The City Beautiful in The City of Harrisburg
The City’s been here before.
In light of the recent Harrisburg calamity of sinkholes to start off the new year, the whole region and state is looking upon Pennsylvania’s capital city in astonishment, cynicism, pity, skepticism, and even disgust.
This isn’t the first time the City of Harrisburg has confronted such impressions. In 1897, the PA Capitol building burnt down. Philadelphia took the opportunity to call for the return of the capital to the City of Brotherly Love. Proponents of the move cited Harrisburg as antiquated, dirty, and decaying. They said a city in squalor was not worthy of such an important distinction. Despite the validity of the appeal, the State Legislature ignored the petition and the new Capitol building was built where it stands now, green domed and gilded. Dedicated in 1906, the Pennsylvania State Capitol cemented the City of Harrisburg as the capital of State.
That dedication happened in the midst of the City Beautiful Movement. A national crusade, City Beautiful was based on the concept that beautifying the country’s cities would result in social and economic prosperity. The idea was that if urban spaces presented a clean, ordered, modern infrastructure that included green and open spaces, then not only would all city inhabitants benefit—no matter their class or color, but also people from the outside would come and spend money on what that city had to offer. The key was getting citizens to be involved. City Beautiful considered civic pride the foundation of civic duty. It was believed people in and around the city would respect and maintain a beautiful and efficient place.
City Beautiful came to Harrisburg because of a lecture resident Mira Lloyd Dock gave to the Harrisburg Board of Trade, a group of prominent businessmen, in 1900. Dock argued that the City of Harrisburg’s ugliness was the consequence of a lack of concern and action on the part of Harrisburg’s residents. Using a stereopticon to show pictures of thriving European cities, she spoke of ways to confront urban neglect and wretchedness. She called for extreme and immediate measures to tackle the sanitation problems that caused Harrisburg to be so unattractive and disrespected. As a capital city along the river, Dock declared that the city’s residents did not take advantage of “the cash value of cleanliness and beauty.” Her speech called for more people in the region to take an active interest in the city’s development.
The key was getting citizens to be involved.
Dock’s lecture was coordinated with a speech J. Horace McFarland gave to the Harrisburg Woman’s Civic Club. McFarland urged the women to take note of the inadequacies of services, to rally for public engagement, and to pressure their husbands as businessmen to help make the City better.
As a result of these separate but synchronized presentations, a campaign took force in Harrisburg. The public responded enthusiastically and committed to the movement, most obviously showing support by way of approving various bond issues for the projects that ensued.
An Improvement Committee was formed and a deliberate and methodical approach was developed. People, skill sets, and possibilities were brought together to formulate a comprehensive plan that incorporated these principles:
- the necessity of acknowledging increased community concerns
- the development of partnerships among residents, businesses, and local government
- the need for well-organized, efficient planning for social, economic, and physical adjustments
- the development of cleaner, safer, and more beautiful streets to ensure happier citizens
- the implementation and maintenance of public improvements and services
- an awareness of the responsibility one has for one’s own home and neighborhood
- a resistance to urban sectionalism
- the participation of every city resident
In a span of fifteen years, the City Beautiful Movement in Harrisburg not only initiated the City’s first water filtration and sewage treatment systems, paved 74 miles of street, and improved trash collection and street cleaning, but also expanded Riverfront Park, developed Wildwood Park, created the promenade today known as the Greenbelt, and dammed the Susquehanna River for sanitation reasons as well as for swimming and boating. Bridges were built. Buildings were repaired. Businesses were opened.
Because of City Beautiful, Harrisburg realized its potential and met its expectations of providing its residents with cleaner, safer, and revitalized neighborhoods. At the same time, people of the region flocked to the City for work, dining, culture, and recreation. Most of the changes enacted during these early years of the 1900s endured for generations.
Today, Harrisburg is in a similar position as it was over one hundred years ago—systems have been neglected, the infrastructure is aged, services are inadequate, and residents have withdrawn in frustration and apathy. To many observers standing on the outside looking in, the capital city of Pennsylvania is a pathetic place. Too many residents of the City and region think that, too.
However, a look back on the City Beautiful Movement in Harrisburg and its incredible success at turning around a failing place proves that once again, the situation for PA’s capital isn’t hopeless.The framework is there; the principles laid out; the models already in place. Citizens changed the course of the City of Harrisburg once before. It can be done again.
Read more on City Beautiful:
- The City Beautiful Movement
- The City Beautiful Movement and Harrisburg’s Old 8th Ward
- Explore PA: Mira Lloyd Dock
- Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee: J.Horace McFarland
Tara,
There is one difference major between now and the early 1900's and that is the crippling debt of the city. The city can not take on the debt it did in the past to create these solutions. The solution are once again in the hands of the citizens and the businesses of the area. I believe Lighten Up Harrisburg fulfills a crucial role. Where the city government can not meet the need of the community private citizens are stepping up.
