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Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia
Rittenhouse Square is a neighborhood, including a public park, in Center City Philadelphia. The park is one of the five original open-space parks planned by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme during the late 17th century. The neighborhood is among the highest-income urban neighborhoods in the country. Together with Fitler Square, the Rittenhouse neighborhood and the square comprise the Rittenhouse–Fitler Historic District. Rittenhouse Square Park is maintained by the non-profit group The Friends of Rittenhouse Square. The square cuts off 19th Street at Walnut Street and also at a half-block above Manning Street. Its boundaries are 18th Street to the east, Walnut St. to the north, Rittenhouse Square West (a north–south boundary street), and Rittenhouse Square South (an east–west boundary street), making the park approximately two short blocks on each side. History Originally called Southwest Square, Rittenhouse Square was renamed in 1825 after David Rittenhous ...
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Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of world's largest metropolitan regions, with 6.245 million residents . The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's indep ...
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Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, before emptying into Delaware Bay. It is the longest free-flowing river in the Eastern United States. The river has been recognized by the National Wildlife Federation as one of the country's Great Waters. The river's watershed drains an area of and provides drinking water for 17 million people. The river has two branches that rise in the Catskill Mountains of New York: the West Branch at Mount Jefferson in Jefferson, Schoharie County, and the East Branch at Grand Gorge, Delaware County. The branches merge to form the main Delaware River at Hancock, New York. Flowing south, the river remains relatively undeveloped, with protected as the Upper, Middle, and Lower Delaware National Scenic Rivers. At Trenton, New Jersey, the Dela ...
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Rittenhouse Square
Rittenhouse Square is a neighborhood, including a public park, in Center City Philadelphia. The park is one of the five original open-space parks planned by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme during the late 17th century. The neighborhood is among the highest-income urban neighborhoods in the country. Together with Fitler Square, the Rittenhouse neighborhood and the square comprise the Rittenhouse–Fitler Historic District. Rittenhouse Square Park is maintained by the non-profit group The Friends of Rittenhouse Square. The square cuts off 19th Street at Walnut Street and also at a half-block above Manning Street. Its boundaries are 18th Street to the east, Walnut St. to the north, Rittenhouse Square West (a north–south boundary street), and Rittenhouse Square South (an east–west boundary street), making the park approximately two short blocks on each side. History Originally called Southwest Square, Rittenhouse Square was renamed in 1825 after David Rittenhouse ...
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Stonewall Riots
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighborhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered the watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.; As was common for American gay bars at the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia. While police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. Tensions between New York City Police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupte ...
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Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book ''The Death and Life of Great American Cities'' (1961) argued that " urban renewal" and "slum clearance" did not respect the needs of city-dwellers. Jacobs organized grassroots efforts to protect neighborhoods from urban renewal and slum clearance – in particular plans by Robert Moses to overhaul her own Greenwich Village neighborhood. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed directly through an area of Manhattan that later became known as SoHo, as well as part of Little Italy and Chinatown. She was arrested in 1968 for inciting a crowd at a public hearing on that project. After moving to Toronto in 1968, she joined the opposition to the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of expressways in Toronto th ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million Military personnel, personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Air warfare of World War II, Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in hu ...
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Frank Furness
Frank Heyling Furness (November 12, 1839 - June 27, 1912) was an American architect of the Victorian era. He designed more than 600 buildings, most in the Philadelphia area, and is remembered for his diverse, muscular, often unordinarily scaled buildings, and for his influence on the Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. Furness also received a Medal of Honor for bravery during the Civil War. Toward the end of his life, his bold style fell out of fashion, and many of his significant works were demolished in the 20th century. Among his most important surviving buildings are the University of Pennsylvania Library (now the Fisher Fine Arts Library), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, all in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Baldwin School Residence Hall in Bryn Mawr. Biography Furness was born in Philadelphia on November 12, 1839. His father, William Henry Furness, was a prominent Unitarian minister and abolitionist, and ...
