Penn's Luminous City

Penn’s Luminous City

Joseph Howard Tyson

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

Penn’s Luminous City

Copyright © 2005 by J. H. Tyson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

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W.C. Fields’ photograph and scattered quotations reprinted with permission of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing from W.C. Fields By Himself by Ronald Fields copyright © 1973 by Anne Ruth Fields, picture of Arlington Hotel courtesy of Harold S. Finigan Jr. and The Darby Historical & Preservation Society, East Coast Greenway Map with permission of East Coast Greenway Alliance, 1937 Germantown Map from W.P.A. Guide to Philadelphia (PA Historical Commission,) maps of Fairmount Park trail system and Wissahickon Valley courtesy of Fairmount Park Commission, Ian McHarg’s Health & Pathology Map, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-35469-6 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-79962-6 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-35469-6 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-79962-0 (ebk)

Contents

Preface

1 Three Maps

2 The Holy Experiment: William Penn’s Prophetic Vision

3 Benjamin Franklin, Citizen of Philadelphia and the World

4 Mass: Philadelphia’s Architecture

5 Let’s Feng Shui Philly

6 Celebrating Philadelphia’s Underutilized Assets

7 Sojourners in Fairmount Park

8 Irreplaceable Germantown

9 The Legend of Whitey

10 West Philadelphia

11 The Schuylkill River

12 The Delaware Riverbank Project: A Plan to Revive Philadelphia’s Northeast Corridor

Preface

Philadelphia author Francis Daniel Pastorius wrote a miscellany entitled The Beehive between 1696 and 1719. This massive tome used essays, poems, anagrams, and other literary devices to impart information about philosophy, agriculture, law, and the classics. As if further proof of his versatility were needed, Pastorius composed pieces in Latin, Greek, German, French, English—seven languages in all.

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden also falls into the miscellany tradition. The young author blends prose with verse, science with reverie. He intersperses treatises on higher laws and economics with reflections about pole beans, an ant battle, Walden Pond, and woodland animals. Dissimilar subjects are juxtaposed to jolt readers into new realizations. Thoreau goes off on tangents. The best of them cast sidelights on his main themes. Many of Thoreau’s digressions are learned, but too whimsical to be academic. Like life, the book takes sudden turns, and has an uneven quality. Short bravura pieces interrupt the occasional dull patch. By apparent accident the whole hangs together in the end.

The miscellany works like a submarine—far-ranging, scudding about on the surface, as well as diving into unexplored depths. Specialists in our compartmentalized age disparage such randomness, but generalists appreciate the form’s suitability for pursuing common threads through a variety of subjects.

The present work utilizes biography, fantasy, poetry, and magazine article format to delve into city planning, history, architecture, theology, genealogy, horticulture, and ecology. There are tangents on canal boating, Fanny Kemble, Freemasonry, W. C. Fields, Quaker theology, the Seabees, etc. These diverse perspectives all confirm Philadelphia’s intrinsic worth, despite damage inflicted since World War II by substance abuse and corporate disinvestment.

History clarifies and enriches current experience, creating what some philosophers call an expanded present with deeper meaning. Chronological investigations not only bring the past into sharper focus, but enhance our consciousness of today’s world, and provide glimpses of the future.

Penn’s Luminous City argues that the key to Philadelphia’s future lies in its past. William Penn’s ideal of a greene countrie towne can hardly be improved upon. However, its realization requires spiritual awareness. Today’s rat-racers are too blinded by materialism to care about ethics, aesthetics, spirituality, or nature. Fanny Kemble noticed this obtuseness back in 1833.

…the utter insensibility of…Americans to the…sublimity of nature is…amazing; and in this respect they literally appear to me to want…sense. I have been filled with astonishment and perplexity at the total indifference with which (they) behold scenes of grandeur and loveliness that any creature, with half a soul, would gaze at with feelings almost of adoration. But in these glorious tabernacles of nature…Americans come and stare and stand for a moment, and depart again,…impressed with nothing, (then continue) toiling along the crowded streets of their cities, those dens of Mammon…1

Genuine urban renewal requires spiritual regeneration. William Penn regarded decrepit houses and littered alleys as products of human vice. On the other hand, positive phenomena such as slum clearance, creek clean-up, the reconnection of Philadelphia’s trail system, and reformation of schools manifest the Light’s healing action. Drug use has ravaged whole neighborhoods in North and West Philadelphia. Only Spiritual Power can make this plague recede.

