Executive Director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia Paul Steinke gives readers an insider's view of the city of Philadelphia with his foreword from Trope's Above & Across Philadelphia. Featuring over 140 breathtaking images from 11 photographers from the Philadelphia area and beyond, Above & Across Philadelphia captures the stunning beauty of the city from the sky.
In 1682, when London-born William Penn decided where he would locate his New World colony’s principal city, he settled on a flat, well-watered expanse of land between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. “Philadelphia,” he named it, from the Greek for City of Brotherly Love. As a Quaker who suffered persecution from his intolerant British peers, Penn wanted his city to be a place of religious freedom. And as a survivor of the devastating London fire of 1666, he envisioned a city with rectilinear, intersecting streets flanking square building plots, each of which would hold a single house surrounded by gardens – the better to prevent fire from spreading from one building to another.
William Penn’s 17th century urban form has survived to this day, nearly 350 years after he first stepped ashore from his ship, Welcome. Remarkably, modern Philadelphia is still arrayed along the same rectilinear, intersecting streets, albeit with dense development that quickly filled in the garden plots as Penn’s city grew to an extent he could have never imagined. Penn’s original gridiron plan reserved four supersized plots as green spaces, which today are public parks named after George Washington, Ben Franklin, James Logan (Penn’s secretary), and David Rittenhouse (a renowned astronomer and inventor). A fifth plot at the geographic center of the gridiron was reserved for public buildings where today, an enormous bronze statue of William Penn stands atop City Hall tower, erected in 1894. From his lofty perch 548 feet above the street, the city’s founder surveys his urban creation.
Thus was formed the nucleus of a great American city, a downtown that Philadelphians call “Center City.” Situated in a broad, mostly flat river valley, Philadelphia lacks the backdrop of mountains, lakes, or oceans that set the tone for other iconic cityscapes – although the surprisingly broad Delaware River offers an appealing aqueous perspective of the cityscape. Nor is the city defined by its tall buildings, although several skyscrapers soar to more than respectable heights.
What I have found to be Philadelphia’s secret power is the power of small. Its streets were laid out in the horse and buggy days and now seem impossibly small and narrow. This may be the bane of motorists, but it’s pure joy for pedestrians in this most walkable of cities. What’s more, the busy east-west and north-south arteries are interlaced with even narrower lanes and alleys, many lined with tiny little row houses, private clubs, hidden taverns, and eateries. The most famous of these, Elfreth’s Alley, is the oldest continually occupied residential street in America.
Emanating from the urban core are blocks and blocks of row houses in every direction: north, south, west, and – well, not east, because there lies the Delaware River and New Jersey. But in neighborhood after neighborhood outside of Center City, the red brick row house reigns supreme. Philadelphia has more attached dwellings by far than any other city, sometimes as many as 120 per block (60 per side). At the corners can often be found taverns, hair salons, groceries, and other neighborhood-serving shops and services.
But it’s not all asphalt, brick and concrete. Starting at City Hall, a wide, tree-lined boulevard cuts across the grid: the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, inspired by the Champs-Élysées. At its terminus rises an amber-colored limestone temple housing the city’s incredible art museum. Stretching out behind it is the broad, green expanse of Fairmount Park, flanking the Schuylkill River, embracing nearly 5,000 acres on both sides of the river. The park, among the largest in the United States, provides a verdant backdrop for the scullers rowing to and from Boathouse Row who were immortalized by Thomas Eakins. The park extends north and west along the river to the mouth of the Wissahickon Creek, which cuts its way through a magnificent, deep gorge that for centuries has inspired naturalists, painters, and even Charles Dickens.
The city is not all row houses, either. Its built environment reflects centuries of great American architecture. William Strickland started the national craze for Greek Revival design in the 1820s, giving rise to Philadelphia’s 19th century reputation as the “Athens of America.” Later, Frank Furness created a muscular Victorian-era architectural style that defined the cityscape during Philadelphia’s industrial heyday. In the 20th century, architects like Louis Kahn, Aldo Giurgola, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown devised the so-called Philadelphia School of modern architecture that resonated not just in this city but around the world.
The sum total is a joy to experience from the bird’s eye, despite the absence of snow-capped peaks or great lakes. But to truly appreciate Philadelphia is to simply walk its streets, many of which were traversed in bygone days by the founding fathers, determined abolitionists, civil rights champions, and great patriots who helped to forge the great American story.
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