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John Notman
John Notman (22 July 18103 March 1865) was a Scottish-born American architect, who settled in Philadelphia. He is remembered for his churches, and for popularizing the Italianate style and the use of brownstone. Career Notman was born on 22 July 1810 at Fernieside on the south edge of Edinburgh in Scotland. He was the son of David Notman, a mason and builder. He was educated at the Watt Institution in Edinburgh. Around 1824 Notman joined his older cousin, William Notman to train as an architect in the office of William Henry Playfair in Edinburgh prior to emigrating to the United States in 1831. He eventually settled in Philadelphia, where one of his first commissions was Laurel Hill Cemetery in 1835. He later opened and operated a successful firm until his death in 1865. Notman was also a founding member of the American Institute of Architects and was committed to establishing professionalism in the practice of architecture in the United States. Notman is credited with i ...
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Kevin Bacon
Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American actor. His films include the musical-drama film '' Footloose'' (1984), the controversial historical conspiracy legal thriller '' JFK'' (1991), the legal drama '' A Few Good Men'' (1992), the historical docudrama ''Apollo 13'' (1995), and the mystery drama ''Mystic River'' (2003). Bacon is also known for voicing the title character in '' Balto'' (1995), and has taken on darker roles, such as that of a sadistic guard in '' Sleepers'' (1996), and troubled former child abuser in '' The Woodsman'' (2004). He is further known for the hit comedies '' National Lampoon's Animal House'' (1978), ''Diner'' (1982), '' Tremors'' (1990) and '' Crazy, Stupid, Love'' (2011). His other well-known films are ''Friday the 13th'' (1980), ''Flatliners'' (1990), '' The River Wild'' (1994), '' Wild Things'' (1998), '' Stir of Echoes'' (1999), '' Hollow Man'' (2000), '' Frost/Nixon'' (2008), '' X-Men: First Class'' (2011), '' Black Mass'' (2015) and ...
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Edmund Bacon (architect)
Edmund Norwood Bacon (May 2, 1910October 14, 2005) was an American urban planner, architect, educator, and author. During his tenure as the executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970, his visions shaped today's Philadelphia, the city in which he was born, to the extent that he is sometimes described as "The Father of Modern Philadelphia". Among other works, he authored the seminal urban planning book '' Design of Cities''. Early life Bacon was born in West Philadelphia, the son of Helen Atkinson (née Comly) and Ellis Williams Bacon. He grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and graduated from Swarthmore High School in 1928. He was educated in architecture at Cornell University, where his senior thesis for a new civic center for Philadelphia included an urban park at the position where Philadelphia's famous LOVE Park was later built. After college, while traveling the world on a small inheritance, Bacon found work as an architect in Shangha ...
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John Wanamaker
John Wanamaker (July 11, 1838December 12, 1922) was an American merchant and religious, civic and political figure, considered by some to be a proponent of advertising and a "pioneer in marketing". He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and served as U.S. Postmaster General during the term of U.S. President Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1893. Early life and family Wanamaker was born on July 11, 1838, in a then-rural, unincorporated area that would in time come to be known as the Grays Ferry neighborhood of South Philadelphia. His parents were John Nelson Wanamaker, a brickmaker and native of Kingwood, New Jersey, and Elizabeth Deshong Kochersperger, daughter of a farmer and innkeeper at Gray's Ferry. Her ancestors came from Rittershoffen in Alsace, France, and from Canton of Bern in Switzerland. At the age of 19 he was hired by the Philadelphia YMCA, he was the first corresponding secretary in the YMCA movement. In 1860 John Wanamaker married Mary Erringer Brown (1 ...
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Wanamaker's
John Wanamaker Department Store was one of the first department stores in the United States. Founded by John Wanamaker in Philadelphia, it was influential in the development of the retail industry including as the first store to use price tags. At its zenith in the early 20th century, Wanamaker's also had a store in New York City at Broadway and Ninth Street. Both employed extremely large staffs. By the end of the 20th century, there were 16 Wanamaker's outlets, but after years of change the chain was bought by Albert Taubman, and added to his previous purchase of Woodward & Lothrop, the Washington, D.C., department store. In 1994, Woodies, as it was known, filed for bankruptcy. The assets of Woodies were purchased by the May Company Department Stores and JCPenney. In 1995, Wanamaker's transitioned to Hecht's, one of the May Company brands. In 2006, Macy's Center City became the occupant of the former Philadelphia Wanamaker's Department Store, which is now a National Historic ...
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