Philadelphia (city, Pennsylvania)

I

Introduction

Philadelphia (city, Pennsylvania), largest city of Pennsylvania. Founded in 1682 by English Quaker William Penn, Philadelphia is known as the Birthplace of the Nation because of its role in America’s struggle for independence from Britain. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were drafted in the city. The name Philadelphia was derived from the Greek words meaning “city of brotherly love,” and Penn opened his city to people of many different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Modern Philadelphia has worked hard to maintain that diversity while becoming one the great commercial, cultural, and educational centers in the United States.

The city of Philadelphia, which since 1854 has had the same boundaries as the county of Philadelphia, is located in the southeastern corner of the state, at the junction of the Delaware River and Schuylkill River. A major port, the city lies about 160 km (about 100 mi) inland from the Atlantic Ocean and is situated approximately halfway between New York City and Washington, D.C. It has hot humid summers and moderately cold winters. In January, temperatures average 1°C (34°F) and in July 25°C (77°F). The average annual precipitation is 1,050 mm (41 in).

II

Philadelphia and its Metropolitan Area

Philadelphia’s original street plan, as laid out by William Penn and his surveyor general, Thomas Holme, established a pattern of rectangular blocks called a grid system. The grid included four public squares that defined each of the city’s sectors, as well as a central square that eventually became the site of City Hall. Numbered thoroughfares ran north and south, while east and west streets were named mainly for trees, such as Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Spruce, and Pine streets. Large building lots freed residents from the problems of overcrowding experienced by other 17th-century cities and also encouraged more real estate development.

As Philadelphia grew in different directions, the grid system was extended to the city limits. Along these streets, developers constructed row houses in two-, three-, and occasionally, grand four-story models. These houses fronted on the street, but because of the size of the original lots, 18th-century landowners then added new alleys and courts behind them. There they built rental units, including the three-story tenements that became home to thousands of the city's poor Irish, Jewish, and black immigrants during the 19th century.

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The portion of William Penn’s original town site that extended west from the Delaware River also included many important commercial and government buildings. This area, often called Center City, now contains the Independence National Historical Park. The park includes more than 20 sites associated with early American history. Perhaps the most famous is Independence Hall, originally completed in 1753 as the home of the Pennsylvania colonial government. The Declaration of Independence was adopted in this building, and it was also the location of the debate over the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States. Other historic buildings nearby include Carpenters’ Hall, where the First Continental Congress met in 1774; the First and Second Banks of the United States; and Old City Hall which housed the Supreme Court of the United States from 1791 to 1800. The Liberty Bell, which originally hung in Independence Hall, now rests in its own glass-walled pavilion, and Franklin Court, the site of Benjamin Franklin’s home, includes an underground museum.

Center Square, later known as Penn Square, marked the exact geographical center of Philadelphia’s original plan and the intersection of the city’s two main thoroughfares, Broad and Market streets. At this site in 1871 the city began construction of a massive new City Hall, which, when it was completed 30 years later, became the largest municipal building in the United States. A towering statue of William Penn stands on top of the structure. To preserve it as a focal point of downtown Philadelphia, an informal agreement that remained in effect for more than a century banned any new buildings that would exceed the height of City Hall.

Since the 1950s Philadelphia has embarked on major redevelopment and restoration projects for this downtown area of the city. In eastern Center City, the Society Hill area was transformed from a decaying district of mixed housing and commercial structures into an affluent urban residential village with numerous restored 18th- and early 19th-century townhouses. Penn Center, across from City Hall, became the first of several new commercial and office complexes to be completed. Not until 1987, however, with the construction of One Liberty Place did Philadelphia developers abandon the old height restriction and begin to add skyscrapers to the city skyline. Philadelphia’s transformation distinguished itself by the preservation of the old and the integration of the new; thus, a restored 18th-century town house may sit comfortably in the shadow of modern metal-and-glass high-rise buildings.

