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Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Date: October 23, 2005
Byline: Paul R. Levy

The rich legacy of Ed Bacon

I met Ed Bacon – Philadelphia's longtime city planner who died Oct. 14 at age 95 – at a reception in 1978, after completing an oral history of Queen Village that explored the impact of Interstate 95. Highway opponents had recounted how Bacon responded to pleas to save homes.

"He was godlike," they said. "He patted us on the head as if to say, 'Yes, my children' – then sent us on our way, and proceeded with demolition."

I introduced myself to Bacon that evening, joking I had just finished my Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as a footnote to his Hamlet. We became friendly and I invited him to a forum on revitalizing lower-income neighborhoods. When an activist decried inflexible city programs, Bacon leapt to his feet, jabbing his finger in the air for punctuation:

"Young man, stop complaining about what government doesn't do! Figure out what needs to be done and go do it!"

That was Ed at his best, instilling in others the Young Turk spirit that catapulted him to prominence.

Over the next several years, our paths occasionally crossed. I recall Ed's prescient film on cities and the energy crisis. There was an impromptu conversation in Rittenhouse Square in 1985, when he blasted Willard Rouse's Liberty Place for daring to reach so high. Then came the vehement attacks on redesigns for Independence Mall.

I didn't personally experience the wrath of Bacon until presenting plans in 1999 to refashion the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Then, that jabbing finger was in my chest and Ed was excoriating me for destroying the city. That's the Ed you see savaging Lou Kahn in Nathaniel Kahn's My Architect.

Fathers and sons. My thoughts returned often to that theme as my father grew frail and then died last year at 96. He began as an attorney, served as a combat infantry commander in Europe in World War II, moved on to a career in business, retired twice, before moving to Philadelphia in the early 1990s. He was at peace with himself, proud of his sons and grandchildren, still swimming, attending concerts and the Alliance Francaise. But he had comfortably moved from the stage.

Why wouldn't Ed go gracefully? Only now I understand. My father's work was behind him. Bacon's work was before him each day he walked from his house on Locust Street. It was his Philadelphia others were altering.

What's Bacon's legacy? He came to power when cities were shaking off the dust of neglect from the Depression and a World War that drained momentum from the domestic front. With the confidence of victory and federal funding behind him, Ed's will and vision were right for the times.

Much he did well. I walk home on a greenway he designed 50 years ago. I live in an 1824 rowhouse on a block he helped reclaim. But many of his plans were heavy-handed, destructive to the fabric of the city, even if they were in keeping with the tastes of his time: barren plazas around City Hall; blank walls on Market East; highways that slash through parks and sever neighborhoods from the water.

Yet, what would Philadelphia be now without Society Hill, without the commuter rail tunnel and without an office district that replaced derelict tracks with the economic backbone of the city? Bacon dared to dream big about cities when cities were in decline. We can quarrel with design details, not with the breadth and success of his vision.

I last saw Bacon in May, at the dedication of a plaque in his honor. Gathered on his greenway were architects, planners, developers, politicians, preservationists, and local residents. Many had worked for him, others had fought him. The commemorative plaque wisely weds him with his opposite: Preservationist Charles Peterson, who battled him house by house through Society Hill, is celebrated on the other side.

Though frail, Bacon delivered without notes a challenge to Philadelphia once more to shake off its pessimism, its acquiescence to the shabby and second-rate, and to dare to think big again. Joined to Peterson on an intimate walkway between historic and modern homes, he was for once remarkably generous, sharing credit with all.

At a time when it's become easier to oppose than to get things done, Bacon left to us enormous tasks: overcoming highways that are now barriers to growth, redesigning plazas devoid of life, reconnecting to waterfronts, reinvigorating the region's transit system. And one final dilemma: how to rekindle in Philadelphia his passion for daring and ambitious public works, while tempering it with sensitivity to the human scale of this wonderfully walkable city.

"But enough of that," Bacon would probably say. "If that's what you believe, go do it!"

Paul R. Levy is president and CEO of Center City District

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