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19-525: Dilworth Park opened in September 2014. It is named in honor of Richardson Dilworth , who served as mayor of the city from 1956 to 1962. The current park was designed by KieranTimberlake , Urban Engineers and OLIN and replaced Dilworth Plaza , designed by Vincent Kling in 1972. City Hall is located in what was originally named Centre Square . Centre Square was one of the five original public squares planned by William Penn in 1682. Centre Square

38-654: A brain tumor at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia on January 23, 1974, at the age of 75. Dilworth Park , adjacent to Philadelphia City Hall, is named in his honor. An abstract "rising phoenix" made by sculptor Emlen Etting in 1982 is a memorial to the Mayor; it was moved from its original location at North end of Dilworth Plaza to 38th Parallel Place in 2013. 1947 Philadelphia mayoral election Bernard Samuel Republican Bernard Samuel Republican The 1947 Philadelphia mayoral election saw

57-516: A center square as the hub of his community had to be abandoned. The large Friends meeting house which was built in 1685 at the midpoint between the rivers was dismantled in 1702. Efforts to develop the Schuylkill waterfront likewise collapsed. Of the merchants, tradesmen, and craftsmen who can be identified as living in Philadelphia around 1690, 123 lived on the Delaware side of town and only 6 on

76-458: A close race to John S. Fine . In 1951 , he was elected Philadelphia District Attorney , while Clark was elected mayor. Clark and Dilworth's inaugurations ended a 67-year period of uninterrupted Republican control of the city (and instituted a period of uninterrupted Democratic control which has persisted past 2022). In 1955 , Dilworth was elected mayor , defeating Thacher Longstreth . During their tenures as mayor, Clark and Dilworth introduced

95-520: A deeply divisive Republican primary involving Philadelphia Republican boss Billy Meehan 's candidate, Judge Robert E. Woodside ; and five other candidates. Republicans also carried both houses of the state legislature in that landslide election. In 1960 and 1961, Dilworth served as president of the United States Conference of Mayors . A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of

114-468: A second bid for governor. Despite President John F. Kennedy 's work on his behalf, Dilworth lost the fall general election by a half million votes to progressive Republican Congressman William Scranton , in what scholars considered "one of the bitterest [campaigns] in Pennsylvania history." Scranton had run for governor (with fellow progressive Raymond P. Shafer for lieutenant governor) after

133-563: A variety of reforms and innovations. Among these was extensive high-rise public housing which would, a generation later, be condemned by many as a breeding ground for poverty and crime. However, they also greatly strengthened the city planning function of Philadelphia city government. Both retained Edmund Bacon as executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission , and the Clark–Dilworth era

152-548: Is recognized as a high-water mark for planning, during which the decline of Center City, Philadelphia as a commercial and residential center was reversed and priority was given (particularly during Dilworth's administration) to saving the city's historic and irreplaceable Society Hill district. During his term he visited the Knesset, The Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem. Dilworth resigned as mayor on February 12, 1962, to launch

171-687: Is to date the last White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mayor of Philadelphia. He was born in Pittsburgh to Joseph Richardson Dilworth and Annie Hunter (Wood) Dilworth. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in World War I and was commissioned as an officer in World War II. In 1938, he joined the law firm of Dilworth Paxson. In 1921 he graduated from Yale University , where he was a member of Scroll and Key and Delta Kappa Epsilon , and lettered for

190-577: The University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Dilworth as the eleventh-best American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993. With his wife, Ann Dilworth, he was a passenger on the SS ; Andrea Doria , an ocean liner that collided with the MS Stockholm near Nantucket, Massachusetts , on July 25, 1956, and subsequently sank. They were saved, and Dilworth was on board

209-484: The Quaker meetinghouse, the state house, the market house, and the schoolhouse. Despite the two riverfronts [ Delaware and Schuylkill , Penn's city had an inward-facing design, focusing on this central plaza. However, the Delaware riverfront would remain the de facto economic and social heart of the city for more than a century. […] hardly anyone lived west of Fourth Street before 1703. Consequently Penn's design of

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228-419: The Schuylkill side. One of the latter, a tailor named William Boulding, complained that he had invested most of his capital in his Schuylkill lot, 'so that he cannot, as others have done, Remove from the same.' Not until the mid-nineteenth century, long after the city had spilled northward and southward in an arc along the Delaware miles beyond its original limits, was the Schuylkill waterfront fully developed. Nor

247-467: The city's longstanding Republican machine. Along with Joseph S. Clark Jr. and others, he was at the forefront of a post-World War II reform movement in Philadelphia that led to the adoption of a modern city charter that consolidated city and county offices and introduced civil service examinations on a broad scale to replace much of the existing patronage system. Dilworth initially ran for mayor in 1947 against incumbent Republican Barney Samuel . Samuel

266-732: The last lifeboat that was picked up by the SS  Île de France . Following his tenure as mayor, Dilworth served as partner in the Philadelphia-based law firm of Dilworth Paxson LLP, which bears his name. He also served as president of the Philadelphia School Board , and in 1971 was appointed one of two bankruptcy trustees (along with Drew Lewis ) for the Reading Company , a railroad company headquartered in Philadelphia . Dilworth died from

285-527: The reelection of Bernard Samuel . To date, this is the last election in Philadelphia mayoral history won by a Republican and the last not won by a Democrat . Samuel defeated Democratic Party nominee, first-time candidate Richardson Dilworth . Dilworth would subsequently go on to be the unsuccessful Democratic Party nominee for governor of Pennsylvania in 1950 before being elected Philadelphia district attorney in 1951 and mayor of Philadelphia in 1955 This Pennsylvania elections -related article

304-422: The varsity football team . In 1926 he graduated from Yale Law School , afterwards becoming an attorney in Philadelphia. He was married to the former Elizabeth Brockie from 1922 to 1935, and they had three children. On August 6, 1935, a week after divorcing his first wife, he married Ann Elizabeth Kaufman. They had two children. Dilworth had grown up as a Republican , but became a Democrat out of frustration with

323-497: Was Centre Square restored as the heart of Philadelphia until the construction of City Hall began in 1871. Dilworth Park contains: Richardson Dilworth Richardson K. Dilworth (August 29, 1898 – January 23, 1974) was an American Democratic Party politician who served as the 91st mayor of Philadelphia from 1956 to 1962. He twice ran as the Democratic nominee for governor of Pennsylvania , in 1950 and in 1962 . He

342-424: Was seeking his second full term in office, after assuming office following the death of Robert Lamberton in 1941. Dilworth was ultimately defeated by over 90,000 votes; however, the election marked the last time, to date, that a Republican was elected mayor of Philadelphia. In 1949, Dilworth was elected city treasurer, while Clark was elected city controller. Dilworth ran for governor in the 1950 election , losing

361-473: Was the geographic heart of the city until 1854, when Philadelphia expanded its city boundaries with the Act of Consolidation. Centre Square never became the social heart of the city as originally intended, but it remained in use until 1871, when construction of City Hall began. Penn planned for Centre Square to be: a central square or plaza of ten acres to be bordered by the principal public buildings, such as

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