Chairman. leader of the meeting. B: You were reviewing your own work? B: You had no right? W: Yes. W: I wasn’t titled Chairman. B: Hey, with that in the book you’ll go to jail. B: Were you named formally Chairman of the Review Board? W: I was reviewing the recommended plans that we turned to the builder. The builder returned the W: No. plans as prepared by their engineers, architects, B: You just did it? and then we presented the plans as supporters W: I called the meeting to review preliminary before the board of review. Streets department, plats and circulated them and we met to review water department, sewer department, FHA, traf- them and they would… I would show them how fic agency and later parallel parking commission. the preliminary plats fit in with the major area. B: How the hell did you get to be Chairman of B: Well when you came here was there already a that? Board of Review and all this system set up? W: I wrote the agenda. When the plans came in W: I think so. I… you know… they were there to review pre- B: Well who set that up in the beginning? liminary plats. Who was the guy who was respon- W: Croley…Paul Croley used to sit in and run sible for receiving preliminary plats, distributing these things. them all around, scheduling the meetings, writing B: He’s dead, isn’t he? up the agenda? Irv. W: Oh, Paul Croley died a long time ago. But B: You have a huge scandal here. I think it’s… Paul Croley, he was the assistant executive direc- Well Irv now… tor and he was very supportive of my work and he W: It was no scandal. It was all part of the subdi- deserves a lot of the credit for making the Board vision code. of Review initially, and working plans through B: I would like to sort of relax now and just have the Board of Review. you explain how in the hell you did that. B: Paul was a comparatively unimaginative per- W: How in the hell I did what? son, but he apparently went ahead and inserted B: That you became the man who reviewed your the whole procedure which Irv could pick up on. own work in the name of the power of the city of W: Paul Croley was the political power in the Philadelphia. background. He knew all of the big names in the W: Because builders would come in and ask for government, including the City Council. He was zoning changes, number one. the city council contact in the planning commis- B: Well you had to review all the zoning changes sion. A lot of the times and the… I think he paved in the Northeast. The Planning Commission did. the way for my effectiveness with the Board of Did you tell the Planning Commission what to Review. approve and what not to approve? B: But you see his relationship with me is very W: When they came in it was routine. Because I interesting, too. Of course you don’t know why had prepared master plans, detailed layouts, when he was Assistant Director of the Planning they came in I would say, “This is what I recom- Commission. He couldn’t be more different than I am. 169 W: He was a politician. He was political. established before you came. And that plan was B: But you see he also supported a wild nut like established before you came. this man. W: Not exactly. W: But he was supportive… B: But something of that nature. B: You see from the point of view of our history W: It was very diagrammatic. it’s something I’d completely forgotten, because I B: But the idea of preserving the stream valleys was the damn boss. And I was Paul Croley’s boss, was already there. but Croley didn’t give a damn about me and he W: My job when I came was to refine the concept went ahead and did all this stuff on his own. But to more of a reality. How it would work, and I have no recollection, and you were present at that’s how the cul-de-sac idea came up. And it the time, how come he was my assistant director turned out that the only street area where we and whether the politicians put him there to keep could have a complete circle was the Morrell me in order or if I suddenly saw in a lineup, this tract. Most of the others could not accommodate man is going to be my assistant because he is a circles and have the loops work within them, so politician. Well anyway, this is all interesting they ended up being half loops. In the Parkwood, background. Well now I will take a more passive Korman, we have a half loop. If it were a com- role and ask you to fill in what you think are the plete loop it wouldn’t fit. gaps of what was covered. H: I found this interesting because in The Last H: Sure. Well I’d like to get a better idea of the Landscape and in the preliminary plan, this one chronology of what went on. So you started in here… August of ’54. When you came in what was W: That was already built. already set up and where did you go from there? H: Oh it was? W: The zoning was established and the initial district that would accept C-1 zoning was estab- B: That was built before you came? lished and the idea of the looping streets and the W: DiMarco. circular collectors and the minor streets as loops H: So who was responsible for turning this street was initially started. This was not the exact plan here into loops? Because now these are loops. but this was very much like it. W: I think that… I’ll be damned. I didn’t real- H: That’s from the preliminary plan, released ize… January, 1955. B: Is DiMarco the one we saw with all the cul-de- B: That was already established. sacs? W: My job, when I arrived was to start doing a H: No, it’s not. detailed plan of this area. And at that time I was W: This apparently was still left undeveloped. to assign where it was possible to have circular Between these two streets this was the first area streets and where it was possible to have small to be built. Those streets were already on the loops and where it was possible to introduce the plan... city plan. But what happened, I’m going to idea of the cul-de-sac. guess is that the back street was eliminated and H: How did you determine all of that? this area was rezoned to C-1 and the loops were W: How did I? put in. H: Sure. B: Oh that’s fascinating. W: I’m a landscape architect. I was able to work H: Sure is. with the land and see how I could design and fit B: Do you have that recorded in your brain? them. And this gentleman would come around H: Yep. and look over my shoulder and say, “great! That’s B: Greg, just let me ask you, where were the cul- what we need.” You don’t recall that. You used to de-sacs that we looked at. come around in the Market Street National Bank Building, when we were in the top floor and you H: Oh, the cul-de-sacs were down here. were to look over my shoulder and see what I was B: Oh, oh. doing and you were thrilled. H: This was the one that we liked because it was B: But to come back again, you are now telling us bordering on all this park land. that the idea of the circular unit was already B: Weren’t those cul-de-sacs?

170 H: No, those were loops. culation of power and streets whether it was W: I’m surprised to see this. I thought the overhead or underground and you have separate DiMarco tract, the pattern would have just con- lines going into the individual houses. But you tinued. But apparently they stopped developing, never plug your radio, television appliance into eliminated the back street, wiped it off, struck it any of those. You plug it directly into the wall so from the map. See you can see this street here. there’s a transition of power. In the same way you This street was supposed to hook up with that have expressways, major arterials, arterials, col- street, but they rezoned it for rowhousing and C- lector streets and residential streets. You build the 1 housing and eliminated the semi-detached. houses on residential streets. And the streets They got more density. department traffic engineers were thrilled with B: Greg, it would be worth while to go up and the fact that we are promoting that idea of a street look especially at DiMarco because it was right hierarchy with developments. on the edge of transition. H: Whose ideas was the hierarchy of streets in H: Right. the northeast? B: So we will do that. W: Initially started out by… Here’s the major arterials. Here are the minor arterials. Here are W: This area was existing and it’s single family. the collector streets, the loops and the residential This is the oldest area. streets. H: That was already developed. So all the single H: So that was already… families were pretty much already developed, correct? W: That was already established and when we did the detailed layout we pointed out to them. W: Yeah. B: Well now, as an adjunct to that, the actual H: When was Denny’s development? nature of the paving which the streets department W: Denny’s development was probably ’55 or required could actually be varied according to ’56. this hierarchical system and the loop streets H: And then Morrell. Because this article was which were only used by local traffic could be from 1959. Was Morrell built soon after Denny? lighter in construction than the connector streets. W: Yeah, Morrell followed Denny, so it was ’58, Is that correct? ’59. W: There was a big cost saving to the streets’ ini- B: I didn’t realize Morrell followed Denny. I’m tial construction and the builders’ costs. very pleased to know that. So Denny was the first B: [On] the question of cost savings, and of breakthrough of the idea of the garages in the course we were almost overcome by the savings front. that resulted from allowing the stream valleys to W: I have a slide of the initial Denny develop- go in their own natural courses, instead of as in all ment. the rest of the city where every stream was put in H: Now you came in ’54 and Denny was as early a sewer and every hill was cut down and so forth. as ’55, and the preliminary plan came out in ’55. That is, of course, self evident that it would have Did you have the detailed master subdivision plan cost millions and billions to but all those streams pretty much set by the time that Denny did his in sewers, but you raised a very good point, tract? Yes? You worked pretty quickly. among others, that your intellectual division of the streets in the hierarchies according to electri- W: I came in ’54 and I’d say by the end of ’55 I cal systems. You had the main distributors, then had probably developed the details of the master you had the local distributors and the connections subdivision plan and was able to meet with to the houses, and I mentioned my impression builders and developers and show them the idea, that the actual specification that the street depart- and how we would like the C-1 street system to ment would require from the contractors when work. One of the things that was very significant they built these streets, meant that on the loop was that we had a definite hierarchy of street sys- street it would only serve twenty to thirty houses, tem and I recall frequently talking about compar- and which could not carry, would be no logic for ing the street system hierarchy to a power system. through traffic on it at all, that they therefore per- You run from community to community with mitted a lighter paving and lighter specification these high [power] lines, which were the express- than they did on the distributor streets. ways, and within the communities you have cir-