Society of Friends’ founder George Fox believed in the Apocalypse of the Word. By this process the Inward Light of Christ sanctified both men and the physical realm. According to Fox’s doctrine, earthly existence could be ameliorated with God’s help. Satan would not reign forever as the prince of this world. By nurturing that of God in every man people of goodwill might eventually reestablish paradise on earth.

Penn truly wanted to found a Realm of Light. He felt that our fallen world could be led out of perdition through the shining example of his Holy Experiment. Due to human frailty God’s Peaceable Kingdom has not yet materialized in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, Penn’s prophetic vision still inspires citizens to make the city a better place.

My thanks to fellow history buffs, preservationists, and armchair urban planners who made constructive suggestions for this project, including Tom Smith, Joe Klinger, John Haigis, Jan Haigis, Vince Reynolds, Andy Saul, Walt Evans, and others. I am solely responsible for any errors or misstatements.

Joseph Howard Tyson III

June, 2005

1. Fanny Kemble, The Journal of Frances Anne Butler, Vol. II, John Murray, London, 1835, pp. 256-257.

1

Three Maps

"And thou, Philadelphia, virgin settlement of

This Province, named before thou wast born,

What love, care, service, and travail there

Have been to bring thee forth and preserve thee

From such as would abuse and defile thee.

O that thou mayest be kept from the evil that

Would overwhelm thee. That faithful to God

Thou mayest be preserved to the end. My soul

Prays to God for thee that thou mayest stand

In the day of trial, that thy children may be

Blest of the Lord and thy people saved

By His power."

—William Penn’s Prayer for Philadelphia (1684)

Engraved on bronze plaque mounted on wall of City Hall’s

north portico

Pennsylvania has more streams than any state except Alaska. Rivers and creeks dominate Thomas Holme’s1681 map of Philadelphia. Viewers see the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, Frankford Creek, Tacony Creek, Wingohocking Creek, Coaquanock Creek, Wissahickon Creek…These are the natural lineaments of the Delaware Valley. William Penn planned to build in harmony with these interconnected waterways.

The fragmentation of Philadelphia began when developers adopted the view that Philadelphia’s watercourses were impediments to their short-sighted schemes. 19th Century contractors built over Turnanaramarning Creek, Coa- quonnock Creek, and others. They now subsist as underground tributaries of Philadelphia’s sewer system. Between 1900 and 1932 the city’s water department encapsulated most of Wingohocking Creek. They dumped as much as forty feet of gravel throughout its bed, laid gas and water mains, then built houses on top. Whole blocks in Logan, Olney, and the lower Northeast sit above Rocky Run or Wingohocking Creek. By 1940 nearly 80% of Philadelphia’s 15,500 acres of watershed had been filled in.

However, two magnificent streams still run through city parks: Wissa- hickon and Pennypack creeks. In 1966 landscape architect Ian McHarg and a team of Penn graduate students mapped the health and pathology of Philadelphia. The areas with lowest incidence of crime and disease were near parks with creeks.

McHarg recommended that urban planners work in concert with natural terrain features, utilizing geology, hydrology, forestry, and agricultural science in their designs.

Progressive landscape architects agree with Chinese practitioners of Feng Shui, who set aside the banks of rivers, lakes, and brooks as park land. In the 19th Century Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Eliot conceived of the Emerald Necklace paradigm: a series of small parks along rivers and creeks linked by greenways, with buildings and streets in-between. Connectivity was crucial to the emerald necklace concept. Only by being strung together could these separate jewels reflect upon each others’ facets. By generating synergy they became greater than the sum of their parts.

Montgomery County’s Schuylkill River Study defines greenway as a linear open space established along a natural corridor (e.g. riverfront, stream valley, ridge line) or a built feature (e.g. railroad right of way, canal, scenic road.) A greenway’s purpose is to connect …open space, natural, historic, scenic, and recreation areas in a natural or landscaped corridor. West River Drive, the Manayunk Towpath, and Forbidden Drive are all greenways. To recover its health as a metropolis Philadelphia needs more of them.

