Cheryl Nagle, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

1. Embracing the 20th Century:
PA SHPO’s Goals and Guidance for
Post WWII Resources
Bureau for Historic Preservation

2. Pennsylvania’s Historic Suburbs
19th Century Railroad & Horsecar Suburbs
Late 19th and Early 20th Century Streetcar Suburbs
Early and Mid 20th Century Automobile Suburbs
Postwar Suburbs 1945-1965
Modern Suburbs 1965-1975+

5. “Plans for Downtown Renaissance” ca 1950 – Model of downtown Pittsburgh showing proposals for Point State
Park, the Manchester and Point Bridges, Gateway Center, the ALCOA Building and Crosstown Boulevard
Courtesy of Paul Slantis Photograph Collection, Historic Pittsburgh Image Collection

6. Lancaster, PA 1910
The issues involved in addressing urban
renewal projects are hardly new. The
underlying challenge is to approach the
task with an open mind, checking one’s
assumptions at the door as it were, and
acquiring a strong base of knowledge of
pertinent source material. The widespread
prejudices against urban renewal and
much of the legacy of the second half of
the 20th century generally must be set aside
in order to assess the real significance of
such initiatives. Our cities and towns
changed dramatically during the postwar
era, and we can ill afford to dismiss those
transformations out of hand.
Richard Longstreth
The Difficult Legacy of Urban Renewal
Lancaster, PA 1971

7. Great cities are not great because of
individual buildings. They’re great
because of the way things fit
together.
Edmund Bacon
Executive Director of the Philadelphia City
Planning Commission
The city welcomed tomorrow because
yesterday was hard and unlovely. The
town took pleasure in the swing of the
headache ball and the crash of the
falling brick. Pittsburgh, after all the
grim years, was proud and self-
confident.
Pittsburgh Mayor David Lawrence

8. Thousands of people who were formerly
the victims of scurrilous, profit-greedy
landlords, that provided dwellings of the
most dilapidated sub-standard grade,
many being potential fire traps and
breeding places for diseases, now live,
laugh, and are happier with a new lease
on life in the clean, modern, and
healthful surroundings of the Raymond
Rosen Projects.
Philadelphia Tribune, 1955
The slums of Philadelphia are no
accident. They are planned slums…
the unregulated tenement
manipulators in their mad scramble
for profits use the Negro as a pawn
and use the middle class white
families as suckers, making them pay
at both ends.
Philadelphia Tribune, 1935

9. Olivetti Underwood Typewriter Factory
Lower Paxton Twp, Dauphin County,
Louis Kahn, 1970

10. Tarentum Bridge, 1949

11. Modern Suburbs
1970-1980

12. Modern Suburbs
Is it a resource?

13. Pittsburgh area 1970 population 2,401,362.
developed land 212,200 acres
1990 Population 2,094,447
Developed land 249,100 acres

14. Questions?