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Middletown, CT

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THE POWER OF AN IDEAEdmund Bacon’s Planning Method

Inspiring Consensus and Living in the Future by

Gregory HellerClass of 2004

Wesleyan University The Honors College

Middletown, CT April, 2004

A thesis submitted to thefaculty of Wesleyan University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for theDegree of Bachelor of Arts

with Departmental Honors in the American Studies Program

2

To Myra Hellermy grandmother, who taught me to love the city,

and to Ed Baconwho taught me how to express that love.

3

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 hasaffected my life and shaped my future. I am also grateful for the tremendous impacthe has had on Philadelphia: the beautiful city I call home.

I would like to thank my parents, Janis Weiner and Douglas Heller, for their endlesslove, support, and encouragement in all of my endeavors. I also thank my father forour discussions about Ed Bacon and city planning. A number of the ideas in this the-sis 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 thanksto Tarsah Dale for always believing in me.

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

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

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

I would like to thank Cynthia Horan and Joseph Siry, two professors who have sig-nificantly guided my understanding of the urban environment. I also owe a debt toRuth 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 thankhim also for his ongoing assistance in my research. I thank Alexander Garvin for hisadvice in my discussion of Ed Bacon and Robert Moses, and for carrying on EdBacon’s legacy through his work.

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

4

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 3Illustrations 5Introduction 81. Philadelphia’s Urban Legend 16

Existing Literature 26Bacon’s Reputation 34

2. The Independent 433. Living in the Future 594. Symbolic Historical Memory 79

Starting with William Penn 86The Extension of the Grid 91

5. Planning the Far Northeast 96Bacon’s Vision 100Inheriting the Concept 103Political Battle, Design Solution 107Garages in the Front 111

6. Ed Bacon’s Planning Process 114The Organizing Concept 115The Message of the Land 116Symbolic Historical Memory 118The Biological Paradigm 119Imaging the Future 120Refusing to Be Categorized 121The Collective Unconscious 122Democratic Feedback 124PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING 126THE PLANNING PROCESS 127

7. The Reaction 128Mistakes and Responses 128Modern Planning Movements 133Top Down? 135

8. Inspiring Consensus 139Mediating Consensus 139The Collective Unconscious 143Bacon and Moses 145

9. The Far Northeast Today 151What Went Wrong? 155

Epilogue: Hope for the Future 159Appendix: An Interview with Edmund Bacon

and Irving Wasserman 162A Note on Sources 176Bibliography 177Notes 186

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 tointeract and complement each other, instead of behaving as separate entities. In orderto comply with U.S. Fair Use Copyright Laws, I include captions with the illustra-tion’s source. I also include a figure number, for reference with the following list.

Figure A.1 “Evolution of a Two-Page Spread” 11Diagrams created by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon; Penn Holme Plan from GeorgeTatum, Penn’s Great Town, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961.

Figure 1.1 “Philadelphia’s Edmund Bacon” 16Time, 84:19 (6 November 1964).

Figure 1.2 “Bacon’s Impact on Center City” 18Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Plan for Center City,” 1963.

Figure 1.3 “Looking into an Urban Crystal Ball” 19Wharton Account, 19:2 (Winter 1980).

Figure 1.4 “Reviving East Market Street” 22Edmund 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” 25Bacon Papers; Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t (New York:McGraw Hill, 2002), 528.

Figure 1.6 “Philadelphia’s Changing Skyline” 37Mauger, 42-43.

Figure 1.7 “Bacon’s Design for Independence Mall” 38National Park Service.

Figure 1.8 “A Public Toilet Beside Independence Hall” 38Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure 1.9 “Bacon’s 1932 Architectural Thesis” 39Bacon Papers.

Figure 1.10 “Robert Indiana’s Love Sculpture” 40Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure 1.11 “Bacon Skates” 40Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure 2.1 “The City as a Body” 48Pietro 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” 52Edmund 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” 54Delaware Vally Regional Planning Commission, “Historic Preservation,” 1969.; Bacon Papers.

5

Figure 3.1 “The Time-Space Machine” 69Photograph taken by Ezra Stoller in Bacon Papers.

Figure 3.2 “Children Plan” 71Photograph taken by Ezra Stoller, in Bacon Papers.

Figure 3.3 “The Better Philadelphia Exhibition Model” 71Photograph taken by Ezra Stoller, in Bacon Papers.

Figure 3.4 “Model Detail” 72Photograph taken by Ezra Stoller, in Bacon Papers.

Figure 4.1 “A Gleaming Triumph” 80Life, 24 December 1965.

Figure 4.2 “Symbolic Historical Memory and Penn’s Landing” 81Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Electronically edited by the author.

Figure 4.3 “The White Paper Syndrome” 85Garvin, 155; The Evening Bulletin (17 May 1941).

Figure 4.4 “Philadelphia and Liberties” 87Walter Klinefelter, “Surveyor General Thomas Holme’s ‘Map of the Province ofPennsilvania,” Winterthur Portfolio, 6 (1970): 48.

Figure 4.5 “Penn’s and Holme’s Organizing Concept” 88Diagrams by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon.

Figure 4.6 “Thomas Holme’s Portraiture” 89Tatum.

Figure 4.7 “City Hall” 90Mauger, 118-119.

Figure 4.8 “Crossing the Schuylkill River” 93John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965),265.

Figure 4.9 “Proliferation of the Grid” 95Rand McNally and Co.’s Business Atlas and Shipper’s Guide, 1901. Electronically edited bythe author.

Figure 5.1 “The Far Northeast Before Development” 96Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Northeast Philadelphia and Why, 1928.

Figure 5.2 “The Benjamin Franklin Parkway” 97David B. Brownlee, Building the City Beautiful (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989), 36-37.

Figure 5.3 “Plan for Riverside” 98Reps, 345.

Figure 5.4 “Radburn, N.J.” 99Mary Lou Williamson, Greenbelt: History of a New Town (Norfolk: Donning, 1997).

Figure 5.5 “Adapting the Penn Plan” 100Diagrams by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon.

Figure 5.6 “The Far Northeast Organizing Concept” 101Diagrams by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon.

Figure 5.7 “Irving Wasserman, Damon Child, and Edmund Bacon” 104Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

6

Figure 5.8 “Interlocking Cul-de-sacs” 106Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957.

Figure 5.9 “The Morrell Tract” 109Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

Figure 5.10 “The Far Northeast: In Theory and in Practice” 110Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Preliminary Far Northeast Physical DevelopmentPlan,” 1955; Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957.

Figure 5.11 “Cul-de-sac” 111Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957.

Figure 5.12 “Garages in Front” 112Photograph taken by Shari Cooper.

Figure 6.1 “Organizing Concepts” 115Diagrams created by Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon.

Figure 6.2 “Preserving the Stream Valleys” 117Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure 6.3 “Bacon at Work” 120Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

Figure 6.4 “Market East Plaza” 123Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Market East Plaza,” May 1958.

Figure 7.1 “Public Housing” 129Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., American Civilization (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), 219.

Figure 7.2 “Le Corbusier’s Future” 130Garvin, 154.

Figure 7.3 “Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Drive Apartments” 130Boston College, “A Digital Archive of American Architecture,” available online athttp://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267.

Figure 7.4 “Hope VI” 134Universal Companies, available online at http://www.universalcompanies.org.

Figure 8.1 “Robert Moses” 146Robert Caro, The Power Broker (New York: Vintage, 1975).

Figure 9.1 “Houses of the Far Northeast” 152Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure 9.2 “Strip Mall” 153Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure 9.3 “Fences” 154Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure 9.4 “Prairie of Automobiles” 155Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure 9.5 “Christmas in the Far Northeast” 158Photograph taken by Gregory Heller.

Figure B.1 “Bacon in a Stream” 161Bacon Papers.

Figure B.2 “Development Tracts in the Far Northeast” 163Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Annual Report,” 1957.

7

8

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 plan-

ner 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

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 cru-

cial 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 pur-

pose 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

10

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 real-

ly 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 lay-

ing 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 photo-

graphs, 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 sepa-

rate 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.

11

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)

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 con-

cept 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 person-

al 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 person-

ality. 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 photo-

graphs 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 address-

ing the way planning is taught in the present. In a short piece he wrote, Bacon imag-

ined a fictional dialogue:

Bacon: I think American civilization at the present time is in a very decadent state. Ourpresident is chatting over tea about how many Iraqi he is going to kill…The way we aregoing there will be bombs bursting in air…Our flag will still be there but there will benobody left to see it.

Heller: Bacon is an embittered old man and understandingly so. We of the coming genera-tion 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 sem-

inar in Bacon’s home with ten planning students whom I met over that year. The dis-

cussion 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 lim-

ited 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 under-

standing 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 plan-

ning 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 fol-

lowing is the beginning of that companion.

15

1. Philadelphia’s Urban LegendEdmund Bacon had greater impact on the planning and development of his home-town than any individual except Robert Moses in New York and Daniel Burnham inChicago.–Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t

Ed Bacon is Philadelphia’s urban legend—widely renowned, criticized, hon-

ored, 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 con-

tinues 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 maga-

zine. 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 us16

Figure 1.1 (Source: Time, 84:19, 11/6/1964)

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 sur-

vey 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.

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 liter-

ature.8 Bacon is not well understood because his method is much harder to grasp, and

18

Figure 1.2 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission)

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, suc-

cessful 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

19

Figure 1.3 (Source: Wharton Account, 19:2, Winter 1980)

Bacon always began with a single, compelling “organizing concept.” He cre-

ated a vision based on the individual characteristics and needs of an area. Once he cre-

ated 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 dif-

ferent 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 consen-

sus,” 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 can-

not 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 cre-

ate 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 commer-

cial 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 devel-

opment 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 con-

vention center in the foreground.

22

Figure 1.4 (Sources: Top, Bacon Papers; Bottom, Ed Mauger, Philadelphia Then and Now, Thunder Bay: San Diego, 2002 )

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 par-

adigm 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 orig-

inal 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 con-

cept,” and to follow how Bacon communicated that concept to the “collective uncon-

scious,” 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 con-

ceived 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 con-

nected 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 consid-

ered 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 orig-

inal 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 sta-

tion 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 pedes-

trian 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 lit-

tle 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 con-

course covered by a roof.

The critical aspect of Bacon’s planning is his grasp of what I call symbolic his-

torical 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

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

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 exist-

ing 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 rec-

ognized 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 plan-

ning 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 prin-

ciples. 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 myfriendship with Ed Bacon. I met him the year the first edition was being published. In theensuing years he has spent hours explaining his work and telling me anything and every-thing that is important about planning cities. If I was in awe of his achievements when wemet, 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 “organiz-

ing 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 cur-

rent 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 talkabout the nature of cities…I [will] attempt to describe Bacon’s philosophy and place it with-in 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 ulti-mately freely accepted…[S]trong and valid ideas for the city’s future, once let loose in themarketplace, will have a cohering effect on enough elements in the society to establish pur-pose.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 dif-

ferent 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 con-

sider 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 vol-

ume. 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 disserta-

tion is a valuable addition to the body of work discussing Philadelphia’s postwar plan-

ning.

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, inorder that it stimulate the imagination of Philadelphia’s leadership as well as the generalpublic and unite them together in a common cause for civic and neighborhoodimprovement.38

Later she elaborated:

For Bacon, the physical plan could not be introduced for the first time at the end of theplanning process…Bacon saw design as the first step…of a ‘design process.’ Having estab-lished a preliminary physical image, Bacon then worked with the realistic limitationsimposed on the project through the course of its development…Bacon’s city planning wasbased on a designed image but he was not committed to a single unchangeablesolution…Bacon oftentimes was able to convince the necessary players of the value of theplan…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 pub-

lished.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 under-standing of the future, but all too often planners are unable to communicate clear ideasabout it. Thus planners distance themselves from the people whose future they are supposed-ly 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 involvesa 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 itspower to motivate individual participators and stimulate further design and individualprocesses, 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, him-

self, 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 TempleRedevelopment Area. Green ways, under Bacon’s guidance, formed the spine of all residen-tial 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 philoso-

phy and how it affected housing and redevelopment. He exhibited a good understand-

ing 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 sec-

tions, 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 lis-

ten, 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 report-

ed 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 lead-

ers 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 devel-

opers, 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 maga-

zine 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 andinertia drives out the good ones. Those who do remain long enough seem to vegetate andbecome 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 proj-

ects. 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

37

Figure 1.6 (Source: Ed Mauger)

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.