Like most modern cities Philadelphia has beautiful attractions as well as blighted areas. The amenities include Fairmount Park, Pennypack Park, John Heinz Wildlife Refuge, Kelly Drive, West River Drive, etc. Some of the worst atrocities have occurred along our waterways: an uninterrupted series of junkyards, fuel depots, and interstate highways block public access to the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. In order to achieve greater asset connectivity, some of these trashed sites must be rehabilitated and merged with existing green space.

The one hundred year master plan of every local environmental group is to unify all of Philadelphia’s parks and cultural resources together by means of a huge, pedestrian-friendly greenway system, consisting of trails, sidewalks, bikeways, and bridges.

Given the financial and political condition of Philadelphia it’s not possible to fashion an Emerald Necklace within our life-times. Nevertheless, opportunities for significant improvement exist: assets can be expanded, liabilities deleted, new linkages formed. Philadelphia currently has 215 miles of recreational trails. According to the calculations of consultant Leon Younger, another 89 miles of greenway links are needed to repair the breaks in this web and unite it into an organic whole.

Restoring Philadelphia’s Fractured Trail System

America has never ceased to be a frontier. In the 1700’s colonists blazed trails through the wilderness. Today we are faced with the challenge of reestablishing corridors through post-industrial wreckage and inner city badlands. The objective is to create two-way streets, opening up every section of the city to all population groups. In 1867 landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted recognized the democratizing effect of Fairmount Park. He pointed out that rich and poor gathered together in such public domains. Both higher and lower economic classes could benefit by escaping overpopulation and enjoying the fresh air and open space of parks.

The Fairmount Park Commission recently consulted with state and national agencies to develop a plan for expanding the Delaware Valley’s Trail Network. The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission’s map shows both existing greenways and trails in the planning stage.

The Delaware Riverbank Project and Cobbs Creek Greenway will soon connect with America’s East Coast Greenway. This ambitious plan has been made possible by Congress’s 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and the 1998 Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21.) Between 1992 and 1998 ISTEA provided over 3 billion dollars for surface transportation (highways and mass transit), with 10% dedicated to greenways.

TEA-21, the successor of ISTEA, aims to achieve balance in transportation funding by subsidizing non-automotive transportation, as well as highways. If we stop engaging in futile wars on the other side of the world this legislation will protect farmland, greenways, historical sites, biological habitats, and watersheds by providing money for bicycle and pedestrian trails, historic highway restoration, stream clean-up, archeological research, and the conversion of abandoned railway corridors into trails. All TEA-21 grants require that the initiating municipality or non-profit organization come up with 20% of the funding. This program has eliminated much of the usual red tape. After issuing a TEA-21 award, the government steps back and allows local authorities to micro-manage the details.

This recent shift in emphasis from expressways to greenways has not given a free hand to tree-huggers. Relatively few trail concepts have gotten TEA-21 money. As the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s website (www.railstrails.org) declares: …only the most exceptional…projects with extremely strong political support are likely to have even a chance at obtaining…funds. Nevertheless, the Conservancy has achieved some dramatic successes in transforming weed-choked track beds into recreational trails.

In the wake of numerous railroad bankruptcies, Congress passed the Staggers Act in 1980, which partially deregulated the industry. Among other things, this law made it easier for railroads to dump unprofitable lines. Between 1980 and 2000 railroads abandoned over 70,000 miles of track. Working in concert with other groups, the Pennsylvania Rails-to-Trails Conservancy helped create several new greenways around Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia-to-Valley Forge Bike Trail, Perkiomen Trail, and the Radnor Multi-Purpose Greenway (previously the Strafford branch of Red Arrow’s P & W line.) Philadelphia currently has 30.7 miles of inactive rail lines. These include 3.5 miles of track between Tabor and Fairhill junctions in North Philadelphia, two miles from Frankford Ave. to Richmond St., and a .6 mile stretch near Benjamin Franklin Parkway that parallels Hamilton St. from 17th to 22nd streets.

