Anchors of Civic Life?
Shopping Centers Not All They Could Have been

The regional shopping mall is so much a part of modern American culture it is easy enough to forget how much more was expected of it with its introduction in the 1950s than simply being an “engine of commerce.” Taken together with David Sullivan’s entry on department stores, Matthew Smalarz’s essay on shopping centers suggests some of what has been lost in the geographic shift of retail activity over the past half century.

Regional shopping centers cropped up precisely at that point when the dispersion of metropolitan population introduced the phenomenon of suburban sprawl. The idealists behind the regional centers hoped their structures would help anchor new communities and give shape to ex-urban land use. As a writer for the Department Store Economist proclaimed in1954, “…no construction is more dynamic than the shopping center or as likely to influence a reform of the usual urban and suburban hodgepodge….A new generation of department store men and women…are showing the same high responsibility to the communities that their grandfathers showed when they helped to create the great downtowns which we know today in hundreds of cities.”  

In their early days, suburban malls hosted fashion shows, opportunities for children’s play, high school proms, and even classical music concerts. If food courts lacked the grandeur of the tea rooms that female shoppers once gathered in downtown department stores, they nonetheless offered opportunities for sociability among women beyond the privacy of their homes, where so much of their attention was otherwise directed if they did not hold down fulltime jobs. For years the Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey served as the gathering point for a number of former Camden residents whose dispersion outside the city in the 1950s and 1960s left them hungry for familiar faces and an opportunity to reminisce about their former lives.

Over time, these facilities became increasingly privatized, as community-oriented events aimed at generating a sense of loyalty to place as well as the crowds to animate them gave way to simply enticing paying customers. Shortly after her important book, A Consumer’s Republic appeared in 2003, I invited author and Harvard University professor Lizabeth Cohen to do a talk and sought to locate it in the courtyard of the Cherry Hill Mall, which received a good deal of attention in her book.The managers of the property said she could do so, but only after paying a $5,000 fee to gain access to the mall’s customers. As an alternative, they suggested the mall’s only bookstore, which we rejected after the manager failed to recognize the name of the publisher: Knopf.

Garden State entraceThe great irony of the commercial redevelopment of the Garden State Race Track nearby was the argument that it would fulfill Cherry Hill’s need for a town center. Apparently no one remembered, let alone imagined the mall once had been touted for serving just that function. As the site developed into an amalgam of different pods—for big box stores and clusters of housing—it served less of a model of “new urbanism” and more of an illustration of the basic problem critics point to in suburbs: physically induced social isolation.

Given the chance to create better communities on relatively open land in suburbs in place of urban centers that had evolved over time, developers fell well short of creating communities that integrated effectively the needs that enable thriving communities. We all have our favorite shopping destinations, but it’s hard to think of them today as the civic investments they were originally intended to be.

Deep Roots, Lasting Legacy

deep_roots_posterThe poster “Deep Roots, Continuing Legacy: Philadelphia in the Struggle for Civil Rights” is a new project from History Making Productions, the documentary film company that strives to share Philadelphia’s rich history through the powerful medium of film. We hope that the poster will encourage Philadelphia residents to delve into our rich, fascinating, and continuous role in the fight for equal rights. Many of the events depicted on the poster are featured in History Making Production’s film series, Philadelphia: The Great Experiment. These films are available at no cost and online at historyofphilly.com.

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is one of the many cultural and civic organizations partner organizations that have helped to produce the poster. We are among the partners that have also supplied supplementary materials that complement and extend the content on the poster. For more information, teaching ideas, and primary sources, go to historyofphilly.com/philadelphia-the-great-experiment

Defining Greater Philadelphia

philadelphiadivideRichard Florida, well-known for introducing the term “creative class,” has recently released an assessment of the class divide distinguishing the Philadelphia area.  Part of a larger series on U.S. cities, the report draws from the U.S. Census American Community Survey to designate areas across the region as part of one of three classes: creative, service, and working. The study is of particular interest to the editors of the encyclopedia  because Florida provides one strategy for understanding the region just as we are about to undertake the challenge of assigning essays that will help us define  what has constituted “greater Philadelphia” over time.  We would be interested in how those who have been following our work react to Florida’s essay. It has already provoked a good deal of commentary on-line, and we welcome your own reactions.

Putting the Delaware River Port Authority in Context

News that a grand jury is considering possible corruption in the award of economic development funds by the Delaware River Port Authority to politically connected recipients makes Peter Hendee Brown’s  posting on the DRPA on this site especially timely. What the DRPA is supposed to do and how it operates is hard to grasp from the many news accounts that has put the agency in the news over time. Brown provides the background that helps make sense of the agency’s central importance to the region and the structural problems that arise from its operations.

