Return to Bacon In the News Index

Source: Philadelphia CityPaper
Date: October 20-26, 2005
Byline: Duane Swierczynski

The Man Who Invented Philadelphia

Whenever I show off the city to an out-of-town friend, I usually describe Philly in terms of what used to be there. I act like a proud parent, telling people, Hey look what we've all done with the place, as if I'm somehow responsible.

"See this row of buildings between Market and JFK?" I'll ask. "It used to be a giant railway called 'The Chinese Wall.' You should see the old pictures. It was a grisly, industrial-era nightmare." Or: "Like the swank houses of Society Hill? Back in the 1950s, this used to be skid row. Amazing, isn't it?"

But these changes had nothing to do with me, or you. So many features on the face of Philadelphia — Penn Center, Market East, Penn's Landing, Independence Mall — are thanks to a single visionary: Ed Bacon, who passed away last Friday. And enough praise cannot be heaped upon the man and his work.

Bacon might be remembered by some as the father of Kevin Bacon, but he also fathered the modern city of Philadelphia. Much like you can pick apart the success and failings of your own father, you can look at Bacon's work and either cheer or say, "meh." He was not perfect; some of his decisions strangled neighborhoods. But that doesn't change the fact that his imagination and vision are imprinted on our city's DNA.

Bacon approached city planning in a biological fashion. "I simply looked inward," Bacon told WHYY in a televised interview, "and I got all of my direction from the magnificent functioning of the organs of my own body." This human approach was an antidote to the grinding desperation of the industrial city: ordered blocks of factories and mills and railroad tracks, where city residents were the cogs in the machine, rather than the masters of it.

One of Bacon's favorite expressions of this human spirit was the fountain at Love Park. "If there is one tiny thing that I would like preserved in my memory," Bacon told the WHYY interviewer, "it would be that little thing that I conceived at Cornell University in 1932, and that [some] set out to destroy. And I would like it to be there forever in memory of my work."

We should honor his request. But no matter what happens to Love Park in the future, Ed Bacon need not worry. This city will always bear the face of its father.

Return to Bacon In the News Index