Other great projects would be revamping/maintaining city parks (last summer Riverfront Park habitually looked overgrown). Picking up trash as you are walking down the street. Notifying the police when we see suspicious activity. If everyday citizens standup for their neighborhood there should not be "bad neighborhoods".
Anyhow, just my thoughts
I was glad to read your article on the City Beautiful Movement in Harrisburg. I have been long interested in this story and its implications for the renewal of Harrisburg. To that end, over the past year or two I have pulled together an advisory group to determine how we might proceed with establishing a not for profit organization to help sustain the City and its considerable assets developed during the turn of the 20th century under the leadership of Mira Lloyd Dock and J. Horace McFarland.
This Advisory Group, the Harrisburg City Beautiful Conservancy Partnership, is a coalition of citizens, civic, neighborhood, educational and business organizations who wish to assist the City of Harrisburg by developing a citizen-implemented plan to rehabilitate and sustain the parks and infrastructure that resulted from the early 20th Century City Beautiful Movement Plan for Harrisburg.
Some of the interested groups and individuals who have already committed to helping with this project include several organizations that were involved in some capacity with the development, promotion and funding of the original Harrisburg Plan, such as The Civic Club of Harrisburg and the Harrisburg Art Association. In the category of interested others, those groups who envision and are willing to work towards securing a prosperous future for Harrisburg, include the Harrisburg Area Community College, Historic Harrisburg Association, the Historical Society of Dauphin County, Harrisburg Young Professionals and the County of Dauphin. Additionally, as I have spoken broadly around town about the importance of the Harrisburg City Beautiful Movement, I have been absolutely amazed at the number of individuals who are knowledgeable about and see the potential for renewing interest in the City Beautiful Plan. Some of these people are Linda Ries, who works at the State Archives, author Ken Frew , David Morrison, and Professor Michael Barton. The acknowledged star player in understanding the potential of our parks and open places is, of course, the Capital Area Greenbelt Association that has been working for years to complete the Emerald Necklace, connecting Harrisburg’s historic City Beautiful Park System.
I have written a number of grants to support this effort and, through Historic Harrisburg, Jeb Stuart has been engaged to write a Multiple Property Documentation Form that will result in the listing of Harrisburg’s City Beautiful designed park system, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Quite a while back, I met with Bill Cluck concerning funding for this project through the Host Municipality Benefit Fund and have discussed additional funding possibilities with PennVest and the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
Recently the Midtown Scholar hosted a discussion of the new bio on Mira Lloyd Dock, Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement by Shippensburg University History Professor, Susan Rimby. Anne Alsedek of Open Stage is convening a group of interested people on January 8 to discuss how to use the Harrisburg City Beautiful Plan for a production of Stories from Home, in ways that will inspire and motivate the citizenry to become involved in the revitalization of Harrisburg.
In partnership with me and Jeb Stuart, John Campbell, executive director, Historic Harrisburg, is making preliminary plans to convene a meeting of the Harrisburg City Beautiful Advisory Group and interested others. Hopefully it will come together this month at The Civic Club of Harrisburg where we will address the next steps for recruiting citizen involvement in the revitalization of the City based on the successful strategies employed by the original proponents.
The hope and expectation is that the rebirth of the City Beautiful Harrisburg Plan will be embraced by the broader community. The incontrovertible benefit of the revitalization of Harrisburg’s historic parks through civic engagement will be the revitalization of Harrisburg as a community. I am hopeful that by working together through civic action, purposefully and voluntarily, to rejuvenate our historic park systems, we will, in turn, be working on the rejuvenation of civic engagement and community, which I think we all agree is sorely lacking in Harrisburg. By creating and maintaining vital spaces in the context of our parks, we will, in turn, be re-institutionalizing the human dimension of the city as the dynamic and civilizing element for the growth and well-being of Harrisburg. I believe that the rejuvenation of Harrisburg depends upon (re)making it as a sustainable, attractive and livable place. A plan for the rehabilitation of its City Beautiful-inspired parks is a beginning step.
Jean,
I would be interested in Participating if you would like. Do you have any place that I could contact you privately?
Happy to have you on board! You can call me at home: 238-8705 or email me a jecutler32@gmail.com. Also let John Campbell at Historic Harrisburg know of your interest. He's managing a master list of interested citizens.
Wow. At a personal level it's kind of nice that this didn't happen until pretty much right after I moved out of the city.
It makes Harrisburg sound rather helpless, but this seems to me like a problem that has to be addressed in a fairly top-down manner. Harrisburg itself has no money to pay for something as costly infrastructural renewal, and decaying and obsolescent infrastructure is actually a crisis at the national level, it's a growing problem across the entire country. This really emphasizes the dependency Harrisburg has on the PA state government and even PA's interaction with the federal government. This is unfortunate because it does disable people at the local level, who don't have a lot of option but to try and gain some leverage on the higher tiers of government.