Editing Society Hill Restoration (section)

== Pre-Restoration Conditions ==

Society Hill had declined significantly by the mid-twentieth century from its colonial-era prominence as one of Philadelphia's most desirable addresses. The neighborhood's eighteenth-century houses had been divided into rooming houses or abandoned entirely; commercial and industrial uses had infiltrated the residential fabric; and the Dock Street wholesale food market occupied several blocks, generating truck traffic and warehouse activity incompatible with residential use. These conditions represented typical American urban decline as affluent residents departed for suburbs, leaving older neighborhoods to residents with fewer options.<ref name="bacon">{{cite book |last=Bacon |first=Edmund |title=Design of Cities |year=1967 |publisher=Viking Press |location=New York}}</ref>

The neighborhood's historic architecture survived despite these conditions, its colonial and Federal-era houses representing one of the nation's finest concentrations of early American residential building. The opportunity to preserve and revitalize this architecture attracted planners who saw alternatives to the demolition-focused urban renewal then dominant. Edmund Bacon, Philadelphia's planning director, championed Society Hill as a demonstration project that could prove preservation's viability as a planning strategy.<ref name="gallery"/>