An enduring feature of Philadelphia is its mosaic of neighborhoods, reminders of the original villages, townships and districts that were eventually incorporated into the city. Maps of Philadelphia identify as many as 100 commonly agreed-upon subdivisions of the city, and local residents often break down these areas even further. Many of these neighborhoods retain the character of the racial and ethnic groups who settled in them. South Philadelphia, for example, is known as an Italian section of the city. The district known as Chinatown developed around Ninth and Race streets as early as the 1860s and continues to have a strong Asian influence. Southwark, which stretches along the Delaware River, had one of America’s first large free black populations in an urban area and remains an important center for Philadelphia’s black community. An important Southwark landmark is Mother Bethel, the home of the African Methodist Episcopal Church founded in 1816.

Four Pennsylvania counties surround Philadelphia on the north, south, and west. These four counties support a booming retail trade and pharmaceutical manufacturing businesses. They also contain Philadelphia’s suburban communities, which are largely populated by upper-middle class families. Among the best-known suburbs are Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Merion, Ardmore, Wayne, and Villanova. Through the 1990s the city of Philadelphia has remained the vital center of a large metropolitan region called by the U.S. government the Philadelphia Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA) (see Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area). The PMSA, which is 9,986 sq km (3,856 sq mi), includes not only the five Pennsylvania counties of Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware, but also four counties in New Jersey: Camden, Gloucester, Burlington, and Salem. The county and city of Philadelphia cover a land area of 350 sq km (135 sq mi).

III

Population

During Philadelphia’s first century, its population grew rapidly as William Penn’s policy of religious tolerance and his city’s thriving economic and intellectual life attracted many settlers. Penn’s new urban center attracted a variety of ethnic groups including Scots-Irish, Irish, Welsh, and Germans. Its population also contained a diverse mix of religious groups including Quakers, Catholics, Jews, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Baptists, Amish, and Mennonites.

Philadelphia historically prided itself on being known as a city of immigrants, and much of the population increase in the 19th and early 20th centuries came from overseas immigration. Between 1820 and the American Civil War (1861-1865), more than 80,000 Irish migrated to Philadelphia and settled throughout the city. Immigrants from Poland moved to industrial sections like Richmond and Manayunk. By the late 19th century the city also contained a large Italian and Russian-Jewish population in South Philadelphia. German bakers and tool and die makers crowded North Philadelphia neighborhoods. While immigration halted in the 1920s, after World War II (1939-1945) thousands of displaced Ukrainians and Lithuanians found refuge in Philadelphia. In the 1970s, following the Korean War and the Vietnam War, Vietnamese and Koreans pressed into North Philadelphia making areas such as Olney among the most ethnically diverse in America.

This inner-city diversity often created tensions. Racial fears and neighborhood blight caused a significant portion of Philadelphia’s white population to leave the city for surrounding suburban counties after World War II. Other factors adding to a decline of the city’s population included the erosion of Philadelphia’s industrial base and a national trend of migration from eastern cities to the warmer climate of the Sun Belt.

Whereas in 1950 Philadelphia contained more than 2 million people and ranked as the third largest city in America, the city's population plunged to 1,517,550 by 2000. In 2005, the city's population was estimated at 1,463,281.

While the city proper was decreasing in population, the metropolitan area centered on Philadelphia grew. In 2005 the region had 6.2 million inhabitants. Philadelphia ranked as the nation’s fifth largest city in 2000; the metropolitan area was the nation’s sixth largest.

According to the 2000 census, whites made up 45 percent of the city’s population; blacks, 43.2 percent; Asians, 4.5 percent; Native Americans, 0.3 percent; and people of mixed heritage or not reporting race, 7 percent. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders numbered 729 at the time of the census. Hispanics, who may be of any race, were 8.5 percent of the people.

