A fond biography of Rittenhouse Square

A History
of Rittenhouse Square

nolead begins By Nancy M. Heinzen

Temple University Press.

203 pp. $29.50

nolead ends nolead begins

Reviewed by Steven Conn

It's hard to imagine that Henry James and Jane Jacobs would have had much in common. But James, the hopelessly aristocratic novelist who retreated to England to escape the chaos of industrial America, and Jacobs, the scrappy urbanist who celebrated the disorder of city life, did share one love: Rittenhouse Square.

And both would doubtless enjoy reading The Perfect Square, Nancy Heinzen's breezy new biography of the place.

Rittenhouse Square has been on the map from the city's very beginning, one of the five open spaces William Penn included in his original city plan. It didn't get its name until 1825, when all those squares were named after prominent figures from the 18th century. Even then, the square was on the far edge of the inhabited city, and the surrounding neighborhood was populated largely by working-class families who made their living in the brickyards and on the coal piers along the Schuylkill.

Only in the mid-19th century did Rittenhouse Square begin to become an enclave of Philadelphia's wealthy elite. In the 1840s a few well-to-do Philadelphians ventured into this working-class district and built large, imposing houses for themselves, though the area was far from genteel. In May 1844 the square filled with neighborhood Irish Catholics prepared to defend St. Patrick's against rioting Nativist mobs. But the wealthy stood their ground as well.

By the turn of the 20th century, Rittenhouse Square had arrived as the city's most fashionable address - lined with elegant townhouses and mansions, occupied by the cream of Philadelphia society. And that society had assumed its reputation as insular, provincial, and complacent. Those who strolled through the square were named Drexel, Biddle, Fells, and Cadwalader, and they were all related to one another.

Ironically, while the neighborhood had reached a social apex of sorts, the square itself needed attention. The trees were dead, and concrete constituted the only real landscaping. Several square residents, inspired by their tours of Europe, believed Rittenhouse Square could be turned into an American version of a Parisian park. In 1913 they came together as the Rittenhouse Square Improvement Association and hired Parisian transplant Paul Cret to transform the space. He did so with such success that the layout of the square remains virtually unchanged 100 years later.

Rittenhouse Square has weathered a number of changes, challenges and indignities. Townhouses and mansions occupied by wealthy families gave way to high-rise apartments, first in the 1920s, again in the 1950s and yet again more recently. In 1950, a company called Underground Garages Inc. pushed a plan to put an underground parking garage underneath the square; in 1954 the Philadelphia Transit Co. proposed lopping off the northwest corner of the square to straighten out its No. 17 trolley line running down 19th Street. Both these projects were defeated when neighborhood residents mobilized in opposition.

Heinzen tells this story in nine chronologically arranged chapters, well researched and beautifully illustrated. As she tells it, she also manages to balance a fine-grained look at the history of Rittenhouse Square, filled with all sorts of terrific details, with references and connections to the city as a whole and the trajectory of its development.

In this way, the square emerges as a microcosm of larger urban patterns: a rough-and-tumble section first settled by workers and their families; the arrival of the wealthy as Philadelphia became the nation's industrial hub; the trickle of those people out to the Main Line and to Chestnut Hill as railroad technology made it easier to live farther out; the struggle to maintain the civility of public space in the postwar era, with crime rising and financial support for public spaces declining.

Heinzen wrote this book while Rittenhouse Square has been enjoying a golden age. It has a lively and supportive neighborhood that has worked to make it, inarguably, one of the most attractive urban spaces anywhere in the country.

Indeed, I am struck that the challenges the square faces in the coming generation stem precisely from the fact that it is loved so well. Development pressure in the area remains enormous, making the balance between residents and businesses, between tranquillity and dynamism, between growth and stasis, that much harder to achieve. As more and more people want to live near, recreate on, and shop, eat and browse along Rittenhouse Square, there is perhaps a danger that the square could be loved to death.

Yet it is ultimately a testament to Rittenhouse Square's success that it attracts so many Philadelphians of so many kinds. Where else, after all, might Jane Jacobs take a walk with Henry James? Heinzen has given us a wonderful history of this remarkable place.

Heinzen opens her delightful book sitting in a restaurant on the square on a "perfect weekday evening in July," watching the life of Rittenhouse Square unfold before her as the sun goes down. I've sat in Rittenhouse Square on exactly such evenings, watching children run around, elderly people gossip, and young couples fall in love. Take this book to Rittenhouse Square and find a bench in the sunshine - the perfect place to read about the perfect square.