When I first returned to the area after a long absence to write a book on Camden in the late 1990s, I was surprised at the way DRPA operated, not as an agent for regional development but as a cash cow that directed funds in equal portions to Pennsylvania and New Jersey without an overall strategic plan. Some projects made immediate sense, such as refitting the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the aftermath of the government’s departure from the site. Other investments were harder to sell. Spokesmen for the agency often talked about building tourism, for instance, by making investments on both sides of the Delaware River, and some good results came from that vision as well, not the least funds that helped make the President’s House memorial in Philadelphia a reality.  But building tourism—which might conceivably generate returns by increasing tolls over bridges connecting the two states—was never central to DRPA’s goal. Supporting allies and garnering political credits appears to have topped the list of priorities, to say nothing of the financial benefits that might be gained through related contracts and political donations, among other things.

As Brown indicates, the creation of the DRPA was part of a movement to remove from politics certain public investments operating as non-partisan authorities. As Louise Dyble’s devastating critique of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, Paying the Toll: Local Power, Regional Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge, demonstrates, reigning in such authorities can be difficult indeed, and holding them accountable nearly impossible. DRPA may not reach that standard, but accountability remains a concern to the many people who continue to pay tolls into this organization’s coffers.

Whether an indictment will follow the grand jury’s investigation, DRPA deserves close scrutiny. We hope that our fellow citizens in the greater Philadelphia region will be aided in their assessment of the DRPA by Brown’s essay. Certainly, none of us have heard the last about controversies surrounding this important player in our region.

 

Shopping in Greater Philadelphia

Wanamakers Department Store interior showing historic organ located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wanamaker’s department store was the first department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the first department stores in the United States.

The closing of downtown Philadelphia’s last department store and the collapse of plans to locate the 76er’s arena on east Market Street have opened major questions, not just about the future of Market Street East but about the role of the city’s core more broadly.

Historically, department stores played a major role in anchoring the region. As population growth accelerated outside the city proper, rail transit connected burgeoning suburbs with the city core, where Philadelphia’s “Big Six” department stores offered not just a vast array of merchandise, but unparalleled opportunities to mix with fellow citizens, enjoy fine dining, and participate in civic rituals. Undoubtedly, Wanamaker’s epitomized the civic element of shopping with its grand court and massive organ offering hugely popular concerts. Appropriately, the 1911 store was designed by Daniel Burnam, whose 1909 Chicago plan epitomized what I have called “civitas by design”—using the built environment as a means of enhancing “the community of citizens.”

photograph of Ardmore Strawbridge & Clothier
The Strawbridge and Clothier in Ardmore opened to the public in 1930 and was one of the first department stores to open a branch in the suburbs of Philadelphia. (Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries)

As decentralization accelerated in the twentieth century, especially under the influence of the automobile, downtown stores attempted to reach customers where they were by opening branch operations. Strawbridge & Clothier led the way, opening at Suburban Square in Ardmore in 1930 and just outside Jenkintown on Old York Road in 1931.  By mid-century, however, a whole different variation of the shopping experience emerged in the form of regional shopping centers. Taking advantage of an expanded highway network making shopping accessible to patrons from multiple jurisdictions, the new commercial structures offered a great deal of that civic sociability once associated with downtown department stores. As a pioneer in the genre and developer of the Cherry Hill Mall, opened in 1961 in Camden County, New Jersey, James Rouse liked to describe such centers as maintaining all the best features of the city core, without its attendant nuisances. Like downtown stores before them, these centers, which emerged throughout the region, offered a range of social opportunities, including fashion shows, a variety of dining options, and opportunities to celebrate national holidays and other civic rituals. In addition to affording social encounters with fellow citizens, such spaces became a preferred location for social gatherings. A number of former Camden residents who left the city after the upheaval of the early 1970s, for instance, met for years at the Cherry Hill Mall.

More recently, as the Internet has undermined bricks and mortar stores, the nature of shopping has changed. As individual consumers go online, they encounter neither the salespeople that once guided them to a purchase nor fellow shoppers, whether known or unknown to them. As habits shifted, shopping malls had to adapt in order to survive. While some followed their downtown predecessors by going out of business, others adjusted by incorporating new uses: medical or civic facilities, hotels, housing, and even sports facilities. Such adaptive uses have staved off the extinction of the building type but left the future of such facilities very much in question.

The same could be said for downtown shopping, as evidenced especially by the Gallery at Market Street East, as the development was marketed when it opened in 1977. Heralded for bringing the best of the suburbs (without its attendant nuisance) back to the city, the experiment never really took off. Plopping the 76ers arena down next to its latest iteration as the Fashion District looked a bit like suburban efforts to enliven shopping districts through the attraction of sports. But because professional games have only a limited schedule, the effect would have been limited. The right mix of intended uses could bring life back to the area, while at the same time helping stitch together nearby elements in ways that could help re-establish the area as a central heart to the region.

