How an Old American City Made Itself New Again

By Inga Saffron

Reviewed by Richard K. Rein

Designing a building and writing a column about the building “are more alike than meets the eye,” says Inga Saffron, the architecture critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer. She makes the point in a new collection of 80 essays drawing on more than 1,600 columns she has written in the past two decades. “A good column, like a good work of architecture, is an expression of a singular vision, as well as a very public demonstration of ego.”

Saffron’s new book, Becoming Philadelphia, published by the Rutgers University Press, extends that analogy. Just as some architects (but, sadly, not all) consider both the design of their building as well as the space it creates in relation to neighboring buildings, the author of a collection of columns has similar relationships to consider. Saffron, who won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2014, has arranged the columns chosen for this book in 10 chapters, with titles that will intrigue any urban-minded reader: “Suburbanizing the City,” “Age of the Megaprojects,” “Building the Equitable City,” and – appropriate given this analogy – “The Spaces between the Buildings.”

That chapter alone gives you a sense of Saffron’s core values. A column from September, 2015, now (in this Covid-19 lockdown) seems prescient. Saffron reports on Pope Francis’s visit to Philadelphia, which prompted the authorities to block car traffic in the five-square-mile heart of the city. The result was, well, heavenly: “The virtual absence of vehicles in the sprawling secure zone, from Gerard to Lombard, was a revelation. Instead of locking us in, it turned out that the much maligned traffic box liberated us from the long tyranny of the car.”

In another column in the “spaces” chapter, Saffron calls out a “high-handed” decision to prohibit “the time-honored practice of parking your bottom atop Rittenhouse Square’s elegant limestone balustrades.” The public interest, in Saffron’s forthright opinion, coincides with her urban sense. “Even though Rittenhouse Square is in the toniest part of town, there is a strong sense that these gracious seven acres belong to all of us. . . A microcosm of the city, the park is the place where we learn to tolerate people who are different from us.” > Read More …