20th Century Transformation

20th Century Transformation. . , Major infrastructure investments transformed the city at the beginning of the 20th century. A grand diagonal boulevard was built to link City Hall to the new art museum at the entrance to Fairmount Par, and excavation for new subway lines reinforced the centrality of downtown., Shortly after the 1870 decision to locate City Hall at Centre Square, the first proposal was made for a diagonal boulevard to link Center City with Fairmount Park. The original Water Works had shifted from Centre Square in Fairmount in 1812, leading to the mid-19th century creation of Fairmount Park to protect the Schuylkill River watershed from industrial pollution., Between 1871 and 1912, numerous plans were drawn for what ultimately became the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, built between 1907 and 1918. The final version, a melding of ideas by Paul Philippe Cret, a French-born architect, and landscape architect Jacques Gréber, was modeled on the grand boulevards of Paris and profoundly influenced by the City Beautiful Movement promoted at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. It represented Philadelphia's first major effort at comprehensive planning since William Penn and a large-scale civic initiative to overcome the grittiness of the industrial city., In the 1920s, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the City of Philadelphia began designing the "Philadelphia Improvements" to relieve congestion, reduce the smoke and noise of steam locomotives at the heart of the city, and open the west side of downtown for new development. The plan included a monumental 30th Street Station to replace Broad Street Station, the building of an underground commuter terminal called Suburban Station near City Hall, and the demolition of the elevated railroad embankment called the "Chinese Wall" to make way for a new office district along West Market Street., The growing commercial density downtown, and its resulting street congestion, prompted the construction of subway and elevated rail lines in the early 20th century. Both the Market Street Line, which opened in 1907, and the Broad Street Subway, opened in 1928, required the massive engineering feat of tunneling and building a station beneath the foundations of City Hall., [Captions:] , 1. This model for the parkway was displayed in the mayor's reception room in City Hall for one of the first national meetings of city planners. It shows many more buildings than were ultimately built., 2. With the building of the Parkway, one of Penn's original squares was transformed by Jacques Gréber into Logan Circle. The impressive fountain at the center was designed by Alexander Stirling Calder, son of Alexander Milne Calder, who had created the sculptures for City Hall., 3. The Broad Street Subway had to be carved out beneath City Hall and threaded through the building's foundations., 4. This aerial photo shows how close Broad Street Station stood to the west side of City Hall, as well as the dominance of the "Chinese Wall" stone viaduct that stretched across the Schuylkill River.