Herb Lipson's good old days

As recently as 1960, when I arrived at Penn as a freshman, Philadelphia was largely a private city where people with money entertained themselves only in their homes and private clubs (and the Academy of Music, which was itself something of a private club). Philadelphia's theater scene consisted of Broadway tryouts and amateur groups. Philadelphia's idea of haute cuisine was Shoyer's and the two rival Bookbinder's. Philadelphia's idea of an elegant hotel was the Warwick.

Philadelphia's music scene consisted of the Orchestra, period. Philadelphia's dance scene was nonexistent. A single movie house— the World, at 19th and Market Streets— showed foreign films.

In those days my Penn history professor, Wallace Davies, a Harvard man, once had a date with the eminent Philadelphia biographer Catherine Drinker Bowen, a descendant of Philadelphia's very oldest family (one of her forebears was born in a cave along the Delaware River even before William Penn arrived). As a relative newcomer to Philadelphia, Davies asked Bowen to recommend a good restaurant. She replied, in all seriousness, that she'd never been to a restaurant in her life; she took all her meals at home, and so did everyone she knew.

One feisty voice

In those exceedingly boring days, a single voice consistently spoke up to puncture the smug self-satisfaction of Philadelphia's white male business establishment: D. Herbert Lipson, publisher of Philadelphia Magazine, in his monthly "Off the Cuff" column. Lipson (my boss there from 1972 to 1975) has given the city a much-needed kick in the pants ever since. His slick, urbane magazine, as well as his relentless kvetching, deserve at least some of the credit for Philadelphia's transformation into an exciting public city, widely envied for its thriving downtown, its innovative restaurant scene and its dozens and dozens of music, theater and dance companies.

Yet somehow, Lipson is still kvetching. In the March issue of his magazine he portrays Philadelphia as a city hopelessly plagued by racial tensions, a growing underclass, an inept city government and a vanishing business community.

His litany of woe begs a logical question: In Lipson's mind, what were Philadelphia's good old days? To judge from Lipson's column, the answer is: 1952, when he first started working at the magazine at the age of 23.

"'You could go anywhere'

"Philadelphia was a different city then," he rhapsodizes. "It wasn't so poor; in fact, business and industry were still booming. It was a safer place— you could go almost anywhere in Philadelphia, at any time. There was much less violence; murder was almost unheard of. City government was corrupt but actually seemed to get things done. Business leaders actively took part in civic affairs."

Oh, for the good old days, when you and I were young, Herb, and the Pennsylvania Railroad, Wanamaker's, Horn & Hardart's and the Evening Bulletin seemed like really dynamic, state-of-the-art institutions. But here's the compensation of old age: Few of your readers are old enough to contradict your narrative.

Well, what was Philadelphia really like in 1952? I wasn't here— thank God— but it happens that I recently researched that very subject for my forthcoming biography of the real estate magnate Albert M. Greenfield. Return with me now to those halcyon days:

The infamous Chinese Wall

Philadelphia circa 1950 resembled a doughnut: a vast metropolis built up around a hollow center. Center City's streets, many of them still illuminated by gaslight, were all but deserted at night. Only a few decent residential blocks remained, all of them around Rittenhouse Square. The rest of the downtown, as well as the city's great universities, hospitals and even Independence Hall, were submerged in slums.

Almost everything about the city seemed old, tired and constrained. The Pennsylvania Railroad's "Chinese Wall," constructed in the 1890s, still effectively choked off the downtown's northern limit at Market Street. New hotels and restaurants were deterred by antiquated Blue Laws that banned the sale of alcoholic drinks on Sundays. New buildings were restrained by a tradition that no structure could rise higher than William Penn's hat atop City Hall.

The smell of burning garbage, which was still carted to open dumps by horse-drawn wagons, permeated Philadelphia's dirty streets. The city's sewage-polluted water required so much chlorination to make it safe for drinking that a glass of Philadelphia water was known as a "chlorine cocktail."

Vaudeville joke

Even industries were beginning to flee Philadelphia because of the city's crushing tax burden. The old vaudeville joke— "Last week I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed"— remained as valid as when W. C. Fields (himself a Philadelphia native) had first uttered it early in the 20th Century.

The city's old historic district, with its narrow streets and cozy but cramped buildings, had long since fallen into disuse, along with its handsome 18th- and 19th-Century homes, now converted into lofts and rooming houses disfigured by grime and stucco and occupied by winos. Dock Street, the city's obsolete and unsanitary 175-year-old produce and meat market, sprawled over several blocks of this district, creating a health hazard as well as appalling traffic jams. "Society Hill" as we know it today had yet to be restored.

The cause of this blight was clear enough. For the first half of the 20th Century Philadelphia's city government was by most accounts the most wasteful and ineffective in the U.S. The city's business leaders, so fondly recalled by Herb Lipson, tolerated this mediocre status quo because (as the urbanologist Jeanne Lowe put it in her classic 1967 study, Cities in a Race With Time) "they did not live in the city, and did not have to drink its water." Things finally began to change in 1952— the city's first year under its Home Rule Charter and its reform mayor, Joseph Clark— but real change was years in the future.

The question naturally arises: Is Herb Lipson a perceptive observer of civic conditions? Or is he just a congenitally unhappy fellow who owns a magazine and who, like a stopped clock, happens to be justified in his misery every once in a while?

The other day I was chatting with Lipson when he launched into his "Philadelphia's going to hell" diatribe. When he paused for breath, I meekly suggested that I've never found the city as exciting as it is right now.

"Well, maybe," Herb replied. "But there's hardly a decent white-tablecloth restaurant left in this town."

Oh— so that's the problem! Won't someone please find this man a tablecloth?♦


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