171 W: That’s true. One of the major obstacles in guiding the new B: Did you work all that out? streets designs that the developers submitted, I W: I think the nature of the design or the hierar- identified as 90% of the Planning Commission chy was something the Streets Department real- staff design, was getting through the board of ized that they could vary the amount of paving review. And the board of review consisted of and the amount of right of way for the residential Planning Commission staff, streets, traffic, sewer streets was predominantly 50 feet right of way department, water department, and the two… the and the improvement in the streets was, I would FHA. The two major departments who had the think, very palatable cost-saving-wise. Later on most to say about residential design and where the streets went from 12-30-12, I think… 12-26- there would be deviations from traditional grid- 12 to 8-34-8. So they could accommodate the cir- iron were streets department and water depart- culation of two rows of traffic and have parking ment, sewer department. The two departments on it as well. actually did all the engineering for the layout and construction of streets and sewers. Usually a B: That would be on the local loop? builder has to hire his engineering company, else- W: Yeah, on the local street. where, to do all this detail work, subject to review [not transcribed, Wasserman shows articles and and approval of a government level entity. In the drawings] city of Philadelphia, the city’s civil engineers in B: Greg, are you clear on the subdivision in the streets and sewer departments do all its work. which the part of it was done before C-1 and then The street layout concerned the sewer department part of it was done after? because they didn’t approve of dead-end sewer H: Yes. Well my understanding is that all of the lines. Cul-de-sac design was almost a new con- single dwellings were done before C-1. So all of cept that was introduced at the practical and tra- this. All of these houses. Then these loops were ditional departments. put on here with C-1. So that’s pretty clear. And They finally conceded to street designs by all of the rows here are C-1. That’s a C-1. introducing an engineering technique which B: This is the one particularly I wanted to be sure linked up the sewer and water lines so there never we go over. Do you remember the name for it? was a dead end, by utilizing easements. The new street design actually produced less street, which H: Yeah, that’s the DiMarco. had financial advantages to both the developer B: Oh, great! and the city. Traffic engineering department was W: These are my notes I put together and I can very supportive of these designs, which were leave these with you. based on a hierarchy of street systems, basic to sound traffic engineering, which is established in B: We can Xerox anything if you want it back. proper width for right of way, based on whether a W: No, I don’t need it. I have this in my comput- street is a collector, an arterial or a major arterial. er. Residential street right of way, which was fifty feet, consisting of 12 sidewalk, twenty six road- H: Oh, great! way, 12 foot sidewalk and went to 8, 34 and 8. W: This is… As I wrote these notes down, I came Listen to this. The representation of the up with the idea that the um… the discussion FHA, who came in and started sitting in on the came under three Ds. The first is “design,” the board of review. They were traditionalists. They second was “development”—communicating had no feeling for the C-1 design, I did. They had with the designer—and the third is “depart- their traditional layout. They became somewhat ment”—getting the departments of the city. And of an irritant to me, because they were not ready that’s where I wrote the three Ds. to go along. They were trained, most of them, as B: Three Ds. That’s wonderful! Are you going to land planners in traditional street layout leave that with us? approach. W: Yes. B: Do the rest of it. This is marvelous. B: Oh, that’s great. W: There were times… W: Let me just read you this. B: Marvelous! B: Oh, read all you like. That’s the idea of it. W: When the Fairmount Park Commission had W: In the section, The Departments of the City: 172 representation at the Board of Review meetings. the capability of looking at the land and decid- Since their department would have the responsi- ing… you know, based on the zoning, based on bility of accepting the dedication of open space as the land use, what’s needed. To do a sketch plan part of our design concept. At first they were of what ought to be done. More than just colors, unsure that they wanted the open space, that the detailed design…layout. Which buildings Planning Commission staff had made one of the are…lots are generally laid out. If there is an conditions of C-1 zoning, since they had no open space concept… if there’s a pedestrian con- budget that would fit them to set up a program of cept, design for it, so the architect or landscape care and maintenance, not to mention improve- architect can actually go in and do some designs ments. Eventually the higher ups in the agency of and show the developers. That’s the way good the Fairmount Park Commission saw there were land design is going to be done. great advantages in the new open space system H: If this concept was unheard of then and it’s (these are my judgments) in the Far Northeast, unheard of now, but it’s so successful, do you since it made the Fairmount Park Commission’s have any ideas why commissions aren’t doing status in the city of Philadelphia more prominent. this? And that’s why I think they finally went along. W: I think… I don’t know why commissions While the detailed engineering work was com- aren’t doing this. I think that it’s… most of the pleted by the city departments based on the planning commissions are people who deal with Planning Commission designs and approvals land use. You know, basic land use. And they stop through the Board of Review, the developer or at the point of design, where the layout is impor- builder used the city plan of the streets depart- tant. In the Planning Commission we had both: ment as the basis for their final plat. In other we had master plan land use, land planning divi- words, all the details, streets department came up, sion, design division and we had staff who did… they used the final plat information before the von Moltke, Ed Bacon and so forth. The redevel- Planning Commission. The final plat usually was opment area plans, design plans and they were a routine submission to the Planning Commission instrumental in convincing the Redevelopment for their approval. And the next step… construc- Authority of the potential of a redevelopment tion. Here you go. I mentioned when I arrived, area was, because they had an idea of layout and Willo von Moltke’s name and the hierarchies. the value, and as they brought the developers in B: Why don’t you read. There you dropped it. I to bid on the land, they required that the develop- just want to point out to Greg the enormous sig- er or developers submit detailed design. They nificance of the concept of streets as hierarchical, would create almost a contest, and we would then as compared to the proliferation of the single select the best developer within the context of the gridiron concept. And that the actual cost of the design control. whole thing is incredibly wasteful, when every H: It’s incredible to me, one, that the Planning street is used for every purpose. Commission could have developers come and [not transcribed, Wasserman shows some photo- look at what they had already and that they had graphs. Then Bacon leaves. Heller and such control over the physical shape of what was Wasserman continue the interview.] to be built. Do you have any idea how that was all W: Create designs that are produced for develop- accomplished? ers. That’s the best way to get good planning W: Well the staff of the planning commission in done—physical planning. In the Philadelphia the design, land planning division were com- City Planning Commission—Society Hill and posed of designers and the category of employ- Center—all of these places were based on designs ment was a title called “Planning Designer” 1, 2, done in the Planning Commission. They later var- 3, 4 and so forth. And the civil service exam that ied it, but the basic principle is stable—the con- you took to get a job required you to do a certain trolling principle is there and they (the developer) amount of physical design… sketches drawings have the capability of producing other kinds of and you weren’t hired to be a planning designer detailed designs within the context of the strong unless you accomplished a successful exam. And principle that has been established. The C-1 that’s how I got my job and I had to demonstrate developers are examples of that. I was getting my design capabilities. How did it happen? It back to the point… if a planning commission has happened because of the way the planning com- a staff of design people, anywhere, and they have mission was structured. They had design, land

173 planning division, comprehensive planning divi- preferred them was they leant themselves more to sion, projects division. It just goes without say- the geometry of the rowhouse. Whereas, rotating ing, the land planning division had the responsi- them around a curve was not as… it was more bility of design. appropriate, more beneficial to the builder. He H: Did you have a concept in your mind, while was able to get greater density using square you were planning, what the principles were shaped streets. As a matter of fact, I introduced under which you were working? If you had to the loop street with a square corner [drawing]. summarize, what would you say the major princi- You see the termination of a building rather than ples were? the space inside. W: Well I think the major principles were essen- H: At the same time I’d imagine having a long tially to create under a hierarchy of street system, straight stretch like this would allow you to built residential clusters that utilized the row house in longer rowhouses. a non-gridiron style. And the best way to do that W: But not that long. You had to break them up. is to break up the pattern into small residential And there was a certain amount of requirement streets. Originally they started out as “U”-shaped that the builder realizes density can be achieved, loops, and I introduced the idea of the cul-de-sac. I think more related, getting streets to reflect the And they were both utilized. The initial start out geometry. was the Denny, Robindale loop and later on the H: Why was it that Morrell was the only one cul-de-sac system came along. I remember a big that… revelation of the Philadelphia Bulletin article by W: Why was it the only loop? It was early in the this guy, Mac Getz, who wrote this story on the C-1 idea and the space was available permitted. so-called “interlocking cul-de-sacs” system, was We could have had that loop slide down and have I think significant and it influenced a lot of a loop there and there [pointing to map]. You builders to that system. would still have accomplished the same purpose, H: Was this kind of street patterning done else- which was to have a collective street. This acts as where, or was it something totally new to you a collector of these loops. We realized later on when you came to Philadelphia? that the geometry of rowhouses… we couldn’t fit W: The street pattern elsewhere was some kind of a loop… a circular system on Red Lion Road, so a hierarchy. There was definitely a hierarchy of we revised the circle idea to a half circle and we streets, but the level of detailed street… small found it accomplished the same purpose of break- shaped street, in the case of C-1 to break up the ing the… creating a collective pattern, and allow- units, so there was a maximum of ten, was the ing the rectilinear streets, that the road can be a… significant thing. Single family housing else- roads can be square-shaped cul-de-sac and they where, you know, residential streets that are created much better… you look at the… let me designed to have a maximum of housing and to show you. You had to put a street in that con- feed a collective street, you know, arterial. But tained residential groupings, because the town- the cul-de-sac as a circle, not as a square, was the houses are rectilinear, it might be nicer to see a pattern, where you can swing single-family hous- pattern like that [drawing], geometrically, than a ing around the circle. But the square shape was a pattern like this [drawing]. The space falls apart. shape that was derived by the row homes and the You come into a residential street, the view you loops also created a… small shaped loops were get is that view, but you come in here and the also designed to break up the row house into view is terminated by this building, so it makes smaller loops. more sense to have a square shaped loop street or H: And that was something you were aware of as cul-de-sac. And the introduction of a center island you were planning? for parking or planting is not possible in the loop W: Yeah. There was a limit to… the idea was to street. So these are some of how… that are relat- break up the rowhouse length, and the best way to ed to a residential environment, whereas the orig- do that is to put it on a loop street or cul-de-sac. inal Morrell tract, you see how the roots… We That was the guiding principle. took the principle of this and we literally created this area. And we found that we can improve the H: Did you see any advantages between loop relationship of units and still accomplish the res- streets and cul-de-sacs? idential entity, using, where possible, residential W: I preferred the cul-de-sacs and the reason I streets and cul-de-sacs. Does that explain?

