Of Philadelphia’s anniversary bashes, the 1976 Bicentennial suffers the greatest gap between its original vision and the final reality. Dismal as it was, the 1926 Sesquicentennial produced a real world’s fair with exhibit halls, pavilions, and a new stadium. The Bicentennial started off with grandiose schemes for a transformational festival that would establish Philadelphia as a world-class city. While the final celebration spurred the completion of the city’s historic areas and the creation of several new institutions, few traces of the Bicentennial survive today.

Originally, the Bicentennial served as a focus for the utopian visions of Edmund Bacon, Louis I. Kahn, Oscar Stonorov, and the postwar generation of Philadelphia city planners. These men dreamt of a new metropolis rising from the decaying burg that was shedding residents, jobs, and businesses at alarming speed. To communicate this dream, Bacon, Kahn, and Stonorov created the Better Philadelphia Exhibition, a vast display promoting urban redevelopment that occupied two floors of Gimbels’ Department Store in Autumn 1947.

The centerpiece was a 30-by-14-foot scale model of Center City with 45,000 buildings. As a narrator discussed future development, sections flipped over to reveal how Philadelphia might appear in 1980. The Chinese Wall, the elevated viaduct which carried trains between 30th Street Station and Center City, was replaced by an avenue of gleaming office buildings. A revitalized Society Hill and Delaware River waterfront appeared, along with a park and mall surrounding Independence Hall. In only five weeks, over 385,000 visitors viewed the Better Philadelphia Exhibition, proof of the public enthusiasm for urban renewal.

After the exhibition closed, Stonorov asked City planners to imagine a world’s fair to “show the world Philadelphia’s and Pennsylvania’s importance.” Little came of his suggestion, but a decade later Bacon revived the dream of a transformative fair. By 1957, Bacon had been the executive director of the City Planning Commission for eight years. Under his tenure, Philadelphia had emerged as a poster child for American urban renewal. The City boasted achievements like the Schuylkill Expressway, Penn Center, Independence Mall and National Historical Park, a modern international airport, and the Pattison Avenue Food Distribution Center.

By 1976, the 200th anniversary of American independence, Bacon expected to have the other key components of his master plan in place. These would include a recreation area along the Delaware River (Penn’s Landing), a restored historic district in Washington Square East (Society Hill), Crosstown and Vine Street Expressways linking the Delaware Expressway (I-95) with the Schuylkill Expressway, model communities in Eastwick and the Far Northeast, a reborn Market East shopping district, and a Center City Commuter Connection. What better way to show off this reborn Philadelphia than by inviting the world to a Bicentennial Fair?

In 1957, with the support of Mayor Richardson Dilworth and U.S. Senator Joseph Clark, Bacon began to hold meetings with the Junior Chamber of Commerce to plan a Bicentennial World’s Fair. Bacon fleshed out his concept in a 1959 article in Greater Philadelphia Magazine entitled “Tomorrow: A Fair Can Pace It” (later republished as “Philadelphia in the Year 2009”). While viewing the Bicentennial Fair primarily as a vehicle to ensure completion of his master plan, Bacon lingered over its attractions. On Independence Mall, visitors would delight to a sound-and-light recreation of 1776 called the “Lights of Freedom.” At the Delaware River Marina, they could enjoy historic ships, a maritime museum, and an aquarium. Electric trolleys would whiz them up and down a traffic-free Chestnut Street, Midway of the Fair. City Hall Courtyard would host nightly theatrical performances from around the globe, from Molière to Kabuki.

At the Schuylkill River, visitors could stroll through a park stretching along the east bank from the Art Museum to South Street, across from a stadium, amusement center, and tourist center on the west bank. Boats and aerial cable cars would convey them to the main fairgrounds at the Centennial site in West Fairmount Park, where Memorial Hall would be joined by a host of new pavilions.

Despite Bacon’s compelling vision, few concrete steps were taken for several years. In 1964, a preliminary Bicentennial prospectus was submitted to President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1967, Mayor James Tate and City Council formed the 50-member Philadelphia 1976 Bicentennial Corporation. This would be the primary liaison with the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission (ARBC), the federal organization charged with thematic, location, and funding decisions for a 1976 world’s fair.

At this point, the first major fissures erupted in the unwieldy and sclerotic planning process captained by Philadelphia’s WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) oligarchy. Outside voices–people of color, community leaders, and the young–demanded a say. In response, the Bicentennial Corporation established an “Agenda for Action” headed by housing reform activist Catherine Sue Leslie to involve minorities in fair planning.

