Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Walter Massey PHILLIPS
Walter Massey Phillips, 73, the quiet force behind the 1950s renaissance that shaped modern Philadelphia, died yesterday at his home in Chestnut Hill after a long illness.
In recent years, it was his son, Walter M. Phillips Jr., who captured the spotlight and made the family name familiar in Pennsylvania as a special prosecutor for the state and as a candidate for attorney general.
The elder Phillips was far from unknown, but he was never one to seek personal attention from the public. While his life was dedicated to shaping public opinion and, through it, changing the shape of the city, he worked mostly behind the scenes.
Quietly, he created history. Without Walter M. Phillips Sr., Philadelphia would not be precisely, if anything at all, like what it is today. In physical terms, there would probably be no Market Street East redevelopment, no Gallery shopping mall, no John F. Kennedy Boulevard. In the arena of the intangible, there might not be the City Charter that reformed politics in the city and rid it of an ingrained corruption that had held sway for years.
But among the achievements of all those who worked for change in Philadelphia - the Clarks and the Dilworths and the Bacons - Mr. Phillips' contributions are probably the least-known, largely because of his behind-the-scenes style.
"Walter received less recognition than he deserved for his contributions to the city," said Edmund Bacon, a man Mr. Phillips recruited in 1939 to help him mold the city. But, Bacon added, "Walter Phillips' pervasive influence is present around us continuously, and it influences many of the things we do."
Even in his college days, Mr. Phillips displayed a spark of genius that suggested to those around him a special quality, Bacon recalled.
Mr. Phillips, a ninth-generation Philadelphian, was reared in the city's Torresdale section. After graduating in 1931 from Episcopal Academy, he earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1935. In 1937, he married Mary Bird of East Walpole, Mass., and in 1938 he graduated from Harvard Law School.
"He came out of law school an earnest young reformer," Bacon said. His first move was to join a group of individuals who wanted to change the City Charter in order to rout the corrupt politicians who then held power in Philadelphia.
That charter movement was flawed, Bacon recalled, because it was organized by civic leaders who had no popular support in the city's wards. Mr. Phillips worked for the charter change, but the voters, whose loyalties were to ward politicians, rejected the movement.
That rejection taught Mr. Phillips a valuable lesson. If he wanted to bring about reform in Philadelphia, he would need grass-roots support and he would need patience. The job of reform would take time to be accomplished.
Bacon said, "I think he was the greatest figure in the renaissance, and I think the vision he had . . . is really one of the most remarkable in the history of the city and really one of the most remarkable I've ever heard of."
Mr. Phillips' vision, to which Bacon referred, was this:
Start about 80 of the brightest young Philadelphians working together on endeavors that would imbue them with a sense of the problems and potentials of the city. When these individuals reached an age where some of them were in leadership positions in government, business and cultural institutions, a network for cooperation would already have been established. Then, great changes could easily be made in the city.
"The vision that he had proved to be astonishingly accurate," Bacon recalled.
One reason for the accuracy was Mr. Phillips' efforts to make it come true. He was tireless, and he was willing to be a catalyst rather than a celebrity.
"I think he was well aware that his personal effectiveness would be greater if he could get a group of people to believe the way he did rather than if he stood forth as the sole proponent," Bacon said. Moreover, "he was particularly skillful in getting other people to take leadership positions."
In 1939, Mr. Phillips began recruiting the 80 Young Turks of his vision and giving them roles to play in the City Policy Committee, the formal name for their group.
Bacon, for example, was a young architect who had just returned from Flint, Mich., where he had been called a communist for espousing public housing. First, Mr. Phillips signed him as managing director of the Philadelphia Housing Association, a nonprofit, Community Chest-sponsored group. Then he encouraged Bacon to develop within the City Policy Committee an interest in city planning, while he was encouraging other members to develop their own areas of specialty.
Shortly after the committee was formed, the United States entered World War II. Mr. Phillips, who had had rheumatic fever as a child, was disqualified
from military service. He had spent 1939 as a law clerk in Common Pleas Court, and from 1940 until 1943, he was a member of the law firm of Krusen, Evans & Shaw. In 1943, he took a leave from the firm to work on the Regional War Labor Board. From 1944 to 1947, he was president of the Bureau of Municipal Research, working on plans for Philadelphia after the war. At the same time, he was president of the Citizens Council on City Planning.
It was during those war years that Mr. Phillips and several of the Young Turks developed the idea that Bacon called "one of the most remarkable expressions of Walter Phillips' vision."
The idea was the Better Philadelphia Exhibition. It was held for a week in September 1947, on the fifth floor of the Gimbels department store. It was attended by 400,000 guests, including schoolchildren, businessmen, lawyers and city planners. It cost $300,000 to produce and, with scale models of astounding detail, it showed Philadelphians how the city was put together in 1947 and how it might be improved. It invited Philadelphia's residents to
dream grand dreams for their city. It created expectations of improvement. And it laid the groundwork for public acceptance of the sacrifices that those changes would demand.
During these years, while he was helping to orchestrate the city's future, Walter Phillips was known as a manufacturer. He was president of Delta Manufacturing Corp., which made toasters.
In 1949, Mr. Phillips, a lifelong Republican, registered as a Democrat. And he became president of the Philadelphia Housing Association, an organization that espoused public-housing causes.
The next year, the newly elected city controller, Democrat Joseph S. Clark Jr., named Mr. Phillips to the Philadelphia Housing Authority, thus beginning for him six years in public office.
Mr. Phillips played a leading role in promoting the Home Rule Charter that Philadelphia adopted in 1951. And in 1951, he served as co-chairman of Clark's successful mayoral campaign.
His reward for serving Clark, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1956, was his appointment to the new mayor's cabinet as city representative-director of commerce, a post he held for four years. While holding that position, Phillips was in charge of the city's port and airports. During his tenure, he proposed the formation of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., a quasi-public agency that promotes business growth in Philadelphia.
Three of Clark's four cabinet officers were alumni of the City Policy Committee that Mr. Phillips had created. The network he had envisioned was working.
In addition to political reform, Clark's election as mayor - the first time a Democrat controlled City Hall in 67 years - ushered in a decade of urban renewal. Clark and Richardson Dilworth, who was elected mayor in 1955, oversaw an era in which the city's face was transformed.
During the 1950s, the so-called Chinese Wall, an elevated train line that ran along Market Street in Center City, was torn down, and the old Broad Street Station made way for the underground Suburban Station.
Under Clark and Dilworth, Philadelphians also saw the rebirth of Society Hill and the shaping of Philadelphia's modern airport.
Mr. Phillips served on the Committee of Seventy from 1956 to 1958, as chairman of the board of Lincoln University in 1957 and as chairman of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans for Democratic Action in 1962. In 1963, he ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for mayor against Mayor James H.J. Tate and, finally, unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for City Council in 1967. During the years following his term as city representative, Mr. Phillips was also instrumental in creating the Delaware River Basin Commission.
But the essence of Mr. Phillips' contribution to the community remains his pursuit of long-range planning, regional cooperation and citizen involvement in the process of governing.
"Had he not been on the scene, the renaissance, if it had occurred at all, would have been of a lesser quality," Bacon said. Mr. Phillips was "a really remarkable example of an individual's contribution to history."
Mr. Phillips is survived by his wife; two sons, Walter Jr. and Frank; a daughter, Anna Sofaer Pertschuk; five grandchildren and three sisters.
Memorial services will be held on July 11 at 4 p.m. at Christ Church, Second and Market Streets. Burial will be private.
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