During the 1950s, urban analysts frequently cited Philadelphia's Penn Center office project as emblematic of an urban “renaissance” in the United States. The development of Penn Center, however, was characterized by a series of conflicts that belie notions that the shared interests of public and private actors led to the quick formation of progrowth coalitions after the Second World War. Penn Center clearly demonstrated that local planners lacked the political, legal, and financial tools to control urban redevelopment projects implemented by private actors. Such constraints help to explain why even housing-oriented liberal officials such as those in Philadelphia supported the broadening of federal urban redevelopment legislation beyond its original “primarily residential” orientation.
For post-World War II Philadelphia and the reform movement, see David Wallace, “Renaissancemanship,”Architectural Forum26, no. 3 (August 1960): 157-176; Jeanne R. Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time: Progress and Poverty in America's Renewing Cities (New York: Random House, 1967), 313-404; Kirk R. Petshek, The Challenge of Urban Reform: Policies and Programs in Philadelphia(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973); William W. Cutler III, “The Persistent Dualism: Centralization and Decentralization in Philadelphia, 1854-1975,” in The Divided Metropolis: Social and Spatial Dimensions of Philadelphia, 1800-1975, ed. William W. Cutler III and Howard Gillette Jr. (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980), 249-84; John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); and Carolyn Adams, David Bartelt, David Elesh, Ira Goldstein, Nancy Kleniewski, and William Yancey, Philadelphia: Neighborhoods, Division, and Conflict in a Postindustrial City (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). For postwar urban and regional development in the United States, see Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), esp. 190-245; Bruce Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Margaret Pugh O'Mara, Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
2.
For the concept of progrowth coalitions, see John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); and Alan Harding, “Elite Theory and Growth Machines,” in Theories of Urban Politics, ed. David Judge, Gerry Stoker and Harold Wolman (London: Sage, 1995), 35-53.
3.
Key works in the voluminous literature on urban renewal include (along with those cited in note (2) Scott Greer, Urban Renewal and American Cities: The Dilemma of Democratic Intervention(Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1965); James Q. Wilson, ed., Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966); Mark I. Gelfand, A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Jon C. Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1990); Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and the Redevelopment of the Inner City (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993); and June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
4.
Built during a period of intense competition between the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads, the Broad Street Station included “the widest single-span train-shed ever built anywhere at any time: 300 feet wide, 108 feet 6 inches high, and 595 feet long” (the Reading's Philadelphia shed was 256 feet wide). The elevated viaduct leading to the shed was designed to eliminate grade level intersections with city streets. A 1923 fire destroyed the train shed, but both the Broad Street Station and the massive track viaduct remained. Carroll L. V. Meeks, The Railroad Station: An Architectural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1956), 7-7, 88-88, 103-104; and “Heroic Workers Fight Blaze 20 Hours; Mail Saved; Baggage Lost; Hundreds Storm Luggage Rooms; Streets Reopened to Vehicles; Theater Damaged; Fire Loss Fixed at $1,335,000,” Philadelphia Bulletin, June 11, 1923.
5.
“Philadelphia's Hour of Decision,”Architectural Forum96, no. 6 (June 1952): 119-119.
6.
Ibid., 120.
7.
“Broad St. Station Will Be Removed, Mayor Announces; New Terminal to be Erected on West Bank of Schuylkill, Kendrick Says after Conference with Atterbury and Mitten; Subway for Traffic East; Engineers to Devise Plan,”Philadelphia Bulletin, January 15, 1924; “Razing of Broad St. Station Forecast for Near Future; Mayor Wilson Expects Early Start on Demolition of Terminal and ‘Chinese Wall’ after Parley with Railway Officials,” Philadelphia Bulletin, August 25, 1937; “New Chinese Wall Razing Plan Saves City 2 Million; Pennsylvania Railroad Agrees to reduce Claim by That Amount; State Would Build Highway,” Philadelphia Bulletin, October 17, 1946; Cyril Bahr Roseman, “Public-Private Cooperation and Negotiation in Downtown Redevelopment: A Study of the Decision Process in Philadelphia,” (PhD diss., Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 1963), 142-43; and Wallace, “Renaissancemanship,” 158.
8.
The real estate study forecast that downtown Philadelphia would need 3 million square feet of new office space by 1960. Alderson & Sessions, Philadelphia Central District Study; Prepared for the Philadelphia City Planning Commission (Philadelphia: Alderson & Sessions, 1951), 38-38, 43-49; also Roseman, “Public-Private Cooperation and Negotiation in Downtown Redevelopment,” 144-45; Stephen Salsbury, No Way to Run a Railroad: The Untold Story of the Penn Central Crisis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 57-73; and Robert Sobel, The Fallen Colossus(New York: Weybright and Talley, 1977), 245-49.
