{"id":11462,"date":"2017-07-12T16:21:03","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T20:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=11462"},"modified":"2017-07-12T16:21:03","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T20:21:03","slug":"a-centennial-celebration-eight-views-of-the-long-lost-parkway-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2017\/07\/a-centennial-celebration-eight-views-of-the-long-lost-parkway-model\/","title":{"rendered":"A Centennial Celebration: Eight Views of the Long-Lost Parkway Model"},"content":{"rendered":"

Architects of the Renaissance would have expected more for Philadelphia. Oh, they\u2019d have seen some<\/em> wisdom in the city\u2019s original city plan. Leone Battista Alberti imagined grandiose \u201cpublic ways\u201d leading to \u201csome Temple, or the Course for Races; or to a Place for Justice.\u201d Andrea Palladio concurred in the importance of creating large, \u201cBroad\u201d streets and \u201cHigh\u201d streets<\/a>, \u201cwhence the Mind is more agreeably entertained and the city more adorned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upgrade those streets into public avenues and boulevards lined with worthy buildings. Cities should have built-in expressions of “moral” and “political” significance; they should project \u201cpublic magnificence.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in their \u201cgreen countrie towne,\u201d William Penn and Thomas Holme avoided any kind of unctuous, obsequious expression. Their<\/em> plan for Philadelphia was quite the opposite: modesty and restraint. That\u2019s the original<\/em> vision for Philadelphia\u2019s center square, the nucleus where the city\u2019s DNA would propagate.<\/p>\n

But then, in the 1870s, they blew the lid off Philadelphia\u2019s planning toolkit. It started with the design for City Hall, which grew more immense and more ornate every year. And, as if this bright white-marble building rising out of a sea of red brick in a style akin to the Louvre wasn\u2019t enough, its designers encrusted the exterior with hundreds of allegorical and historical sculptures. Then they topped it all off with a giant bronze rendition of the founder. Apparently Philadelphians had enough after two centuries of understatement. Now was the time to indulge in full-blown \u201cpublic magnificence.\u201d<\/p>\n

How would this new city be made to look and feel? That was the question for the time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Parkway Model Looking [North]West, [Mayor’s Reception Room, City Hall, May 1911.] (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>At first, the answer was to create a \u201cway to the park\u201d\u2014the newly expanded Fairmount Park. Then that concept got an exuberant upgrade. Replicate the axis of Broad Street by cutting a new diagonal swath northwest from City Hall. Make the boulevard a bold starting and ending point for a grand boulevard. Here would be more, much more, than a mere way to the park. Here was a destination in and of itself: The Parkway.<\/p>\n

The idea caught on and grew. And in 1911, when 200 city planners gathered in Philadelphia for their conference, the centerpiece in the room where they deliberated (the Mayor\u2019s Reception Room in City Hall itself) was nothing less than a 30-foot model of the vision. This was how public magnificence was going to play out in the 20th<\/sup> century. A departure and a glorification.\u00a0A Quaker apotheosis\u2014if such a thing was possible\u2014something big enough and new enough, to play in the same ballpark as City Hall. Who knows, the Parkway might even up the game.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Parkway Model Looking [from the Northwest], Mayor’s Reception Room, City Hall, 1911. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>No longer would the 17th<\/sup>-century grid hold back urbanity. Here, in all of its diagonal glory, severing an entire quarter of Penn-Holme Philadelphia, was a contrary vision of a fresh, new city\u2014a City Beautiful, though still in plaster and papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Charles Mulford Robinson , the man who gave the City Beautiful movement it\u2019s name, came to the conference in 1911 and declared it so.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica is waking up,\u201d declared W. Templeton Johnson in anticipation of the exhibition. \u201cConservative Philadelphia is taking a great step forward\u201d in its new priority to turn \u201caway from the checker-board plan, the curse of our American cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have planned radial streets after the French manner, but with a constantly increasing width on leaving the center so as to create a great path for fresh country air to come blowing in to the very vitals of a great city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great purpose of the Philadelphia exhibition is to start a campaign of education, to attract people to the City Hall, and once there to show them graphically and expeditiously by means of plans, beautifully prepared perspectives, and photographs what far-seeing men are doing to make the cities of the world not only more beautiful to look upon, but better places to live in. It is hoped that not only Philadelphians, but people from all parts of the country may come to this exhibition, and with the aid of the competent guides which it is proposed to have, learn the great lesson of good city planning, and spread its propaganda through the city and over the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

The model stood at the heart of the \u201cInternational Exhibition of City Planning\u201d which was \u201con view free to the public, in the corridors of the City Hall from May 15 to June 15\u201d 1911. \u00a0The headlines screamed approval: \u201cSplendid Municipal and Educational Buildings Will Line Sides of Parkway;\u201d \u201cCity Planners Loud in Praise of Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n

The model is gone, long gone, but we have these and other photographs of it. Eight in all:\u00a0From the City Hall end of the model there is this one<\/a> (a detail of which is illustrated, top) and another<\/a>.\u00a0There\u2019s a bird\u2019s eye view<\/a> from Broad Street South. And yet one more<\/a> from the East.\u00a0At the Northwest end of the Parkway, there\u2019s this view<\/a> of Fairmount from across the Schuylkill. And another<\/a> from further downstream.\u00a0On axis from the Northwest there\u2019s this view<\/a> (a detail of which is illustrated above) and other<\/a> at a similar angle showing more of the park.<\/p>\n

You’ll find other historical material as well: William E. Groben\u2019s Bird\u2019s Eye Perspective<\/a> of Fairmount, the subject of this earlier post<\/a>. And if this is all a bit of D\u00e9j\u00e0<\/em>\u00a0vu<\/em>,\u00a0maybe you read this post<\/a>\u00a0back in 2011, which, as we see it, would have been the best time to celebrate the Parkway\u2019s Centennial.<\/p>\n

[Sources:\u00a0 David Brownlee,\u00a0Building the City Beautiful: The Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/em>\u00a0(Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989)<\/a>; W. Templeton Johnson, “The Coming City Planning Exhibition<\/a>,” in The Survey, <\/em>April 1911, pp. 183-184;\u00a0\u201cNation\u2019s Experts to Inspect New Plan: Splendid Municipal and Educational Buildings Will Line Sides of Parkway,\u201d\u00a0 The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, February 28, 1911; and \u201cCity Planners Loud in Praise of Philadelphia\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer, <\/em>May 16, 1911.]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Architects of the Renaissance would have expected more for Philadelphia. Oh, they\u2019d have seen some wisdom in the city\u2019s original city plan. Leone Battista Alberti imagined grandiose \u201cpublic ways\u201d leading to \u201csome Temple, or the Course for Races; or to a Place for Justice.\u201d Andrea Palladio concurred in the importance of creating large, \u201cBroad\u201d streets […]<\/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-11462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11462","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=11462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}