The New Philadelphia Story

It was a day of sheer, giddy, lustful triumph, a day to wipe out memories of all the decades of defeat. Down Broad and Chestnut streets wound the motorcade last week while some 2 million zealots, nearly half the population of metropolitan Philadelphia, screamed with delight, threw confetti and fought with sweating cops to get close to their heroes. The Philadelphia Flyers had just won the Stanley Cup, symbol of supremacy in pro hockey, by destroying the Boston Bruins with un-Quakerlike ferocity, and the city had spontaneously taken Monday off to celebrate.

Perched on the trunk of a taxicab at Broad and Chancellor streets, Mrs. Alberta Taylor, a retired schoolteacher, gazed with admiration at the massive throng--bigger, said some, than the crowds that turned out to mark the end of World War II--and declared: "It's been so long since we've had anything to root for in Philadelphia. I'm so excited and proud."

Heady Stuff. There is plenty to root for these days in Philadelphia, long the city of brotherly losers, where over the years sports fans have become so frustrated that they once booed Santa Claus when he turned up at a football game. Not only did the Flyers triumph, but the Phillies--the Phillies?--are leading the Eastern Division of the National League. Heady stuff, and emblematic of the fact that things are looking up in Philadelphia, that citadel of conservatism, the faded dowager of the East Coast, the yawn between New York City and Washington, the well-kicked butt of humor for comedians. Perhaps the cruelest cut of all came from W.C. Fields, a home-town boy, who was said to have proposed as his epitaph: "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

Today the city that Fields fled is struggling hard, and with some success, to solve the great problem facing all major urban centers: how to make life attractive downtown. During the past two decades, Philadelphia has protected and rebuilt its historic core for people, not automobiles. As a result, the city is one of the few large American metropolises where walking in the center of town can be a pleasure.

As they went about pouring $1.3 billion into renewal projects, Philadelphia's planners wisely continued to honor the unwritten but hallowed "Billy Penn Hatbrim Rule," which holds that no building may rise higher than 548 ft. (or about 40 stories), the height of the hatbrim on the huge statue of Penn that surmounts city hall. As a result, the sidewalks are flooded with sunlight from city hall, a gloriously gaudy souvenir of the 19th century, to the simplicity and quiet dignity of Independence Hall.

To encourage people to move into the downtown area, Philadelphia has been rejuvenating a neighborhood directly south of Independence Hall that is known as Society Hill. Instead of sending in the bulldozers to flatten the decaying district, Philadelphia has cleared out only the grim factories and warehouses, while rebuilding the small, elegant 18th century town houses and creating what Inquirer Editor Eugene Roberts Jr. calls "a suburb right in the middle of the city." In the past three years 23 restaurants and bistros have opened in the neighborhood, catering to the 8,000 people--mostly young couples--that have moved back into the area.

The renaissance of Philadelphia has not affected the city's traditions. At the stately Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, a string trio still plays Strauss waltzes during the afternoon cocktail hour. The main shopping floor of Wanamaker's, one of the city's major department stores, is lined with heroic-sized paintings: Orpheus Laments the Fate of Eurydice looks down on the women's panty department. Philadelphia remains one of the great art and music centers of the U.S. The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by the tireless Eugene Ormandy, 74, is one of the nation's finest. This summer, as they have since 1930, Philadelphians will flock to the open-air Robin Hood Dell concerts in 4,000-acre Fairmont Park.

Gussied Up. Long a tryout town for Broadway, Philadelphia has a theatrical scene that is improving and has even gussied up the beginnings of a night life. For all its historic attraction, Philadelphia has been a bummer for tourists, but tour directors are beginning to take notice, and eight new hotels have either opened in the past 18 months or are now under construction.

Philadelphia continues to be afflicted by the problems that are endemic to most big American cities: racial tension, poor housing for low-income groups, underfinanced and overwhelmed public schools, a chilling crime rate (a recent federal report ranked the city behind Detroit and Denver as the third most violent in the country).

But last week, in the flush of rare victory, Philadelphians were not concerned about sober matters of sociology. The Philadelphia Flyers triumphantly put the Stanley Cup on display in a center-city branch of the Girard Bank. On the first day, some 15,000 people reverently lined up and filed past to see for themselves the tangible proof that Philadelphia at long last is a winner.

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