Building Drexel: The University and Its City 1891-2016
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Published in conjunction with Drexel University’s 125th...)
Published in conjunction with Drexel University’s 125th anniversary, Building Drexel chronicles the founding of the university by Anthony J. Drexel through to the present day. The editors and contributors create a prismatic discussion of the university and its evolution.
Richly illustrated chapters cover the architectural history of notable Drexel buildings; the role of Drexel in Philadelphia’s modern history; its Greek life; sports—particularly Drexel’s history in the Big 5; and each of the university’s schools and colleges. There is a history of the medical college and law school, plus the creation of new schools such as those of biomedical engineering, science and health systems.
Building Drexel also documents the civil rights history of Drexel and its urban planning history in relation to the racially diverse Powelton Village and Mantua neighborhoods it borders. This commemorative volume shows the development of the university both in the city and in the world.
Contributors include: Lloyd Ackert, Cordelia Frances Biddle, Paula Marantz Cohen, Donna Marie De Carolis, Roger Dennis, Gloria Donnelly, Kevin D. Egan, Alissa Falcone, David Fenske, John A. Fry, Stephen F. Gambescia, Marla J. Gold, Charles Haas, Kathy Harvatt, Daniel Johnson, Jeannine Keefer, Larry Keiser, Michael Kelley, Jason Ludwig, Jonson Miller, Julie Mostov, Danuta A. Nitecki, Anthony M. Noce, Steven J. Peitzman, David Raizman, Tiago Saraiva, Amy E. Slaton, Nathaniel Stanton, Virginia Theerman, Laura Valenti, James Wolfinger, Eric A. Zillmer, and the editors.
Social Capital in the City: Community and Civic Life in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Voices, Philadelphia Vision)
(This is an examination of social capital across social co...)
This is an examination of social capital across social contexts and time periods within the city of Philadelphia and the role of social networks, moving beyond typical definitions of social capital.
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There are nearly 20,000 general-purpose municipal gover...)
There are nearly 20,000 general-purpose municipal governments―cities―in the United States, employing more people than the federal government. About twenty of those cities received charters of incorporation well before ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and several others were established urban centers more than a century before the American Revolution. Yet despite their estimable size and prevalence in the United States, city government and politics has been a woefully neglected topic within the recent study of American political development.
The volume brings together some of the best of both the most established and the newest urban scholars in political science, sociology, and history, each of whom makes a new argument for rethinking the relationship between cities and the larger project of state-building. Each chapter shows explicitly how the American city demonstrates durable shifts in governing authority throughout the nation’s history. By filling an important gap in scholarship the book will thus become an indispensable part of the American political development canon, a crucial component of graduate and undergraduate courses in APD, urban politics, urban sociology, and urban history, and a key guide for future scholarship.
Richardson Dilworth was an American Democratic Party politician and statesman. He served as the 16th District Attorney of Philadelphia from 1952 to 1956, and 91st Mayor of Philadelphia from 1956 to 1962.
Background
Dilworth was born on August 29, 1898 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Joseph R. Dilworth, the owner of an iron factory, and Annie H. Wood, the daughter of the founder of the first sheet steel mill in the United States. When Dilworth was eight, illness forced his father to retire from the factory that he owned, and the family moved to New York City.
Education
Dilworth attended St. Mark's school in Southboro, Massachusetts, where he captained the baseball team, starred on the football team, and was a leading member of the debate team. He graduated from prep school in 1917 and then entered Yale for a short time and then quit the university. His father relented and agreed to fund Dilworth's studies at Yale Law School. He was an editor of the law review and graduated cum laude in 1926.
Career
Dilworth quit the university and joined the U. S. Marine Corps as a private. Serving on the western front, ру was hit by a high-explosive shell that shattered his left arm. Awarded a Purple Heart, Dilworth underwent a half dozen operations to save his arm. Though he never regained full use of the arm, Dilworth recovered well enough to be a starting end on Yale's 1920 varsity football team. On his return to Yale, Dilworth became interested in politics as a supporter of Woodrow Wilson's proposals for a League of Nations.
Dilworth took a job at the open hearths of the U. S. Steel Co. plant in Pittsburgh and then worked on a construction crew building an oil refinery in Ponca City, Oklahoma. He later moved to Philadelphia, passed the bar, and worked briefly as an assistant city solicitor, which gave him an education in graft and corruption at city hall. He joined the law firm of Evans, Bayard, and Frick, whose clients included the Philadelphia Transit Company. In 1928, Dilworth helped conduct the Philadelphia Bar Association's probe into the corrupt relationship between law firms handling personal-injury cases and the police department. After a dozen years with the Evans law firm, Dilworth joined Murdoch, Paxson, Kalish, and Green, where he would become the senior partner.
Dilworth was the counsel for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He gained national recognition as a libel lawyer, representing Time Inc. , Curtis Publishing, and Triangle Publications. After the United States entered World War II, the forty-three-year-old Dilworth volunteered for active duty with the marines. He was commissioned a captain and saw action on Guadalcanal and in the Russell Islands landings, earning a Silver Star. Discharged as a major, Dilworth returned to Philadelphia with political ambitions. "All of these people coming back from the war realized how backward we were in Philadelphia, " Dilworth told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1972.