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.

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.

38

Figure 1.7 (Source: National Park Service)

Figure 1.8 (Gregory Heller)

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 architec-

ture thesis at Cornell University. Part of his design was a park at the westernmost ter-

minus of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, seen at the left side of Bacon’s thesis draw-

ing, below.

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 tohim, was in the company of his Commissioner of Streets. So he turned to his commissionerand said, “Well, what do you think?” And the commissioner said to him, “Mr. Mayor, if youdo 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

Figure 1.9 (Source: Bacon Papers)

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

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 theworld. It was here, in Philadelphia in1776, that the leaders of our countrystood up to the King of England and toldhim to go to Hell. I make no claim to be aleader, but, by God I am a person and Istand up to Mayor Street and tell him togo to Hell and stay there until he sees thelight and changes his ways by going toLOVE Park each day with a smile on hisface and a warm welcoming handshake togreet 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

40

Figure 1.10 (Gregory Heller)

Figure 1.11 (Gregory Heller)

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 any-

one 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 destruc-

tion 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 individ-

ual’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 vision-

ary is today’s relic: Today some of Bacon’s accomplishments are considered fail-

ures.”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 life-

time. 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 IndependentI developed at an early age a fierce sense of independence and indifference to whatother people thought of me, which persist to today. I do not look to anyone outsidefor corroboration or support of any kind. Yet living in a sealed off future has itsrewards. 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, hap-

pened 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 deci-

sions. 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 fol-

lowing 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 surroundingshere I was in a family with “the boys”—my two older brothers—which assuredly did notinclude me... Norwood [myself], and then my dear little sister, Lydia. And most assuredly Iwas not that. So really I had no status or role in the family structure, and this, I think, almostfrom 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 theirinner circle machinations. So I learned, almost from infancy never to depend on any way onanybody outside myself for any support whatsoever. So therefore I developed a fierce senseof 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 notallowed to play tennis, nor any game, especially cards (there was a family debate as towhether the game “Old Maid” was cards)…For nine generations everyone, including littlekids, had attended the Sunday Meeting for worship5…and sat for one hour in silence occa-sionally punctuated by a message from God transmitted by one of the members6…OneSunday my sister, about five years old at the time, complained of feeling sick and so was lefthome alone as the rest of us went off to meeting. In the middle of the silent worship a littlefigure opened the door of the Meeting House. There up the aisle came my little sister…to getthere my sister had to cross several streets, on a major traffic street, and to find the meetinghouse. It shocks me in retrospect that, in my Mother and Father’s value system, going tomeeting was more important than taking care of their child.7

Later in life Bacon’s sense of independence clashed with his Quaker back-

ground. 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 wonder-

ful 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 con-

cepts may be a result of his Quaker upbringing, but it may also have to do with a back-

lash 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 brotherswho had paid no attention to me in my life up to that time, saw my house, and it was thefourth 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 ofseeing my little structure blown to smithereens.10

Since that time Bacon has allowed other people to take ownership of his con-

cepts, 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 theground floor first grade classroom looking out the window, and there I saw a woman withsome students and a balloon man came along and she bought all the students balloons. Iwas very envious. I learned that these were the bad children and that principal had decidedbased on an ancient Quaker concept, that when people are bad they should be separatedfrom other people, and, as with prisoners, put in solitary confinement. They would repent oftheir sins and be good forever after. So she had the idea that she would separate the badchildren that they would feel isolated and then if you buy them balloons that they would feellike babies and repent of their sins. Well I said, “That’s for me.” So I quickly took suchaction as was necessary—and I don’t remember what it was—to be transferred to the badchildren’s class. In the bad children’s class we were totally isolated from all teachers andsupervision, whatsoever, we developed a wonderful society of our own in midair. We leaptfrom 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 pro-

fessional 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 methat it was totally unprofessional for me to make a plan of property I didn’t own, and that if Ipersisted 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, askingpermission 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. Therewe were, just the two of us, William Penn and I, alone together, higher than anybody. At ourfeet 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 belowus. Suddenly I felt these two arteries intersecting in my gut, giving me a new center. Thissensation has never left me, giving me a sense of purpose and direction in everything I havedone since. This was not an intellectual thing. This was a body thing. What a way to learnhistory!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 per-

son’s arm is injured, the solution is to heal it, not to amputate. Bacon’s ability to con-

stantly 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.

48

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)

In a 2001 interview, Bacon phrased it most aptly:

I reject completely the idea that is currently the dominant idea about city planning, that yourideas come from the manipulation of numbers. I have no interest in numbers at all and theynever mean anything to me in my method of thought. I think that what you are taught in col-lege about city planning, is that city planners first of all analyze the situation. Well I thinkanalyzing is for the birds. No idea ever came out of analysis. You might as well not wasteyour time on it. You need to feed your brain computer with the facts of the case. But the factsof the case are not numbers. The facts of the case are the reality of the physical sensorystimuli that assault your senses, sequentially experienced in musical fashion. I completelyreject the mechanical paradigm. My paradigm is entirely visceral, physical body, and I forsome reason am very sensitive to my body as a functioning element, and it actually suppliesme with the raw material for which I turn into thoughts, which I laboriously turn into physi-cal realities, and which I subsequently very carefully communicate.14

Market analysts try to anticipate the future by creating five or ten-year projec-

tions. 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 isola-

tion [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 thatgave me…an empty center block for me to do my architecture on…The Parkway at that pointwent 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, whichwould be a wonderful place to perceive the grandeur of the Parkway and how it related towhat 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. Wecalled them votive columns in those days, and it was a rather odd, classical idea, butnonetheless it was there. In my mind it served the very important function of marking thepoint 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 the-

sis 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 grand-

father 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 thebasement of the American Academy of Rome, where I suppose it still is, and I just hoppedover to Greece with a friend, because it was so close. My friend hated the primitive delightsthere, but I had a superlative time. So I thought, well I’m right next to Turkey and theIslamic culture, so before I go home I’ll just hop over for a little trip. And I went to Istanbuland I saw the incredible magnificence of the Feast of Ramadan in Aya Sofya—somethingthat 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’sboat, so I made a deal with Arab captain to take me up and row me up with his crew, whichcost less than a day in the Cook’s boat.

But when I returned from that magnificent adventure I suddenly decided now I am throughwith romance. I want to get down to brass tacks, and get a job and earn my living. And by awild coincidence, at that moment I met a missionary from Shanghai and he told me inShanghai there are jobs in architecture. So I counted my money and I had enough to get toShanghai on a third-class Japanese boat with $35 left over. I walked the streets of Port Saidfor two days, struggling with my decision. Then suddenly a light came, “well you can’t pos-sibly tell the consequences of either, so I might as well follow my impulses,” so I jumped ona Japanese boat and I sailed down the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and into the IndianOcean and the Chinese Ocean.

I cursed myself for the decision because I thought the Chinese culture I totally hated, gotnothing but gold dragons. But I did arrive in Shanghai with $35 which had become smallerand smaller and smaller as I approached. I did get an architectural job [with Americanarchitect Henry Killian Murphy]. I did go to Beijing, China. I did see the imperial, palace ofthe Forbidden City of Peking. And there I learned everything about architecture, and I cameback, unbelievably inspired by what I saw. And nobody knows it’s true, but I madePhiladelphia 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 illustra-

tions below compare Bacon’s Philadelphia concepts and their Chinese influences.

52

Figure 2.2 (Sources: Clockwise from top left, Edmund Bacon, Design of Cities, New York: Viking, 1967; Dennis Cox/ChinaStock; Emil Schulthess, China, New York: Viking, 1966; Philadelphia City Planning Commission)

Bacon wrote the following of his experience in the Forbidden City, after walk-

ing 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 Roombuilding I was in were slightly smaller than those of some of the pavilions I had passedthrough to get there. How could this experience of standing before the throne of China be sooverwhelming? Suddenly and powerfully I realized that it was not because of the size of thestructure, rather it was because of the position of this structure as the crescendo of this pow-erfully musical symphonic sequence of buildings and courtyards I had gone through to getthere.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 inPhiladelphia, where I never thought in terms of structures at all. I only thought about whatare 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 inter-

connect projects in one location with the rest of the city. For this reason, the entire res-

idential 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 skyscrap-

ers 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 orig-

inal 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.

• • •

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

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

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…andreceived Tau Beta Pi and Phi Kappa Phi, for whatever they may be worth…I traveledleisurely in England, France and Italy…mostly sketching, living, learning of people, absorb-ing the tenor and quality of life in those places…In Egypt I achieved the consummation ofmy romantic quest with a voyage up the Nile…At this point I feel strongly a new need toexplore more deeply into the knowledge of these of [sic] experience, and into myself…Colorin particular, I should like to know more about. I have long thought it should be an integralpart of form composition…China completely revolutionized my sense of form. Instead ofthrusting aside space, as do the shouldering domes and towers of the Western world, theChinese 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 intercon-

nected: “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) fund-

ing.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 bythe federal government, which I was supposed to follow, which simply put people out on thestreet 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: ACSparkplug, Fisher Body, Chevrolet, and Buick and in the center, center city. And I saw thewhole traffic as a fluctuation back and forth every day of people in these five directions, andtherefore 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 incrediblelabor I had, the number of drivers who would be deflected from the other routes and wouldfollow it.

In the middle of my work, along came representatives of the Federal Government inWashington, and they said to me sternly, “Young man, you have not followed the guidelinesof the United States Government, and you are now fired.” So I said, “alright, but I mightremind you that I’ve already spent two million dollars, and there is nobody in the world whocan take over my job now and finish the survey, because I am the only person in the worldwho knows the technology that I’ve created.” And so they looked a little sheepish, and wentback and were never heard from again.33

In a letter to his parents, dated November 22, 1937, Bacon wrote, “Traffic sur-

vey 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 work-

ers, on contract. That is, if the worker defaulted on one month’s payment, the devel-

oper 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 werehung. The sheriff was coming the next day to evict the family because the father had notreceived any money from General Motors for weeks and could not make the last payment onhis 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 mod-

ern-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 sendtheir debutante daughters out into the real world and see how the other half lived. So theyorganized this group of those young ladies from New York and Long Island to FlintMichigan, 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 fed-eral program for subsidizing housing of the lower-income families and I was deeply hurt bythat. 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 publichousing project. And we thought of course 90% of the people in Flint, Michigan are reallyvery 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 GeneralMotors 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 FutureIn order to do my planning I had to escape into the future and shut the door sothere was nobody around to tell me it couldn’t be done…The one inevitable factabout life is that the future will be the contemporary reality. The second fact is thatthe 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 move-

ment 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 pres-

sured local leaders to quash the bill, and Philadelphia returned to politics as usual, cor-

rupt 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 admin-

istrators 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 civicgroup. The proposals for a new City Charter for Philadelphia had been defeated the previ-ous spring. The political leaders responsible for this had won the November elections. TheCity of Philadelphia had practically no borrowing capacity at a time when public improve-ments 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. Thatman with that vision, and I repeat that I’ve never seen anything like it since. He penetratedmy soul with his vision. I made the resolve that come Hell or high water, I would neverbudge out of this city and that I would put my life’s blood on the line to make it as good as Icould, 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 rela-

tively 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 atten-

tion 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 its62

“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 cur-

rent 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 byWidener’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 offi-

cials.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 recom-

mended 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 hous-

ing.”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 thatHugh Pomeroy did was to go up to the mayor, sitting in the facing table, to shake his fingerbeneath the mayor’s nose and say, “and you, Mr. Mayor, are responsible for the slums ofPhiladelphia because you turned down the $19 million of public housing money.” Well mysoul sank to the bottom of my feet and I was so horrified that I ran out of the room and wentout to my country house and shouted at the trees for two days. And of course I thought mycareer was totally ruined because…the $19 million [was something] The PhiladelphiaHousing 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 encour-

aged 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 pickedup the paper in the morning and overnight the mayor had been killed. What had happenedwas he was riding with his daughter and slammed the door shut with his overcoat in thedoor 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 recom-

mended 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 “wide-

spread 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 submit-

ting 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, gen-

tlemen, 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 adopt-

ed 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 theCity Council; two members to be heads of City departments, one of them to be the Directorof Public Works and one members to be a member of the Board of Education; and five mem-bers to be persons of suitable qualifications who hold no office, position, or employment ofprofit 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 divergentpurposes, and we all agreed on a slate of five people for the citizen members which we sentto Mayor Samuel, who as you know was part of the old Republican regime…And lo andbehold 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, aunion 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 everafter…[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 ittakes world leadership and where it really attacks its gut problems and where it really doesinspire 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.