As Inquirer columnist Inga Saffron reports, the area already is following one lead from refurnished suburban shopping centers by attracting a mix of accessible recreational activities: paintball courses, Formula 1 simulators, arcade games, and indoor bounce houses for kids located into the spaces once occupied by clothing and furniture retailers. These complement other similar newcomers such as Puttshack, at the Shops at Liberty Place on Chestnut Street.

Such investments could help make downtown a desirable destination for more than just the casual visitor. To succeed, however, planners will need to envision a district that moves beyond novelty to enrichment, and here the area’s position between the soon-to-be-reopened Franklin Square SEPTA terminal and Chinatown to the north and the historic district to the south opens new opportunities for blending education and civic celebration with leisure activities. It’s a combination that makes it possible to imagine something so central to a wide range of area residents as well as tourists as to bring back memories of the importance of department stores like Wanamaker’s.

The contested path of the Sixers arena

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of occasional blogs connecting contemporary issues with Greater Philadelphia’s storied history as documented in the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Underlying these posts is the question whether we have learned sufficiently from the past to make the right decisions going forward.

Image depicts the original plan for the ’76ers stadium intended to be built in Market Street East. (Photo courtesy of phlsportsnation)

In the effort to identify regional connections between Philadelphia and the surrounding areas, Carolyn Adams and I found that nothing brought our area’s diverse people together across multiple counties in three states so much as professional sports. “The fact that thousands of avid sports fans from the suburbs poured into South Philadelphia for every home game fostered their identification with the rest of the region as perhaps no other activity could,” Adams concludes the overview chapter to our forthcoming book, The Greater Philadelphia Region. With the decision in the past few days to construct a new combined stadium for the ‘76ers and Flyers in the existing stadium district, that element of identity is only going to deepen. Whether one agrees with that decision or not, the winding and contested path to that decision raises serious questions both about the process and its ultimate resolution.

The Inquirer’s Helen Ubinas is not the only observer who thinks city interests proved secondary to profit-making throughout the two years of negotiations that took place.  From the start, the plan to make over part of Market Street East came not from planners or government officials, but from an aggressive real estate developer and part owner of the 76ers. As it had in the past—most notably in the failed effort to stop the Vine Street Expressway—the Chinatown community, with the most to lose, reacted vehemently against the proposal. Other nearby communities also opposed the move, which would have brought street traffic, congestion, and noise on game days and only questionable benefits on other days. Only belatedly, it became clear that peak attendance would overwhelm SEPTA without additional financial resources, which the team was unwilling to commit to in months of negotiations.

No doubt that part of downtown needed assistance. Hopes for the original Gallery Place at Market East project designed by the famed developer, James Rouse, never materialized, and its makeover as the “Fashion District” also faltered. There was a rationale for replacing part of that project with a stadium, but it was not one that followed from a planning process for the whole area. Ideally, city officials would have followed the approach it embraced for reconnecting the city to the waterfront, through a public planning process, greatly assisted by Penn Praxis’s executive director Harris Steinberg. Now the director of the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel, Steinberg weighed in on the 76s plan in a general sense by suggesting the location follow a less invasive course, citing a block across Market at Eleventh as a model. Other downtown locations were suggested but never seriously entertained during the course of debate.

One could well argue that an alternative downtown location could have helped the city, without destroying a vulnerable neighborhood nearby as the Capital Arena in Washington did in totally overwhelming its adjacent Chinatown. One might look to Detroit, for example. Instead, the 76ers, in partnership with Comcast, will now build a new arena in South Philadelphia as part of a much larger makeover of the sports complex, bringing new housing and retail to an area currently devoid of character and animation outside of the stadiums, with the single exception of the nearby casino. What these billionaire partners have in mind is something like the entertainment and sports complex Battery Atlanta.

Revitalizing the existing sports complex will undoubtedly boost city taxes over time, while removing the political costs of potentially destroying a valued neighborhood. But there are downsides as well. The South Philadelphia location remains remote from the city core, forcing primary reliance on auto traffic, without the compensating effect of spillover business from sports events for a struggling downtown.  With the simultaneous loss of the downtown’s last major department store, Market Street has been further damaged. While city officials speak optimistically about refiguring the historic Wanamaker building in the wake of Macy’s closure as part of an alternate plan for Market Street East, those ideas remain vague so far. One can only hope that the next steps incorporate a participatory and professional planning process that will enhance, rather than continue to weaken the core at the heart of the region.

Howard Gillette
Contributing Editor

 

Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy