The 2 hundredth birthday of the USA was celebrated throughout the nation on July 4, 1976. In Philadelphia, tens of 1000’s gathered on and round Independence Mall.
Some writers and members mentioned Philadelphia’s celebration was a hit. Others mentioned it was a failure. Is it doable they’re each proper?
The Bicentennial celebration had its pluses and minuses. There have been the crowds at Independence Sq.. An estimated a million folks visited town for the occasions, which included a five-hour parade that included 1000’s of members from all 50 states. Queen Elizabeth II of England visited and offered a present for the nation, a bigger duplicate of the Liberty Bell (known as an “Independence Bell”) made on the identical basis that created the unique. Different dignitaries visiting Independence Corridor included King Carl XVI of Sweden; Valery Giscard d’ Estaing, President of France; Crown Prince Harold of Norway; Helmut Schmidt, Chancellor of West Germany; and Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco.
Some well-known buildings round city had been reconstructed or refurbished, together with the second ground of Independence Corridor, the Second Financial institution of the USA, Previous Metropolis Corridor, Metropolis Tavern. The Liberty Bell was moved from Independence Corridor to its personal pavilion on the mall.
Legendary filmmaker John Houston created a film known as “Independence.” In keeping with Hobie Cawood’s e-book, “Celebrations! A Private Memoir Commemorating America’s Bicentennial Period: 1971-1991,” the movie allowed viewers to review up earlier than coming to Philadelphia for the Bicentennial.
“Such an introduction would enable guests to grasp how every constructing match within the general story of America’s independence,” mentioned Cawood, the superintendent of Independence Nationwide Historic Park for twenty years. “The movie would additionally enable our company to expertise a digital 18th century setting set within the buildings they might quickly go to.”
The movie featured actors Eli Wallach as Ben Franklin, Pat Hingle as John Adams, Patrick O’Neil as George Washington and Ann Jackson taking part in Abigail Adams.
But it surely was a far cry from the plans that started to bubble up nearly twenty years earlier.
Grand plans
In 1959, metropolis planner Edmund Bacon conceived of Philadelphia internet hosting not solely a Bicentennial celebration but additionally a World’s Truthful. Grandiose plans by Bacon and his workers included pageant grounds constructed on the railroad yards west of thirtieth Road Station. They conceived of trams, constructed tales above floor, that might transport folks from the station to Middle Metropolis and Previous Metropolis.
These initiatives by no means materialized.
For each the one hundredth and one hundred and fiftieth nationwide celebrations, town had constructed many buildings, a few of which are nonetheless in use at present. Philadelphia didn’t construct many amenities for the Bicentennial. Its largest main challenge, a Dwelling Historical past Middle at sixth and Race streets, didn’t draw the anticipated guests and closed after 1976. It has since grow to be the house of WHYY, Philadelphia’s largest public media group and Billy Penn’s guardian.
A presidential go to had been a staple of those earlier nationwide milestones. Once more, the 1976 model lands someplace between victory and snub. President Gerald R. Ford was within the metropolis on Independence Day — however left for New York, the place he watched the historic “Tall Ships” enter New York Harbor, judged on the time to be the spotlight within the celebration.
So, success or failure?
Whether or not the 1976 Bicentennial was a hit actually is determined by the way you outline success, mentioned Dr. Seth C. Bruggeman, professor of Historical past and director of the Middle for Public Historical past at Temple College.
Formal planning for the Bicentennial had begun below President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, below the course of a bipartisan American Revolution Bicentennial Fee (ARBC), Bruggeman mentioned, however issues modified dramatically with the election of President Richard Nixon in November 1968.
“Johnson took a largely hands-off strategy, preferring {that a} nonpartisan committee handle planning. Nixon concerned himself straight, and selected reasonably to exchange the planning committee with partisan supporters whose function was to leverage the occasion in assist of his personal political ambition,” Bruggeman mentioned. “That is to say that, on the federal degree, the Bicentennial grew up between two very totally different definitions of success. If in hindsight we understand the Bicentennial as a failure, then it was so in no small half as a result of Nixon’s presidential worldview was deeply flawed.”
The variations in scope had been jarring. The Philadelphia delegation that offered to ARBC in 1969 pitched a World’s Truthful celebration with varied venues throughout town to supply progressive options to city issues. They anticipated 100 million guests, and projected the funds at greater than $1 billion, in accordance with the Encyclopedia of Higher Philadelphia.
That plan was rejected, which led to a bitter divide in Philadelphia alongside racial strains over the themes and places of occasions. Progress stalled, and Rizzo canceled the bid for a World’s Truthful fully in 1972. Nationally, ARBC inspired Bicentennial celebrations all around the nation, not simply in Philadelphia.
“On different fronts, too, it’s price contemplating what success means with regard to Philadelphia’s varied centennial celebrations,” Bruggeman mentioned. “In my opinion, a key level of confusion issues the intent of centennial planners.
“We glance again at 1876, 1926, and 1976, and presume that the planners organized these occasions primarily as celebrations of American historical past. Notice although that the planners have by no means been historians, at the least not how we’d outline them at present. The planners have sometimes been enterprise magnates, industrialists, philanthropists and others who stage the centennials by the use of arguing for the centrality of personal capital in American life.
“Historical past — typically unhealthy historical past, at that — will get deployed as a imprecise justification for ‘progress,’ which is often offered because the unfettered growth of personal enterprise, at dwelling and overseas.”
Bruggeman famous there was an surprising, ironic outcome that sprung from the chaos of those clashing visions.
“One ‘success’ ensuing from Nixon’s incapability to ship the funding he had promised was a wave of grassroots historical past programming all throughout the U.S.,” he mentioned. “A few of it was sponsored by state and native governments. A few of it was organized round protesting the Nixon administration.
“A lot of it, although, demonstrated that Individuals can take management of their very own cultural lives and arrange round their very own pursuits. That, in my view, was a hit — a certified success, at the least — for public historical past, one that’s instructive as we strategy yet one more centennial celebration whereby the play of personal pursuits is simply as problematic because it was over the past three.”
Issues at dwelling
There have been different winds blowing in opposition to the centennial in Philly, too. The occasion passed off throughout a time of frequent protests and unrest. The Bicentennial included a few of that, within the type of counterprogramming — parades in different elements of town that served as different celebrations. They had been peaceful and there have been no arrests.
Mayor Rizzo apparently was unnerved by the plans for these occasions. In keeping with the New York Instances, weeks earlier than the July 4 remark, Rizzo wrote to President Ford requesting 15,000 federal troops “as a result of Philadelphia has obtained threats of violence and disruption.”
“Mayor Frank Rizzo was actively telling folks to not come to Philly for this. And out of that, there was not solely no coordination, however there have been quite a lot of protests that got here out of it, each of the nationwide political setting of ’76, but additionally of the totally different festivities that had been popping up and other people simply weren’t notified as a result of authorities wasn’t supportive,” mentioned Matt Winberg, communications director for at-large Philadelphia Metropolis Councilman Isiah Thomas, who’s concerned in preparations for the upcoming 250th anniversary.
There have been broader problems with re-making cities and who was being privileged and accommodated in these plans, too.
“So, you consider the place town was within the mid-Sixties, we’re on the peak of the city renewal section and Ed Bacon is operating these main clearance, redevelopment, eminent area seizure packages,” mentioned Brent Cebul, a historical past professor on the College of Pennsylvania.
“In College Metropolis and Society Hill, these clearance initiatives are additionally engendering protests, along with protests round police violence that truly explode in violence all around the metropolis within the Sixties. And there begins to be an actual concern that planners, like Bacon, had been considering the Bicentennial is a chance to increase Philadelphia’s redevelopment, and to get entry to huge federal cash to redevelop the waterfront, to do an entire bunch of different potential initiatives,” Cebul mentioned.
In the long run, that cash and people initiatives didn’t materialize — and neither did the expansive reputational success of 1876. The Bicentennial was in some methods a affirmation of what folks dropped at the second. Possibly that’s not so distinctive, although the canvass on which it occurred was.
Subsequent up for Philadelphia, 2026. Billy Penn can be reporting on town’s plans for the 250th over the following 12 months — and perhaps writing a recap of it in 50 years or so.