9.
The 1951 Home Rule Charter required the City Planning Commission to prepare a comprehensive plan for the city, an annual six-year capital program forecasting municipal expenditures, and an annual capital budget of expenditures for the following fiscal year. The charter also required the commission to provide the City Council with a recommendation on any ordinance affecting the comprehensive plan, zoning, the capital program and budget, street and land subdivision plans, or city real estate transactions. Charles F. Robinson and J. Ronald Williams, “Analysis of the Philadelphia Comprehensive Plan: Its Formation and Its Application to Specific Projects” (MS thesis, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 1963), 17-20, 230-33.
10.
Bacon had in effect been working on a plan for the Chinese Wall area ever since his 1932 senior thesis at Cornell, which was titled “Plans for a Philadelphia Center City.” See “Under the Knife, or All for Their Own Good,”Time, November 6, 1969, p. 69-69; Edmund N. Bacon, “Planning, Architecture, and Politics in Philadelphia,” Russell Van Nest Black Memorial Lecture, Cornell University, April 24, 1973, Walter M. Phillips Oral History Project, Box 1, F: Edmund Bacon, Temple University Urban Archives (TUUA), Philadelphia, n.p.; and John Guinther, Direction of Cities (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), 102-3.
11.
On the adjoining Reyburn Plaza, Bacon planned to build a new City Hall and a separate municipal office building. Initially, the idea of removing City Hall attracted more public interest—most of it critical—than the design for Penn Center itself. Edmund N. Bacon, “Statement on Penn Center Plan at Meeting of Citizens' Council on City Planning in cooperation with the Greater Philadelphia Movement, the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia and Its Greater Philadelphia-South Jersey Council,”February 21, 1952, Managing Director's Files and Correspondence (MD-FC), RG 61.2, Box A-709, F: City Planning—1952, Philadelphia City Archives, 8-10; “Will Tear Down Old Edifice and Chinese Wall; Planning Commission Would Raze City Hall Except for Tower,” Philadelphia Bulletin, February 21, 1952; Philadelphia City Planning Commission (CPC), Penn Center Redevelopment Area Plan, April 1952 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 1952); CPC, “For Release: Public Hearings on the City Planning Commission's ‘Penn Center Plan,’ ” June 15, 1952, MD-FC, RG 61.2, Box A-709, F: City Planning—1952, City Archives, 2; Edward Hopkinson Jr., “Statement at the Public Hearing on the Penn Center Plan,” June 16, 1952, MD-FC, RG 61.2, Box A-709, F: City Planning—1952, City Archives, 3; “Philadelphia's Hour of Decision,” 118-125 (esp. 120); and Edmund N. Bacon, Design of Cities, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 1974), 244-51.
12.
Bacon, “Statement on Penn Center Plan,”4-6; and Bacon, “Philadelphia's Hour of Decision,” 119-22.
13.
Bacon's plan reflected the modernist tradition in which he had received his training; nonetheless, Bacon rejected Le Corbusier's idea that buildings should constitute autonomous sculptures free of any connection to their surroundings, and as a result, his plan for Penn Center retained an urban character absent in many of its modernist counterparts. Bacon, Design of Cities, 233-233. See also Guinther, Direction of Cities, 154; and Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, updated ed. (New York: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1996), 204-40.
14.
“Architect Says Nothing Left of Original Penn Center Dream” (letter to editor), Philadelphia Bulletin, April 14, 1959; CPC, Annual Report for 1952: City Planning in Philadelphia—A Record of Progress (Philadelphia: Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 1953), 8-9; and Guinther, Direction of Cities, 151-52.
15.
Despite Clark's distrust, Bacon had been an early and active participant in the reform movement. Walter M. Phillips, interview by Kirk R. Petshek, March 24, 1965, transcript, Petshek Papers, Accession 202, Box 5, F: [Interviews], TUUA, 9; Edmund N. Bacon, interview by Walter M. Phillips (part 2), November 13, 1974, transcript, Phillips Oral History Project, Box 1, F: Edmund Bacon, TUUA, n.p.
16.
In 1960, David Wallace, formerly the director of planning for the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (RA), used the “professional citizens” phrase to describe the membership of the Citizens’ Council on City Planning (CCCP). Continuing, Wallace noted that “they are people who have found this a way to take part in important things that are happening in the city without getting involved in ‘dirty politics.’ ” Wallace, “Renaissancemanship,” 173.
17.
Sidney Hopkins, “Requiem for a Renaissance,”Greater Philadelphia Magazine55, no. 11 (November 1964): 35-35. James Reichley notes that at the University of Pennsylvania's architecture and planning schools, the CPC's executive director was referred to as “Lord Bacon.” Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It,” 51.