A group of self-declared “Young Professionals” formed an alternative organization called the “Committee for an International Exposition in Philadelphia in 1976.” Members included lawyer Stanhope Browne, Philadelphia Magazine publisher Herbert Lipson, and architects John Andrew Gallery, Richard Saul Wurman, and David Crane. To house the exposition, the Young Professionals proposed a four-mile “megastructure” constructed over the vast Pennsylvania Railroad yards north of 30th Street Station. Extending to the Centennial site in Fairmount Park, the megastructure would include a new transportation hub, with monorails and moving sidewalks to outlying sites. After the fair, the edifice would be adapted to residential and commercial uses. It was assumed the federal government would cover most of the $800 million cost.

Reaction from the Old Guard was swift and fierce. The Junior Chamber of Commerce mailed 10,000 postcards urging defeat of the plan. Critics stressed the difficulty of obtaining air rights for the rail yards from the Pennsylvania Railroad, facing bankruptcy and planning to merge with another railroad to form the Penn Central Transportation Company. Pushed to the periphery, Bacon withdrew from fair planning. Despite these conflicts, an anxious Mayor Tate ordered the Bicentennial Commission to absorb the Young Professionals and their ideas.

In September 1969, the Bicentennial Commission traveled to Washington to present “Toward a Meaningful Bicentennial” to the ARBC. While maintaining the 30th Street megastructure as the heart of the international exposition, the final plan added two additional locations. Penn’s Landing and Camden would be developed as the sites of the national celebration, while decaying North Philadelphia would be reborn as a model city with innovative housing and a community college. By now, the price tag had grown to $1.2 billion, with an anticipated 50 million visitors. While the ARBC balked at the size and cost of the megastructure, it recommended Philadelphia as the “international focus point” and host of the celebration. President Richard Nixon told Congress that Philadelphia was “the natural place” for a 1976 world’s fair.

However, by 1970, the convulsive changes in American society no longer favored a major exposition in Philadelphia. The euphoria and prosperity of the 1950s and early 1960s had yielded to a dystopic atmosphere of recession, racial conflict, environmental crisis, and anti-war protests. Nixon’s Republican administration had pledged to slash domestic spending, curtailing the generous federal funding of the Great Society. Like other American cities, Philadelphia struggled with unemployment, urban violence, and a crumbling infrastructure.

Even the concept of a world’s fair suffered an existential crisis. The 1964-65 New York fair and Montreal’s Expo ’67 had been popular successes, but financial failures. Writing in the New York Times, critic Ada Louise Huxtable asked, “Is a World’s Fair type Bicentennial festival appropriate in a country racked with social, racial, and environmental agonies?” Her article featured a model of the proposed megastructure with the caption, “Will they come from Boise, Idaho, to look at urban exercises?”

Faced with multiple conflicts, the planning process disintegrated. The 1970 bankruptcy of Penn Central tied up air rights for the 30th Street rail yards interminably. The Bicentennial Corporation scrambled to find another location, considering the neighborhoods of Byberry and Port Richmond in Philadelphia, Camden, New Jersey, and even temporary islands in the Delaware River. Disgusted by the paralysis, many African American and Latino community leaders boycotted the fair. A growing number of Philadelphians viewed the Bicentennial as a boondoggle, siphoning funds desperately needed elsewhere.

Philadelphia architects struggled to find new concepts for the celebration. Kahn offered a surreal scheme for a Forum of the Availabilities connecting the Court of the Physical Resources and the Court of the Expressions. Robert Venturi and John Rauch proposed turning the Benjamin Franklin Parkway into a giant Gladway. During the day, the Parkway would be a “Street of the World” lined with facades of the Taj Mahal, Kremlin, and other landmarks. At night, it would be transformed with lasers, fireworks, and projections, including an enormous Benjamin Franklin floating above the Museum of Art. Sadly, lack of funding doomed this design, along with another Venturi and Rauch proposal to line the city’s dingy automobile approaches with colorful billboards promoting local attractions from William Penn to soft pretzels.  

By 1972, the prospects for a great Bicentennial fair in Philadelphia were hopeless. The Nixon administration decided against a single international exposition and allotted smaller grants to individual cities for local celebrations. Mayor Frank Rizzo dismissed the Bicentennial Corporation and created a new corporation called Philadelphia ’76 Inc. to manage the scaled-back event. “Even though the expo is dead,” the new group assured the public, “there will be a celebration in ’76.”

Organizers were forced to select a few key projects, financed by $50 million in federal grants and augmented with city, state, and private funds. Foremost among them was a new home for the Liberty Bell, which had resided in Independence Hall for most of its 223-year existence. Designed by Ehrman B. Mitchell and Romaldo Giurgola, the utilitarian Liberty Bell Pavilion would handle the 20 million visitors still expected for the Bicentennial. The relic was transferred from Independence Hall to its new home during the opening minutes of 1976 and would remain there until it was moved to the current Liberty Bell Center in 2003. The Mitchell/Giurgola pavilion was dismantled and sold to an Alaskan developer in 2006.