Campbell, Thompson & Co.’s report on the Tinicum-Fort Mifflin Trail mentions 2.2 miles of idle tracks near the Schuylkill River at 25th & Washington Ave. and a 4.4 mile length from 60th & Elmwood to Ft. Mifflin. These abandoned railroad rights of way may eventually become part of Philadelphia’s trail network. In our benighted age of terrorism the unused tracks at 25th & Washington need stepped-up pedestrian patrol since this isolated area abuts Philadelphia Gas Works. Fiends with rocket-propelled grenades can’t deploy while troops of muscular South Philly guys walk the walk with their families. Philadelphia’s City Planning Commission has already recommended that the old Kensington & Tacony rail corridor (near Delaware Ave. & Lewis St.) become part of the Delaware Riverbank Project. There is a possibility that CSX may relinquish some of its little used lines on the east Schuylkill River bank, which would give much-needed impetus to current plans for enlarging Schuylkill River Park.

Philadelphia has a falling population and financial problems. Much of the pre-automobile-era housing in north & west Philadelphia is cramped, government-subsidized, or tax-delinquent. Building construction and renovation expenses far exceed the costs of cutting grass and maintaining pedestrian walkways in parks. Rigorous anti-pollution statutes effectively prevent rebuilding at some sites. Therefore, the city must concentrate on inter-relating its positive features with greenways, and transforming bombed-out zones into parks and lower-density residential developments.

Bridges

Though this book advocates political solutions, readers ought to appreciate Philadelphia in the present, as if it were ideal. Enjoy the city now, in spite of its imperfections. Positive visualizations facilitate improvement.

Connectivity enhances urban health. Pedestrian-friendly bridges over the Schuylkill River dramatically achieve continuity by unifying diverse areas. These include East Falls, Strawberry Mansion, Spring Garden, West River Drive, South St., University Drive, and Grays Ferry bridges.

Such connectors provide excellent opportunities for bicycle and hiking expeditions. Many great bike trips are simple back and forth routes—for example, Bluestone Bridge to Northwestern Ave. and back on Valley Green’s Forbidden Drive. Although others are loops which cross bridges, such as the oval, clockwise route from the Art Museum via West River Drive to Falls Bridge, then back to the museum by way of Kelly Drive. Other circular excursions use different bridges, for example: the counterclockwise loop from Girard Ave. Bridge—33rd St.—Strawberry Mansion Bridge—West Park—Montgomery Drive—West River Drive—Sweet Briar Cutoff—Girard Bridge, and: the clockwise loop from Spring Garden St. Bridge—Schuylkill Greenway—South St. Bridge—33rd St.—Spring Garden Bridge.

Innumerable variations might be executed based on different bridge and travel-direction combinations. Greater variety would emerge if other spans could accommodate pedestrians—such as the Columbia Railroad Bridge (West River Drive at Montgomery Drive,) which has crumbling sidewalks, no protective fence, or access to the Kelly Drive side of the river.

New pedestrian/bicycle bridges at key spots could immeasurably enhance Philadelphia’s cohesion. The University of Pennsylvania’s 330 foot Locust Walk overpass above 38th St. demonstrates that the technology exists to rejoin enclaves severed by automobile highways.

Companies like Continental Bridge and Gateway Bridge specialize in cable-stayed and steel truss pedestrian bridges. Most of their smaller structures are prefabricated, with choice of wood or concrete decks. All designs include safety rails and conform to American Institute of Steel Construction criteria for pedestrian, vehicle, snow, and wind loads. Non-vehicular Skywalks cost nowhere near as much as car-and-truck traffic bridges. With federal and state support, Philadelphia can afford such projects. The Pew Charitable Trust, William Penn Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, and other non-profits should fund more of them. The engineering faculty and student body at Drexel University brim with innovative bridge designs.

Restoring Philadelphia’s organic wholeness boils down to a simple process of reconnecting the web of parks and greenways, thus making it a more stroll- able European-type city. This means bringing the ghettoes of North Philadelphia and West Philadelphia into the mix, not just Chestnut Hill, or East Falls. Fractures have to be healed in order to establish William Penn’s Peaceable Kingdom. African-Americans and Hispanics cannot be excluded.

A Modest Proposal: Resurrect the W.P.A.

During the Depression the Works Progress Administration made substantial improvements to Valley Green Inn and Wissahickon Hall (now a police barracks at Gypsy Lane & Wissahickon Drive.) WPA workers built cabins, fences, and retaining walls. They also widened the carriage road and dug 35 miles of bridle paths.