69

Figure 3.1 (Ezra Stoller)

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 pres-

ent-day cityscape. Next came Bacon’s Time-Space Machine. Then there was an enor-

mous 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 build-

ings 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, accord-

ing 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

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.

71

Figure 3.3 (Ezra Stoller)

Figure 3.2 (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 land-

scape. 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 apart-

ments 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 magnifi-

cent 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 “Samuel72

Figure 3.4 (Ezra Stoller)

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 thePlanning Commission and [Hopkinson] would be there to observe them in action, out ofwhich they would select the superior one and offer him the job…Well, Mr. Hopkinson didexactly 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 ofthose dumbheads is going to be my boss?” So next morning I informed Mr. Hopkinson afterhe 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’llarrange 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’tthink. 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 wasgoing 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 biologi-

cal 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.

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• • •

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-look-

ing Republican economist, Robert “Buck” Sawyer, employed by the Bureau of

Municipal Research, was rapidly recording substantive data on the extent of the gov-

ernment’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

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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 ofPhiladelphia voted for the new Charter, and 159,607 voted against it. Thus approved, thePhiladelphia 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

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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 suc-

cessor, 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 qual-

ified 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 phi-

losophy 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.

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4. Symbolic Historical MemoryThere 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 envi-

ronment 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.

Another example of responding to symbolic historical memory has to do with

the planning of Philadelphia’s Delaware riverfront, Penn’s Landing. Bacon commis-

sioned 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

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

firm, Geddes, Brecher, Qualls and Cunningham. He also worked with Bacon as chair-

man of the Advisory Board of Design for Society Hill.1

Geddes came to Bacon with a design for Penn’s Landing comprised of sever-

al 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 fol-

low 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.

81

Figure 4.2 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission, electronically edited by the author)

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 differ-

ent 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.

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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-chang-

ing. At any period in time we have a different interpretation and understanding of his-

torical 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 sym-

bols 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 philos-

ophy: planning is a continuous process that creates a connection between past, pres-

ent, 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 con-

tribution to the City since its inception, as well as its original design. The Bulletin arti-

cle read:

[Kahn] looks at Philadelphia and finds it inadequate in this age. So he has mapped out afuturama Philadelphia…Mr Kahn describes it this way. ‘The drawing I have made…showsan ideal use of the Philadelphia site as a functioning metropolis. Existing buildings havebeen 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.

85

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

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 dedi-

cated for Philadelphia and the surrounding liberties.

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

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

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 sys-

tem 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, residen-

tial space for development, and a system of ori-

entation that related to the two rivers. When

taken together these principles interlock to form

a beautifully successful whole.

88

Figure 4.5 (Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller)

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

Figure 4.6 (Source: Tatum)

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 build-

ings, two hundred years earlier. This is evidence that the original plan was still guid-

ing 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 mas-

sive, 548-foot tower.25 The statue was a fitting tribute to the man still recognized as the

city’s founding father.

Bacon felt that “center square” should be both the physical and symbolic cen-

ter 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.

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Figure 4.7 (Source: Mauger)

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 signifi-

cantly altered by the Benjamin Franklin Parkway—a grand boulevard connecting the

downtown to Fairmount Park, named for the same “Faire Mount” noted on the origi-

nal 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 muse-

um, 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 demo-

cratic 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 evi-

dence 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 want-

ed his city placed on flat, solid land, where a grid made sense. The Liberties and sur-

rounding 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 pat-

tern 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.

93

Figure 4.8 (Source: John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965, p. 265)

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

95

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

5. Planning the Far NortheastEdmund Bacon: when you came was the whole idea of the opportunity that the FarNortheast 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 inter-

ested 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 ances-

tors, the Comlys, settled on 500 acres of land there.3 He also knew there was a hous-

ing 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.

96

Figure 5.1 (Source: Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Northeast Philadelphia and Why, 1928)

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 prece-

dent 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.

97

Figure 5.2 (Source: David B. Brownlee, Building the City Beautiful, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989)

Indeed, the gridiron was the guiding force in early nineteenth-century devel-

opment, 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” con-

cept, 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

98

Figure 5.3 (Source: Reps, p. 345)

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 fam-

ily 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 impossi-

ble,” 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

Figure 5.4 (Source: Mary Lou Williamson, Greenbelt: History of a New Town, Norfolk: Donning, 1997)

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 cen-

tury, heavy automobile traffic overcrowded residential streets. Bacon sought to

address this problem, in his new kind of neighborhood street pattern. He took a seg-

ment 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 hous-

es along it. Then Bacon curved the entire orthogonal grid, so that it fit in the stream

valleys of the Far Northeast.

100

Figure 5.5 (Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller)

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 val-

leys 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 residen-

tial loop streets. Bacon envisioned dense row

houses, curving around the loop streets.

These design principles created a cohe-

sive design for a way to plan an urban neighbor-

hood that was not gridiron.

101

Figure 5.6 (Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller)

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 coordi-

nated 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 else-

where 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

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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 topog-

raphy…[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

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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.

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

Figure 5.7 (Philadelphia City Planning Commission)

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 devel-

opers 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 develop-

ers 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 ini-

tially 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.

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

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

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 sub-

urban-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 neigh-

borhood 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 classifi-

cation 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 compro-

mise 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 dedi-

cated 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 develop-

ments in the Far Northeast with C-1 zoning.

108

109

Figure 5.9 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission)

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.

110

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

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 circu-

lar loop street, because the houses are

angled along it, one’s view terminates

in the space between houses. The image

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 fea-

ture 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 poten-

tial 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 back-

yards. 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

Figure 5.11 (Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission,“Annual Report, 1957)

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 develop-

ments.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.

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 com-

panies 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

Figure 5.12 (Shari Cooper)

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 ProcessRecent events in Philadelphia have proved incontrovertibly that, given a clearvision of a “design idea,” the multiplicity of wills that constitutes our contemporarydemocratic process can coalesce into positive, unified action on a scale largeenough 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 underly-

ing 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 novery specialized directive or purpose of his own, but who has the “drive” to bring to realitythe 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 prin-

ciples: “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 grid-

iron. He envisioned a hierarchy of streets, then laid out a system of residential clus-

ters, 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.

115

Figure 6.1 (Gregory Heller and Edmund Bacon)

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.

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-

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

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.

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Figure 6.2 (Gregory Heller)

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

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.

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

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 neigh-

borhoods. 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

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

Imaging the Future

Almost nobody believes that there really is a future. Those who claim to be futurists aremostly technologists, playing. Those who take it seriously are immediately branded ivorytower dreamers, and therefore irrelevant to real life.

Yet the future is the one immutable reality. It is coming with indomitable force. It is going todetermine every aspect of our lives, or our deaths, for that matter. And we systematicallypretend it is not there.

I have spent most of my life projecting in detail what I wanted different parts of Philadelphiato become. Now…I can look back and see, in precise detail, how the present reality ofPhiladelphia compares with or deviates from my fifty or sixty year-old predictions of what itwould 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.

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Figure 6.3 (Philadelphia City Planning Commission)

Of course, an organizing concept is dead if it sits in a person’s brain. The plan-

ner 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, cre-

ating 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 com-

municate that future, largely explains why he was so successful.

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 com-

municate the idea that you guys could live down here.”9

In the 1960s, the administration of Temple University hit a standstill in nego-

tiations 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

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

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 plan-

ning (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, func-

tion 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.

The Collective Unconscious

According to Bacon, the “collective unconscious” is the public’s understand-

ing 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.

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

The process of an idea entering and becoming rooted in the collective uncon-

scious 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 pub-

lic’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 creat-

ed 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.

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Figure 6.4 (Philadelphia City Planning Commission, “Market East Plaza,” May 1958)

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 some-

one even has to see the reality before it can become rooted in the collective uncon-

scious. In one way or another, the planner must image the future in a way to inject the

organizing concept into the collective unconscious.

Democratic Feedback

In Bacon’s method, the planner begins the planning process with an organiz-

ing 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, view-

ing 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

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

to a concept before it is built. This is both the beauty and the danger of Bacon’s plan-

ning 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 fur-

ther 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, com-

munity 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.

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

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PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING

In order to be a city planner one must be ableto create an organizing concept.

Making the future real is achieved byinseminating the collective unconscious

with an organizing concept.

That is: A planner makes the future real bygetting people to understand his/her idea

as if it were their own.

Through the feedback cycle, the planner’s ideaactually becomes their own.

The greatest proof of the power of an idea iswhen the planner is forgotten by the endof the process, but his vision gets built.

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THE PLANNING PROCESS

1. Conceive the organizing conceptresponding to the individual

realities of an area.

2. Communicate the physical design of theorganizing concept.

3. Inject the three-dimensional aspects of theconcept into the collective

unconscious.

4. Set into motion the democraticfeedback cycle to allow actors totranslate the three-dimensional

design into built projects.

5. Extend the organizing concept to nearbyareas and repeat the process.

7. The ReactionCity planning has reached the end of a cycle. What is needed is a really dynamicand 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 con-

sensus.” 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 consen-

sus 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

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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” neigh-

borhoods 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.

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Figure 7.1 (Source: Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., American Civilization, London: Thames and Hudson, 1972, p. 219)

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 cur-

rent 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-

quately maintained, simply forcing the poor

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Figure 7.2 (Source: Garvin, p. 154)

Figure 7.3 (Source: Boston College, “A DigitalArchive of American Architecture,” available online at

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/)

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 hadcaved in because of leaks in the plumbing and large holes in the living room walls…a house-hold of five slept in one bedroom…the mayor himself talked about [units in which]…sewageand 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 peo-

ple 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 exclusive-

ly confined to low income housing.”10

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Though public housing was the most highly criticized result of postwar plan-

ning, 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 hous-

ing 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 irrel-

evant 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 ordi-

nary 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

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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 proj-

ects, 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 docu-

menting 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

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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 pub-

lic 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 fed-

eral 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.

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Figure 7.4 (Source: Universal Companies, available online at http://www.universalcompanies.org/)

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 misguid-

ed, 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 wasmaking his. At least, that’s the way it was, once upon a time. Suddenly, all sorts of dragonswere rising up to take it away from him [Bacon]. There are these people in the ghettos with

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their demands for black power and the right to undo the mess that planning and renewalhave made of their lives…Ed Bacon was used to the principle of the squeaky wheel. But thatwas no longer just a squeak out there. It was getting harder and harder to put a dab of oilhere and a dab there and then get on with what was really important—the shaping of hiscity—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 segre-gation…The plan did not proceed out of a process that engaged those whom it would mostaffect, 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 resi-

dents 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 clear-

ance.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

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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 sen-

timent of this statement, it seems that people have forgotten the Gallery was the rea-

son 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

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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.