18.
“The Philadelphia Cure: Clearing Slums with Penicillin, Not Surgery,”Architectural Forum96, no. 4 (April 1952): 115-115.
19.
In 1948, the Chinese Wall–Broad Street Station site had actually been certified for redevelopment under the 1945 state law as part of the larger Triangle Redevelopment Area, a two-hundred-acre triangular tract bounded by Market Street on the south, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on the northeast, and the Schuylkill River on the west. In 1950, following approval of the Vine Street Expressway, the northern section of the area was separately recertified as the North Triangle Redevelopment Area and planned for luxury high-rise housing (built without federal subsidy). Even if Penn Center had been included in a larger project that included the entire Triangle Area, the wider area's scarcity of residential units and high land costs would have made it difficult to justify the project as primarily residential. In 1951, a CPC- and Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (RA)–commissioned Urban Institute panel of real estate experts advised that it did “not consider housing either the highest or best use for this entire area. Land acquisition at $125,000 an acre would necessitate a write-down that is practically prohibitive, especially when a sounder economic use is indicated.... [T]he panel would strongly recommend that housing be limited to the small Triangle area North [sic] of Vine Street.” Although the 1949 Housing Act had failed to define the precise meaning of “primarily residential,” the particular circumstances of the Penn Center area thus made it an unlikely candidate for federal subsidy under the existing legislation. Urban Land Institute, “Report and Recommendations on the Redevelopment of the Triangle Area, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,”January 17, 1951, Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania, 25-26; CPC, Certification of the Triangle Area for Redevelopment, January 1948, (Philadelphia: Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 1948); CPC, North Triangle: Redevelopment Area Plan, September 1950 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 1950); and Gelfand, A Nation of Cities, 142-56.
20.
Edward Hopkinson Jr., “Tentative Draft; Statement Of Edward Hopkinson, Jr., Chairman, City Planning Commission, at the Meeting of the Citizens' Council on City Planning, Friday, March 6 at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, on THE PENN CENTER PLAN,”March 4, 1953, CPC Files, RG 145.2, Box A-2898, F: Redevelopment—Penn Center 1953, City Archives. Also, CCCP, “Report: Penn Center Hearing—The Planning Commission's First Public Hearing,” July 8, 1952, CCCP Records, Box 3, URB 10/II/26, TUUA, 2-3.
21.
“Philadelphia's Hour of Decision,”124-124.
22.
Earl Selby, “Business Center Planned at Site of Chinese Wall; Greenfield Forms Group Ready to Put 50 Million in Project,”Philadelphia Bulletin, September 22, 1952; “Bob Dowling Climbs Philadelphia's Chinese Wall: Better Architecture in the Development of Philadelphia's Wasted Core Depends on Office Building Economics,” Architectural Forum 98, no. 4 (April 1953): 149. For the “half of Philadelphia” comment, Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 341. Although Lowe's comment may be apocryphal, Albert M. Greenfield & Company was the largest real estate firm in Pennsylvania and among the largest in the country. E. Digby Baltzell described Greenfield as “the single most powerful individual in the city” and noted that the Bankers Trust Company incident provides “the sociologically inclined observer with some insight into the nature of power and influence in the city.” E. Digby Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class (New York: Free Press, 1958; repr. of the 1971 Quadrangle Paperbacks edition, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 379-83. Also, Dan Rottenberg, “The Rise of Albert M. Greenfield,” in Jewish Life in Philadelphia 1830-1940, ed. Murray Friedman (Philadelphia: ISHI Publications, 1983).
23.
Raymond C. Brecht, “700 on Board as Last Train Leaves Broad St.; Thousands Join in Farewell to Historic Landmark,”Philadelphia Bulletin, April 28, 1952; Pennsylvania Railroad, “Hear the Philadelphia Orchestra in Ceremony Marking the Closing of Broad Street Station” [newspaper insert], Philadelphia Bulletin, April 25, 1952.
24.
Symes became president of the railroad in 1954. Harry Batten, interview by Kirk R. Petshek, December 14, 1964, transcript, Petshek Papers, Acc. 202, Box 5, F: [Interviews], TUUA, 13; Saul Schraga, interview by Kirk R. Petshek, n.d., transcript, Petshek Papers, Acc. 202, Box 5, F: [Interviews], TUUA, 2; Roseman, Public-Private Co-operation and Negotiation, 142-142, 146-146; and Salsbury, No Way to Run a Railroad, 58-59.
25.
