Source: University City Review
Date: September 2008
Byline: Nicole Contosta

Looking back 60 years to the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibit

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission hosted a lecture on the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibit, which honored the late Edmund Bacon and other trailblazing city planners last Tuesday, September 25.

Bacon wanted to give "legitimacy to city planning" with the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibit, said Greg Heller, President of the Ed Bacon Foundation.

Chronicling Bacon's rise to becoming one of Philadelphia's most influential planners, Heller offered a brief summary of Bacon's biography and the work that he, along with other significant planners such as architect Oskar Stonorov and Louis Kahn, did, not only to plan the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibit but to transform the city itself.

According to Heller, Bacon, who was born in Philadelphia in 1910, began his career as a city planner in the mid-1930's in Flint, Michigan. Having earned an architecture degree from Cornell University in 1932, Bacon traveled throughout Europe and China, then returned to study under the renowned architect and planner Eliel Saarinen in 1936. While there, Saarinen asked for Bacon's assistance in nearby Flint, which gave Bacon experience in traffic planning and later propelled him into becoming the Secretary of the Flint City Planning Board and a member of the Flint Chamber of Commerce. Even though Bacon received considerable acclaim in Flint, explained Heller, his work also aroused suspicion from its city council because he earmarked funds for affordable housing. In 1939, Bacon was literally "run out" of Flint, Heller said.

But Bacon had numerous contacts in Philadelphia, explained Heller, and so he returned to the city of his birth and with the help of Walter Phillips, a Harvard Law student interested in civic reform, secured a job with the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Bacon also became involved in the New City Planning Committee, which in 1942 went before City Council, and the Philadelphia City Planning Commission was formed.

Between the formation of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibit, Bacon left his job at the Philadelphia Housing Authority and joined the Navy in 1943 to fight in WWII, explained Heller. During his absence, Bacon's friends and colleagues Oskar Stonorov and Robert Mitchell began developing a "major exhibition to educate the public about what city planning is," Heller said. When Bacon was discharged from the Navy in 1945, he joined Stonorov and Mitchell in planning for the exhibition, added Heller.

For two months, opening in September 1947 on the top two floors of Gimbel's department store, the Better Philadelphia Exhibition attracted over 340,000 visitors. According to Heller, the exhibition's main attraction was a 33' by 14' model of Philadelphia as it was in 1947. As visitors looked at the model, panels would rotate until the model changed into a future vision of what the city would look like in 1982. This model was on display at the Philadelphia Civic Center until 1976, said Heller.

As the lecture progressed, Heller and architects David Brownlee and James Kise during a "roundtable discussion" went on to note Bacon's achievements as City Planning Director from 1949-1970. Bacon's major accomplishments as City Planning Director included: constructing Penn Center, which linked all of Philadelphia's rail lines together and created a connected, underground shopping concourse; developing the Far Northeast; constructing Love Park and Dilworth Plaza; revitalizing Society Hill; and constructing Market East.

There will be an awards ceremony and gala reception for the Ed Bacon Foundation to announce the winners of Connecting Market East, the foundation's Second Annual National Student Design Competition, at Loews Philadelphia Hotel, 1200 Market Street, on November 5 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are available at www.edbacon.org/marketeast/ceremony.htm.