Dilworth and another returning veteran, Joseph S. Clark, led a postwar reform movement that produced a new city charter in 1951 and ended the Republican organization's seventy-year control of city government. Clark and Dilworth had been allies in Democratic reform politics since the late 1920's, and they sensed that Philadelphia was ready for change. As the Democratic nominee for mayor in 1947, Dilworth exposed graft, waste, and corruption. He lost to Republican Mayor Bernard Samuels by 92, 000 votes, but Dilworth's allegations sparked a grand-jury probe. Many officials were indicted in the next two years and nine committed suicide. Dilworth was elected city treasurer in 1949, leaving office in 1950 to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. He narrowly lost to Republican John Fine. In 1951, Clark was elected mayor of Philadelphia, and Dilworth was elected district attorney. As district attorney, Dilworth brought a new sense of purpose and direction to the office, cutting the backlog of cases and targeting organized crime. He successfully prosecuted seven top figures in the numbers racket. Dilworth also vigorously prosecuted policemen for using excessive force. During the Korean War, the former marine supported the appeal of Quaker peace demonstrators who had been harassed by police and convicted of disorderly conduct. Dilworth helped the Quakers win their appeal by arguing in court for the constitutional right to assembly.
Dilworth was the most dynamic politician to emerge in Philadelphia in more than a half century, attacking political rivals as "crum bums, " "crooks, " and "fakers. " Elected mayor of Philadelphia in 1955, Dilworth did much more than clean out city hall. More than any chief executive in Philadelphia history, he changed the face of America's founding city and restored a sense of civic pride. Early in his term, he outlined a master plan for the restoration of Philadelphia. A massive stone causeway that held sixteen railroad tracks and ran through Center City was torn down, making possible the development of plazas and parkways and a new complex of glass-encased office buildings, apartment towers, and a hotel. A four-hundred-acre Food Distribution Center was built on land provided by the city. Dilworth formed the Old Philadelphia Development Corporation with a mandate to revive Center City and the historic areas around Independence Hall and Society Hill.
The Dilworths showed their commitment to urban renewal by building a home in a neighborhood that had been a slum. The Dilworths were among the survivors of the sinking of the Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria in 1956. Crew members said that Dilworth calmed some passengers who were about to panic and guided them to lifeboats. He was on the last lifeboat sent by the liner Ile de France. Dilworth wanted to seek the Pennsylvania governorship in 1958. John F. Kennedy said that Dilworth would have been a formidable contender for the presidency in 1960 had he been elected governor. But Dilworth made the political mistake of saying that the People's Republic of China should be recognized by the United States and admitted to the United Nations. His critics in the Philadelphia Democratic organization used the remark against Dilworth, and he chose not to run. In 1962, Dilworth resigned as mayor to run for governor, but he lost to Republican William W. Scranton. In 1965, Mayor James H. J. Tate appointed Dilworth to a six-year term as president of the Philadelphia board of education. Dilworth played a role in integrating the school system and strived to improve the city's schools. A 1967 federally funded report said that the Philadelphia public schools were undergoing "the most dramatic reform in urban education since World War II. " But the gains were short-lived. Tate and Dilworth had a falling out over school funding. Dilworth had even sharper differences with Tate's successor, Frank L. Rizzo, and resigned before Rizzo took office in 1971. He died in Philadelphia, on January 23, 1874.
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Published in conjunction with Drexel University’s 125th...)
Politics
Dilworth had grown up as a Republican, but became a Democrat out of frustration with the city's longstanding Republican machine. Along with Joe Clark and others, he was at the forefront of a post-World War II reform movement in Philadelphia that led to the adoption of a modern city charter that consolidated city and county offices and introduced civil service examinations on a broad scale to replace much of the existing patronage system.
Views
Quotations:
"I thought everybody who had the means to do their part should get into it, " Dilworth said of his decision to serve.
"All of these people coming back from the war realized how backward we were in Philadelphia, " Dilworth told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1972.
Personality
Tall and handsome with patrician features and silver hair, Dilworth had style and charisma. Witty, urbane, and cultivated, Dilworth also had the toughness of a marine. One of the best-dressed publicfigures of his era, he was nicknamed "the man in the double-breasted suit. " Though usually unflappable, Dilworth had a sharp temper that he would sometimes display in public.
The Presidential Unit Citation referred to Dilworth's "gallantry and intrepidity in action" and his "unflagging zeal, heroic determination, and a courageous attitude in his desire to thwart the enemy. "
Connections
Despite his father's threat to cut off funding for his education if he got married, Dilworth and Elizabeth Brockie were married on June 2, 1922; they had three children.
Dilworth and his first wife were divorced in August 1935. That same month, he married Anne Kaufman Hill, who was also newly divorced; they had two children.