City of Repose

PHILADELPHIA, HOLY EXPERIMENT--Struthers Burf -- Doubleday, Doran ($3.75).

One of Philadelphia's distinguished physicians was so absent minded that he forgot his stethoscope when he called late one night to listen to the heart of a lady patient. He leaned down, listened, fell asleep and remained there almost half an hour. The lady thought it "an exceptionally thorough examination." Another famed Philadelphia doctor, S. (for Silas) Weir Mitchell, was a successful novelist, an expert on snake bites, and a pioneer U.S. neurologist. When his own nerves gave way, he rushed to Europe, consulted a Viennese specialist, was told: "In your own country is the man who can do you most good. His name is Dr. S. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia."

As Philadelphian Struthers Burt sees it, Philadelphians in general have been much like Dr. Mitchell. Citizens of the "spoiled child of American cities," they have always tended to overlook their distinctions as well as their oddities. Prosperous from the start, with fourscore cottages in its first year (1683), at the time of the Revolution Philadelphia was bigger than any English city except London. It was once the headquarters of the Revolution, once the capital of the Republic, once the banking, theatrical and art center of North America. It still contains more trees than any other city on earth, and leads the world in the manufacture of false teeth.

By-Products of Contentment. Philadelphia's drinking water is notoriously rank, its city hall a $26,000,000 monument to graft and bad taste. But underneath the smugness of Philadelphia life is a quality of repose" that Struthers Burt spends most of his 396 pages trying to define. Much of this feeling comes from the old Philadelphia houses, three stories in front, with a two-story ell leading back to the alley, spacious, light and comfortable dwellings whose warm rooms were made for good dinners and good conversation.

In the spring, when the windows are open, "you can hear pianos being played and people practicing singing." There are street-corner flower stands, and women selling lavender. In this old city much that seems dull to newcomers, or hopelessly outdated to reformers, turns out to be a by-product of contentment, accidentally wise.

Author Burt's highly readable history is as sprawling and leisurely as the city itself. It has a disproportionate amount of material on Philadelphia's early days, very little on its post-Civil War boom and stagnation, or on its wartime present. Philadelphia, Holy Experiment is crammed with little-known historical facts, ranging from Alexander Hamilton's love affairs to the beginnings of Pennsylvania's coal mining and glass blowing.

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