The 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition
Click here for 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition Brochure [pdf format, 1.8mb]
The period following World War II was a pivotal time for America's cities. Assisted by substantial new sources of Federal Urban Renewal funds, cities demolished their slums and built massive development projects, aimed at pumping new life into what were seen as ever-deteriorating urban conditions.
At the height of Urban Renewal, during the 1950s and 60s, Philadelphia became famous as a model of a progressive and forward-looking metropolis. Under the leadership of Planning Director Edmund N. Bacon, Philadelphia developed what Time magazine called "the most thoughtfully planned, thoroughly rounded, skillfully coordinated of all the big-city programs in the U.S." During the 21 years of Bacon's tenure, Philadelphia contained some of nation's major redevelopment efforts, including the office and transit development of Penn Center and the historic neighborhood revival of Society Hill.
Bacon was instrumental in the effort to create a new, modern Planning Commission by act of City Council in 1942. In 1949 he would become its Executive Director. In between was a single event that perhaps, more than any other, gave Bacon the popular appeal and mass sentiment of progressive reform that would surround most of his career. That event was the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition.
Though he came from a ninth-generation Quaker family, Bacon broke the traditional Quaker belief in pacifism and enlisted in the Navy in World War II. While in the South Pacific, Bacon received a letter from his friend and colleague, architect Oskar Stonorov, inviting him to co-design an exhibition.
Stonorov had recently attended the national planning conference in Chicago with Robert Mitchell, Executive Director of the new Philadelphia City Planning Commission, where he conceived of the idea of holding a major city planning exhibition to expose the public to the concept of planning the possibilities for Philadelphia's future. Back in Philadelphia Stonorov enlisted his partner Louis Kahn to the effort.
Bacon recalled: "There was a sentiment that if we can only win the war, everybody would be good for ever after...[It] was a very temporary state of mind...[and Stonorov thought] that we would capitalize on it and give a vision to the city of Philadelphia of a really wonderful future where it takes world leadership and where it really attacks its gut problems and where it really does inspire new development."
After Bacon was discharged at the end of 1945, Mitchell hired him to the staff of the City Planning Commission, and he set to work with Mitchell, Stonorov, and Kahn on the exhibition. A new chartered organization was created to handle the funding of the exhibition, and Arthur Kaufman agreed to provide two floors of his Gimbel's Department Store to host it. The concept of the exhibition was to imagine the future of the city in 1982 on its 300th birthday.
The Better Philadelphia Exhibition opened on September 8, 1947 and closed on October 15. During its brief display it attracted over 385,000 visitors. Guests entered to a giant image of the 19th-century city overlaid on the present-day cityscape. Next came the Time-Space Machine--using backlit panels to illustrate the progression of development in the city. Then there was an enormous map of the city with every project that the Planning Commission had on the six-year Capital Program marked 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 daycare service. Another room exhibited a series of cartoons by artist Robert Osborne, showing children planning a football play and other scenes demonstrating the need for planning in everyday life. A series of model buildings and utilities with actual miniature price tags hanging off of them aimed at making the scale of the public expenditure more comprehensible.
Next came a room of models and drawings made by students from elementary to technical high school. Bacon and Stonorov went to 13 schools, explained about planning, and invited classes to participate, providing 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.
The exhibition's climax was a model of Center City Philadelphia, 33 feet by 14 feet in size. 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. 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 vision for the site. One-by-one, 13 sections rotated until the entire model changed to that of Philadelphia's future in 1980. Then all-at-once the panels rotated back to the familiar present.
Bacon, Mitchell, Stonorov and Kahn divided up the model's design. Bacon was assigned the southeastern quadrant, where he designed a rudimentary version of what would become the Society Hill Greenway System. Stonorov and Kahn designed the center area, then occupied by the "Chinese Wall," the Pennsylvania Railroad's enormous elevated viaduct cutting through the city, from the former Frank Furness-designed City Hall Station to 30th Street Station.
No one realized it at the time, but the entire future portrayed in that model was imaginary. There was no actual plan or fiscal allocation to build Kahn and Stonorov's complex of buildings to replace the "Chinese Wall," Kahn's high rise apartments along the Parkway or Bacon's greenway paths. The entire idea was to inspire guests with a vision for the future, and to get them thinking seriously about grand possibilities for their urban landscape.
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."
The irony of this message is that Samuel was previously distrustful of planning altogether, and for a time, stood in the way of creating the modern planning commission. He likely had little actual interest in city planning even then, but the exhibition fell conveniently a month before the mayoral election. In that election Samuel defeated Democratic candidate Richardson Dilworth.
Ultimately, 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. We can only conjecture what combination of forces combined to make Bacon's career so successful. However, what is clear is that the Better Philadelphia Exhibition was a great success, and was likely a major turning point for the city and the way it would consider its future.
Gregory Heller
Sources:
- "Better Philadelphia Exhibition: What City Planning Means to You," official brochure of the exhibition (1947).
- "The City: Under the Knife, or All For Their Own Good." Time, 84:19 (6 November 1964).
- David Clow, "The Show that Got Philadelphia Going," Philadelphia (May 1985)
- "Philadelphia Plans Again," The Architectural Forum (December 1947).
- Personal interviews with Edmund N. Bacon.
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