Vol. 2: One more premature eulogy for Center City
“Is Center City Over?”, by Tom McGrath in the June 2022 issue of Philadelphia Magazine, is the latest in a long string of premature eulogies to Philadelphia’s downtown that I’ve encountered ever since I moved here 50 years ago. McGrath overlooked Center City’s saving grace over many decades: its uncanny ability to turn weakness into strength.
— In 1946, when commercial development threatened to overwhelm the Rittenhouse Square area and the Square itself suffered from years of neglect, nearly 300 neighbors organized the Center City Residents Association. They successfully pressed the city to maintain the Square and preserve the neighborhood’s residential character.
— In the ’50s, when most cities sought federal urban renewal funds to raze their downtowns and rebuild from scratch, Philadelphia’s inability to follow suit led instead in the opposite direction: Hundreds of decaying or abandoned homes within the city’s historic district were preserved and restored. The resulting community, christened “Society Hill,” attracted more than 6,000 upper-middle-class residents, mostly from the suburbs. It remains the envy of American cities everywhere.
— In the ‘60s, traditional merchants fled South Street to escape the impending construction of the Crosstown Expressway. When the Expressway plans fizzled, a hip Bohemian entertainment district sprung up on South Street as artists, artisans, foodies, and flower children occupied its cheap abandoned retail spaces.
— In the ’70s, the end of the Vietnam War released the creative energies of a whole generation of youthful anti-war protesters—social activists who rejected corporate life and instead perceived restaurants as an ideal counter-culture outlet. Center City— with its unique combination of sophisticated population and low property costs (especially on its narrower streets)— proved the ideal incubator space for their gastronomic experiments. As a result, a city never previously known for its cuisine was suddenly celebrated nationally for its “restaurant renaissance.”
— In the ‘80s, a humdrum downtown weekly paper called the Welcomat was transformed into a unique opinion forum written largely by its readers. In the process, it became one of the nation’s first profitable “alternative” publications and was cited by Advertising Age as “a vanguard of the future of big-city publishing.” But in fact, the Welcomat’s success couldn’t be replicated elsewhere: A 1980 U.S. Census study concluded that no downtown community in America could match Center City for its combination of population size, household income level, education level, and number of residents who both lived and worked within the same neighborhood.
— In the ’90s, South Broad Street was transformed from a commercial district into the Avenue of the Arts as empty office spaces were replaced by theaters, the Kimmel Center, and apartment buildings housing culture-hungry empty nesters.
— Also in the ’90s, the city’s failure to adequately clean downtown streets prompted the creation of the privately-funded Center City District, which subsequently expanded its mission to a broad range of other services.
— And today, COVID and the consequent fear of crowded indoor spaces has forced restaurants to create outdoor “streeteries” in order to survive. The result: bustling new pedestrian life on downtown streets formerly dominated by gas-spewing cars.
Why am I not worried about Center City’s future?
Dan Rottenberg is author of The Education of a Journalist: My 70 Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech, published in February by Redmount Press. He was editor of the Welcomat from 1981 to 1993.