174 H: Yeah, it certainly does. Have you been up H: What I’m saying is the space between the there recently? Ed and I took a trip up there last houses. Did that belong to the people in the units? week and I think he was kind of disillusioned W: Yes. There was a district plan for the far with what he saw. He envisioned along here northeast, in which there were areas designated as where you have the stream bed, he envisioned all appropriate for C-1 zoning. There were other the neighbors having open space between their areas in the far northeast which would be built houses and going down to the stream. What peo- twin housing, semi-detached and detached single ple have done was put fences up abutting each family. But the new design ideas were primarily other on their property, so that no public can go designated for the rowhouse. down to the stream, and then the back yards are H: While you were at the planning commission also fenced in before the stream, so that no one what other projects did you work on? Eastwick has any access to it at all. And some of the people you already said. we talked to said that it’s where all the kids go to W: Yes, I worked on Eastwick. I worked mostly drink and do drugs. So no one ever goes down in the Far Northeast. I did some work on a couple there anymore. Then the stream that’s along the of redevelopment areas—in the picture I showed road that was open was all overgrown with trees you of Southwest Temple. And then I became the and you can’t get down at all. And it looks nice, district planner to produce the district plan, and I but no one can use the stream bed at all. I think did the district plan for West Philadelphia and Ed found that kind of disturbing. Northwest Philadelphia. W: Had the Fairmount Park Commission, maybe H: You were busy. taken an active role of care and maintenance. That’s what we had hoped for. H: I also worked on preparing some of the Center City Plan, preparing the document. I worked on H: We passed one… this one over here and this that—one of the plans that had a couple of blue colored ring here, that’s where Fairmount Park covers. I was responsible for getting the produc- does maintain the land. And this land is very nice. tion of the book. Then I went on to the district There are trees and then trails down to the stream. plan. I think I spent three or four years on the dis- And then they had plantings all along here. We trict plan. I was about to start a district plan for saw people were walking through it. People we South Philadelphia, when I took the job at Reston talked to said they walk their dogs through there, in 1967.That would have been a major milestone so the dogs use it more than the children. But I if we had done the district plan. I don’t think there mean, it’s still used, whereas along here this land was one for South Philadelphia. is totally unused now. W: It’s tight in here, and I think a lot of these things [dedicated land along the streams] are too tight. Had it been wider I think it would encour- age more to use it. H: It’s true. But it’s very hard to get down. W: I’d love to have a copy of this [plan]. H: I’ll get you one. H: What was the breezeway? W: The breezeway was the space between the rowhouses. H: The houses we saw all had their fences abutting each other and there was no space between… well I guess it was their properties. W: It was just a term. The word breezeway stood for the space between. H: Right, but was it public property or private property? W: Half and half. The property line went down the middle.

175 A Note on Sources

During my year working with Ed Bacon I amassed a large number of firsthand sources. Almost every day after work I would finish with a recorded cassette tape. Either I would interview Bacon, record our interaction as we worked on his memoirs, or Bacon would record his own recollection of some past event or important concept. I now have hundreds of hours of taped sessions with Bacon in my personal files. I also have several recorded interviews with Bacon by people other than myself. Over the course of our time together, Bacon also gave me hundreds of his handwritten and typed manuscripts, accumulated over the years. These papers are now in my personal files. Bacon also gave me unlimited access to his own archives and papers in his house. I am grateful to Bacon for all of these resources. In this thesis I cite a number of these interviews and documents, and my arguments are shaped by still more of them. Below is a list of selected interviews and unpublished manuscripts that contributed to this thesis. In the case of untitled manuscripts, and for all of the interviews I list the topic in brackets.

176 Bibliography

Selected Interviews with Edmund Bacon

June 6, 2001 (Philadelphia): [Bacon’s Career] Interviewed by Josh Olsen. Tape recording. Gregory Heller’s personal files. September 9, 2002 (Philadelphia): [Far Northeast] Interviewed by the author. Tape recording. Gregory Heller’s personal files. September 30, 2002 (Philadelphia): [WHYY TV documentary] Interviewed by Patty Hartman. Tape recording. Gregory Heller’s personal files. October 2002 (Philadelphia): [Recollections of Childhood and Early Career]. Tape recorded by Bacon. Gregory Heller’s personal files. December 4, 2002 (Philadelphia): [History of Bacon’s Work in Philadelphia] Interviewed by the author. Tape recording. Gregory Heller’s personal files.

Selected Unpublished Writings by Bacon

[Architectural Lessons of the Forbidden City] Unpublished typescript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002 (?). “Bacon’s Military Experience.” Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2003. [Edward Hopkinson. Jr.] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002. [Fictional dialogue with Gregory Heller] untitled manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2003. “Is Ed Bacon Egotistical?” Unpublished typescript. 1998 (?). “Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, and William Penn Come to My Rescue.” Unpublished typescript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2001 (?). [Bacon’s childhood] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002. “On Being a Quaker.” Unpublished typescript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002. [Quaker meeting] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002. [Organizing Concept] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002. [Living in the Future] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2003.

177 [Refusing to Be Categorized, 1] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002. [Refusing to Be Categorized, 2] Unpublished typescript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002. [The Future] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s Personal files, 2002. [Work in China] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files. 2002.

Additional Interviews

Bacon, Elinor. Interviewed by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon. Tape recording. Philadelphia, December 26, 2002. Gregory Heller’s personal files. Korman, Berton. Interviewed by Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller. Tape recording. Philadelphia, 18 November 2002. Gregory Heller’s personal files. Wasserman, Irving. Interviewed by Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller. Tape recording. Philadelphia, 10 October 2002. Gregory Heller’s personal files.

Other Unpublished Sources

Bacon, Edmund. “Confidential Reports to the Mayor.” Unpublished report, 1960. Edmund Bacon’s personal papers. Bacon, Edmund. “Confidential Reports to the Mayor.” Unpublished report, 1953. Edmund Bacon’s personal papers. Bacon, Edmund. Correspondence to Gregory Heller. 7 February. 2003. Bacon, Edmund. Correspondence to Eliel Saarinen. 1935. Edmund Bacon’s personal papers. Bacon, Edmund. Correspondence to his parents. 22 November 1935. Edmund Bacon’s personal papers. Bacon, Edmund and Gregory Heller. “Making the Future Real.” Unpublished manuscript of Bacon’s memoirs. September 2003. Bacon, Edmund. “Planning, Architecture, and Politics in Philadelphia.” Russell Van Nest Black Memorial Lecture. Cornell University, 24 April 1973. Bacon, Edmund. “Talk Given by Edmund N. Bacon, Former City Planner of Philadelphia at LOVE Park.” Press release, 28 October 2002. Birch, Eugenie. Lecture notes, 22 October 2002. CPLN 540: Introduction to City Planning: Past, Present, Future, University of Pennsylvania, Department of City

178 and Regional Planning. Clow, David. “The 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition: An Historic Turning Point.” Presented to the Second National Conference American Planning History, 1987. Cohen, Madeline. “Postwar City Planning in Philadelphia: Edmund N. Bacon and the Design of Washington Square East.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1991. Keene John and Eugenie Birch. “Keene-Birch Top Ten Planning Themes.” Document compiled for courses CPLN 540/723, University of Pennsylvania Department of City and Regional Planning. December 2002. Phillips, Walter M. Correspondence to Edmund Bacon. 13 January 1940. Edmund Bacon’s personal papers. Satullo, Chris. Email correspondence with the author. 7 February 2003. Scattergood, Roger. “The City Policy Committee.” Unpublished essay. 20 March 1956. Wasserman, Irving. “Far Northeast Philadelphia.” Unpublished notes. 10 October, 2002. Gregory Heller’s personal files. Whitlow, Anis. “Vision and Blindness: Edmund Bacon’s 1963 Plan for Center City Philadelphia.” Research paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undated. Internet. Available at http://web.mit.edu/awhitlow/www/UDD%20Philadelphia.pdf. Accessed 5 April 2004.

Published Sources Alexander, Ernest R. Approaches to Planning. Philadelphia: Gordon and Breach, 1992. Altman, Howard. “LOVE Burns Bacon.” Philadelphia City Paper (31 October-6 November, 2002). Arani, Pietro C. Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 2000. Bacon, Edmund. “A Case Study in Urban Design.” The Journal of American Institute of Planners, 26:3 (August 1960). Bacon, Edmund. “The City Image.” Man and the Modern City. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963. Bacon, Edmund. Design of Cities. New York: Viking, 1974. Bacon, Edmund. “New World Cities: Architecture and Townscape.” American Civilization. Daniel J. Boorstin, ed. London: Thames and Hudson, 1972. ———. “Bacon Says Pumpkins Stifle Creative Kids,” The Evening Bulletin, (date 179 unknown). Baltzell, E. Digby. Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. Baylson, Tod. “In Defense of the Threatened Hope VI Program.” Planetizen (22 March 2004). Internet. Available at http://www.planetizen.com/oped/item.php?id=119. Accessed on 5 April 2004. Berens, Raymond A. “Is East of Broad St. Really No-Man’s Land?” The Evening Bulletin (27 January 1974). “The Better Philadelphia Exhibition: What City Planning Means to You.” Official brochure of the exhibition. 1947. Edmund N. Bacon’s Papers, University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives. Bissinger, Buzz. A Prayer for the City. New York: Vintage, 1997. Boesiger, Willi and Oskar Stonorov. Le Corbusier: Complete Works. Birkhauser, 1997. Bowden, Mark. “Though Old-Fashioned, Bacon’s an Asset to City.” The Philadelphia Inquirer (8 December 2002). Brenner, Roslyn F. Philadelphia’s Outdoor Art. Philadelphia: Camino, 1991. Brownlee, David B. Building the City Beautiful: The Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989. Burt, Nathaniel and Wallace E. Davies. “The Iron Age.” In Philadelphia: A 300-Year History. Russell F. Weigley, ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1982. Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Vintage, 1975. Cartographic Modeling Laboratory. “Neighborhood Base.” University of Pennsylvania. Internet. Available at www.cml.upenn.edu/nbase. Accessed 5 April 2004. Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corporation. “State of Center City.” 2003. ———. “City Acts to Condemn 104 Homes Periled by Sewer.” The Philadelphia Inquirer (21 July 1961). ———. “City May Raze 40 Houses in Collapse Area.” The Philadelphia Inquirer (19 July 1961). City of Philadelphia. “Philadelphia Home Rule Charter.” 1951. Internet. Available at http://www.phila.gov/personnel/homerule/index.htm. Accessed 5 April 2004. ———. “The City: Under the Knife, or All For Their Own Good.” Time, 84:19 (6 November 1964).

