Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA

PHILADELPHIA. Founded in 1682, Philadelphia has throughout its long history been notable for its religious and ethnic diversity, importance as a center of trade

and commerce, and role in perpetuating learning and the arts. Although many have quipped that its moniker as the City of Brotherly Love is something of a misnomer—Philadelphia sports fans once famously booed Santa Claus at halftime of a professional football game—its significance in American history is undeniable.

During the colonial period, Philadelphia embodied its founder William Penn's ethos of religious pluralism and tolerance. By the mid-eighteenth century, Philadelphia was home to more religious denominations than any other American city, featuring vibrant Quaker, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, and Moravian congregations, among others. Philadelphia was also early America's most cosmopolitan city, with significant numbers of Swede, German, and Scottish settlers in addition to its English majority. Colonial Philadelphia was home to several notable intellectual institutions, including the Library Company (the oldest lending library in America), the American Philosophical Society (the oldest scientific association in America), and the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania), the only nondenominational college in colonial America. In 1776, Philadelphia was the largest city in colonial British America with 28,400 residents. Its pivotal role in the Revolutionary and early national eras testifies to its status as early America's first city; it served as the site for the Continental Congress from 1774 through 1783, for the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and as the new nation's capital from 1790 to 1800. Perhaps the two most important founding documents in American history, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were written in the City of Brotherly Love. It continued as an important intellectual and cultural center through the early nineteenth century; the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, founded in 1805, was the new nation's first art school.

The early nineteenth century saw New York eclipse Philadelphia as the United States' largest and most significant commercial city. Despite Philadelphia's financial significance—it was home to both the First and Second Bank of the United States—the rapid settlement of upstate New York and the consequent expansion of New York City's hinterland fueled its growth at Philadelphia's expense. Despite this economic change, Philadelphia continued to be a center of religious and ethnic diversity during the antebellum era. Home to one of the largest free African American populations in the United States, Philadelphia also played a pivotal role in black religious life. Fighting racial discrimination in the city's churches, the minister Richard Allen culminated a long struggle for independence with the organization of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the nation's first black religious denomination. Perhaps because of its religious diversity, Philadelphia was also the site of fierce and often violent conflict. The 1840s and 1850s saw nativist Protestants incite riots against local German and, especially, Irish Catholic immigrants; in 1844, nativists even burned several Catholic churches to the ground. Antebellum Philadelphia continued to be a significant commercial and industrial center, a leader in the textile, shipbuilding, and locomotive industries. The city expanded, and its population reached 565,529 by the eve of the Civil War—the second largest city in the United States. By the time of the city's Centennial Exposition in 1876, Philadelphia was one of the largest cities in both Europe and America, surpassed only by New York, London, and Paris.

Although during the Gilded and Progressive Eras Philadelphia continued to be an important cultural and educational center, the city began to decline economically in the twentieth century. The city's economy, based mainly on light manufacturing, metal products, textiles, food products, and chemical industries, as well as the largest refining operations on the east coast, began to stagnate during this period. Nevertheless, the city maintained a world-class stature in the arts through institutions like the Academy of the Fine Arts (where artists and teachers like Thomas Eakins had helped build an American art movement in the late nineteenth century), The Philadelphia Orchestra (founded in 1900), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (founded in 1928). The city was by then also home to more than a dozen colleges and universities and six medical schools.

Despite a brief upturn around World War II—largely the result of wartime military production and the efforts of reform mayors like Joseph S. Clark Jr. and Richardson

Dilworth after the war—the city suffered from the same urban decline that afflicted most American industrial cities in the twentieth century. In an effort to attract middle-class and upper-class residents back to Philadelphia, the city made pioneering efforts at urban renewal and revitalized certain neighborhoods, but failed to stem the tide out of the city as a whole. Philadelphia's population began to drop in the postwar period. Following a high of 2,072,000 residents in 1950, the city's population had declined by more than 18 percent by 1980, losing nearly 300,000 residents from 1970 to 1980 alone.

Most of this change was the result of "white flight" to the region's rapidly growing suburbs; the city's minority population reached 40 percent during this period. Racial and political tensions accompanied these economic and demographic changes, epitomized by Frank L. Rizzo. A former police chief who served two terms as mayor in the 1970s, Rizzo was extremely popular among Philadelphia's white ethnic population for his aggressive efforts against crime, while the city's African Americans felt he pandered to white fears through his blatant efforts to link crime and race. In the 1980s, W. Wilson Goode, the city's first African American mayor, won acclaim for handling race relations well but received criticism for alleged administrative incompetence. Under Edward G. Rendell's mayoral administration in the 1990s, the city's fortunes improved somewhat. Following near-bankruptcy in 1991, Rendell was able to put the city on firmer financial footing and largely stem the flow of jobs and residents out of the city to the suburbs. Despite Rendell's success, in 2002 it was still uncertain whether his administration marked a temporary aberration in Philadelphia's history or a true revitalization for one of the United States' oldest, most historically significant, and culturally important cities.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bissinger, Buzz. A Prayer for the City. New York: RandomHouse, 1997.

Nash, Gary B. First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Warner, SamBass, Jr. The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth. 2d ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.

Weigley, Russell F., ed. Philadelphia: A 300-Year History. New York: Norton, 1982.

John Smolenski

See also Pennsylvania .