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The Grace’s Furniture sign is one of Chicago’s most significant historic neon artifacts. It is known well beyond the city’s borders for its scale, its mid-century design flair, and for the mere fact that it has survived so many changes in its neighborhood. To lose it or mistreat it would be a great misfortune, a forfeiture that would reverberate in the national media. Historic signs in Chicago and across the nation are increasingly being watched as the general public shows growing concern for the future of historic neighborhoods. It’s not just about architecture anymore. Cities across America are more and more active in the pursuit of public policy that protects these signs. The Grace’s Furniture sign is extra significant in Chicago for being part of an historic neon corridor that extends from Margie’s Candies to the Logan Cinema. Such a concentration of historic neon in now very rare in America.

Across the United States, more and more historic signs of the scale and stature of Grace’s Furniture are receiving full restoration to operate as they once did, with fully functioning neon. Such illuminated landmarks become true civic beacons. Positive national press following the re-lighting of such signs is often surprising in its scale, with a powerful effect on tourism and neighborhood development.

As an architect the author of the definitive book on historic signs and commercial architecture, I can make an informed recommendation regarding the future of the Grace’s Furniture sign.¹ At the bare minimum, this sign should be examined for its structural stability by a sign company well established with artifacts of this scale and potential complexity.² Whether or not the neon element of the sign is restored, the sign itself should be structurally stabilized. Ideally this same qualified company would be directly involved with cosmetic factors such as painting or visual touch-up. Only certain paints will be effective in bonding properly with the sign’s surface, and color matching will be important. The wrong paint could quickly render the sign unsightly, with the potential for peeling paint rendering the sign distressed visually. This, in turn, could affect the way that the sign is perceived in the future, diminishing reverence and respect. The ultimate goal for this sign should be a full re-lighting of the neon, even though this may achieved at a later date. In any case, nothing should be done (or left un-done) that would prevent this sign from being fully restored eventually. Regular maintenance of both finish and structural sound-ness is highly recommended, if not essential, beginning as soon as possible.³ Whether illuminated by floods or neon, a well-kept sign will contribute greatly to the public’s perception of the neighborhood. And once this fully functioning neighborhood landmark is re-lit by neon, it will be the visual beacon that this historic stretch of Milwaukee Avenue (and the City of Chicago) deserves.

Electra has few of the attractions offered by most small Texas towns. There is no shady park, no fountain, no monument, no energetic local café, no hardware store for wandering the aisles. To say that it is a sleepy town — that it is NOT electric — comically understates the obvious. The streets in Electra remain mostly silent throughout the day, and the storefronts off the primary commercial street are either empty or rapidly decaying. However, on the primary street, East Cleveland Avenue, there is a healthy-looking pharmacy — at least its storefront is well maintained. During the heat of midday, however, when I stood across the street examining the building façade, I saw only sporadic activity. From time to time, a single customer would pull up quickly in a sun-baked car, rush in, and then rush out again. Down the way, the Pump City Diner was drawing in some dinner patrons. One might say it was the most animated location in town, but it turned a blank face to the street with windows blocked by enormous, faded photos of the dishes offered within.

Other than these two businesses along Electra’s main street, there were only institutions like City Hall and the Chamber of Commerce, along with a silent, stoic bank. Not a single pedestrian walked the sidewalks, and few cars stirred up any dust. The overall impression to an outsider was that this was something of a ghost town, a place left behind. There are many missing pieces to Electra, and much of what’s still standing is vacant or collapsing. Many buildings have been removed or have crumbled to nothing by themselves. Of the demolished pieces of these streets, former floor plans are still marked by paint or chipped pieces of linoleum on concrete floors, now under the open sky and bleached by the sun. These missing buildings have not become tiny green pocket parks or petite plazas with monuments to local heroes, as one might find in more prosperous towns. In Electra demolished building sites have simply become voids, blank spaces still marked with tracings of what was once here. Short stretches of these streets are still lined with small groups of buildings soon to be removed if they are not quickly stabilized and occupied. Many storefront windows are plywood now or the view inside is obscured by tattered blinds. One of them, not fully covered, allows you to peer deeply within, to imagine how the space was once used, to conjure up for a moment what transpired there years ago.

What captivated me about Electra? Perhaps it was the silence that hung so heavily, almost oppressively; it was as powerfully present as the relentless sun. It’s possible that I felt welcome merely because there was space, it was easy to simply look at the town undistracted by pedestrians and vehicular traffic. There was time, nearing sunset, to reflect and imagine. Late in the day this silence was a relief after my many long drives, with podcasts, loud music, and harsh coffee fueling my driving attention for the long distances between destinations across the Texas prairies.