180 Clark, Joseph S., Jr. and Dennis J. Clark. “Rally and Relapse.” In Philadelphia: A 300-Year History. Russell F. Weigley, ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1982. Cleveland, Robert. “Robert Moses: An Atlantic Portrait.” Atlantic (1939). Clow, David. “The Show that Got Philadelphia Going.” Philadelphia (May 1985). Committee of Seventy. “The Charter: A History.” Philadelphia, 1980. Internet. Available at http://www.seventy.org/resources/publications/Charter_History.pdf. Accessed 5 April 2004. Congress of New Urbanism. “About New Urbanism.” Internet. Available at http://www.cnu.org/about/index.cfm. Accessed 5 April 2004. Delaware Vally Regional Planning Commission. “Historic Preservation.” 1969. Duany, Andres and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Towns and Town-Making Principles. Cambridge: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1991. Faiks, Sarah, et. al. “Revisiting Riverside: A Frederick Law Olmstead Community.” Master’s project, University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment. April 2001. Internet. Available at http://www.snre.umich.edu/ecomgt/pubs/riverside.htm. Accessed 5 April 2004. Fodors. “Philadelphia: Gallery at Market East.” Internet. Available at http://www.fodors.com/miniguides. Garvan, Anthony N.B. “Proprietary Philadelphia as Artifact.” In The Historian and the City. Oscar Handlin and John Burchard, eds. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press and Harvard University Press, 1963. Garvin, Alexander. The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t. New York: McGraw Hill, 2002. Garvin, Alexander. “The Second Coming of Moses.” Topic Magazine (2003). ———. “Geddes, Robert.” Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. University of Pennsylvania. Internet. Available at www.philadelphiabuildings.org. Accessed 5 April, 2004. Geffen, Elizabeth M. “Industrial Development and Social Crisis.” In Philadelphia: A 300-Year History. Russell F. Weigley, ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1982. Gosling, David. The Evolution of American Urban Design. Hoboken: Wiley- Academy, 2003. Guinther, John. “1942: When the Busy Bees Swarmed into City Council.” Welcomat. January 15, 1992. Guinther, John. Direction of Cities. New York: Viking, 1996. Guinther, John. The Jury in America. Facts on File, 1988. Guinther, John. Philadelphia: A Dream for the Keeping. Tulsa: Continental Heritage Press, 1982. 181 Guinther, John and Frank Friel. Breaking the Mob. New York: McGraw Hill, 1990 Guinther, John and Thomas Martinez. Brotherhood of Murder. New York: McGraw Hill, 1988. Harris, Linda K. “Skaters Won’t Give Up Their Mecca Quietly.” Philadelphia Inquirer (April 22, 2002). Holmes, Liz. “Inspiring Consensus: A Talk with Edmund Bacon.” Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Newsletter, 5:2 (Summer/Fall 2002). ———. “Imaginative Study of Philadelphia Done Over on Modernistic Planning Principles.” The Evening Bulletin. 17 May 1941. Independence Hall Association. “Liberty Bell Timeline.” Internet. Available at http://www.ushistory.org. Accessed 5 April 2004. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage, 1992. Jones, Emily Lewis and Hans Knight, eds. Walter M. Phillips: Philadelphia Gentleman Activist. Bryn Mawr: Dorranee and Co., 1987. Journal of City Council. Philadelphia, 1942. Philadelphia City Archives. Journal of City Council. Philadelphia, 1954. Philadelphia City Archives. Jung, C.G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. Kise, Straw, and Koladner. “Project Scope and Course of Action.” Planning proposal for Rockledge Borough. June 2002. Klein, Esther M. Fairmount Park: A History and a Guidebook. Official directory of the Fairmount Park Commission. Bryn Mawr: Harcum Junior College Press, 1974. Klinefelter, Walter. “Surveyor General Thomas Holme’s ‘Map of the Improved Part of the Province of Pennsilvania.’” Winterthur Portfolio, 6 (1970). Kroloff, Reed. “Disney Builds a Town.” Architecture (August 1997). Lake, Lillian M. and Harry C. Silcox, eds. Take a Trip Through Time: Northeast Philadelphia Revisited. Holland, PA: Brighton Press, c.1996. Lee, Adrian I. “Bacon’s Battle Against the Bulldozer.” The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin (date unknown). Levine, Neil. The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Love, Nancy. “Paradise Lost.” Philadelphia (July 1968). Marcus, Charles. “Looking into an Urban Crystal Ball,” Wharton Account 19:2 (Winter 1980).

182 Massey Douglas and Nancy Denton. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Mauger, Ed. Philadelphia Then and Now. Thunder Bay: San Diego, 2002. McCalla, John. “Sales of $230 Per Square Foot: The Gallery on Market East was a Huge Success in its Time.” Philadelphia Business Journal (date unknown). McKeever, J. Ross, ed. The Community Builders Handbook. Urban Land Institute, 1968. Morrone, Francis. An Architectural Guidebook to Philadelphia. Layton: Gibbs Smith, 1999. Nash, Gary B. First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2002. Penn, William. The Papers of William Penn. Vol. 2. Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. Pennsylvania Convention Center. “History and Architecture.” Internet. Available at http://www.paconvention.com/bi/history.asp. Accessed 5 April, 2004. Philadelphia City Planning Commission. “Blight Certification For the Area Generally Bounded by Louden Street, Marshall Street, Roosevelt Boulevard and 11th Street.” May 2002. Philadelphia City Planning Commission. “Census 2000 Data for Philadelphia.” Internet. Available at http://www.philaplanning.org/data/datamaps.html. Accessed 5 April, 2004. Philadelphia City Planning Commission. “Center City Philadelphia.” 1963. Philadelphia City Planning Commission. “Logan Redevelopment Area Plan.” May 2002. Philadelphia City Planning Commission. “Market East Plaza: A New Center for Transportation and Commerce.” 1958. Philadelphia City Planning Commission. “Philadelphia Subdivision Ordinance.” 4 June 1954. Philadelphia City Planning Commission. “Preliminary Far Northeast Physical Development Plan.” January 1955. Philadelphia City Planning Commission. “The Neighborhood Planning Process.” 2001. ———. “Philadelphia Plans Again.” The Architectural Forum. December 1947. ———. “Proper City Planning Would Save Philadelphia Money, Says Expert.” The Evening Bulletin. May 17, 1941. Purrington, Gina. “Robert Moses: A Tribute to the Man and His Impact on the Borough.” The Western Queens Gazette (30 June 1999). 183 “Radburn: A Town for the Motor Age in Fair Lawn, N.J., U.S.A.” Internet. Available at http://www.radburn.org. Rand McNally and Co.’s Business Atlas and Shipper’s Guide. 1901. Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia. “Society Hill: A Modern Community that Lives with History.” Undated. Reps, John. The Making of Urban America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. “Riverside Community Website.” Internet. Available at http://www.riverside-illinois.com. Rybczynski, Witold. City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World. New York: Scribner, 1995. Rybczynski, Witold. “Perfection of the Work: A Son’s Study of a Brilliant Architect and Errant Father.” The Pennsylvania Gazette (January 2004). Saarinen, Eliel. The City. New York: Reinhold, 1943. Safron, Inga. “I-95’s Stranglehold on Waterfront.” The Philadelphia Inquirer (12 November 2002). Salisbury, Stephan. “Society Hill Emerged Amid Tumultuous Times.” The Philadelphia Inquirer (17 March 2004), G13. Schulthess, Emil. China. New York: Viking, 1966. ———. “Six Degrees of Edmund Bacon.” Anonymous letter to the editor in Skateboarder, November 2002. Smedley, Samuel L. Smedley’s Atlas of the City of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1862. Smith, Ramona. “How all that coal ash got dumped on the city.” Philadelpha Daily News (11 December 2000). Steffins, Lincoln. Shame of the Cities. New York: Sagamore Press, 1957. Steuteville, Robert. “The New Urbanism: An Alternative to Modern, Automobile- Oriented Planning and Development.” New Urban News. Internet. Available at http://www.newurbannews.com. Tatum, George. Penn’s Great Town. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961. University of Pennsylvania Library. “Far Northeast Philadelphia.” Internet. Available at http://oldsite.library.upenn.edu/census/philnbrhds/nbrfarnephil.html. Veale, Frank R. Family Business: Strawbridge & Clothier, The Momentous Seventies. Philadelphia: Strawbridge and Clothier, 1981. ———. “A ‘Vision’ Inspired Philly’s Center.” The Washington Post, Times Herald:

184 1959-1965 (28 November 1965). G6. Accessed from ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Warner, Sam Bass, Jr. The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968. Williamson, Mary Lou. Greenbelt: History of a New Town. Norfolk: Donning, 1997. Wilson, Wiliam Julius. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Wiseman, Carter. I.M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990.