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8. Inspiring ConsensusAt the beginning of a good design…are not forces, but…a creative idea held up as avision, 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 con-

sensus 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 partic-

ipants. Conversely, mediating consensus gives its participants the illusion of partici-

pation, 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 listen-

ing and patience pile up, that frustration turns into an outright contempt for the pub-

lic.”2 Satullo’s solution to this problem is the same one that planners across the coun-

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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 con-

temporary 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 informa-

tion, technical assistance and guidance as each community moves through the [plan-

ning] 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-

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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 develop-

ers 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-

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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 con-

cept, 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 feel-

ing 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 collec-

tive 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

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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 car-

ried the concepts along the process, those concepts actually became their own.

Bacon does not necessarily value his vision over anyone else’s. He simply cre-

ates 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 inhubris? 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 planwill continue to be the best plan until somebody comes up with a better one. Should this hap-pen I will be the first to rise up and shout “HUZZAH, let’s get on with it,” and gladly throwmy 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 instillin its members a far stronger desire and capacity to take the lead in both community build-ing and community reform than a normative culture that emphasizes equality and brotherlylove, explicitly rejecting the need for hierarchy, class and authority.10

At the same time Bacon’s independent nature clashes with his Quaker mod-

esty. To anyone who knows Ed Bacon, the planning process I have described contrasts

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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 architec-

ture 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, itwill have to face up to the barrier created by I-95. Otherwise, the city has little choice but toaccept 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 bombard-

ed 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 success-

ful 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 suc-

cessful 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 watchingNew York, demanding that we create nothing short of the best new public place. We will dothat—and more—if we understand correctly who Moses was, what he accomplished, how hedid 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-

ment documents, and in manipulating politi-

cal 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

Figure 8.1 (Source: Robert Caro, The Power Broker,New York: Vintage, 1975)

into positions of power. After Moses built the Triboro Bridge (1929-36) and estab-

lished 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 devel-

op 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 pub-

lic’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 sup-

port of parks and proposed a massive system of “parkways.” Of course they were actu-

ally 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 asyou’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 plan-

ning method took existing public backing and manipulated it to support his ends:

“Whenever possible, rather than compete with the very people whose support he need-

ed 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, tak-

ing 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 differ-

ent 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 organiz-

ing 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 ofJones Beach. He’s more responsible for the design of Jones Beach than any architect orengineer 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.

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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 his-

tory 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.

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9. The Far Northeast TodayOxford Circle. Torresdale. Bustleton. Frankford. Rhawnhurst. These are just a fewof 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 driventhrough 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 real-

ity 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 respond-

ed 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 architectur-

al style, as shown below, creating a stable, yet lively and diverse urban environment.

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 some-

times 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

Figure 9.1 (Gregory Heller)

are too often not well-maintained. Importantly, the automobile affected the develop-

ments 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.

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

Figure 9.2 (Gregory Heller)

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 com-

pletely 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.

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 resi-

dential 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

Figure 9.3 (Gregory Heller)

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.

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

Figure 9.4 (Gregory Heller)

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 specif-

ic 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 limit-

ed 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 neighbor-

hoods, though each different in character, share an image of how people live and func-

tion. 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.

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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 val-

leys, 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

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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 per-

son 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.

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Figure 9.5 (Gregory Heller)

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, sur-

rounded 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 misunder-

stood—much like their creator.

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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 profes-

sion 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 per-

son’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 exceeding-

ly 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

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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.

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Figure B.1 (Bacon Papers)

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 outthe physical plan for the Far Northeast in 1954.

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Edmund Bacon: When did you come to theplanning commission?Irving Wasserman: Okay, the PlanningCommission job came up as the result of a civilservice exam that I took in Boston, and you calledme at the Massachusetts Planning Agency (I hada temporary job).B: Oh, I called him. Did you hear that?W: Yeah, he called me, and he said, “come ondown. I want to meet you. You passed the civilservice exam. Blah blah blah.” And I said, “whois this?” and you said, “Ed Bacon.” And I said,“Who are you?” I didn’t even know who he was!This was 1954, and I came down.B: Well was it my charming voice that attractedyou?W: It was a job that was available. And do youknow who told me I should take it? Hideo Sasaki.B: What!W: Hideo Sasaki.B: He did?W: He said…B: Oh my goodness! He was a famous landscapearchitect.W: He was my advisor at Harvard. I had justgraduated the graduate school.B: Oh, you had just graduated, so you came rightover from Harvard—right from Harvard toPhiladelphia.W: I had two jobs available. One was in NewYork and one was in Philadelphia. And he said…Hideo said, “Take the one in Philadelphia at theCity Planning Commission. It’s great. You’ll beworking with Ed Bacon, blah blah blah.”B: “Blah, blah, blah” is right.W: So that’s how it happened. I came down. Ithink it was in June or July and met you anddecided to show up around August, I think.

B: And again the date.W: ’54.B: ’54. That was two years into the Clark admin-istration. Was Penn Center going by the time yougot here?W: Penn Center was still to be torn down. PennStation [Broad Street Station]. I was here when itwas being removed.B: Well in ’52 the last train went out of BroadStreet Station, come to think of it. I was on thattrain with my children. So you came down.W: That’s right, I came down, and I think I wasintroduced to Willo von Moltke and uh…B: Willo von Moltke. He was my head designer.He was a German aristocrat. He was the grandsonof the great general von Moltke.W: And do you know that also his brother wasinvolved in the attempt on Hitler’s life?B: I didn’t know that.W: Yeah, his brother. And his brother was dis-covered along with all of the others and he wasexecuted.B: Was he killed?W: Yeah.B: My God! I didn’t know that. Oh I’m so gladyou told me that. Willo of course was a very inti-mate friend of mine because he was… Well mygoodness.W: And Willo was my initial supervisor when Icame to the planning commission.B: What was the first job you worked on?W: Planning the Northeast.B: It was ’52. When was the ordinance passed?W: ’54. I started working in ’54. The zoning ordi-nance had just… When I arrived it had all reallybeen passed. There had been an attempt at allo-cating C-1 zoning areas in the northeast. When Icame down the initial allocation of potentiallyzoned areas was established.

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

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B: Good. Well do you have your drawings?H: Right here.B: We are interested to know about these draw-ings that Greg has.Gregory Heller: Well this is from thePreliminary Plan of ‘55. That’s something youworked on, I assume.W: There it is. Yep. Okay. Okay.B: Now were those drawings already done beforeyou came?W: No. I did them.B: You did that. Well look at that diagrammaticone there. Did you do that one?W: It had been established, I think this was drawnup as an illustration for a magazine for one of theannual reports.B: Were you here then?W: Yes.B: Did you supervise?W: I supervised.B: That drawing?W: Yeah.B: You did that drawing and you did that draw-ing?W: Yes. I did those.B: Well, by golly, Greg. There you’ve got it. Thiswas your conception?W: Yep.B: Where did you get the idea from?W: You.B: Ah! Yeah! I hope you heard that.H: I heard that.W: And it was up to me to take this, then, andmake it specific-this area here and this area here.Most of these were part of the Master SubdivisionPlan that I did. And these were just fill-in areas,tentatively before the detailed… This became arace track. This was the Parkwood development.I have the detailed plan of the Parkwood devel-opment.B: Well we have a million questions to ask you,but I think we were very interested in knowingthis particular thing. So why don’t we now handthe microphone over to you, and why don’t youjust explain to us how it all developed?W: Glad to see this. In my notes that I brought, Iam referring to this area where the C-1 or therowhouse communities were allocated-theseareas in here. They weren’t all allocated for the

entire area. Some of them were already in semi-detached and detached housing in here.H: Yeah, we saw that.B: Yeah we did. Well… Oh, damn, I had a goodquestion. What was it? I guess I can’t evenremember it. Well forget it.H: This is a map…W: I brought some stuff but…H: This is the area here.W: This is all my design. I did these detaileddesigns. This is Denny, Parkwood, Morrell Tract.This is built? I don’t know who built this. I thinkit was built after I left.B: Where’s Robindale on there?W: Right here.B: That’s the one that…W: Denny.B: Denny built.W: Yeah, I have an aerial photograph. This iswhere Denny started out, in Normandy.B: Well in Normandy did he build houses withthe garages in the front.W: Yes. Well, these were single family.B: Oh, oh, oh. The first set of garages in the frontwas over there in Robindale by Denny.W: Yeah, and I have a photograph.B: You have a what?W: I have a photograph slide.B: Did you inspire him to put the garages infront?W: Yes.B: Huh!W: I said to him. I said to all of them…B: Holy cripple!W: I said to them, “We can’t put rear drivewaysin these houses because we don’t have gridiron.We have basically units that swing around and weshould open up the rears to open space, garden,patios.” And they bought it. B: This is all being recorded? Well I just have tosit back absolutely stunned. But you know thatonce that was done the entire industry switchedover and never built a garage in the back.W: There was never any… This was a definitedeviation with rowhouse design. Opening up…In fact the kitchens were taken from the back tothe front, and the rear was the living room. Andmost of these rowhouses have the living room inthe back so they can open up into the gardens and

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the patios. No driveways. That was a major,major deviation from the tradition of the builders.B: Now how did you manage to get that idea?W: Denny.B: Oh, I thought you said you told Denny. He toldyou!W: I told Denny, that’s the way it would probablywork and he agreed with me. B: Well I asked you how did you get the idea forwhat you told Denny?W: We got the idea because the driveways wouldhave wrecked the circular idea, the U-shapedstreets, the cul-de-sacs. All of that would not lenditself to rear driveways. And I recommended theydo the front driveways.B: And you did the actual negotiations yourselfwith the builders? And I wasn’t any part of that.True?W: Yeah.B: And I wasn’t any part whatsoever of thisamazing idea that you told Denny.W: And Denny was demonstrating the fact thatthe rear driveway was… front driveway, frontgarage was sellable. And therefore, developersand builders in the future adopted that idea. So Ihave to credit Denny with demonstrating at theinitial… at the beginning the fact that…B: Well but I might remind you of the fact thatyou could never have done that with Orleans orKorman. They already told me you can’t do thatbecause no housewife is willing to take hergarbage pail through the front parlor. Did youknow that?W: Yeah.B: Greg, do you have any comments or ques-tions?H: Not yet. This is fascinating, though.B: But I mean, really Irv, what you have beenrecorded there. You as a single individual havechanged the entire pattern of row housing inPhiladelphia.W: [laughs]B: And it never went back to the old again.W: No, it didn’t.H: Well, here’s my question. If no one was will-ing before Denny to build the garage in the front,why do you think it was that he was willing to dothat?W: Greg, the nature of the configuration ofunits… You see units were maximum of ten units,

then you had a break. And the breaks were at rightangles and curves, and so forth. And to put drive-ways at the back of this kind of configuration, asagainst units that are lined up against a gridiron,is senseless. It’s expensive. It just doesn’t makesense. So Denny, I think realized this right fromthe beginning and he accepted the notion of frontgarages by virtue of saving a lot of money.Additional paving in the back was expensive. Byputting the short driveway to the front garage wassensible, and the configuration of the streets andloop streets and cul-de-sacs was supportive ofthat idea.B: Well now, you tried that idea out on Orleansand Korman before you went to Denny?W: Orleans didn’t have C-1 land.B: He didn’t have what?W: He didn’t have the… At the time Orleans wasbuilding semi-detached twins and single family.He did not have any of the Morrell Tract.B: Well what about Korman?W: Korman agreed. Korman was a follow upafter Denny and the Morrell. He developed his C-1 land after Denny and Morrell.B: Well Morrell preceded Denny.W: No, Denny preceded Morrell.B: Denny was the first one to build?W: Yes.B: Well I didn’t know that. So that you set thepattern with the Denny project with this entiresystem in mind and you established the idea ofthe garage in front before anybody else startedwork. But I have this powerful impression. Wellmaybe I went to Orleans and Korman and said,“Do the garages in front.” But Greg, it’s probablyall a mental illusion.W: Also Ed, Mac Guess, Eleanor Guess’s hus-band, wrote up an article about the interlockingcul-de-sac idea that I came up with. I just did thissketch at home. And it made a lot of sense. Yousee this area…B: Is it there? Was it actually built? Move overcloser because I can’t… Was that built beforeDenny or after Denny?W: After.B: And that has the garages in the front?W: Yep.B: Oh well, Greg, are you getting this. This Iabsolutely did not know. This whole… Well,there really could be a map where we show thesequence. Where is Denny on here?

