Historic Philadelphia

THE 300-YEAR-OLD CITY
THE
EIGHTIES
A new plan for Penn’s Landing was announced in 1980. It, as usual, sounded quite a bit like the
old plan, but scaled down by the new Bill Green administration. William J. Green III, while still in
law school, had assumed his late father’s Congressional seat, hobnobbed with Kennedys, and
blended with the Washington establishment. He ran for mayor in 1980 and was elected, at fortyone.
During his term, the city had a year of special events celebrating the city’s three-hundredth
anniversary, and a flotilla of “tall ships” from all over the world sailed into the Delaware, masts far
taller than any the 1682 founders might have imagined.
For managing director, Green enlisted a North Carolina farm boy who had been educated at
Penn’s Wharton School: W. Wilson Goode. A hard working public servant, Goode earned a
reputation as a skilled manager. When Green chose not to run in 1983, Goode was elected the city’s
first black mayor.
Wilson Goode’s opponent in the Democrat primary had been Frank Rizzo, trying to make a comeback.
Rizzo had been retired since leaving office in 1980. After the ’83 defeat, he went on the payroll
of the Philadelphia Gas Works as a security consultant. In 1987, he switched his registration to
Republican and got GOP organization backing to run for mayor again, but Goode was reelected.
Rizzo then became a radio talk show host.
In the business world, foreigners moved in: pharmaceutical old-timer SmithKline Beckman
merged with Beecham Group of England, and Pennwalt Company, a chemical firm, was acquired
by Elf Aquitaine of France. The old Smith, Kline & French laboratories traced their origin to a twoman
apothecary shop established in 1830; Pennwalt had started in 1850 as the Pennsylvania Salt
Manufacturing Company, producing lye for soap making.
Venerable names disappeared. Insurance Company of North America merged with Connecticut
General to form Cigna. The army closed the Frankford Arsenal, which had been making armaments
since 1816. Jack Frost Sugar, Proctor-Silex, Keebler, and American Can departed the local
scene one way or another. The Evening Bulletin’s presses went silent after 134 years. Hanscom’s,
which had fed Philadelphians prepared foods and baked goods for 101 years, closed 12 of its 13
outlets in 1984, on its way to extinction. The government forced megalithic AT&T to break up in
1983, and former Bell of Pennsylvania emerged as Bell Atlantic.
Banking laws changed, encouraging two Pittsburgh banks to reach across the state and grab local
institutions. Mellon National bought Girard Bank. Pittsburgh National acquired Provident National,
which had been founded by Quakers as the Provident Life and Trust Company in 1865. First Fidelity
of Newark, New Jersey, absorbed Fidelity Bank of Philadelphia, which dated to 1866. Locally,
Philadelphia National Bank, founded in 1803, bought Hamilton Bank of Lancaster and changed the
combined institution’s name to CoreStates Financial, while PSFS acquired Western Savings Fund and
renamed itself Meritor. In 1989, Meritor was in trouble, and sold fifty-four branches to Mellon, which
then dubbed its Philadelphia operation Mellon PSFS.
The old Reading Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad commuter lines each dead-ended in Center
City. At a cost of some $328 million, the city burrowed a 1.7-mile tunnel that connected the lines,
allowing SEPTA trains to roll through efficiently. The massive construction job took more than five
years, opening in the fall of 1984.
The loss of industrial jobs promoted decay of old neighborhoods. The temptation of cheap addictive
drugs was introduced in such former blue collar neighborhoods as North and West Philadelphia and
Kensington, followed by crime and prostitution that drove out many residents and left those who
stayed to endure a decline in quality of life, amid crumbling blocks of empty, abandoned houses. The
city budget doubled from $1 billion in 1975 to $2 billion in 1990, and deficits grew.
✧
William Penn’s town at the start of the
new millennium.
COURTESY OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA,
CITY REPRESENTATIVE’S OFFICE.
CHAPTER VII
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