Edmund Bacon

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 of his birth, to the extent that he is sometimes described as "The Father of Modern Philadelphia". He authored the seminal urban planning book Design of Cities. Early life and education 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 Swarthmore, Pennsylvania in 1928. He attended Cornell University, where he studied architecture. His senior thesis at Cornell made the case for a new civic center for Philadelphia that included an urban park where LOVE Park was ultimately built. After college, while traveling the world on a small inheritance, Bacon found work as an architect in Shanghai, China in Henry Murphy's office. He was responsible for designing the Nanking airport. With Murphy, he visited Beijing, a city that exerted a deep influence on his thinking. After a year in China, he returned to Philadelphia where he worked for architect William Pope Barney.