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H: Denny is up here.W: So glad to see this drawing. Who did this?B: City Planning Commission. This has all thebuildings on it. The City Planning Commissionspends all their money on maps. They never usetheir brains at all. But you remember we had,compared to this, we had the most primitive toolsto work with.W: You see the nature of the groupings, whetherthey are loops or cul-de-sacs, to put in a reardriveway—something like that—is stupid. It’sstupid and costly. So the front garage idea, whichwas written up in the Bulletin at the time by MacGuess. I don’t know if you remember him.B: Of course I do. He was an old son-of-a-bitch,but I remember.W: Yeah, you and he had some words. His wifeEleanor…B: Worked for me, and her husband attacked mein the press all the time.W: She was… She realized that there was a storyin the rowhouse idea and she brought Mac in, andMac interviewed me, and I scoured my recordsand files, but I couldn’t find the article.B: Well what year was it?W: 1954 or ’55.B: Well there, Greg, 1954 or 1955. His name wasMac Guess. G-U-E-S-S, and it’s about C-1… Is itabout C-1 zoning?W: Yeah it…B: Would it be your name?W: Yeah, my name and picture. I was in thepaper.B: Why didn’t you keep it, you nut?W: I should have. I am a nut.B: Now I do have to inject there, that I have sostrongly the memory in which I visualize myselfsaying to at least Korman, “Here is an idea whichI think you should go for.” And they said to me,“No housewife in Philadelphia would allow ahouse where she has to take the garbage out infront… taking it through her front parlor.”W: Was that Murray Izzard? He was the primaryspokesman for…B: Well who were the other major builders? Iused the name Orleans, but that may have beenwrong. Well anyway, I don’t remember if it wasMurray Izzard. I would have thought not. Ofcourse he was on the Planning Commission.W: Yeah he was…

B: An executive of the Korman constructioncompany.W: I brought… There! There! This is my draw-ing.B: Well my God! If you want information just goto that guy. Isn’t that amazing?W: This is my drawing. I did this drawing.B: Is this attributed to Mac Guess? Where’s yourphotograph? Does it refer to you there?W: No.B: That’s the way they do.W: You could see the way… you see this cul-de-sac is one like that. And the grouping, you can seethe way the interlocking arrangements work.[reading from article] This design developed bythe Planning Commission’s experts has beenadapted for Morrell Park. Among its features areprivacy, elimination of through traffic, provisionof living areas opening onto rear gardens. Nowthose were my words.B: There’s something.W: You, for some reason, Ed, were aware thatA.P. Orleans was a large land owner in the north-east, but A.P. Orleans did not develop initiallyany of the rowhouse, C-1 areas.B: So are you telling me the Denny tract preced-ed Morrell?W: Absolutely.B: Well I’m so staggered by the whole thing, Ican’t even think, so I imagine I’ll shut up.W: It was followed very quickly by Morrell.B: Good old Morrell. Who built Morrell, do youremember?W: I forgot the names. A couple of young Italianbuilders. [Geldman and Curcillo]B: Oh, really? Young Italian builders didMorrell?W: They bought the land. I think the Morrell tractwas up for sale and Webber was the land owner,and Webber we were trying to convince to devel-op the C-1 loop idea, sold to these young devel-opers and they were very happy to extend row-housing in the Far Northeast. They had been, tomy knowledge, a traditional, rear driveway, 16-foot-wide, rowhouse… C-1 said 18 is the mini-mum width. Are you familiar with the zoning?H: Yeah, a little bit.W: I’ve got some notes in here.B: But do you think the widening to 18 feet wasa good thing or a bad thing?

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W: A good thing.B: Were you instrumental in doing that or was I?W: That was you. I came and the C-1 zoning wasalready established. So you were the one…B: I hope you heard that. When you came was thewhole idea of the opportunity that the FarNortheast had for experimentation… Was thatalready there or did you invent it?W: I inherited it.B: You inherited it.W: When I arrived I was told that the areas for C-1 were already allocated in the Northeast. Andmy job was to get into the details of the subdivi-sion work.B: But you weren’t given any suggestions abouthow to do that. You created all that yourself. Oh Iknow what I wanted to ask you…W: The loop idea was already established.B: Where was it? Oh, the idea was already estab-lished before you came.W: Yeah, that was you.B: Ah now. Well, damnit, I love hearing that. WellFred Thorpe had to approve all your plans. Didyou know Fred Thorpe?W: I dealt with one of his underlings, Al Moser.B: Oh, Al Moser. Was Al Moser cooperative orresistant?W: Ed, the board of review consisted of thestreets department, sewer department, waterdepartment, traffic engineer. I’ve got it all in mynotes. They were all resistant to the new streetsystem. They fought and they didn’t like cul-de-sacs. Why? Gridiron was all they were familiarwith. They didn’t like cul-de-sacs, the waterdepartment, sewer department because there weredead sewer lines and water lines, and they werefighting it. However, we kept harping away at thesimplicity of the layouts, and there was a hierar-chy of street systems we were trying to imposeand the gridiron didn’t fit the land.B: Well that’s all true, but how the devil did youwin the argument?W: Persistence and the realization that the CityPlanning Commission designers were trying—you and Willo and I—were trying to introducesomething that fit the land. The other thing isstream valleys. The stream valleys had to be pre-served and we had to stay away from the streamvalleys and concentrate the roads and preservethe stream valleys. And when we came out withthis stuff, the publications, this sort of thing, and

it was all in the paper. I think the builders decid-ed they would accept it and they would file theirplans in accordance with our designs. It wasn’teasy.B: Well, Fred Thorpe. Did you work directly withFred Thorpe?W: No.B: Was he alive then?

W: Fred Thorpe was one of the close… I think itwas assistant to Dave Small.B: Absolutely. But he was head of the Board ofSurveyors that had had total control of the streetplans since 1854.W: Yes, yes.B: Did you have personal confrontations withhim?W: Yes.B: Did he object to what you were doing?W: No.B: He didn’t?W: No, he conceded and Al Moser, who tookorders from Fred Thorpe, went along with ourwork.B: My God! Well, you confronted him directly?W: Fred Thorpe didn’t come to Board of Reviewmeetings. Al Moser did.B: But Fred Thorpe had absolute power underthis.W: Yes, yes. Thorpe… he was willing to goalong. I don’t know if you had any private ses-sions with him.B: Well we do know. It was not long before youcame that the basic city charter said, and I wrotethis provision, that the legal placing of streetsmust have the approval of both Fred Thorpe andthe Planning Commission, and by that I cut offhis power, socko, because he had been theabsolute, total czar of street planning during theentire gridiron period under the charter.W: Wasn’t the subdivision code written at thattime?B: Well we wrote it. I wrote it directly and I wrotethe provision that landowners must come to theplanning commission before they made theirplans.W: The builders, land owners, would come in andmeet with the planning commission, mainlymyself, and we would hand them a plan.H: And how did they respond to that?W: They accepted it. They were allowed to make

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little variations.B: [laughs] It’s called review.W: Some variations we left it up to them, if theydidn’t want to do a loop this way, extend the loopa little longer. If they wanted two cul-de-sacsinstead of three cul-de-sacs. We made all kinds ofadjustments.H: Is that drawing over there pretty much whatyou gave them?W: No. This is the plan I gave them. I blew it upfrom the cover. Whyte’s cover. Have you seenthis book?H: Yes.W: I took this drawing and I enlarged it. This isthe plan I developed and turned over of theMorrell tract.B: The idea of defining the drainage areas of thestream valley, now that was already establishedbefore you came?W: Yeah.B: See I’m checking you about this. My recollec-tion is that Sam Baxter (he was the Commissionerof Water), you had to work with him, that hecame to me and said, “in the far northeast weshould define the stream valleys’ borders that arenecessary for their drainage, to avoid puttingthem in sewers,” and that we should require thededication by the property owners of that neces-sary land adjacent to the streams before theycould get approval to do anything on their land.W: Except for one thing. The Fairmount ParkCommission was to accept the land and they did-n’t want it. That was a hangup. The FairmountPark Commission’s budget was shot. They didn’thave the capability of accepting land and main-taining it. And when they came to the realizationthat their position in Philadelphia would beenhanced by having additional land, they went upin the name, they decided to go along. But theywere fighting the acceptance of stream valleysinitially.B: Well do they own all that land now?W: Yeah, sure.H: All of this color green on the map isFairmount Park.B: But the… was it already accepted by the timeyou got here that the land was going to them? Iguess the first question was, who drew the bor-der? Did you draw the borders of the land? Youdid that yourself?W: In the master subdivision plan my responsi-

bility was to delineate where the lines of dedica-tion should occur because it was very general andwas zip-a-tone pattern on the Master Plan. It wasthe detailed plan that established the line ofdemarcation between residential and stream.B: Did you have fights about that?W: Yep.B: Did you win?W: Yeah.B: Holy crow! I mean what we have learned in…Whoo!H: In which year was the Master SubdivisionPlan finally published?W: It was never really published. It became theguide to the… Every time a developer wouldcome in we gave him the detailed layout. Weactually laid out the townhouses specifically. Weshowed them detailed layouts and we handedthem. And they hired their staff—their engineers,landscape architects—to file the preliminary plat,based on our designs. As a matter of fact, basedon our designs for the whole area. We did detailedlayouts… This area in here, I did all that, and thiswas Korman’s Parkwood. You see this area inhere, I did this. That was my design. It was for abuilder by the name of… [pause] So manynames. My point is, in the far northeast we did allthe detailed layouts, regardless of whether theywere subdivision or C-1 or not. My point is thedevelopers would come in and sit down with usand we did design. We did design.B: Were they engineering drawings or were theyarchitectural?W: They were layout land plans. They would hiretheir people to lay out, in detail and the streetsdepartment would do the city plans. And the citystreets department would do the city plans. Theywere responsible for engineering the streets anddesigning the sewer system. They did all thework. That was so atypical. Other planning com-missions sit back and passively redline otherdrawings. We in the planning commission did thedrawings. They were then turning back to us 90%of what we did.B: Did you have fights with them?W: Yeah.B: How did you adjudicate fights?W: We enabled to go to bat for them before theboard of review. Board of review was a criticalthing. We were their supporters because we didlayout and design and we were their advocates