The description of Dowling as a “knight-in shining-money” is from “Bob Dowling Climbs Philadelphia's Chinese Wall,” 149. See also “Penn Center: Let's Face the Facts; Part I: Credit Where Credit Is Due,”Delaware Valley Announcer32, no. 6 (June 1959): 21-21; Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It,” 52 Dowling Plan; “Six Skyscrapers Would Be Built,” Philadelphia Bulletin, January 29, 1953; “Firms Contacted on Penn Center; Phila. Electric and Statler Show Interest,” Philadelphia Bulletin, January 29, 1953; “GPM Backs Plan for Penn Center Development; Directors Approve It; Penn Mutual ‘Ready’ to Aid Financing,” Philadelphia Bulletin, February 1, 1953. For another indication of Binswanger's view of the Bacon plan, CCCP, “Report: Penn Center Hearing,” 2-3. On Dowling's earlier career, “Man over Manhattan,” Architectural Forum 84, no. 1 (January 1946): 96-99; “Equitable to Help Finance $100,000,000 ‘Radio City’ on 23-Acre Pittsburgh Slum,” New York Times, September 22, 1949; Robert C. Doty, “Manhattan Bars to Housing Cited,” New York Times, October 3, 1950; and Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 140-41.
26.
T. D. Bower, “Memo to Files; Subject: Explanation by Mr. Fraher of model of Dowling Scheme for Penn Center,”February 4, 1953, CPC Files, RG 145.2, Box A-2898, F: Redevelopment—Penn Center 1953, City Archives; Hopkinson, “The Penn Center Plan—Meeting,” March 6, 1953; and “Bob Dowling Climbs Philadelphia's Chinese Wall,” 148-51.
27.
“Chance for Starting on Penn Center Seen by Spring; N.Y. Planner Shows Revised Model, Says Financing Is Certain,”Philadelphia Bulletin, March 6, 1953; Bacon, “Planning, Architecture, and Politics in Philadelphia”; and Bacon, interview by Walter M. Phillips (part 2), November 13, 1974 [question 39].
28.
Responding to the Dowling plan, Greenfield commented that “I have my doubts... I have my doubts. Those are New York rents. Has he found a paymaster for office space at $5 a square foot?” “Bob Dowling Climbs Philadelphia's Chinese Wall,”149-149; “Firms Contacted on Penn Center,” Philadelphia Bulletin, January 29, 1953; “Local Interests Cool to Financing New ‘Wall’ Deal,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 31, 1953; “Chance for Starting on Penn Center Seen by Spring,” Philadelphia Bulletin, March 6, 1953; “Philadelphia's Hour of Decision,” 120, 124; “Penn Center: Let's Face the Facts,” 19-22; and Roseman, “Public-Private Cooperation and Negotiation,” 149.
29.
Walter Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, temporarily joined the agreement as the developer of the planned transportation center on the block between 17th and 18th Streets. He soon withdrew, however, and was eventually replaced by Philadelphia builder Matthew McCloskey. “Agreements OKd for Development of Penn Center,”Philadelphia Bulletin, May 19, 1953; “Hotel Planned for Penn Center; Sheraton Corp. to Erect Skyscraper,” Philadelphia Bulletin, June 25, 1953; CCCP, “Tentative Plans for Penn Center Development,” June 14, 1954, CCCP Records, Acc. 124, Box 1, F: Penn Center Subcommittee, TUUA; W. J. O'Neill, “He Sells Philadelphia,” Greater Philadelphia Magazine 45, no. 3 (March 1957): 21; “Men behind the Blueprints in This Month's Forum,” Architectural Forum 103, no. 1 (July 1955): 117; “Penn Center: Let's Face the Facts,” 21; and Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It,” 53-56.
30.
“Penn Center: Let's Face the Facts,”21-22; and Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It,” 55-56.
31.
By 1961, public investments at Penn Center included $529,000 for underground service streets and $379,081 for improvements to a subway station (an additional $335,000 for further work on the station had been included in the 1962 to 1967 six-year capital program). By contrast, construction costs for the first Uris Brothers building alone were estimated at $15 million, while costs for the railroad's eventual development of a shopping concourse were estimated at $5 million; in 1956, Uris Brothers exercised an option to purchase the site of the first building from the railroad for $2 million. Early cost estimates for the entire project ranged from $75 to $100 million. CPC, Capital Program 1962/1967 City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: City Planning Commission, 1961), 18-18, 66-66, 122-122; “Agreements OKd for Development of Penn Center,” Philadelphia Bulletin, May 19, 1953; “PRR to Develop $5,000,000 Shopping Concourse under Penn Center; Six Tenants Already Signed,” Philadelphia Bulletin, March 29, 1956; and “Skyscrapers May Replace Mid-Philadelphia ‘Wall’,” New York Times, January 30, 1953. For the area's zoning status, CPC, Penn Center Redevelopment Area Plan, 12.
32.
