Philadelphia

History

The Philadelphia region was first settled by Swedes in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was not until 1682 that the Englishman William Penn, having received a land grant from King Charles II, founded his settlement between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, north of the existing Swedish settlement. Penn planned a town with broad avenues and public squares. Settlers were attracted by the economic opportunities available in the new land, as well as by the promise of religious freedom guaranteed by Penn, a Quaker who had rejected the dictates of England's established Anglican Church.

By the eighteenth century, thanks to its fine port and good agricultural land, Philadelphia had become the foremost city in the 13 British colonies. Its considerable wealth, reflected in both its architecture and in the interior decor of its houses, also supported an impressive infrastructure and network of public services and cultural institutions. The first hospital in the future United States was opened in Philadelphia in 1755 (a project in which the city's most famous son, Benjamin Franklin, participated). Franklin was also a driving force behind the founding of the University of Pennsylvania, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the American Philosophical Society.

Although the Philadelphians were more politically moderate than their neighbors in New England, they participated actively in the debate that preceded the adoption of the Declaration of Independence (which occurred in the city's own Independence Hall, then known as the State House) and were heavily involved in the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), during which their city was occupied by British troops under General Howe between 1777 and 1778 before Howe's army moved on to New York. The members of the Continental Congress fled to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, taking the Liberty Bell with them. After the war, Philadelphia was the site of the Constitutional Convention, at which the U.S. Constitution was drafted in 1787, and the city served as the capital of the new country in the 1790s before the completion of Washington, D.C.

The nineteenth century brought continued prosperity and cultural advancement to the city. In 1805 the first permanent bridge over the Schuylkill River connected Philadelphia with the fertile farmland of the interior. In the 1820s and 1830s, seaport and rail

access made the Philadelphia the manufacturing capital of the United States, as well as one of its premier financial centers. Cultural progress continued also with the establishment of public education and the creation of such institutions as the Walnut Street Theater. Although the national capital had moved to Washington, Philadelphia remained the national center for the minting of money, shipbuilding, and weapons production.

As an enlightened city, Philadelphia was a hotbed of antislavery sentiment, although many of the city's elite, dependent on Southern trade, opposed the war for economic reasons. War brought its own economic compensation as Philadelphia became a center for military supplies and transport equipment.

However, nothing could compensate for the loss of thousands of Philadelphia's native sons in the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) in 1863. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, his body lay in state in Independence Hall before traveling to its final resting place in Illinois.

Immigration to Philadelphia, already heavy before the Civil War (1861–65), continued in the last decades of the century. New arrivals from Italy and Eastern Europe joined the large number of Irish immigrants who had arrived earlier and helped maintain Philadelphia's position as the nation's manufacturing capital, with a varied manufacturing base that ranged from sugar refining to hat manufacturing. In 1876 Philadelphia hosted the first World's Fair held in the United States: the Centennial Exhibition in Fairmount Park, which included a demonstration of the telephone. Philadelphia went on to become a pioneer in the establishment of modern utilities, claiming the first residential and office electric lighting and the first telephone exchange, both in place by 1878.

As the new century arrived, Philadelphians were prospering, with the greatest home ownership rate of any city in the world. During World War I (1914–18), the city boasted the largest shipbuilding plant in existence at the time. The city's population continued to grow—from one million to two million between 1900 and 1930, an increase that included a large number of African Americans. However, the Great Depression of the 1930s signaled the end of Philadelphia's predominance as a manufacturing center, even though the city's economy rebounded with the advent of World War II (1939–45).

In the post-war years, Philadelphia's leaders have slowed migration to the surrounding suburbs with an ambitious program of urban renewal that restored Center City, preserving Philadelphia's historic heritage while allowing for development that would draw businesses to the city. Like other urban centers in the United States, Philadelphia has seen the growth of a service-oriented economy replace its former manufacturing base; today, manufacturing in this former industrial capital employs only about ten percent of the work force. As the twenty-first century began, the city continued to combine historic preservation with new development as the National Park Service worked on plans to transform Independence Mall, and a new National Constitution Center entered the planning stages as well.