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when it came to the board of review. When theplans came in it was practically what we hadasked for and laid out, and if they were devia-tions, we would probably go along with someminor changes. So we would go to the board ofreview with these agencies and present them. Thebuilders were not at the board of review. We werethe presenters at the board of review. Buildersnever went to the board of review.B: Who was the board of review?W: I ended up as sort of the chairman.B: Who did?W: I was Chairman.B: You were reviewing your own work?W: Yes.B: Hey, with that in the book you’ll go to jail.W: I was reviewing the recommended plans thatwe turned to the builder. The builder returned theplans as prepared by their engineers, architects,and then we presented the plans as supportersbefore the board of review. Streets department,water department, sewer department, FHA, traf-fic agency and later parallel parking commission.B: How the hell did you get to be Chairman ofthat?W: I wrote the agenda. When the plans came inI… you know… they were there to review pre-liminary plats. Who was the guy who was respon-sible for receiving preliminary plats, distributingthem all around, scheduling the meetings, writingup the agenda? Irv.B: You have a huge scandal here. I think it’s…Well Irv now…W: It was no scandal. It was all part of the subdi-vision code.B: I would like to sort of relax now and just haveyou explain how in the hell you did that.W: How in the hell I did what?B: That you became the man who reviewed yourown work in the name of the power of the city ofPhiladelphia.W: Because builders would come in and ask forzoning changes, number one.B: Well you had to review all the zoning changesin the Northeast. The Planning Commission did.Did you tell the Planning Commission what toapprove and what not to approve?W: When they came in it was routine. Because Ihad prepared master plans, detailed layouts, whenthey came in I would say, “This is what I recom-

mend for your area.” I would turn a plan over tothem and they would come back to us with adetailed layout. And of course if they fit in wewould accept the preliminary plat. We would rec-ommend that they be reviewed favorably by theBoard of Review and make changes that theyrequired. We did not insist on the exact detail. Wetried to get builders’ plans to conform to the mas-ter, detailed layout that we did.B: Who appointed you the Chairman of theReview Board?W: I wasn’t the chairman. I just acted as theleader of the meeting.B: You had no right?W: I wasn’t titled Chairman.B: Were you named formally Chairman of theReview Board?W: No.B: You just did it?W: I called the meeting to review preliminaryplats and circulated them and we met to reviewthem and they would… I would show them howthe preliminary plats fit in with the major area.B: Well when you came here was there already aBoard of Review and all this system set up?W: I think so.B: Well who set that up in the beginning?W: Croley…Paul Croley used to sit in and runthese things.B: He’s dead, isn’t he?W: Oh, Paul Croley died a long time ago. ButPaul Croley, he was the assistant executive direc-tor and he was very supportive of my work and hedeserves a lot of the credit for making the Boardof Review initially, and working plans throughthe Board of Review.B: Paul was a comparatively unimaginative per-son, but he apparently went ahead and insertedthe whole procedure which Irv could pick up on.W: Paul Croley was the political power in thebackground. He knew all of the big names in thegovernment, including the City Council. He wasthe city council contact in the planning commis-sion. A lot of the times and the… I think he pavedthe way for my effectiveness with the Board ofReview.B: But you see his relationship with me is veryinteresting, too. Of course you don’t know whyhe was Assistant Director of the PlanningCommission. He couldn’t be more different thanI am.

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W: He was a politician. He was political.B: But you see he also supported a wild nut likethis man.W: But he was supportive…B: You see from the point of view of our historyit’s something I’d completely forgotten, because Iwas the damn boss. And I was Paul Croley’s boss,but Croley didn’t give a damn about me and hewent ahead and did all this stuff on his own. ButI have no recollection, and you were present atthe time, how come he was my assistant directorand whether the politicians put him there to keepme in order or if I suddenly saw in a lineup, thisman is going to be my assistant because he is apolitician. Well anyway, this is all interestingbackground. Well now I will take a more passiverole and ask you to fill in what you think are thegaps of what was covered.H: Sure. Well I’d like to get a better idea of thechronology of what went on. So you started inAugust of ’54. When you came in what wasalready set up and where did you go from there?W: The zoning was established and the initial dis-trict that would accept C-1 zoning was estab-lished and the idea of the looping streets and thecircular collectors and the minor streets as loopswas initially started. This was not the exact planbut this was very much like it.H: That’s from the preliminary plan, releasedJanuary, 1955.B: That was already established.W: My job, when I arrived was to start doing adetailed plan of this area. And at that time I wasto assign where it was possible to have circularstreets and where it was possible to have smallloops and where it was possible to introduce theidea of the cul-de-sac.H: How did you determine all of that?W: How did I?H: Sure.W: I’m a landscape architect. I was able to workwith the land and see how I could design and fitthem. And this gentleman would come aroundand look over my shoulder and say, “great! That’swhat we need.” You don’t recall that. You used tocome around in the Market Street National BankBuilding, when we were in the top floor and youwere to look over my shoulder and see what I wasdoing and you were thrilled.B: But to come back again, you are now telling usthat the idea of the circular unit was already

established before you came. And that plan wasestablished before you came.W: Not exactly.B: But something of that nature.W: It was very diagrammatic.B: But the idea of preserving the stream valleyswas already there.W: My job when I came was to refine the conceptto more of a reality. How it would work, andthat’s how the cul-de-sac idea came up. And itturned out that the only street area where wecould have a complete circle was the Morrelltract. Most of the others could not accommodatecircles and have the loops work within them, sothey ended up being half loops. In the Parkwood,Korman, we have a half loop. If it were a com-plete loop it wouldn’t fit.H: I found this interesting because in The LastLandscape and in the preliminary plan, this onehere…W: That was already built.H: Oh it was?B: That was built before you came?W: DiMarco.H: So who was responsible for turning this streethere into loops? Because now these are loops.W: I think that… I’ll be damned. I didn’t real-ize…B: Is DiMarco the one we saw with all the cul-de-sacs?H: No, it’s not.W: This apparently was still left undeveloped.Between these two streets this was the first areato be built. Those streets were already on theplan... city plan. But what happened, I’m going toguess is that the back street was eliminated andthis area was rezoned to C-1 and the loops wereput in.B: Oh that’s fascinating.H: Sure is.B: Do you have that recorded in your brain?H: Yep.B: Greg, just let me ask you, where were the cul-de-sacs that we looked at.H: Oh, the cul-de-sacs were down here.B: Oh, oh.H: This was the one that we liked because it wasbordering on all this park land.B: Weren’t those cul-de-sacs?

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culation of power and streets whether it wasoverhead or underground and you have separatelines going into the individual houses. But younever plug your radio, television appliance intoany of those. You plug it directly into the wall sothere’s a transition of power. In the same way youhave expressways, major arterials, arterials, col-lector streets and residential streets. You build thehouses on residential streets. And the streetsdepartment traffic engineers were thrilled withthe fact that we are promoting that idea of a streethierarchy with developments.H: Whose ideas was the hierarchy of streets inthe northeast?W: Initially started out by… Here’s the majorarterials. Here are the minor arterials. Here arethe collector streets, the loops and the residentialstreets.H: So that was already…W: That was already established and when wedid the detailed layout we pointed out to them.B: Well now, as an adjunct to that, the actualnature of the paving which the streets departmentrequired could actually be varied according tothis hierarchical system and the loop streetswhich were only used by local traffic could belighter in construction than the connector streets.Is that correct?W: There was a big cost saving to the streets’ ini-tial construction and the builders’ costs.B: [On] the question of cost savings, and ofcourse we were almost overcome by the savingsthat resulted from allowing the stream valleys togo in their own natural courses, instead of as in allthe rest of the city where every stream was put ina sewer and every hill was cut down and so forth.That is, of course, self evident that it would havecost millions and billions to but all those streamsin sewers, but you raised a very good point,among others, that your intellectual division ofthe streets in the hierarchies according to electri-cal systems. You had the main distributors, thenyou had the local distributors and the connectionsto the houses, and I mentioned my impressionthat the actual specification that the street depart-ment would require from the contractors whenthey built these streets, meant that on the loopstreet it would only serve twenty to thirty houses,and which could not carry, would be no logic forthrough traffic on it at all, that they therefore per-mitted a lighter paving and lighter specificationthan they did on the distributor streets.

H: No, those were loops.W: I’m surprised to see this. I thought theDiMarco tract, the pattern would have just con-tinued. But apparently they stopped developing,eliminated the back street, wiped it off, struck itfrom the map. See you can see this street here.This street was supposed to hook up with thatstreet, but they rezoned it for rowhousing and C-1 housing and eliminated the semi-detached.They got more density.B: Greg, it would be worth while to go up andlook especially at DiMarco because it was righton the edge of transition.H: Right.B: So we will do that.W: This area was existing and it’s single family.This is the oldest area.H: That was already developed. So all the singlefamilies were pretty much already developed,correct?W: Yeah.H: When was Denny’s development?W: Denny’s development was probably ’55 or’56.H: And then Morrell. Because this article wasfrom 1959. Was Morrell built soon after Denny?W: Yeah, Morrell followed Denny, so it was ’58,’59.B: I didn’t realize Morrell followed Denny. I’mvery pleased to know that. So Denny was the firstbreakthrough of the idea of the garages in thefront.W: I have a slide of the initial Denny develop-ment.H: Now you came in ’54 and Denny was as earlyas ’55, and the preliminary plan came out in ’55.Did you have the detailed master subdivision planpretty much set by the time that Denny did histract? Yes? You worked pretty quickly.W: I came in ’54 and I’d say by the end of ’55 Ihad probably developed the details of the mastersubdivision plan and was able to meet withbuilders and developers and show them the idea,and how we would like the C-1 street system towork. One of the things that was very significantwas that we had a definite hierarchy of street sys-tem and I recall frequently talking about compar-ing the street system hierarchy to a power system.You run from community to community withthese high [power] lines, which were the express-ways, and within the communities you have cir-

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W: That’s true.B: Did you work all that out?W: I think the nature of the design or the hierar-chy was something the Streets Department real-ized that they could vary the amount of pavingand the amount of right of way for the residentialstreets was predominantly 50 feet right of wayand the improvement in the streets was, I wouldthink, very palatable cost-saving-wise. Later onthe streets went from 12-30-12, I think… 12-26-12 to 8-34-8. So they could accommodate the cir-culation of two rows of traffic and have parkingon it as well.B: That would be on the local loop?W: Yeah, on the local street.[not transcribed, Wasserman shows articles anddrawings]B: Greg, are you clear on the subdivision inwhich the part of it was done before C-1 and thenpart of it was done after?H: Yes. Well my understanding is that all of thesingle dwellings were done before C-1. So all ofthis. All of these houses. Then these loops wereput on here with C-1. So that’s pretty clear. Andall of the rows here are C-1. That’s a C-1.B: This is the one particularly I wanted to be surewe go over. Do you remember the name for it?H: Yeah, that’s the DiMarco.B: Oh, great!W: These are my notes I put together and I canleave these with you.

B: We can Xerox anything if you want it back.W: No, I don’t need it. I have this in my comput-er.H: Oh, great!W: This is… As I wrote these notes down, I cameup with the idea that the um… the discussioncame under three Ds. The first is “design,” thesecond was “development”—communicatingwith the designer—and the third is “depart-ment”—getting the departments of the city. Andthat’s where I wrote the three Ds.B: Three Ds. That’s wonderful! Are you going toleave that with us?W: Yes.B: Oh, that’s great.W: Let me just read you this.B: Oh, read all you like. That’s the idea of it.W: In the section, The Departments of the City:

One of the major obstacles in guiding the newstreets designs that the developers submitted, Iidentified as 90% of the Planning Commissionstaff design, was getting through the board ofreview. And the board of review consisted ofPlanning Commission staff, streets, traffic, sewerdepartment, water department, and the two… theFHA. The two major departments who had themost to say about residential design and wherethere would be deviations from traditional grid-iron were streets department and water depart-ment, sewer department. The two departmentsactually did all the engineering for the layout andconstruction of streets and sewers. Usually abuilder has to hire his engineering company, else-where, to do all this detail work, subject to reviewand approval of a government level entity. In thecity of Philadelphia, the city’s civil engineers inthe streets and sewer departments do all its work.The street layout concerned the sewer departmentbecause they didn’t approve of dead-end sewerlines. Cul-de-sac design was almost a new con-cept that was introduced at the practical and tra-ditional departments.

They finally conceded to street designs byintroducing an engineering technique whichlinked up the sewer and water lines so there neverwas a dead end, by utilizing easements. The newstreet design actually produced less street, whichhad financial advantages to both the developerand the city. Traffic engineering department wasvery supportive of these designs, which werebased on a hierarchy of street systems, basic tosound traffic engineering, which is established inproper width for right of way, based on whether astreet is a collector, an arterial or a major arterial.Residential street right of way, which was fiftyfeet, consisting of 12 sidewalk, twenty six road-way, 12 foot sidewalk and went to 8, 34 and 8.