Aaron Levine, “Memo to Penn Center Committee Members and Board of Directors,”July 16, 1953, CCCP Records, Acc. 124, Box 1, F: Penn Center Subcommittee, TUUA, 1-3; Roseman, Public-Private Co-operation and Negotiation, 150; Edmund N. Bacon to Edward Fraher, November 18, 1953, Mayor's Correspondence (MC) 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives; Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It,” 54; Bacon to Robert Dowling, January 29, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives; Bacon to Dowling, February 10, 1954, MC 1952-1954, ibid.; and Harold Enarson, “Memorandum for Mayor Clark; Re: Penn Center,” February 18, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives.
33.
City of Philadelphia, “Release—Sunday (draft),”August 9, 1953, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-448, F: Advisory Committee on Penn Center, City Archives; Joseph S. Clark, Jr. to Arthur C. Kauffman, August 21, 1953, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-448, F: Advisory Committee on Penn Center, City Archives; “Mayor Appoints Advisory Group on Penn Center,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 12, 1953. Arthur C. Kaufmann to Rudolf F. Vogeler, February 12, 1955, CPC Records, RG 145.2, Box A-2416, F: Penn Center Citizens Advisory Committee; 1953-55, City Archives.
34.
CCCP, “Penn Center Committee Minutes,”June 5, 1953, CCCP Records, Acc. 124, Box 1, F: Penn Center Subcommittee, TUUA, 2; CCCP, “Board of Directors Meeting Minutes,” June 11, 1953, CCCP Records, Box 3, URB 10/III/8, TUUA; CCCP, “Principal Recommendations on Penn Center Development,” July 9, 1953, CCCP Records, Acc. 124, Box 1, F: Penn Center Subcommittee, TUUA; and CCCP, “Memorandum from Citizens' Council on City Planning on Penn Center,” March 22, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives.
35.
“Penn Center Building Design Criticized as ‘Unimaginative,’ ”Philadelphia Bulletin, October 10, 1953. Bacon to Fraher, November 18, 1953, 2; Robert B. Mitchell to Robert Dowling, January 28, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives, 1-3; Joseph S. Clark to Robert H. Dowling, January 29, 1954, MC 1952-1954, ibid; Robert H. Dowling to Joseph S. Clark, February 2, 1954, MC 1952-1954, ibid; Citizens' Advisory Committee on the Penn Center Plan, “Minutes,” November 20, 1953, January 22, 1954, and January 27, 1954, ibid., pp. 1-2, 1-2, 1-3; Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It,” 53-54; and Roseman, Public-Private Co-operation and Negotiation, 153-58.
36.
Citizens' Advisory Committee on the Penn Center Plan, “Minutes,”January 22, 1954, 3-3; Bacon to Fraher, November 18, 1953, 2; and Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It,” 54-55. In 1954, Clark supported a City Council bill that would have extended the Art Commission's jurisdiction to cover the entire Penn Center area, including the low-rent commercial district on the south side of Market Street. Opponents delayed the measure for over a year, until a 1955 compromise rendered it useless by extending the jurisdiction with only advisory authority.
37.
Clark also noted that “the development of the concourse is quite obviously an essential feature of Penn Center. If the building at 3 Penn Center Plaza fails in significant respects to conform to the Penn Center Plan, then I fail to see how we can prevent a continuous and disastrous whittling-away of Penn Center.” Joseph S. Clark to Edward Hopkinson, Jr., January 29, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives; Clark to C. Clark Zantzinger, January 29, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), ibid.
38.
“Cabinet Minutes for Meeting #101,”February 8, 1954, MD-FC, RG 61.2, Box A-710, F: Confidential—Cabinet Meetings 1954, City Archives, 3; Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It,” 55; and Roseman, Public-Private Co-operation and Negotiation, 156-57. For other city efforts to control the developers, Citizens' Advisory Committee on the Penn Center Plan, “Minutes,” January 22, 1954, February 16, 1954, January 14, 1955, and September 16, 1955, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives, pp. 3, 1-2, 2-3, and 1-2, respectively; Harold Enarson, “Memorandum To Mayor Clark; Re: Penn Center,” February 26, 1954, MC 1952-1954, ibid.; Arthur C. Kaufmann, Chairman, Citizens' Advisory Committee on the Penn Center Plan, “Memo to the Honorable Joseph S. Clark, Jr.,” March 1, 1954, MC 1952-1954, ibid.; Harold Enarson, “Memorandum to A. L. Freedman; Re: Requesting That an Ordinance Be Drafted Expanding the Area Controlled by the Art Commission,” March 16, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives; and Roseman, Public-Private Co-operation and Negotiation, 158-59.
39.
Bob Darling [sic], “Western Union Telegram to Mayor Joseph Clark,”February 4, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives.
40.