The Living History Center, another Mitchell/Giurgola design based on a concept by Raymond Loewy, rose at the northern end of Independence Mall. This museum featured interactive and multimedia exhibits, along with the first IMAX theater on the East Coast. At $11.5 million, the Living History Center was the most expensive Bicentennial project and perhaps its biggest flop. By May 1976, the Philadelphia Inquirer had christened it “our official Bicentennial White Elephant.” It closed in 1978. Most of the structure was demolished for the current WHYY headquarters.

Benjamin Franklin was commemorated with a complex on the site of his home and business on the 300 block of Market Street. Five federal buildings fronting Market were reconstructed, housing a post office, postal museum, and a newspaper office and press. In the courtyard behind them, the outlines of two structures in white steel tubes rose from the center of a park. Designed by Venturi & Rauch, the “ghost houses” represented Franklin’s residence and a nearby print shop, demolished in the 1800s. An underground museum dedicated to Franklin’s life and accomplishments was constructed beneath the park. After a two-year rehabilitation, it reopened in 2013.

At 2nd and Walnut Streets, the City Tavern, where the Founding Fathers debated and drank, was reconstructed, serving as a restaurant until it closed in 2020. The Graff House, where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, was rebuilt at 7th and Market Streets, next to the new headquarters for the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies. The Mummers Museum opened at 2nd Street and Washington Avenue, while the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum (today the African American Museum in Philadelphia) opened at 7th and Arch Streets.

As July 4 approached, Philadelphia underwent a frenzy of housecleaning. The exterior of City Hall was sand-blasted. In June, the Philadelphia Bulletin reported that “the ‘Mud Hole’ west of City Hall has blossomed into Dilworth Plaza in time for the Bicentennial,” with benches and rows of saplings in planters. In one of the few holdovers from the original Bacon plans, Chestnut Street was closed to vehicular traffic for 10 blocks, becoming a pedestrian mall and transitway. It reopened to regular traffic in 2000.

At Independence National Historical Park, Independence Hall and Carpenters Hall were restored. The First Bank of the United States was also rehabilitated, while the Second Bank of the United States became a Portrait Gallery. The Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial opened to the public. Even the 5th Street subway station received a facelift as “the Gateway to the Liberty Bell.”

In Fairmount Park, 10,000 new trees were planted. The neglected Japanese House and Garden, today’s Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center, were restored with assistance from the Japanese government. A 14,000-seat performance space named Robin Hood Dell West (today the Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts) opened in the West Park, offering free concerts by the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Ben Franklin Parkway became an outdoor festival filled with cultural exhibits, open-air cafes, and live entertainment. The Parkway was adorned with dozens of world flags, a custom that continues to this day.

All in all, Philadelphia’s Bicentennial was a pleasant affair, even after Mayor Frank Rizzo demanded 15,000 federal troops to combat the hordes of protestors he claimed were waiting to descend on the city. (The two major demonstrations held during the summer were both peaceful.) The celebration’s highlight was Freedom Week, which began on June 26 with a Mummers Parade down the Parkway. On July 4, President Gerald Ford addressed the nation from Independence Hall. Two days later, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip presented Philadelphia with a Bicentennial Bell made in the same foundry as the original Liberty Bell. The bell was hung in the tower of the new Visitor Center at 3rd and Chestnut Streets and remained there until shortly before the center’s demolition in 2014. Today it resides in the Benjamin Rush Garden at 3rd and Walnut Streets.

Despite these successes, the Bicentennial became a bitter disappointment for many Philadelphians. Its reputation was further marred by a mysterious ailment, later called Legionnaires’ disease, which sickened hundreds of American Legionnaires at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in July, eventually killing 34. The notoriety caused dozens of other conventions to cancel their Philadelphia visits and forced the venerable hotel to close in November. Today it operates as a mixed-use facility called The Bellevue. Between seven and nine million tourists visited Philadelphia in 1976, far below the 20 million originally expected. In the words of one reporter, “the New Atlantis described in 1965 has become the Big Block Party of 1975.”

Yet, at least it was a Block Party with a humongous Sara Lee birthday cake! The 50-foot high, 25-ton confection was displayed in the Grand Court of Memorial Hall from July 2 to July 4. The eight-tiered, octagonal cake was decorated with panels depicting great events and individuals from American history. Visitors to Memorial Hall during those three days received cupcakes. On July 5, the giant cake was sliced into more than 200,000 servings and distributed to local hospitals and charitable organizations. Sweet, yet ephemeral, those morsels of history may serve as the best metaphor for the transitory pleasure that was the 1976 Philadelphia Bicentennial.

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