Listen to this. The representation of theFHA, who came in and started sitting in on theboard of review. They were traditionalists. Theyhad no feeling for the C-1 design, I did. They hadtheir traditional layout. They became somewhatof an irritant to me, because they were not readyto go along. They were trained, most of them, asland planners in traditional street layoutapproach.B: Do the rest of it. This is marvelous.W: There were times…B: Marvelous!W: When the Fairmount Park Commission had

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representation at the Board of Review meetings.Since their department would have the responsi-bility of accepting the dedication of open space aspart of our design concept. At first they wereunsure that they wanted the open space, that thePlanning Commission staff had made one of theconditions of C-1 zoning, since they had nobudget that would fit them to set up a program ofcare and maintenance, not to mention improve-ments. Eventually the higher ups in the agency ofthe Fairmount Park Commission saw there weregreat advantages in the new open space system(these are my judgments) in the Far Northeast,since it made the Fairmount Park Commission’sstatus in the city of Philadelphia more prominent.And that’s why I think they finally went along.While the detailed engineering work was com-pleted by the city departments based on thePlanning Commission designs and approvalsthrough the Board of Review, the developer orbuilder used the city plan of the streets depart-ment as the basis for their final plat. In otherwords, all the details, streets department came up,they used the final plat information before thePlanning Commission. The final plat usually wasa routine submission to the Planning Commissionfor their approval. And the next step… construc-tion. Here you go. I mentioned when I arrived,Willo von Moltke’s name and the hierarchies.B: Why don’t you read. There you dropped it. Ijust want to point out to Greg the enormous sig-nificance of the concept of streets as hierarchical,as compared to the proliferation of the singlegridiron concept. And that the actual cost of thewhole thing is incredibly wasteful, when everystreet is used for every purpose.[not transcribed, Wasserman shows some photo-graphs. Then Bacon leaves. Heller andWasserman continue the interview.]W: Create designs that are produced for develop-ers. That’s the best way to get good planningdone—physical planning. In the PhiladelphiaCity Planning Commission—Society Hill andCenter—all of these places were based on designsdone in the Planning Commission. They later var-ied it, but the basic principle is stable—the con-trolling principle is there and they (the developer)have the capability of producing other kinds ofdetailed designs within the context of the strongprinciple that has been established. The C-1developers are examples of that. I was gettingback to the point… if a planning commission hasa staff of design people, anywhere, and they have

the capability of looking at the land and decid-ing… you know, based on the zoning, based onthe land use, what’s needed. To do a sketch planof what ought to be done. More than just colors,detailed design…layout. Which buildingsare…lots are generally laid out. If there is anopen space concept… if there’s a pedestrian con-cept, design for it, so the architect or landscapearchitect can actually go in and do some designsand show the developers. That’s the way goodland design is going to be done.H: If this concept was unheard of then and it’sunheard of now, but it’s so successful, do youhave any ideas why commissions aren’t doingthis?W: I think… I don’t know why commissionsaren’t doing this. I think that it’s… most of theplanning commissions are people who deal withland use. You know, basic land use. And they stopat the point of design, where the layout is impor-tant. In the Planning Commission we had both:we had master plan land use, land planning divi-sion, design division and we had staff who did…von Moltke, Ed Bacon and so forth. The redevel-opment area plans, design plans and they wereinstrumental in convincing the RedevelopmentAuthority of the potential of a redevelopmentarea was, because they had an idea of layout andthe value, and as they brought the developers into bid on the land, they required that the develop-er or developers submit detailed design. Theywould create almost a contest, and we would thenselect the best developer within the context of thedesign control.H: It’s incredible to me, one, that the PlanningCommission could have developers come andlook at what they had already and that they hadsuch control over the physical shape of what wasto be built. Do you have any idea how that was allaccomplished?W: Well the staff of the planning commission inthe design, land planning division were com-posed of designers and the category of employ-ment was a title called “Planning Designer” 1, 2,3, 4 and so forth. And the civil service exam thatyou took to get a job required you to do a certainamount of physical design… sketches drawingsand you weren’t hired to be a planning designerunless you accomplished a successful exam. Andthat’s how I got my job and I had to demonstratemy design capabilities. How did it happen? Ithappened because of the way the planning com-mission was structured. They had design, land

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planning division, comprehensive planning divi-sion, projects division. It just goes without say-ing, the land planning division had the responsi-bility of design.H: Did you have a concept in your mind, whileyou were planning, what the principles wereunder which you were working? If you had tosummarize, what would you say the major princi-ples were?W: Well I think the major principles were essen-tially to create under a hierarchy of street system,residential clusters that utilized the row house ina non-gridiron style. And the best way to do thatis to break up the pattern into small residentialstreets. Originally they started out as “U”-shapedloops, and I introduced the idea of the cul-de-sac.And they were both utilized. The initial start outwas the Denny, Robindale loop and later on thecul-de-sac system came along. I remember a bigrevelation of the Philadelphia Bulletin article bythis guy, Mac Getz, who wrote this story on theso-called “interlocking cul-de-sacs” system, wasI think significant and it influenced a lot ofbuilders to that system.H: Was this kind of street patterning done else-where, or was it something totally new to youwhen you came to Philadelphia?W: The street pattern elsewhere was some kind ofa hierarchy. There was definitely a hierarchy ofstreets, but the level of detailed street… smallshaped street, in the case of C-1 to break up theunits, so there was a maximum of ten, was thesignificant thing. Single family housing else-where, you know, residential streets that aredesigned to have a maximum of housing and tofeed a collective street, you know, arterial. Butthe cul-de-sac as a circle, not as a square, was thepattern, where you can swing single-family hous-ing around the circle. But the square shape was ashape that was derived by the row homes and theloops also created a… small shaped loops werealso designed to break up the row house intosmaller loops.H: And that was something you were aware of asyou were planning?W: Yeah. There was a limit to… the idea was tobreak up the rowhouse length, and the best way todo that is to put it on a loop street or cul-de-sac.That was the guiding principle.H: Did you see any advantages between loopstreets and cul-de-sacs?W: I preferred the cul-de-sacs and the reason I

preferred them was they leant themselves more tothe geometry of the rowhouse. Whereas, rotatingthem around a curve was not as… it was moreappropriate, more beneficial to the builder. Hewas able to get greater density using squareshaped streets. As a matter of fact, I introducedthe loop street with a square corner [drawing].You see the termination of a building rather thanthe space inside.H: At the same time I’d imagine having a longstraight stretch like this would allow you to builtlonger rowhouses.W: But not that long. You had to break them up.And there was a certain amount of requirementthat the builder realizes density can be achieved,I think more related, getting streets to reflect thegeometry.H: Why was it that Morrell was the only onethat…W: Why was it the only loop? It was early in theC-1 idea and the space was available permitted.We could have had that loop slide down and havea loop there and there [pointing to map]. Youwould still have accomplished the same purpose,which was to have a collective street. This acts asa collector of these loops. We realized later onthat the geometry of rowhouses… we couldn’t fita loop… a circular system on Red Lion Road, sowe revised the circle idea to a half circle and wefound it accomplished the same purpose of break-ing the… creating a collective pattern, and allow-ing the rectilinear streets, that the road can be a…roads can be square-shaped cul-de-sac and theycreated much better… you look at the… let meshow you. You had to put a street in that con-tained residential groupings, because the town-houses are rectilinear, it might be nicer to see apattern like that [drawing], geometrically, than apattern like this [drawing]. The space falls apart.You come into a residential street, the view youget is that view, but you come in here and theview is terminated by this building, so it makesmore sense to have a square shaped loop street orcul-de-sac. And the introduction of a center islandfor parking or planting is not possible in the loopstreet. So these are some of how… that are relat-ed to a residential environment, whereas the orig-inal Morrell tract, you see how the roots… Wetook the principle of this and we literally createdthis area. And we found that we can improve therelationship of units and still accomplish the res-idential entity, using, where possible, residentialstreets and cul-de-sacs. Does that explain?

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H: Yeah, it certainly does. Have you been upthere recently? Ed and I took a trip up there lastweek and I think he was kind of disillusionedwith what he saw. He envisioned along herewhere you have the stream bed, he envisioned allthe neighbors having open space between theirhouses and going down to the stream. What peo-ple have done was put fences up abutting eachother on their property, so that no public can godown to the stream, and then the back yards arealso fenced in before the stream, so that no onehas any access to it at all. And some of the peoplewe talked to said that it’s where all the kids go todrink and do drugs. So no one ever goes downthere anymore. Then the stream that’s along theroad that was open was all overgrown with treesand you can’t get down at all. And it looks nice,but no one can use the stream bed at all. I thinkEd found that kind of disturbing.W: Had the Fairmount Park Commission, maybetaken an active role of care and maintenance.That’s what we had hoped for.H: We passed one… this one over here and thiscolored ring here, that’s where Fairmount Parkdoes maintain the land. And this land is very nice.There are trees and then trails down to the stream.And then they had plantings all along here. Wesaw people were walking through it. People wetalked to said they walk their dogs through there,so the dogs use it more than the children. But Imean, it’s still used, whereas along here this landis totally unused now.W: It’s tight in here, and I think a lot of thesethings [dedicated land along the streams] are tootight. 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 therowhouses.H: The houses we saw all had their fences abut-ting each other and there was no space between…well I guess it was their properties.W: It was just a term. The word breezeway stoodfor the space between.H: Right, but was it public property or privateproperty?W: Half and half. The property line went downthe middle.

H: What I’m saying is the space between thehouses. Did that belong to the people in the units?W: Yes. There was a district plan for the farnortheast, in which there were areas designated asappropriate for C-1 zoning. There were otherareas in the far northeast which would be builttwin housing, semi-detached and detached singlefamily. But the new design ideas were primarilydesignated for the rowhouse.H: While you were at the planning commissionwhat other projects did you work on? Eastwickyou already said.W: Yes, I worked on Eastwick. I worked mostlyin the Far Northeast. I did some work on a coupleof redevelopment areas—in the picture I showedyou of Southwest Temple. And then I became thedistrict planner to produce the district plan, and Idid the district plan for West Philadelphia andNorthwest Philadelphia.H: You were busy.H: I also worked on preparing some of the CenterCity Plan, preparing the document. I worked onthat—one of the plans that had a couple of bluecovers. I was responsible for getting the produc-tion of the book. Then I went on to the districtplan. I think I spent three or four years on the dis-trict plan. I was about to start a district plan forSouth Philadelphia, when I took the job at Restonin 1967.That would have been a major milestoneif we had done the district plan. I don’t think therewas one for South Philadelphia.

A Note on Sources

During my year working with Ed Bacon I amassed a large number of firsthandsources. 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 alsohave several recorded interviews with Bacon by people other than myself.

Over the course of our time together, Bacon also gave me hundreds of hishandwritten and typed manuscripts, accumulated over the years. These papers are nowin my personal files. Bacon also gave me unlimited access to his own archives andpapers 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 argu-ments are shaped by still more of them. Below is a list of selected interviews andunpublished manuscripts that contributed to this thesis. In the case of untitled manu-scripts, and for all of the interviews I list the topic in brackets.

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Bibliography

Selected Interviews with Edmund Bacon

June 6, 2001 (Philadelphia): [Bacon’s Career] Interviewed by Josh Olsen. Taperecording. Gregory Heller’s personal files.

September 9, 2002 (Philadelphia): [Far Northeast] Interviewed by the author. Taperecording. Gregory Heller’s personal files.

September 30, 2002 (Philadelphia): [WHYY TV documentary] Interviewed by PattyHartman. Tape recording. Gregory Heller’s personal files.

October 2002 (Philadelphia): [Recollections of Childhood and Early Career]. Taperecorded 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. GregoryHeller’s personal files. 2002 (?).