Between May 6, 1935 and December 14, 1943 the WPA employed 8,500,000 workers on 1,410,000 projects, spending 11 billion dollars in the process. It constructed 853 airports, 8,192 parks, 124,110 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 miles of highway, as well as subsidizing theatrical companies, orchestras, artists, and writers. WPA clerical staff indexed censuses, veterans’ pension records, immigration passenger lists, and other archival documents.

A new WPA could help landscape, build bridges, construct greenways, and sponsor a few starving artists. Trade Unions will oppose it, even though such an army of working men and women would come from the ranks of the unemployed. Philadelphia supposedly has a 5.4% unemployment rate as of May, 2005. Stetson Hat, Packard Automotive Works, Edwards Shoes, Baldwin Locomotive, Lehigh Mills, Cramp Shipbuilding, Disston Saw, Bromley & Co. Textiles, and the Pennsylvania Railroad are no more. The city had 293,000 industrial workers in 1937, but only 99,000 fifty years later. Reviving the WPA would alleviate unemployment and improve America.

Analyzing South Philly

Few possibilities for significant green-space development exist in South Philadelphia. It’s a densely-populated urban area with rising real estate values bordered by South St., the Delaware River, Schuylkill River, Philadelphia International Airport, and League Island, the former U.S. Naval Base. Though Queen Village flows into Society Hill, Gloria Dei Church, South St., and Penns Landing, South Philadelphia’s other enclaves do not integrate well. Busy streets surround and cut off FDR Park’s Bellair Mansion (20th & Patti- son,) from vest-pocket parks such as Girard Estate (21st & Shunk,) Wilson Park (25th & Jackson,) and Mifflin Square (8th & Ritner.)

The Schuylkill Expressway, Interstate 95, railroad tracks, and huge industrial areas on the right bank of the Schuylkill River alienate South Philadelphia residents from the rest of Philadelphia’s greenway system. If we conceive of the city as an organism, South Philly resembles a limb with its circulation cut off. This section can’t be rehabbed without altering its ingrained pedestrian-unfriendliness.

Like North Philadelphia South Philly lacks good east-west conducting streets. A restored South Street represents the best opportunity for a continuous Delaware River to Schuylkill River pathway. To achieve greater connectivity two enhancements must occur: a Broad St overpass at South St. similar to the University of Pennsylvania’s span across 38th St., and an extension of the Schuylkill River Trail another four blocks from Spruce St. to the South Street Bridge.

With the exception of Penn’s Landing, most of South Philadelphia’s green space lies at its southern tip: Ft. Mifflin, Girard Point, 330 acre Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and League Island (the former Navy yard.) The Penns Landing greenway runs along the Delaware Riverfront from Spring Garden St. to Dickinson St., where it abruptly terminates. The one and a half miles of river frontage below Dickinson consists of shopping centers, big box stores, railroad property, and the Packer Marine Terminal. Easements from these industrial real estate owners for a lengthening of Penn’s Landing to the former naval reservation are not likely without tremendous political pressure. Most South Philly residents don’t seem to care, even though their relatively high cancer rate almost certainly stems from higher levels of air and water pollution.

According to federal law, no one may own an ocean beach. The same doctrine should apply to rivers. No grumpy, neurotic private property owner ought to have the right to deny pedestrian access to riparian banks—defined as the 50 foot area from the water line. At any rate, seaport, railroad, and mercantile substructures between Morris St. and Government Ave. prevent Penn’s Landing’s southerly continuation.

The Bitter Fruit of Graft

Heading west from 26th St. toward the Schuylkill River one encounters a dismal complex of rail yards, fuel storage tanks, refineries, and scrap-yards. Society must have such facilities, but do we need four square miles of marginal land use along a beautiful river?

Republican bosses George, Edwin, and William Vare created this no- man’s land between 1888 and 1928 when their political machine reigned supreme. During that period—when one could buy lunch at Horn & Hardarts’s for fifteen cents—the Vare brothers secured 341 municipal contracts worth more than 28 million dollars.

The Vare clan started out as pig farmers in the wetlands by the Schuylkill River near Passyunk Ave. Shortly after becoming politically active in the 1880’s George and Edwin Vare