By Murray Dubin - Inquirer Staff Writer
Sun, Sep. 19, 1999
Blame the mayor.
Blame the rain.
Blame the political boss.
And save some blame for the Shriners.
Blame abounds when the focus turns to the 150th-anniversary celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, an event that could have been - SHOULD have been - the century's grandest international moment for Philadelphia.
It was the Sesquicentennial, known as "the Sesqui," the nation's birthday party held in 1926 at the southern end of Broad Street, with all the world invited.
But most ot the world said, "No, thank you," and the Sesqui wasn't ready for those who came. If Philadelphia has an inferiority complex, it was surely stamped on the city psyche 73 years ago: people not only ignored the celebration but ridiculed it as well.
And the event was not only behind schedule and poorly planned but also soaking wet - rain fell on 107 of its 184 days.
"Everything I've read says it was an embarrassment," says David Bartelt, chairman of the geography and urban studies department at Temple University.
'They had a lot of trouble getting the people behind it, getting public support," says Ellen Freedman Schultz, a preservation consultant from Ambler who did her master's thesis on the Sesqui.
And there was good reason.
The idea of a world's fair in 1926 had been proposed 10 years before by department store giant John Wanamaker, who had been active in the 1876 Centennial celebration in Fairmount Park.
The idea won support, but World War I scuttled any real planning. Two more years went by before Mayor J. Hampton Moore revived the idea and appointed a Sesquicentennial Exhibition Association.
That group proposed and studied 14 sites. In 1922, it chose one in Fairmount Park near the Parkway, not far from where the Centennial had been celebrated. City Council pledged $5 million.
But the public was not entirely behind the idea, and a debate ensued about how international the Sesqui should be. Some leaders wanted a more local and less expensive celebration.
After W. Freeland Kendrick , a Republican, was elected mayor in 1924, he got the Sesqui moving again - south, to the end of Broad Street - 1,000 acres from 10th Street to 20th Street and from 3100 South Broad to 3900 South Broad.
He had moved the celebration into "Varesville," the fiefdom of GOP political boss William S. Vare, who watched as land values soared in the southern rural end of the city, near the Naval Yard. Vare and his political associates owned some of that swampy land and almost all the votes in the area.
The city paid $660,000 to drain the marshes and $1.7 million to move 1.6 million cubic yards of fill from the north end of the Broad Street Subway construction to the site. The fill was provided by the Vare Construction Co.
The switch left many in Philadelphia with a bitter taste. Then Kendrick brought Col. David C. Collier from California to direct the Sesqui's planning. Collier was the first of seven men to hold the job.
President Calvin Coolidge gave official approval in February 1925 for an international expostion in Philadelphia. Collier went to work, drawing plans for the celebration.
But construction experts said they needed more time and called for delaying the Sesqui until 1927. World fairs had opened late before, and Collier agreed to the delay, but Mayor Kendrick said no.
The Shriner's national three-day convention was to begin on May 31, 1926, and the mayor, a Shriner imperial potentate, had promised to dedicate the first three days of the Sesqui to them.
Collier resigned in October 1925. The debate about when to start continued within the expostition planning committee. Construction stopped.
On Jan. 20, 1926, Kendrick announced that the Sesqui would open on time, on May 31. At that point, only two exhibition buildings and the newly built Municipal Stadium were complete.
By opening day, the federal government had contributed a little more than $1 million and Pennsylvania had paid for its building at the Sesqui but nothing more. Financier Albert M. Greenfield raised $3 million. The city would spend nearly $10 million more before it was over.
On May 31, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg were among the speakers lauding the Sesqui's beginning. There were aerial exhibitions, fireworks, a band, and a fancy ball.
But it was all a brave front. The Sesqui just wasn't ready to open. International in name only, it had seen only seven other countries erect pavilions. Rain fell on opening day and throughout the summer - including on 19 of the following 26 weekends.
The local press was gentle: "A large portion of the building debris is removed and the Sesqui looks fairly presentable," wrote the Evening Bulletin, predicting that the fair would be completed by July 1.
The national press was not as kind: The Sesqui was "opened before it was ready and made the additional mistake of promising more than it had," read an editorial in the New York American.
And so those 25,000 Shriners from across the country went home bad-mouthing the event and telling everyone that it wasn't worth a visit. Crowd predictions before the Sesqui were 25 million to 30 million, but just 4.5 million - 3.5 million fewer than attended the Centennial - showed up over the six months.
Most of the Sesqui was finished by mid-July, but, by then, word of mouth had been so bad that its failure was assured.
No money was spent to publicize its completion.
That's unfortunate, because the Sesqui had some wonderful things to see:
What is clear is that the city found itself with a $5 million deficit. E. L. Austin, the Sesqui's last director-in-chief, blamed citizens and the mayor. He scolded residents for their "destructive criticism" and refusal to "subordinate personal preference to the good of the city as a whole."
Four hundred creditors whom the Sesqui owed money were represented by George C. Klauder, law partner of Harry A. Mackey, then city treasurer and leader of the 46th Ward. City Controller Will B. Hadley refused to approve payment vouchers, and the mayor was subpoenaed, as were all financial accounts, but no legal action was ever pressed.
Before long, City Council voted large appropriations to rescue the Sesqui from insolvency. Eventually, every creditor was paid in full.
In the end, some historians feel the Sesqui helped spur the residential development of South Philadelpiha. Others are not so sure. Some think preservation consciousness was raised by the reconstrucion of High Street. It's hard to say.