{"id":1098,"date":"2011-09-22T11:14:28","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T15:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=1098"},"modified":"2011-09-22T14:04:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T18:04:26","slug":"finding-philadelphias-wow-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2011\/09\/finding-philadelphias-wow-factor\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Philadelphia’s “Wow Factor”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\"Purchase <\/a> \"View <\/a>Construction of the Sesquicentennial Bell at the base of Broad Street, 1926<\/span><\/div>\n

Philly history is telling us something: We lost our sense of humor at the bottom of Broad Street. <\/p>\n

Consider the new spine of lights proposed for a stretch of Broad, the 2 \u00bd miles from Spring Garden to Norris. These 29, 55-foot tall stalks of light are meant to restore North Broad Street\u2019s long-absent \u201cwow factor,\u201d according to the folks at the Avenue of the Arts. But history suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n

Want to find Philadelphia’s \u201cwow factor?\u201d Go back to Broad Street and Oregon Avenue in 1926. That <\/em>was the real deal: a monumental, iconic claim of Philadelphia as the nation\u2019s \u201cCradle of Liberty.\u201d Sesquicentennial designers installed a giant sculpture right in the center of Broad Street on what\u2019s now Marconi Plaza. Never before or since has the city seen something so bold, so apt\u2014so much fun. Visible for miles, the giant Sesqui bell seemed to be in a kind of conversation with the 38-foot-tall statue of William Penn on City Hall. \u201cMake no mistake,\u201d these two sculptures seemed to be saying, “you\u2019re in Philadelphia, and there’s a message to share. We\u2019re saying it here and we\u2019re making it come alive\u2014with light.” <\/p>\n

Long before the invention of the electric bulb, light had been the city\u2019s best metaphor. Philadelphia was created around the central Quaker belief in an \u201cinner light,\u201d that divine spark in everyone so essential to the idea of equality and community. Later came the notion of the light of Liberty, something worthy of a new and independent nation. <\/p>\n

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\n\"Purchase <\/a>
\n\"View <\/a>The Sesquicentennial Bell lit up the night, June 1, 1926.<\/span><\/div>\n

How to make these metaphors come alive on the street? Cue the electric light. For more than a century, Broad Street, the founding city\u2019s longest, widest public avenue, has been a light laboratory, a stage for meaningful illumination. At the end of the Spanish American War in 1898 lights adorned the temporary arch<\/a> at Broad and Walnut. Lights draped from City Hall<\/a> celebrated Philadelphia\u2019s 225th birthday in 1908. Powerful spotlights permanently illuminated City Hall\u2019s tower<\/a> in 1916. And as recently as 2005, wild light play continued at City Hall<\/a>. But nothing <\/em>topped Broad Streets convergence of form, meaning and light more than when the gargantuan, sheet metal blow-up of the Liberty Bell was switched on in 1926, for the nation\u2019s 150th birthday.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know what creative genius proposed this 80-foot sculpture covered with 26,000, 15-watt light bulbs. (We do <\/em>know D. W. Atwater of the Westinghouse Lamp Company designed the illumination.) Switched on May 31, 1926, the Sesqui Bell predated Pop Art by a long shot: Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg weren\u2019t even born <\/em>until the late 1920s. Warhol painted his Campbell\u2019s soup cans<\/a> 36 years later; Oldenburg installed his giant Clothespin<\/a> 50 years later. \u201cI am for art that is flipped on and off with a switch;\u201d wrote Oldenburg in his Pop Art manifesto<\/a>, considered avant garde<\/em> in 1961: \u201cI am for the blinking arts, lighting up the night.\u201d <\/p>\n

We\u2019re convinced: Philadelphians in the 1920s were way <\/em>ahead of the curve. They knew how, where and with what to light up Broad Street. They <\/em>were in touch with Philadelphia\u2019s \u201cwow factor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Construction of the Sesquicentennial Bell at the base of Broad Street, 1926 Philly history is telling us something: We lost our sense of humor at the bottom of Broad Street. Consider the new spine of lights proposed for a stretch of Broad, the 2 \u00bd miles from Spring Garden to Norris. These 29, 55-foot tall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}