12 Aug Edmund Bacon and William Penn Shared Surprising Connections That Transformed Philadelphia

It’s no surprise that William Penn, who is widely known as the founder of Pennsylvania, inspired the man who would come to be known as “The Father of Modern Philadelphia.”

Edmund Bacon (1910 – 2005) was raised in Philadelphia and spent his career as an urban planner and architect. He had a unique encounter with William Penn (1644 -1718) that would change the course of his life – and the city of Philadelphia.

As a young boy, Edmund wrote a letter to the mayor of Philadelphia and said he wanted to climb to the top of City Hall and stand at the feet of the statue of William Penn. Surprisingly, the mayor responded to Edmund’s request. In an interview with American INSIGHT, Edmund shared how the experience had a profound impact on him.

“I was stirred to the gut to the point where my entire life since that time has been devoted to strengthening, enriching and trying to ensure the continuation of the fundamental concept I got by standing there,” he said.

When he looked down from City Hall – which sits at the intersection of Market Street and Broad Street – Edmund could clearly see William Penn’s vision for the city. He especially noticed the four quadrants surrounding it and their parks: Washington Square, Rittenhouse Square, Logan Square and Franklin Square had succumbed to urban blight.

Bacon decided that day that he wanted to spend his life “protecting and enhancing” Penn’s vision for the city. In fact, his senior thesis as an architectural student at Cornell University focused on making the case for creating an urban park in the heart of Center City Philadelphia, which is where LOVE Park now stands.

In 1949, Bacon was named executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, a title he would hold for the next 21 years. During that time, he became known as a proponent of urban renewal and appeared on the cover of Time magazine in both 1964 and 1965. However, everything he did in the modern era hearkened back to Penn’s ideas for the great city.

William Penn obtained the land that became Pennsylvania as a grant from King Charles Il of England. This land was given to Penn in 1681 to settle a debt owed to his father, a prominent admiral in the British navy. When he first came here, Penn envisioned a city on the Delaware River that would both be a place for government and serve as a port. His idea was to lay out the roads on a grid to keep the houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards in between. Although the city’s inhabitants ignored this direction and ended up crowding around what is now the Port of Philadelphia, Penn’s grid concept remained and went on to greatly influence Bacon.

In his essay “The City Image,” published in Man and the Modern City in 1963, Bacon– who received the prestigious Philadelphia Award in 1984 for being a pioneer in urban revitalization – envisioned a city that would be clean, appealing, and symmetrical, with thriving houses and businesses, and plenty of open spaces for the flow of fresh air between the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers.

And at the center, would be City Hall and that statue of William Penn that inspired one young boy to dream big.