In April 1954, the Los Angeles consulting firm of Weldon-Beckett determined that the concourse would be profitable and that it would increase the marketability of Penn Center's office space. “PRR to Develop $5,000,000 Shopping Concourse under Penn Center; Six Tenants Already Signed,”Philadelphia Bulletin, March 29, 1956; H. L. Enarson, “Memorandum for Mayor Clark; Re: Penn Center Problem,” January 15, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives, 1-2. For reaction to the report, Robert H. Dowling to Arthur C. Kaufmann, April 23, 1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives; Joseph S. Clark to Robert H. Dowling, April 28, 1954, MC 1952-1954, ibid.; Bob Dowling, “Western Union Telegram to Honorable Joseph Clark,” May 7, 1954, MC 1952-1954, ibid.; Citizens' Advisory Committee on the Penn Center Plan, “Minutes, Special Session,” May 10, 1954, MC 1952-1954, ibid., 2-3; Penn Center Committee of the CCCP, “Memo to Mayor Joseph S. Clark, Jr.,” July 15, 1954, CCCP Records, Acc. 124, Box 1, F: Penn Center Subcommittee, TUUA.
41.
“Old Broad Street Station Site Should Be a park,”Philadelphia Daily News (editorial), January 30, 1953; CCCP, “Penn Center Committee Minutes,” April 8, 1953, CCCP Records, Acc. 124, Box 1, F: Penn Center Subcommittee, TUUA, 2; Lewis M. Stevens to the Hon. Joseph S. Clark, Jr., May 4, 1953, CPC Files, RG 145.2, Box A-2898, F: Redevelopment—Penn Center 1953, City Archives; Joseph S. Clark Jr. to Lewis M. Stevens, May 7, 1953, CPC Files, RG 145.2, Box A-2898, F: Redevelopment—Penn Center 1953, City Archives; “Old Station Site Urged as Entrance to Park,” Philadelphia Bulletin, June 2, 1953; and James M. Symes to Lewis M. Stevens, May 7, 1953, CPC Files, ibid.
42.
Of these ideas, only the skating rink would actually be implemented. CCCP, “Board of Directors Meeting Minutes,”March 12, 1953, CCCP Records, Box 3, URB 10/III/8, TUUA, 3; Julian L. Greiner, “Penn Center Plan Called Vital,” Philadelphia Bulleting, May 5, 1953; CCCP, “Penn Center Committee Minutes,” April 8, 1953, CCCP Records, Acc. 124, Box 1, F: Penn Center Subcommittee, TUUA, 1; and “PRR Ownership of Chinese Wall Site Questioned: Councilman Phillips Wants Legality of Claim Investigated,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 6, 1953.
43.
CCCP, “Penn Center Committee Minutes,”June 5, 1953, 1-1; and Roseman,Public-Private Cooperation and Negotiation, 195-99.
44.
Lennox L. Moak, “Memorandum to Hon. Joseph S. Clark, Jr.; Subject: Penn Center,”February 10, 1954, 1954-1954, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-462, F: Penn Center 1954, City Archives; Roseman,Public-Private Co-operation and Negotiation, 195-99; and W. H. Brown Jr., and C. E. Gilbert, Planning Municipal Investment: A Case Study of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 78-79.
45.
The Housing Act of 1954 permitted the use of 10 percent of a city's urban renewal funds for nonresidential development, but this change came into effect after the critical decisions regarding Penn Center had been made. Ashley A. Foard and Hilbert Fefferman, “Federal Urban Renewal Legislation,” in Wilson, Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy, 93-113; and Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance, 107. For Clark's difficulties with the Democratic Party organization, see James Reichley, The Art of Government: Reform and Organization Politics in Philadelphia (New York: Fund for the Republic, 1959), 14-20.
46.
Citizens' Advisory Committee on the Penn Center Plan, “Minutes, Regular Meeting,”January 14, 1955, and July 8, 1955, MC 1952-1954, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-473, F: Penn Center 1955, City Archives; CCCP, “Penn Center Committee Minutes,” May 3, 1955, CCCP Records, Acc. 124, Box 1, F: Penn Center Subcommittee, TUUA, 1-4; Edmund N. Bacon, “Memorandum to Members of the Mayor's Cabinet; Subject: Report on Current Status of Penn Center,” September 9, 1955, MC, RG 60-2.3 (Clark), Box A-472, F: Penn Center 1955, City Archives; and Citizens' Advisory Committee on the Penn Center Plan, “Minutes, Regular Session,” March 16, 1956 and September 21, 1956, MC, RG 60- 2.4 (Dilworth), Box A-493, F: Penn Center—Citizens' Advisory Committee, City Archives.
47.