185 Notes

Abbreviations

ENB Edmund N. Bacon ENB Papers Edmund N. Bacon’s papers in his personal files GH Gregory Heller GH Files Gregory Heller’s personal files PCPC Philadelphia City Planning Commission ENB Penn Edmund N. Bacon’s papers at the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives

Introduction

1 I have never seen the term “symbolic historical memory” used elsewhere, although “historical memory” and “collective memory” are two popular ideas that are widely written about today. They both mean something very different than my concept. I will discuss these terms more fully in Chapter Four. 2 ENB and GH, “Making the Future Real,” unpublished MS of Bacon’s memoirs, September 2003. 3 In a conversation with the author, planner Denise Scott Brown (of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates) explained that Bacon strongly disliked her firm’s plan for redesigning Independence Mall in the late 1990s. She recalled Bacon made some exceedingly rude remarks about her plan. She held a meeting with Bacon to discuss the issue rationally. She told me she served him drinks, spoke to him nicely (though inside she was seething), and Bacon was as rude as ever. Scott Brown was perplexed that Bacon was so rude to her when she treated him so nicely. It makes perfect sense to those who know Bacon, however. He hated her idea, and no amount of food, drink, or kind words would make Bacon separate the person from the idea. 4 Liz Holmes, “Inspiring Consensus: A Talk with Edmund Bacon,” Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Newsletter 5:2 (Summer/Fall 2002): 10. 5 Edmund Bacon, [fictional dialogue with GH], unpublished MS, GH Files, 2003. 6 Edmund Bacon, “Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare and William Penn Come to My Rescue,” unpublished TS, GH Files, 2001.

Chapter 1

1 “The City: Under the Knife or All for Their Own Good,” Time (November 6, 1964). 2 Mark Bowden, “Though Old-Fashioned, Bacon’s an Asset to City,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (December 8, 2002). 3 “Philadelphia: Gallery at Market East,” Fodors, available online at http://www.fodors.com/miniguides. 4 Carter Wiseman, I.M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990), 65.

186 5 Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia, “Society Hill: A Modern Community that Lives with History” (undated). 6 Francis Morrone, An Architectural Guidebook to Philadelphia (Layton: Gibbs Smith, 1999), 78. 7 University of Pennsylvania Library, “Far Northeast Philadelphia,” available online at http://oldsite.library.upenn.edu/census/philnbrhds/nbrfarnephil.html. 8 I will provide a survey of existing literature later in this chapter. 9 Charles Marcus, “Looking into an Urban Crystal Ball,” Wharton Account 19:2 (Winter, 1980). Tellingly, the artist placed City Hall in the center of his illustration. Bacon always stressed the importance of City Hall tower as the physical and symbolic center of Philadelphia. This is why he so vigorously opposed Liberty Place, the skyscrapers built in 1989 by Willard Rouse that surpassed City Hall in height. 10 Howard Altman, “LOVE Burns Bacon.” Philadelphia City Paper (October 31-November 6, 2002). 11 Bacon is familiar with Jung’s work and is aware of Jung’s use of the term, “the collective unconscious.” Bacon uses it anyway because he feels it is the most descriptive of his concept. In Bacon’s definition the collective unconscious is the public mind, made up of ideas shaped by daily experience and interaction in the city; in Jung’s it is the “part of the psyche,” made up of “archetypes,” (i.e., mythological “motifs”) that “owe their existence exclusively to heredity.” The greatest difference between the two definitions is that Bacon’s collective unconscious changes constantly due to outside stimuli; in Jung’s the collective unconscious is static and inherited, unaffected by “personal experience.” In Jung’s writings, he also discusses the “individual unconscious,” which is shaped by life experience, and seeps its way a person’s unconscious. However, Bacon’s definition stresses that the collective unconscious is a force felt throughout the entire populace, and for this reason, “individual unconscious” is not an appropriate term for Bacon’s concept. For a full definition of Jung’s term, see C.G. Jung, The Archtetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 42. 12 Holmes, 10. This is my description of Bacon’s method based what I absorbed during my work with him. This article is an example of his discussing “inspiring consensus,” however I do not believe Bacon coherently communicates how his method worked. In Holmes’s article Bacon says, “You can call your [article] ‘Inspiring Consensus’…You see, just the juxtaposition of those two words—but I don’t have to explain what I meant because if there ever was an example of one individual doing it—I mean where is anybody even close to doing what I did?” 13 See PCPC, “Market East Plaza: A New Center for Transportation and Commerce,” 1958. 14 Frank R. Veale, Family Business: Strawbridge & Clothier, The Momentous Seventies (Philadelphia: Strawbridge and Clothier, 1981), 156. 15 Bacon uses this term, the “organic paradigm,” but likely was inspired by Eliel Saarinen who wrote about dealing with the city as a living organism. See Saarinen’s book, The City (Reinhold, 1945). 16 For a good accounting of Bacon’s disdain for market analysis, see Marcus. 17 Edmund Bacon, “Confidential Reports to the Mayor,” September 22, 1960, unpublished report, ENB Papers. 18 Raymond A. Berens, “Is East of Broad St. Really No-Man’s Land?” The Evening Bulletin, (January 27, 1974). 19 John McCalla, “Sales of $230 Per Square Foot: The Gallery on Market East was a Huge Success in its Time.” Philadelphia Business Journal (date unknown). 20 Pennsylvania Convention Center, “History and Architecture,” available online at http://www.paconvention.com/bi/history.asp. 21 Francis Morrone says of PSFS, “What a modern classic this has become! There must be twenty buildings in New York, from town houses to apartment buildings to office skyscrapers, that were directly influence by the PSFS.” Morrone, 115.

187 22 In 2003, the Gallery came under new management. Also there is ongoing talk of the possibility of Nordstrom’s or other upscale store moving to East Market Street. 23 PCPC, “Center City Philadelphia” (1963), 8. 24 For example, see Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, (New York: Vintage, 1975), 230-231. 25 I was present in that elevator, and was surprised and amused. Upon reaching the landing I jotted the remark in my notebook. This was only my favorite of many such statements I have heard people make about Bacon’s impact on Philadelphia. 26 Witold Rybczynski, City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World” (New York: Scribner, 1995), 162-3. 27 Witold Rybczynski, “Perfection of the Work: A Son’s Study of a Brilliant Architect and Errant Father,” The Pennsylvania Gazette (January 2004). 28 For example, during the planning of Penn Center, the Pennsylvania Railroad engaged developer Robert Dowling who decided to cover the open plaza in Bacon’s plan with a roof. Bacon felt he could not win this battle if he continued to fight for his original design. He and his staff met on a Sunday and decided to concede Dowling’s roof, but insisted that a few holes be poked into it, creating a patchwork of small garden plazas. This account is reported in “The City: Under the Knife or All for Their Own Good. 29 See Chapter Four for further discussion of symbolic historical memory. 30 Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), xii. 31 Garvin, 530. 32 Garvin, 525. 33 The quote for Brotherhood of Murder comes from the book’s description on Amazon (available online at http://www.amazon.com). Breaking the Mob and Brotherhood have both been reprinted with a new publisher. Brotherhood has also been produced as a film. 34 John Guinther, Direction of Cities (New York: Viking, 1996), xi. 35 Ibid., 19. 36 Ibid., 234. 37 Today the Washington Square East Redevelopment Area is better known as Society Hill and Independence National Historical Park. 38 Madeline Cohen, “Postwar City Planning in Philadelphia: Edmund N. Bacon and the Design of Washington Square East” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1991), 16. 39 Ibid., 18-20. 40 In his 1987 paper, “The 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition: An Historic Turning Point,” Clow refers to Conversations with Ed Bacon as his “forthcoming book.” I don’t believe the work was ever published. 41 I provide more on the Better Philadelphia Exhibition in Chapter 3. 42 David Clow, “The 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition: An Historic Turning Point” (presented to the Second National Conference American Planning History, 1987). 43 Ibid. 44 Brownlee was also Madeline Cohen’s faculty advisor on her dissertation. 45 David B. Brownlee, Building the City Beautiful: The Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989), 115. 46 Joseph S. Clark, Jr. and Dennis J. Clark, in Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, Russell F. Weigley, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1982), 699.

188 47 David Gosling, The Evolution of American Urban Design (Hoboken: Wiley-Academy, 2003), 39. 48 Ibid. 49 J. Ross McKeever, ed., The Community Builders Handbook, (Urban Land Institute, 1968), 74. 50 “Bacon Says Pumpkins Stifle Creative Kids,” The Evening Bulletin (date unknown). 51 “The City: Under the Knife or All for Their Own Good.” 52 Berton Korman, interviewed by ENB and GH, tape recording, Philadelphia, 18 November 2002, GH Files. 53 Nancy Love, “Paradise Lost,” Philadelphia (July 1968): 96. 54 ENB, [tape-recorded recollections], Philadelphia, October 2002, GH Files. From hereon this recording will be referred to as “Recollections.” 55 Roslyn F. Brenner, Philadelphia’s Outdoor Art (Philadelphia: Camino, 1991). 56 See Linda K. Harris, “Skaters Won’t Give Up Their Mecca Quietly,” Philadelphia Inquirer (22 April 2002). 57 ENB, “Talk Given by Edmund N. Bacon, Former City Planner of Philadelphia at LOVE Park,” flyer distributed to the press, October 28, 2002. 58 See Altman. 59 Bowden. 60 Korman interview. 61 Ibid. 62 Love, 96. 63 “Today I discovered my own personal Rosa Parks. His name is Edmund Bacon…He stated that he wasn’t afraid of being put in jail because he thought banning skaters from LOVE was wrong, and that took away from the true meaning of love…I’m grateful to him for his courage and for fighting the good fight.” Anonymous letter in: “Six Degrees of Edmund Bacon,” Skateboarder (November, 2002).

Chapter 2

1 ENB, [Childhood], unpublished MS, GH Files, 2002. 2 ENB, “Recollecions.” 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Edmund Bacon, “On Being a Quaker,” unpublished TS, GH Files, 2002 (?). 6 ENB, [Quaker meeting], unpublished MS, GH Files, 2002 (?). 7 ENB, “On Being a Quaker.” 8 Ibid. 9 ENB, [Quaker meeting]. 10 ENB, interviewed by Patty Hartman (WHYY Television), tape recording, Philadelphia, 30 September 2002, GH Files. I tape recorded this interview, but it was recorded on video for a television documentary. As of the printing of this thesis, the documentary has not been aired. From hereon this interview will be referred to as “WHYY interview.” 11 ENB, “Recollections.” 12 ENB, WHYY interview. 13 ENB and GH, “Making the Future Real.”

189 14 ENB, interviewed by Josh Olsen, Philadelphia, 6 June 2001, GH Files. 15 ENB, “Recollections.” 16 Bacon told me about his reasons for attending Cornell in a phone conversation on March 30, 2004. 17 Gilmore Clark was a landscape architect/engineer, Westchester Parks Commissioner in New York, and designer of the Belt Parkway. He became one of the principles of landscape architecture firm Clark, Rapuano, and Halloran. In the 1950s as Bacon was planning Eakins Oval to “complete” the Benjamin Franklin Parkway he engaged Michael Rapuano of that firm as the landscape architect for the project. See Holmes, also Gina Purrington, “Robert Moses: A Tribute to the Man and His Impact on the Borough,” The Western Queens Gazette (June 30, 1999). Bacon told me about his work with Rapuano in an interview, Philadelphia, August 1, 2003, GH Files. 18 Holmes. 19 Unwin was one of the pioneers of the modern profession of city planning. It is no surprise that he was trying to recruit young architects like Bacon to the field. In The Making of Urban America, John Reps described the creation of planning as its own profession in the early 20th century. He wrote, “In response to the rise in interest in city planning and the growing demand for technical assistance in plan preparation, a new profession came into being…there was growing recognition that city planning was an art or science which, although related to other disciplines, constituted a separate and increasingly complex field of endeavor.” John Reps, The Making of Urban America, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 525. 20 ENB, “Recollections.” 21 Bacon probably made his pitch to Dilworth around 1960. 22 ENB, WHYY interview. 23 ENB, [Architectural Lessons of the Forbidden City], unpublished TS, GH Files, 2002 (?). 24 ENB, WHYY interview. 25 From a personal meeting with Pei, Bacon and the author on 30 July 2003. 26 Bacon wrote that the “illness of a friend made return to America imperative.” ENB, [Work in China], unpublished MS, GH Files, 2002. 27 Edmund Bacon to Eliel Saarinen, 1935, ENB Papers. 28 ENB, WHYY interview. 29 Saarinen, 8-9. 30 Bacon recalls this lesson of Eliel Saarinen’s in his speech “Planning, Architecture, and Politics in Philadelphia,” Russell Van Nest Black Memorial Lecture, Cornell University, 24 April 1973. 31 ENB and GH, “Making the Future Real.” 32 John Guinther explained that the motivation for the survey came from General Motors, at the time “increasingly worried about its corporate image.” Guinther, Direction, 72. 33 ENB, WHYY interview. 34 ENB, letter to his parents, 22 November 1937, ENB Papers. 35 ENB and GH, “Making the Future Real.” 36 ENB, WHYY interview. 37 Ibid. 38 ENB and GH, “Making the Future Real.”

190 Chapter 3

1 ENB, [Living in the Future], unpublished MS, GH Files, 2003. 2 Emily Lewis Jones and Hans Knight, eds., Walter M. Phillips: Philadelphia Gentleman Activist, (Bryn Mawr: Dorranee and Co., 1987), 14. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 ENB, [History of His Work in Philadelphia] interviewed by the author, tape recording, Philadelphia, 4 December 2002, GH Files. From hereon this recording will be referred to as “History interview.” 7 ENB, WHYY interview. 8 “The City: Under the Knife or All for Their Own Good.” 9 ENB, WHYY interview. 10 The epithet “corrupt and contented” comes from Lincoln Steffins, Shame of the Cities, (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957). The stranglehold quote comes from Brownlee, 14. 11 The Committee of Seventy, “The Charter: A History” (Philadelphia, 1980), 15. 12 ENB, History interview. 13 Committee of Seventy, 15. 14 Jones and Knight. 15 People often referred to Phillips’s group as the “Young Turks.” In a letter to Bacon, Phillips wrote “The meeting to consider the formation of a group of younger people to study and participate in Philadelphia public affairs, about which you have been informed, will be held as a dinner-meeting at the Princeton Club…on Thursday, January 18 at 6:30 p.m. We hope that you will be able to come.” Walter M. Phillips to Edmund Bacon, 13 January 1940, ENB Papers. 16 Roger Scattergood, “The City Policy Committee,” unpublished TS, ENB Papers, 20 March, 1956. 17 Jones and Knight. 18 Ibid. 19 Scattergood. 20 Ibid. 21 Clow, “1947.” 22 Scattergood. 23 ENB, History interview. 24 “Proper City Planning Would Save Philadelphia Money, Says Expert,” The Evening Bulletin, May 17, 1941. 25 Scattergood. 26 Cohen, 263. 27 ENB, History interview. 28 Scattergood. 29 ENB, History interview. 30 Scattergood. 31 ENB, History interview. 32 Ibid. 33 Scattergood, 7.

191 34 ENB, History interview. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Scattergood, 5-6. 38 Ibid., 6, also ENB, History interview. 39 ENB, History interview. 40 John Guinther, “1942: When the Busy Bees Swarmed into City Council.” Welcomat (January 15, 1992). 41 Ibid. 42 ENB, History interview. 43 “Philadelphia Plans Again,” The Architectural Forum (December 1947). 44 ENB, History interview. 45 Guinther, “1942.” 46 Ibid. 47 ENB, History interview. 48 Guinther, “1942.” 49 ENB, History interview. 50 Ibid. 51 Guinther, “1942.” 52 ENB, History interview. 53 Guinther, “1942.” 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. ENB, History interview. 56 ENB, History interview. 57 Journal of City Council, Appendix No. 243, 3 December 1942 (Philadelphia). 58 Scattergood. 59 ENB, History interview. 60 Journal of City Council. The Capital Program was likely set at six years so as not to imitate Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. Bacon told me that during the hearing on the City Planning Bill, one of the major arguments against it was the imitation of Communist policy, including the Five-Year Plan. 61 Cohen, 278. 62 ENB, “Bacon’s Military Experience,” unpublished MS, GH Files, 2003. 63 Ibid. 64 ENB, History interview. 65 Willi Boesiger and Oskar Stonorov, Le Corbusier: Complete Works (Birkhauser, 1997). This work is now in its 14th printing. 66 ENB, History interview. 67 ENB, WHYY interview. 68 ENB and GH, “Making the Future Real”. 69 David Clow, “The Show that Got Philadelphia Going,” Philadelphia (May 1985), also ENB, History interview. 70 “Philadelphia Plans Again.”

192 71 The description of displays came from Bacon’s recollection as well as “Philadelphia Plans Again.” 72 “Philadelphia Plans Again.” 73 Clow, “The Show that Got Philadelphia Going.” 74 Secret message letter distributed at the Better Philadelphia Exhibition, as printed in “The Better Philadelphia Exhibition: What City Planning Means to You,” official brochure of the exhibition (1947), ENB Penn. 75 Clow, “The Show that Got Philadelphia Going.” 76 Interview with Irving Wasserman; also ENB, WHYY interview; and “The City: Under the Knife or All for Their Own Good.” 77 Jones and Knight. 78 ENB, History interview. 79 Ibid. 80 Edmund Bacon, [Edward Hopkinson, Jr.] unpublished MS, GH Files, 2002. 81 Clark, 654. 82 Ibid., 653. 83 Guinther, Direction, 138. 84 Committee of Seventy. 85 Clark, 654. 86 See Scattergood under the section “Early Leaders.” 87 Committee of Seventy. 88 Ibid. 89 Weigley, 654. 90 “Philadelphia Home Rule Charter,” (Philadelphia, 1951). 91 Clark, 655. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 656. 94 Scattergood. 95 Guither, Direction, 141. 96 John Guinther, Philadelphia: A Dream for the Keeping (Tulsa: Continental Heritage Press, 1982). 97 In Direction of Cities (148-49) John Guinther recalled a story that Bacon also recounted to me: Bacon did not publicize his vision for Penn Center during the first few years of his directorship. Once Joseph Clark was elected in 1952, Bacon told him he had been saving this idea for the development of the city’s center just for him. Clark, however, was not at all interested, and Bacon recalls, at his presentation of the Penn Center concept, during a luncheon sponsored by the City Policy Committee and the Chamber of Commerce, Clark refused to sit at the speaker’s table and instead hid himself in the corner. Guinther explores the roots of Clark’s mistrust for Bacon: “[Clark was] personally cautious, elitist, and conservative, despite his political liberalism. Such a person would not want to be associated with any project that could be accused of being ostentatious…He thought of himself as a statesman and not a politician, but he was politician enough to be wary of promoting any renewal plan that didn’t have the approval of the business establishment, which Bacon’s didn’t. Above all, Clark liked people he thought of as ‘practical.’…Visionaries like Bacon…are unappeal- ing to that mind-set” (149). 98 ENB, WHYY interview.

193 Chapter 4

1 “Robert Gedes” Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. University of Pennsylvania. Available online at www.philadelphiabuildings.org. 2 Edmund Bacon, Design of Cities, (New York: Viking, 1974), 21. 3 Gary B. Nash, First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2002), 1. 4 This section was guided by Independence Hall Association. “Liberty Bell Timeline,” available online at http://www.ushistory.org. 5 The other mistake was proposing the Cross-Town Expressway that would have cut through the southern portion of downtown, along Lombard and South Streets. Community pressure convinced city leaders not to build it. By an accident of history the expressway ended up having a positive effect on the city. While the highway seemed imminent, property values on South Street fell, and new businesses moved in to take advantage of the cheap rents. As a result, South Street has become a haven of alternative culture. In their 1963 hit, the Orlons sang “Where do all the Hippies meet? South Street. South Street.” Today South Street is one of Philadelphia’s liveliest shopping corridors and attractions. 6 “Imaginative Study of Philadelphia Done Over on Modernistic Planning Principles,” The Evening Bulletin, 17 May 1941. 7 Levine, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 220. 8 See Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti: An Urban Laboratory? (Scottsdale: The Cosanti Press, 1993). 9 Caro, 218. 10 Bacon and Kahn worked together on a couple occasions. Kahn worked with Robert Mitchell on the portion of the Better Philadelphia exhibition model that would replace the Pennsylvania Railroad’s “Chinese Wall” elevated tracks (that would eventually become Penn Center). Bacon approached Kahn and Mitchell with his idea for a sunken pedestrian concourse, but recalls that his idea was not heeded. Kahn and Mitchell created a series of three buildings for which Bacon had a very poor opinion. He felt it did not create a discernable destination. At the time Bacon recognized Kahn as an architectural genius, if one with a misguided sense of how the city functioned. When Bacon was creating his own design for Penn Center in 1949-50, he first approached Kahn to work with him on the project. Bacon knew that he needed to communicate the underlying idea of the system of movement. However, Kahn was continually preoccupied with architectural minutia that Bacon viewed as important only later in the process. The two men parted company and Bacon engaged architect Vincent Kling, who created models of Bacon’s concept and later actually designed many of the buildings and plazas in and around Penn Center. 11 William Penn, The Papers of William Penn, Vol. 2, Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn, eds. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 119. 12 “A certain quantity of land or ground platt shall be laid out for a large towne or citty.” Ibid., 98. 13 Ibid., 120. 14 Penn originally wanted every house placed at the center of a plot of land, “so that there may be ground on each side, for Gardens or Orchards or fields, that it may be a greene Country Towne, which will never be burnt, and always be wholesome.” Ibid., 121. 15 Ibid., 359. 16 Penn initially wanted a city of 10,000 acres with 100-acre lots. Walter Klinefelter, “Surveyor General Thomals Holme’s ‘Map of the Improved Part of the Province of Pennsilvania,’” Winterthur Portfolio, 6 (1970): 47.

194 17 Anthony N.B. Garvan, “Proprietary Philadelphia as Artifact,” The Historian and the City, Oscar Handlin and John Burchard, eds. (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press and Harvard University Press, 1963), 190. 18 See a discussion of Holme’s possible influences in Garvan, 190. Also see Reps 163. 19 Reps, 158. 20 Garvan, 193. 21 Holme specified that the squares should “be of like uses as the Moore-fields in London.” At the time, the “Moore-fields,” London’s commons were famous as open green spaces. Garvan explains that this description “clearly indicated their intended purpose.” 22 The street layout was likely Holme’s way of satisfying Penn’s desire that he “be sure to settle the figure of the Towne so as that the Streets hereafter may be uniforme downe to the Water from the Country bounds.” Ibid., 120. 23 There were some tributaries running within the area designated for the grid, but compared to the surrounding land, the location of Philadelphia was by far the flattest. Placing Broad Street on the watershed shows Holme’s attention to the location of these tributaries. 24 See a series of maps in Bacon’s 1963 plan, showing development over the city’s 300-year history. PCPC, “Center City Philadelphia,” 1963. 25 Morrone, 9-12. 26 Ibid., 12. 27 Esther M. Klein, Fairmount Park: A History and a Guidebook, official directory of the Fairmount Park Commission (Bryn Mawr: Harcum Junior College Press, 1974). 28 Klein. 29 Brownlee, 197. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 199. 32 Garvan, 197-198. 33 Ibid. 34 ENB, [Penn Plan] interviewed by the author, Philadelphia, 9 September 2002. 35 Samuel L. Smedley, Smedley’s Atlas of the City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1862), Explanatory Preface. 36 Ibid. 37 Elizabeth M. Geffen, “Industrial Development and Social Crisis: 1841-1854,” Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1982), 360. 38 Ibid. 39 Smedley. 40 Nash, 261. 41 Sam Bass Warner, Jr., The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), 55. 42 Ibid. 43 Nathaniel Burt and Wallace E. Davies, “The Iron Age: 1876-1905,” Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1982), 494. 44 The most famous sewer collapse was over Mill Creek. Starting in the 1870s Mill Creek was covered over and turned into a sewer. The land was designed for the uses of nineteenth century society and weakened under the weight of cars, trucks and larger buildings. Pieces of the sewer collapsed eight times between 1930 and 1961 when there was a final, major collapse killing at least three peo-

195 ple, injuring many others, forcing the city to condemn 104 homes and displacing at least 500 people, with 200 families immediately evacuated. Another famous catastrophe took place in 1986 when a gas explosion in the Logan area of Philadelphia brought the need to inspect the housing. The City discovered that a large number of houses were sinking. In the early 1900s most people powered their homes with coal fuel. Two corrupt machine politicians named the Vare brothers used a city contract to dump the coal ashes into this site along the Wingohocking Creek. Around 1920 the City developed housing on top of the ash, and as water seeped into the ground, the ash foundation weakened its support of the structures above. The City called in an engineering firm to find the causes of the sinking, and later the Army Corps of Engineers to assess the environmental effects. 957 houses were demolished costing the city $33 million. In 2002 the City Planning Commission approved a redevelopment plan for the area, planning to rebuild most of it for commercial uses. For more on Mill Creek, see “City May Raze 40 Houses in Collapse Area,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (19 July 1961); and “City Acts to Condemn 104 Homes Periled by Sewer,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (21 July 1961). For more on Logan, see Ramona Smith, “How all that coal ash got dumped on the city,” Philadelphia Daily News (11 December 2000); PCPC, “Logan Redevelopment Area Plan,” May 2002; and PCPC, “Blight Certification For the Area Generally Bounded by Louden Street, Marshall Street, Roosevelt Boulevard and 11th Street,” May 2002.

Chapter 5

1 Irving Wasserman, interviewed by ENB and GH, tape recording, Philadelphia, 10 October 2002, GH Files. 2 Lillian M. Lake and Harry C. Silcox, eds., Take a Trip Through Time: Northeast Philadelphia Revisited (Holland, PA: Brighton Press, c.1996), 8. 3 ENB, Reflections. 4 ENB, [Far Northeast] interviewed by the author, tape recording, Philadelphia, 9 September 2002, GH Files. 5 Brownlee, 25. 6 Gosling, 10. 7 Ibid., 11. 8 Ibid., 10. 9 “Riverside Community Website,” available online at http://www.riverside-illinois.com. 10 Sarah Faiks, et. al., “Revisiting Riverside: A Frederick Law Olmstead Community” (Master’s project, University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment, April 2001), available online at http://www.snre.umich.edu/ecomgt/pubs/riverside.htm. 11 Radburn was built with 469 single family homes, 48 townhouses, 30 two-family homes, and 1 93- unit apartment complex. See “Radburn: A Town for the Motor Age in Fair Lawn, N.J., U.S.A.,” available online at http://www.radburn.org. 12 Gosling, 10. 13 Ibid. 14 The Board of Surveyors was included in the Home Rule Charter of 1951 as a Streets Department Board, though its duties are not specifically laid out in the Charter. 15 ENB, Far Northeast interview. 16 Wasserman interview. 17 “Philadelphia Home Rule Charter,” Chapter 6: City Planning Commission, 1951. 18 Journal of Council, Philadelphia, 1954, 481-2.

196 19 PCPC, “Philadelphia Subdivision Ordinance,” 4 June 1954, 8. 20 ENB, “Confidential Weekly Reports to the Mayor,” May 29, 1953, ENB Papers. 21 ENB, Far Northeast interview. 22 Wasserman interview. 23 Ibid. 24 PCPC, “Preliminary Far Northeast Physical Development Plan,” January 1955. 25 Ibid. 26 Irving Wasserman, “Far Northeast Philadelphia,” notes prepared for his interview with ENB and GH, 10 October, 2002. From hereon this document will be referred to as “Wasserman notes.” 27 Wasserman interview. 28 Wasserman notes. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 ENB, Far Northeast interview. 33 Wasserman interview. 34 ENB, Far Northeast interview. 35 ENB, Far Northeast interview. 36 ENB, “Confidential Weekly Reports to the Mayor,” July 24, 1953. 37 Ibid., 7 August 1953. 38 Ibid., 3 December 1953. 39 Wasserman notes. 40 Wasserman interview. 41 ENB, Far Northeast interview. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Wasserman interview. 45 Clark, 699. 46 Korman interview. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid.

Chapter 6

1 ENB, Design of Cities, 13. 2 Besides for the possible exception of Robert Moses (who was not a planning director, anyway), chief planners have traditionally been administrators and did not engage in design work. Art historian Madeline Cohen explained, “In most American cities, the design aspects of redevelopment projects were parceled by city planning administrators out to consulting architects” (Cohen, 18). Cohen argued that Bacon’s predecessor, Robert Mitchell, was one such administrator. In Approaches to Planning (Philadelphia: Gordon and Breach, 1992) Ernest R. Alexander explained that “the traditional role of the planner in governmental contexts…[is as a] technician-administrator…the technical expert at the service of elected officials” (107).

197 3 Bacon, “The City Image,” in Man and the Modern City (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963). 4 ENB, [Organizing Concept] unpublished MS, GH Files, 2002. 5 Love, 73. 6 Specifically, Bacon’s visions led to the revival of Society Hill, Old City, and Queen’s Village. The areas reviving today include Northern Liberties and Fishtown (just north of Old City), and Bella Vista (just to the southwest of Society Hill and Queen’s village). 7 ENB, [The Future] unpublished MS, GH Files, 2002. 8 For example, in 1960, Bacon wrote an article stating that “the deep understanding and skillful employment of three-dimensional design concepts is becoming increasingly a key element in the planning process.” ENB, “A Case Study in Urban Design,” The Journal of American Institute of Planners, 26:3 (August 1960). 9 Stephan Salisbury, “Society Hill Emerged Amid Tumultuous Times,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 17 March 2004, G13. 10 ENB, [Refusing to Be Categorized 1] unpublished MS, GH Files, 2002. 11 ENB, [Refusing to Be Categorized 2] unpublished TS, GH Files, 2002. 12 As I mentioned earlier, Bacon’s definition is very different than that of psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. See Chapter 1: note 11, for a comparison of the two definitions. 13 In Design of Cities Bacon calls this process “Hypothesis Formation and Reformation.”

Chapter 7

1 ENB, “New World Cities: Architecture and Townscape,” in American Civilization, Daniel J. Boorstin, ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), 234. 2 Rybczynski, City Life, 163. 3 Guinther, Direction, 190. 4 Modernism was not only embraced by reformers but by builders and municipalities trying to save money. The vogue at the time for luxury apartments was the model started by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who designed buildings like Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive apartments that exposed the frame and support of the structure. Witold Rybczynski explained that builders of public housing promoted the fact that they were giving the poor dwellings like the rich. However the results turned out much cheaper and took advantage of the fact that buildings with an exposed frame are more affordable to build. When built shoddily they retain no semblance to Mies’s masterpieces. 5 Guinther, Direction, 191. 6 Rybczynski, City Life, 166. 7 Ibid. 8 Buzz Bissinger, A Prayer for the City (New York: Vintage, 1997), 189. 9 See Rybczynski, City Life, for more on the reasons for public housing’s failure. 10 ENB, “New World Cities,”233. 11 See Guinther, Direction, for a good overview. 12 See Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Harvard University Press, 1998); also William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1990). 13 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage, 1992), 3. 14 Ibid., 25.

198 15 Ibid., 441. 16 See Jacobs, 15, where she discusses a particular housing project in East Harlem that did not account for the real needs of the people who would be living there. 17 Ibid., 3. 18 Ibid. 19 Guinther, Direction, 201. 20 Congress of New Urbanism, “About New Urbanism,” available online at http://www.cnu.org/about/index.cfm. 21 For a good overview of New Urbanism see Robert Steuteville, “The New Urbanism: An Alternative to Modern, Automobile-Oriented Planning and Development,” New Urban News, available online at http://www.newurbannews.com. 22 For information on Seaside, see Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Towns and Town- Making Principles (Cambridge: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1991). For more on Celebration, see Reed Kroloff, “Disney Builds a Town,” Architecture (August 1997). 23 Hope VI was carried out by Bacon’s daughter Elinor Bacon. In a December 26, 2002 interview with Ed, Elinor and the author, Ed explained that he feels Elinor is finally carrying out the reform of public housing he attempted several times in his career. 24 Tod Baylson, “In Defense of the Threatened Hope VI Program,” Planetizen (March 22, 2004). 25 Though other factors like highways and sterile office buildings are also viewed as mistakes of the postwar period, slum-clearance and public housing projects are by far the most significant elements of that era that now shape the backlash against top-down planning. 26 Caro 510. Robert Caro continually accused Moses of being racist, however I have heard convincing arguments against the validity of some of Caro’s evidence in conversations with Alexander Garvin. Nonetheless, my point is to show the criticism against administrators of the era, and clearly Caro’s book exhibits this phenomenon adequately. 27 Love. 28 Anis Whitlow, “Vision and Blindness: Edmund Bacon’s 1963 Plan for Center City Philadelphia” (research paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undated), available online at http://web.mit.edu/awhitlow/www/UDD%20Philadelphia.pdf. 29 In an email on 24 November 2002, Birch told me that in terms of urban renewal focusing on revitalization, “[Bacon] was relatively unique—the scale and timing of Washington Square East was large and early—other places like Providence Rhode Island undertook rehab projects but not on the scale of Bacon’s. What was entirely unique was his interlacing of open space.” 30 Such projects include Bacon’s plan for Mill Creek and significant work standing up for threatened communities near Temple University. 31 In the M.I.T. paper, Whitlow wrote, “Even the watercolor renderings included in the plan (Figure 1) reflect the plan’s blindness to the city’s long-standing racial and ethnic diversity. They depict only white middle-class families and businessmen using the proposed spaces. Also, major elements of the plan served to separate lower-income and minority populations from the downtown retail.” True the renderings Bacon’s chief of land planing, Wilhelm von Moltke, commissioned had no black people in them, but for the 1950s, I’m not really that surprised. 32 Quoted in Guinther, Direction, 223. Guinther did not refer to the “vice chairman” by name, but in 1957 it was Philip Klein, under Chairman G. Holmes Perkins. 33 Census 2000 data reports 1,517,550 people in Philadelphia and 655,824 blacks and African- Americans. 34 Bacon calls the Gallery the “people’s palace” in “Making the Future Real.” 35 Bacon proposed such a program under Mayors Richardson Dilworth and James H.J. Tate. His plan was to take the city’s abandoned properties, and instead of selling them at Sheriff’s auction, to 199 restore them and use them as mixed-income, scattered-site housing. He recalls that while he successfully sold Dilworth on the idea, no city agency wanted to be the “city’s largest slumlord,” taking on the ownership of the city’s abandoned houses before they were fixed up. During the Tate administration, Bacon recalls the mayor’s aide, William Rafsky, advised against his plan, and on Rafsky’s advice Tate turned down Bacon’s proposal. Nancy Love also makes reference to one of these programs in her article.

Chapter 8

1 “A ‘Vision’ Inspired Philly’s Center,” The Washington Post, Times Herald: 1959-1965 (28 November 1965), G6, accessed from ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 2 ENB, letter to the author, 7 February, 2003. 3 This modern planning process goes by many names. Bacon always used “mediating consensus” and I think it is the most apt. Kise Straw and Koladner called it “consensus building;” Penn Professors Eugenie Birch and John Keene talk about “public participation, process-based decisions, conflict negotiation, and mediation.” In conversation with the author Alexander Garvin called it “asking people what they want.” 4 John Keene and Eugenie Birch, “Keene-Birch Top Ten Planning Themes” (document compiled for courses CPLN 540/723, University of Pennsylvania Department of City and Regional Planning, December 2002). 5 Kise, Straw, and Koladner, “Project Scope and Course of Action,” Proposal for Rockledge Borough, June, 2002. 6 PCPC, “The Neighborhood Planning Process,” 2001. 7 Chris Satullo, email correspondence with the author, 7 February 2003. 8 Eugenie Birch, lecture notes, 22 October 2002, CPLN 540: Introduction to City Planning: Past, Present, Future, University of Pennsylvania, Department of City and Regional Planning. 9 ENB, “Is Ed Bacon Egotistical?” unpublished TS, 1998 (?). 10 E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979). 11 Inga Saffron, “I-95’s Stranglehold on Waterfront,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (12 November 2002). 12 See Herbert Muschamp, “Don’t Rebuild, Reimagine,” The New York Times Magazine (8 September 2002). 13 Moses was never a planner by profession, however he carried out many of the tasks now associated with city planning. In one planning class that I audited the professor asked the question of whether or not Moses was a city planner. Based on definitions of planning put forth by professional societies there may be some ambiguity. Moses himself argued he was not a planner. According to Robert Caro, “planners in general, [Moses] said, are ‘socialists,’ ‘revolutionaries’ who ‘do not reach the masses directly but through familiar subsurface activity.’” (471). However, Moses continually implemented ideas for “bettering” his city; he oversaw agencies responsible for public works, roads, housing, and open space development. As far as I am concerned, that is planning. 14 Alexander Garvin, “The Second Coming of Moses,” Topic Magazine (2003). 15 Caro, 1144. 16 Ibid., 453. 17 Robert Cleveland, “Robert Moses: An Atlantic Portrait,” Atlantic (1939). 18 Caro, 450. 19 Ibid., 878. 20 Ibid., 1003.

200 21 Ibid., 748. 22 Ibid., 423. 23 Ibid., 218. 24 Garvin, “The Second Coming of Moses.” 25 Ibid. 26 Caro, 223.

Chapter 9

1 The population figure comes from U.S. Census 2000 data, and the number of parking spots is from “State of Center City,” Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corporation, 2003. Based on census figures for children under 18, I subtracted an average 5 percent of the population in the relevant census tracts to account for minors. Of course, some children under 18 drive, so if anything the population figure is slightly low. There are about 512 garages and lots with 44,450 spaces, but being downtown, I would imagine many of these spaces are taken up by com- muters. 2 Clark, 699. 3 ENB, “Recollections.” 4 All figures were provided or derived from the University of Pennsylvania’s Cartographic Modeling Lab’s Neighborhood Base System, available online at http://www.cml.upenn.edu. 5 I have heard rumors that Bacon “sold out” to real-estate mogul Albert Greenfield (later Chairman of the Planning Commission), allowing Greenfield free-rein in the Northeast if Bacon could have free rein in Center City. I have found no support of this rumor. Bacon denies it, and in my research I have found some evidence that contradicts such an under-the-table deal could have ever worked out. Also, Bacon hardly had free-rein in Center City.

Epilogue

1 ENB, “New World Cities,” 234.

201