Cultural Landscape Report: Independence Mall, Independence National Historical Park

Gibson, Deirdre; Whelchel, Mary; Schlegel, Kathy; Toogood, Anna

This cultural landscape report – undertaken to determine the national register eligibility of Independence Mall – was limited to two components: historical research, and analysis and evaluation. A third component that is often a part of such reports – recommendations – will be part of the general management plan currently underway for the park. The study team consulted a number of sources during the research phase of this project. Prominent among them were two well-documented studies that have been completed within the past decade on the park’s developmental history. In 1985 architectural historian Constance Grieff, of Heritage Studies, Inc., wrote the park’s administrative history, Independence: The Creation of a National Park. An edited version was published under the same name by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1987. In 1989 Katherine Kurtz Cook completed a thesis, The Creation of Independence National Historical Park and Independence Mall, for the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate program in historic preservation. Because these reports are available in the park’s archives, this study summarizes that information on the mall’s background while it provides new data and perspectives on the mall’s development. The library and archival collections at Independence National Historical Park are rich sources of study materials. The archives contain the papers of many of the key individuals in the development of the mall; oral interviews of such people; the files, correspondence, and reports issued by the Independence Hall Association, which was the seminal organization behind establishment of the state and national parks; newspaper clippings from approximately 1920 to the present that describe efforts to establish the mall; and manuscripts of and authors’ notes from previous studies of the development of the park. All of these were important to establishing a chronology for development of the concepts for the mall. The park library contains thousands of photographs of the original neighborhood surrounding Independence Mall and of the demolition process and construction of the mall. Photographs and, in some cases, prints of original drawings of various proposals for the mall were invaluable to the progress of the study. The Philadelphia City Planning Commission generously located and lent photographs, plans, and publications describing the development of the mall and redevelopment of the adjoining neighborhood. The limited time available for research did not allow original research in the city archives, where the City Planning Commission and Fairmount Park Art Association records and reports are housed. The firm H2L2, formerly Harbeson, Hough, Livingston, and Larson, who were the primary designers for the mall, generously granted access to their correspondence files from the design and construction period. H2L2 has conscientiously and systematically preserved drawings and documents describing its work. The team was fortunate in being able to interview a number of individuals who were directly involved with the design and development of the mall. Kenneth Arnold, Robert Breading, Edmund N. Bacon, Hobart Cawood, and Charles E. Peterson patiently answered out questions and gave us an understanding of design intent and political influences that could not have been gained from the historical record alone. The second part of the report - analysis and evaluation- is based on the development history of the mall, on field work, and on national register criteria for significance. This phase began with an examination of the construction and as-built drawings of the mall, provided by the Technical Information Center of the Denver Service Center, which holds the originals. The Eastern Team of Denver Service Center developed and provided a computer-generated base map of current conditions of the mall.

Cultural Landscape Report: Independence Mall, Independence National Historical Park

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