Joseph M. Guess, “ ‘Pigeon Hole’ Parking Proposed under Old Broad Street Station Site,”Philadelphia Bulletin, February 19, 1956; and Roseman, Public-Private Co-operation and Negotiation, 199-204.
48.
In fact, both the Bacon and Dowling plans included an office building on the station site. Frederic R. Mann, “Two Week Report to the Mayor,”July 10, 1956, MD-FC, RG 61.2, Box A-708, F: Confidential—Weekly Reports, City Representative's Office, 1956, City Archives; Richardson Dilworth to the Honorable Albert M. Greenfield, June 6, 1956, MC, RG 60-2.4 (Dilworth), Box A-493, F: Mun. Planning—Center City Improvement Program, City Archives; Richardson Dilworth to the Honorable Frederic R. Mann, June 13, 1956, MC, ibid.; “City to Buy Station Site; Plans Underground Garage at Broad St.,” Philadelphia Bulletin, April 22, 1958; James M. Symes to Hon. Richardson Dilworth, March 20, 1959, MC, RG 60-2.4 (Dilworth), Box A-2244, F: Broad Street Station Site, City Archives; and Pennsylvania Railroad, “The Penn Center of Opportunity in Philadelphia” [promotional brochure], [n.d. but probably May 1954], Van Pelt Library, Vertical Files, F: Penn Center, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 3-5.
49.
Richardson Dilworth to Percy Uris, September 29, 1958, MC, RG 60-2.4 (Dilworth), Box A-2244, F: Broad Street Station Site, City Archives; Percy Uris to Mr. Richardson Dilworth, October 2, 1958, MC, ibid.; James M. Symes to Mr. Richardson Dilworth, October 2, 1958, MC, ibid.; Uris Brothers, Proposal to City Of Philadelphia for Erection of New Office Building, January 26, 1959, MC, ibid.; Richardson Dilworth to Mr. H. D. Harvey, February 6, 1959, MC, ibid.; Richardson Dilworth to James M. Symes, March 24, 1959, MC, ibid.; Richardson Dilworth to Percy Uris, March 24, 1959, MC, ibid.; James M. Symes, “Memorandum for Meeting with Mayor Dilworth,” May 27, 1959, MC, ibid.; Richardson Dilworth to James M. Symes, May 27, 1959, MC, ibid.; and James M. Symes to Hon. Richardson Dilworth, June 8, 1959, MC, ibid.
50.
Adrian I. Lee, “He Calls It Phony, Fights Building Plan,”Philadelphia Bulletin, April 1, 1959; “PRR Defends Penn Center Sale to Uris; Replies to Mayor, Says Office Always Was Planned at Site,” Philadelphia Bulletin, April 2, 1959; Tate Calls Dilworth's Plan on Broad St. Site Too Costly,” Philadelphia Bulletin, April 3, 1959; “Mayor to Try Again to Buy Station Site; Broad St. Plot to Be Discussed with Symes Tomorrow,” Philadelphia Bulletin, May 26, 1959; “Hope in Penn Center,” Philadelphia Bulletin, May 27, 1959; and “Democrats OK Plan to Buy Old Broad St. Station Site,” Philadelphia Bulletin, May 12, 1960.
51.
Writing privately to Dilworth, Albert M. Greenfield argued that “two and a half million dollars, Dick, is about one million more than the lot is worth, but, if you want the City to buy it in order to create another rendezvous for the idle and the drifters as already exists at Reyburn Plaza, as far as I am concerned I shall make no effort to stop you from indulging your whims with reference to this property.” Actually, Greenfield's own firm had appraised the lot at $2,063,000 in 1958. Albert M. Greenfield to the Honorable Richardson Dilworth, December 15, 1959, MC, RG 60-2.4 (Dilworth), Box A-2244, F: Municipal Developments: Broad Street Station Site—Citizen Correspondence, City Archives; and Albert M. Greenfield & Co., Inc., “Appraisal; Site Bounded by Market Street, 15th Street, Penna. Boulevard & Broad Street,” October 30, 1958, MC, RG 60-2.4 (Dilworth), Box A-2244, F: Center City Redevelopment: Broad Street Station Site, City Archives.
52.
Gateway Center's first three office towers had opened by 1953; four more office buildings, a hotel, a luxury apartment tower, and an underground parking garage would be added by 1964. Roy Lubove, Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh: Government, Business, and Environmental Change (New York: John Wiley, 1969), 106-132; and Teaford, Rough Road to Renaissance, 46-47, 108-9. The Allegheny Conference on Community Development (ACCD) and the redevelopment authority later faced community resistance to the clearance of minority and low-income residential areas for a civic auditorium and other projects.
53.
