Dilworth: The man behind the park

Before his death in 1974, Dilworth served for six years as president of the newly formed Philadelphia Board of Education.

On Thursday, the city celebrated the grand opening of the revamped Dilworth Plaza - rechristened Dilworth Park - on the west side of City Hall.

It was fitting that his name was retained for the dramatically transformed civic space. Besides reforming city government, Dilworth changed the city's landscape, most notably in the rebirth of Society Hill.

As mayor, he famously built a new house on Washington Square to demonstrate his commitment to revitalizing the colonial core of the city, which had been allowed to decline drastically.

Peter Binzen, coauthor with his son Jonathan of the just-published Richardson Dilworth: Last of the Bare-Knuckled Aristocrats, wrote that city planner Edmund N. Bacon in 1947 had put forth the idea of restoring Society Hill, which at that time was a slum of "seedy boardinghouses, rat-infested warehouses and vacant lots littered with trash."

It wasn't until Dilworth was mayor that the proposal became a reality.

Bacon was "the one that came up with the idea for Society Hill, and Dilworth pulled it off," Binzen said in an interview.

The renewal of Society Hill led eventually to the renaissance of Center City.

Dilworth also was an ardent advocate for public transportation and pushed hard to have the government buy out the privately held transit company that ran the buses, trolleys, and subways in Philadelphia.

His vision became a reality with the creation of SEPTA in the 1960s.

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Dilworth: The man behind the park