IV

Education and Culture

From the beginning of the 18th century, education and culture formed very important parts of life in Philadelphia. One of the colony’s most learned early settlers was James Logan, William Penn's private secretary. Logan mastered numerous languages as well as higher mathematics, and also conducted botanical experiments. He assembled a library that formed the basis for the Library Company of Philadelphia, one of the nation’s earliest subscription libraries, founded in 1731 and still operating as a research facility today.

The diverse achievements of Benjamin Franklin gained Philadelphia recognition as the “Athens of America,” a center of learning and culture. Franklin’s accomplishments as a practical philosopher and political scientist were accompanied by scientific innovation such as his work in astronomy, his experimentation with static electricity, and his invention of bifocal lenses and the heating stove.

Franklin also joined with Philadelphia physician Thomas Bond to found the first public hospital in America, the Pennsylvania Hospital, in 1751. Philadelphia has since remained at the center of both the teaching and the practice of medicine in the United States. It currently is the home of four medical schools: the University of Pennsylvania, Jefferson Medical College, Drexel University School of Medicine, and Temple University.

Philadelphia colleges and universities also offer courses of study in a variety of other fields. For example, the University of Pennsylvania, which had its roots in the Academy of Philadelphia opened by Benjamin Franklin in 1751, excels as a center of research and teaching. Temple University, founded in 1884 by the minister and philanthropist Russell Conwell, began as an evening institution but now includes 15 major divisions and a full range of programs. Drexel University emphasizes the use of technology in the classroom and operates one of the largest cooperative education programs in the country. Philadelphia is home to more than a dozen other prestigious colleges and universities including La Salle University, Thomas Jefferson University, the University of the Arts, and Moore College of Art and Design.

In the 1780s the Philadelphia painter Charles Willson Peale opened his Repository for Natural Curiosities, which in addition to his portrait art, contained mastodon bones and other animal specimens displayed in their natural settings. In 1802 his expanded collection occupied the second floor of Independence Hall. Peale inspired a public interest in art and science that has endured in Philadelphia. The Academy of Natural Science, founded in 1817, is considered the oldest scientific research center in the Western world, and the Franklin Institute Science Museum, dating from 1824, is the oldest museum of applied science in the United States. The Franklin Institute Science Museum features displays illustrating important scientific principles and also contains the Fels Planetarium.

The city has also maintained its reputation as a center for the arts. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1805, includes the oldest art school in the nation and also a Museum of American Art that is regarded as the first public art museum in the United States. The Philadelphia Museum of Art originated as an art exhibit at the 1876 Centennial held in Philadelphia, and its huge collections are now housed in a building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Another important Philadelphia institution, the Rodin Museum, features the works of the famous French sculptor (Francois) Auguste Rene Rodin. History museums include the Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia history, the Balch Institute, which focuses on the city's ethnic history, and the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum.

Several institutions reflect Philadelphia's rich musical heritage. The city built an Academy of Music that opened in 1857 at Broad and Locust streets. In 1900 the academy became the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which received international recognition under conductors Leopold Antoni Stanisław Stokowski and his successor Eugene Ormandy. The Curtis Institute of Music, founded in 1924, is the only major conservatory in the United States offering promising young musicians full-tuition scholarships based solely on merit.

Philadelphia also has a rich theatrical heritage. The city's Walnut Street Theater dating from 1809 may be the oldest theater in continuous operation in the United States. The University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center is a major new performing arts facility that also offers courses in drama and music.

Philadelphia's local cultural traditions include parades, ethnic festivals, and celebrations. From the more common street parades emerged Philadelphia’s celebrated mummers events that feature masked mimes. This tradition had its origins among early Swedish and Finnish settlers in South Philadelphia who greeted the New Year by wearing costumes and firing guns. Organized clown clubs arose in the 1840s, and by 1900 the city officially sponsored a Mummers Parade. This event is still held annually on New Year’s Day with elaborately costumed bands, clowns, and mummers marching along Broad Street to the Philadelphia City Hall.

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