“Bacon’s Military Experience.” Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personalfiles. 2003.

[Edward Hopkinson. Jr.] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personal files.2002.

[Fictional dialogue with Gregory Heller] untitled manuscript. Gregory Heller’s per-sonal 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.

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177

[Refusing to Be Categorized, 1] Unpublished manuscript. Gregory Heller’s personalfiles. 2002.

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Korman, Berton. Interviewed by Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller. Tape record-ing. Philadelphia, 18 November 2002. Gregory Heller’s personal files.

Wasserman, Irving. Interviewed by Edmund Bacon and Gregory Heller. Tape record-ing. Philadelphia, 10 October 2002. Gregory Heller’s personal files.

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Notes

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 I have never seen the term “symbolic historical memory” used elsewhere, although “historicalmemory” and “collective memory” are two popular ideas that are widely written about today. Theyboth mean something very different than my concept. I will discuss these terms more fully inChapter 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 IndependenceMall 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 Brownwas perplexed that Bacon was so rude to her when she treated him so nicely. It makes perfect senseto those who know Bacon, however. He hated her idea, and no amount of food, drink, or kindwords would make Bacon separate the person from the idea.

4 Liz Holmes, “Inspiring Consensus: A Talk with Edmund Bacon,” Cornell University College ofArchitecture, 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/minigu-

ides.4 Carter Wiseman, I.M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,

1990), 65.

ENB

ENB Papers

GH

GH Files

PCPC

ENB Penn

Edmund N. Bacon

Edmund N. Bacon’s papers in his personal files

Gregory Heller

Gregory Heller’s personal files

Philadelphia City Planning Commission

Edmund N. Bacon’s papers at the University of PennsylvaniaArchitectural Archives

187

5 Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia, “Society Hill: A Modern Community thatLives 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 theimportance of City Hall tower as the physical and symbolic center of Philadelphia. This is why heso vigorously opposed Liberty Place, the skyscrapers built in 1989 by Willard Rouse that surpassedCity 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 uncon-

scious.” Bacon uses it anyway because he feels it is the most descriptive of his concept. In Bacon’sdefinition the collective unconscious is the public mind, made up of ideas shaped by daily experi-ence 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 differ-ence between the two definitions is that Bacon’s collective unconscious changes constantly due tooutside stimuli; in Jung’s the collective unconscious is static and inherited, unaffected by “personalexperience.” In Jung’s writings, he also discusses the “individual unconscious,” which is shaped bylife experience, and seeps its way a person’s unconscious. However, Bacon’s definition stresses thatthe collective unconscious is a force felt throughout the entire populace, and for this reason, “indi-vidual unconscious” is not an appropriate term for Bacon’s concept. For a full definition of Jung’sterm, see C.G. Jung, The Archtetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1971), 42.

12 Holmes, 10. This is my description of Bacon’s method based what I absorbed during my workwith him. This article is an example of his discussing “inspiring consensus,” however I do notbelieve 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 twowords—but I don’t have to explain what I meant because if there ever was an example of one indi-vidual 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 weredirectly influence by the PSFS.” Morrone, 115.

22 In 2003, the Gallery came under new management. Also there is ongoing talk of the possibility ofNordstrom’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 peoplemake 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 ErrantFather,” The Pennsylvania Gazette (January 2004).

28 For example, during the planning of Penn Center, the Pennsylvania Railroad engaged developerRobert Dowling who decided to cover the open plaza in Bacon’s plan with a roof. Bacon felt hecould not win this battle if he continued to fight for his original design. He and his staff met on aSunday and decided to concede Dowling’s roof, but insisted that a few holes be poked into it, creat-ing a patchwork of small garden plazas. This account is reported in “The City: Under the Knife orAll 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 reprintedwith 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 wasever 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, andthat took away from the true meaning of love…I’m grateful to him for his courage and for fightingthe 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 televi-sion documentary. As of the printing of this thesis, the documentary has not been aired. From here-on 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 firmClark, Rapuano, and Halloran. In the 1950s as Bacon was planning Eakins Oval to “complete” theBenjamin Franklin Parkway he engaged Michael Rapuano of that firm as the landscape architect forthe project. See Holmes, also Gina Purrington, “Robert Moses: A Tribute to the Man and HisImpact on the Borough,” The Western Queens Gazette (June 30, 1999). Bacon told me about hiswork 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. Hewrote, “In response to the rise in interest in city planning and the growing demand for technicalassistance in plan preparation, a new profession came into being…there was growing recognitionthat city planning was an art or science which, although related to other disciplines, constituted aseparate 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.”

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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 inPhiladelphia public affairs, about which you have been informed, will be held as a dinner-meetingat the Princeton Club…on Thursday, January 18 at 6:30 p.m. We hope that you will be able tocome.” 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.

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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 themajor 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.”

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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 devel-opment 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 PolicyCommittee and the Chamber of Commerce, Clark refused to sit at the speaker’s table and insteadhid 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 wouldnot want to be associated with any project that could be accused of being ostentatious…He thoughtof himself as a statesman and not a politician, but he was politician enough to be wary of promotingany 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.

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Chapter 4

1 “Robert Gedes” Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. University of Pennsylvania. Availableonline 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 convincedcity leaders not to build it. By an accident of history the expressway ended up having a positiveeffect on the city. While the highway seemed imminent, property values on South Street fell, andnew businesses moved in to take advantage of the cheap rents. As a result, South Street has becomea 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 corridorsand attractions.

6 “Imaginative Study of Philadelphia Done Over on Modernistic Planning Principles,” The EveningBulletin, 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 PennsylvaniaRailroad’s “Chinese Wall” elevated tracks (that would eventually become Penn Center). Baconapproached Kahn and Mitchell with his idea for a sunken pedestrian concourse, but recalls that hisidea was not heeded. Kahn and Mitchell created a series of three buildings for which Bacon had avery 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 ofhow the city functioned. When Bacon was creating his own design for Penn Center in 1949-50, hefirst approached Kahn to work with him on the project. Bacon knew that he needed to communicatethe underlying idea of the system of movement. However, Kahn was continually preoccupied witharchitectural minutia that Bacon viewed as important only later in the process. The two men partedcompany and Bacon engaged architect Vincent Kling, who created models of Bacon’s concept andlater 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,’” WinterthurPortfolio, 6 (1970): 47.

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17 Anthony N.B. Garvan, “Proprietary Philadelphia as Artifact,” The Historian and the City, OscarHandlin 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 explainsthat 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 thefigure of the Towne so as that the Streets hereafter may be uniforme downe to the Water from theCountry bounds.” Ibid., 120.

23 There were some tributaries running within the area designated for the grid, but compared to thesurrounding land, the location of Philadelphia was by far the flattest. Placing Broad Street on thewatershed 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 cov-

ered over and turned into a sewer. The land was designed for the uses of nineteenth century societyand weakened under the weight of cars, trucks and larger buildings. Pieces of the sewer collapsedeight times between 1930 and 1961 when there was a final, major collapse killing at least three peo-

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ple, injuring many others, forcing the city to condemn 104 homes and displacing at least 500 peo-ple, with 200 families immediately evacuated.

Another famous catastrophe took place in 1986 when a gas explosion in the Logan area ofPhiladelphia brought the need to inspect the housing. The City discovered that a large number ofhouses were sinking. In the early 1900s most people powered their homes with coal fuel. Two cor-rupt machine politicians named the Vare brothers used a city contract to dump the coal ashes intothis 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 structuresabove. The City called in an engineering firm to find the causes of the sinking, and later the ArmyCorps of Engineers to assess the environmental effects. 957 houses were demolished costing thecity $33 million. In 2002 the City Planning Commission approved a redevelopment plan for thearea, planning to rebuild most of it for commercial uses.

For more on Mill Creek, see “City May Raze 40 Houses in Collapse Area,” The PhiladelphiaInquirer (19 July 1961); and “City Acts to Condemn 104 Homes Periled by Sewer,” ThePhiladelphia Inquirer (21 July 1961). For more on Logan, see Ramona Smith, “How all that coalash got dumped on the city,” Philadelphia Daily News (11 December 2000); PCPC, “LoganRedevelopment Area Plan,” May 2002; and PCPC, “Blight Certification For the Area GenerallyBounded 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 PhiladelphiaRevisited (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 proj-

ect, University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment, April 2001), availableonline 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.

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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 histori-an Madeline Cohen explained, “In most American cities, the design aspects of redevelopment proj-ects were parceled by city planning administrators out to consulting architects” (Cohen, 18). Cohenargued that Bacon’s predecessor, Robert Mitchell, was one such administrator. In Approaches toPlanning (Philadelphia: Gordon and Breach, 1992) Ernest R. Alexander explained that “the tradi-tional role of the planner in governmental contexts…[is as a] technician-administrator…the techni-cal expert at the service of elected officials” (107).

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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 BellaVista (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 theplanning process.” ENB, “A Case Study in Urban Design,” The Journal of American Institute ofPlanners, 26:3 (August 1960).

9 Stephan Salisbury, “Society Hill Emerged Amid Tumultuous Times,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 17March 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 derRohe who designed buildings like Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive apartments that exposed the frameand support of the structure. Witold Rybczynski explained that builders of public housing promotedthe fact that they were giving the poor dwellings like the rich. However the results turned out muchcheaper and took advantage of the fact that buildings with an exposed frame are more affordable tobuild. 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 TrulyDisadvantaged: 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.

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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, avail-able 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 onCelebration, 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 interviewwith Ed, Elinor and the author, Ed explained that he feels Elinor is finally carrying out the reformof 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 elementsof 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 convinc-ing arguments against the validity of some of Caro’s evidence in conversations with AlexanderGarvin. Nonetheless, my point is to show the criticism against administrators of the era, and clearlyCaro’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 athttp://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 revi-talization, “[Bacon] was relatively unique—the scale and timing of Washington Square East waslarge and early—other places like Providence Rhode Island undertook rehab projects but not on thescale 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 threatenedcommunities near Temple University.

31 In the M.I.T. paper, Whitlow wrote, “Even the watercolor renderings included in the plan (Figure1) reflect the plan’s blindness to the city’s long-standing racial and ethnic diversity. They depictonly white middle-class families and businessmen using the proposed spaces. Also, major elementsof 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 noblack 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 in1957 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

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restore them and use them as mixed-income, scattered-site housing. He recalls that while he suc-cessfully sold Dilworth on the idea, no city agency wanted to be the “city’s largest slumlord,” tak-ing on the ownership of the city’s abandoned houses before they were fixed up. During the Tateadministration, Bacon recalls the mayor’s aide, William Rafsky, advised against his plan, and onRafsky’s advice Tate turned down Bacon’s proposal. Nancy Love also makes reference to one ofthese programs in her article.

Chapter 8

1 “A ‘Vision’ Inspired Philly’s Center,” The Washington Post, Times Herald: 1959-1965 (28November 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 ProfessorsEugenie Birch and John Keene talk about “public participation, process-based decisions, conflictnegotiation, and mediation.” In conversation with the author Alexander Garvin called it “askingpeople what they want.”

4 John Keene and Eugenie Birch, “Keene-Birch Top Ten Planning Themes” (document compiled forcourses 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 associat-

ed with city planning. In one planning class that I audited the professor asked the question ofwhether or not Moses was a city planner. Based on definitions of planning put forth by professionalsocieties there may be some ambiguity. Moses himself argued he was not a planner. According toRobert Caro, “planners in general, [Moses] said, are ‘socialists,’ ‘revolutionaries’ who ‘do not reachthe masses directly but through familiar subsurface activity.’” (471). However, Moses continuallyimplemented 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.

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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 popu-lation 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 with44,450 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 freerein in Center City. I have found no support of this rumor. Bacon denies it, and in my research Ihave found some evidence that contradicts such an under-the-table deal could have ever workedout. Also, Bacon hardly had free-rein in Center City.

Epilogue

1 ENB, “New World Cities,” 234.

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