Richard King Mellon could even challenge the power of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1947, Mellon threatened to shift his companies' business to other railroads unless the Pennsylvania Railroad dropped its opposition to a state bill that removed a clause exempting railroads from earlier air pollution control legislation in the Pittsburgh region. The railroad complied and the legislation passed. Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 137-138. Mellon-controlled companies included Mellon National Bank, Alcoa, Gulf Oil, Koppers Company, Carborundum Company, and Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal. Lubove, Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh, 108, 114-18; and Teaford, Rough Road to Renaissance, 60, 65-66. For a longer perspective on redevelopment efforts in Pittsburgh, see Barbara Ferman, Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996).
54.
Reichley, The Art of Government, 15-28. Although Albert M. Greenfield served as chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, he had supported Clark for mayor in 1951. On the divisions within Philadelphia's business community, see Kleniewski “Neighborhood Decline and Downtown Renewal: The Politics of Redevelopment in Philadelphia” (PhD diss., Temple University, Philadelphia, 1982), 100-122. For Clark's conflict with the Chamber, see Walter P. Miller, Jr. to the Honorable Joseph S. Clark, Jr., February 18, 1955, Mayor's Correspondence 1955 (Joseph S. Clark), RG 60-2.3, Box A-473, F: 14: Chamber of Commerce, City Archives, 1-5; Joseph S. Clark, Jr. to Walter P. Miller, Jr., March 4, 1955, ibid., 1-6.; and Joe McLaughlin to Joe Clark, February 23, 1955, ibid.
55.
Douglas Haskell, “An Editorial—Architecture: Stepchild or Fashioner of Cities?”Architectural Forum, December 1953, p. 117-117; Lubove, Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh, 138-40.
56.
CCCP, “Penn Center Committee Minutes,”May 3, 1955, 1-1; “Penn Center Expansion Plan Outlined to Council Unit,” Philadelphia Bulletin, February 10, 1961; and Daniel F. O'Leary, “IBM Building in Penn Center to Be Started,” Philadelphia Bulletin, May 16, 1963. Salsbury notes that by 1963, “Penn Center had become a financial success. At that time, the railroad had realized almost $25 million in land sales and was receiving, in addition, $550,000 a year in rentals.” Salsbury, No Way to Run a Railroad, 58. Also, Peter Binzen and Joseph R. Daughen, The Wreck of the Penn Central(Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 313.
57.
Investment in Penn Center itself totaled more than $100 million. David B. Carlson, “Downtown's Dramatic Comeback,”Architectural Forum120, no. 2 (February 1964): 98-103; Phillip Herrera, “Philadelphia: How Far Can Renewal Go?” Architectural Forum 121, no. 2 (August-September 1964): 180-93; “Under the Knife, or All for Their Own Good,” 60-75; Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 314-16, 331-32, 346; Bernard C. Meltzer, “Market Street West Values Rise Up to 500% without Public Subsidy in Buoyant Market,” Philadelphia Bulletin, October 13, 1967; Leonard J. McAdams, “Chinese Wall Becomes the Towers of Penn Center,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 5, 1970; and Joe Grimm, “Market for Center-City Office Space Suddenly Tight,” Philadelphia Bulletin, December 27, 1981.
58.
“Architect Calls Penn Center Open Mouth with Big Teeth,”Philadelphia Bulletin, February 10, 1961; “ ‘Colonialism’ Labeled Mistake, Threat in Midcity Rebuilding,” Philadelphia Bulletin, March 4, 1964; and “Philadelphia's Redevelopment,” Architectural Forum 105, no. 6 (December 1956): 129-30. Also, John Lukacs, Philadelphia: Patricians & Philistines 1900-1950 (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1981), 320.
59.
Bacon, “Planning, Architecture, and Politics in Philadelphia,” n.p.; Vincent Benedict to Hon. Richardson Dilworth, April 17, 1959, MC, RG 60-2.4 (Dilworth), Box A-2585, F: Municipal Developments—Penn Center, City Archives; Dilworth to James M. Symes, April 24, 1959, MC, ibid.; Symes to Dilworth, May 5, 1959, MC, ibid.; Dilworth to James H.J. Tate, May 11, 1959, MC, ibid.; and Guinther, Direction of Cities, 153, 223. As early as 1958, Jane Jacobs evaluated Penn Center and concluded that “it would be hard to think of a more expeditious way to dampen downtown than to shove its liveliest activities and brightest lights underground” in such malls. Jane Jacobs, “Downtown Is for People,” Fortune, April 1958, p. 137.
Petshek, The Challenge of Urban Reform, 219-219. For an example of Mayor Dilworth's ongoing support for increasing the percentage of urban renewal funds available for nonresidential projects, see Congress, House, Subcommittee on Housing of the Committee on Banking and Currency, Housing Act of 1959, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., February 3, 1959, 604, 611.