Electra’s primary street showcases respectable, though modest, examples of a regional commercial architectural style that is characterized by simple graphic brick patterns in the parapets of one-story buildings. This pattern of stripped-down facades stands in contrast to the more elaborate ornamentation that is typical of the commercial buildings of most Main Streets of the East and Midwest. A simplicity in commercial architecture developed during a time when the automobile made Main Streets less vertical (lack of upper floors) and more horizontal. This is when this region grew most aggressively, fueled by oil money. Throughout Texas and Oklahoma one can find countless examples of this simple parapet tradition.

Among the buildings in the fading commercial center of Electra one discovers something remarkably stately and polished. It is epic in its scale and grandeur. The appropriately named Grand theatre stands among the whispered traces of the past, polished and proud, defiantly living in the present. Not only is the building itself in impeccable condition, but its mid-twentieth century marquee appears to be newly-restored. The contrast between this vision of 1920s opulence and the decay around it is dramatic. But this is not Ozymandius, a sad folly toppled by time and surrounded by an endless emptiness of sand. No, this monumental theatre, once considered the epitome of bling, stands firm, commodious, and delightful.

Erected in 1919, the Mission Style façade of the Grand is composed of a sweeping stone arch flanked by two brick towers, a traditional Spanish mission church composition, here rendered with flattened, Deco-style neoclassical flourishes. The large arch deserves particular mention because of the contrast of such a form with the humble buildings around it. The triumphal arch motif was commonly employed in the façade designs of theatres across America until the mid-1920s. Each functioned as a sign of sorts, quickly identifying the nature of the building before projecting marquees became a standard, distinguishing feature. The sweeping entrance marked the threshold from one world into another, from the mundane, everyday context of a dusty Texas Main Street into a dreamland where romance, adventure, and exocticism were portrayed on a large silver screen in a glamorous space like no other for miles around. In this small town, the Grand facade is sublime, out-of-scale, startling. When I first arrived in Electra, I wasn’t prepared to encounter such a spectacle, certainly not among all the unpretentious commercial buildings in this place of whispers, of long-gone businesses and empty sidewalks.

The greatest surprise was the condition of the theatre, impeccable down to the finest detail. The marquee was a key feature that rendered me mute and unsteadied my sense of where I was and the year of my visit. It was so new in appearance, the fragile neon tubes so impeccably restored and maintained. The persons responsible for this vision had apparently made the decision to restore the marquee to its mid-century appearance instead of updating it with an electronic reader-board or refashioning it to appear like marquees from the 1920s, a trend adopted recently in many theatre restorations. This precious theatre made me feel as if I had discovered a wormhole back in time. The silence of the street aided this illusion; there were no audible intrusions that might pull me back to the present.

During a return visit to Electra, a dramatic formation of clouds was building in the skies to the east. Mountains of white, towering billows rose and expanded at the horizon. It was as if Zeus was summoning gods of the heavens to herald some spectacular event. Late day sun lit these formations dramatically, creating a theatrical backdrop for the lonely majesty of the Grand that emphasized its importance within the camera frame. In the foreground of my picture, below the Grand and across the street, were the sunlit concrete floors of a long-lost cafe and other stores. Grass sprouted through cracks in the paving. Like the clouds, nature was having the last word in Electra. The Grand seemed to bridge the gap between the sublime and the mundane, to be something otherworldly planted on earth, a supernatural gift delivered to this forgotten little town.

How can the multi-dimensional spirit and energy and history and potential of a place be captured in a flat photograph? Pictures of places like Electra have the potential to be much more than ironic and nostalgic, or at worst, ruin porn. I photograph Electra (and towns like it) in order to create documents of places of distinct importance at particular points in time. Vivid lighting and creative framing heighten the experience and pull the viewer into the moment. Each image is conceived to obviate the conceptual plane between the spectator and the subject within the frame. I hope with every photograph — the image of the Grand in particular — to draw the viewer into the setting, perhaps enough to feel emotion: awe, delight, fear, or a whole range of responses.

I aim to create a place experience rather than a visual diversion. It is also my goal when aiming my camera and selecting a composition to illuminate something about the story of a place that I have chosen to frame. My presentation of the Grand theatre, enhanced by the mountainous cloud bank, suggests how the theatre was most likely the frontispiece of a grand urban vision in the 1920s, or at least part of a collective hope that this town was going places. The theatre was a symbol of the ambition of its time and place, a product of the sudden explosions of investment in Texas a century ago.

Sometimes the aspirations of the present are conveyed in my work. Cinemas and theatres are currently focal points and symbols of urban renewal, especially for small towns. These buildings, with their architectural flourishes and brilliant signs, are without peer along their Main Streets. They rise significantly above the datum line, above the height and design details of their neighbors. A grand theatre or opera house in a frontier town was once a sign that a community had truly established itself, had risen above the dust, had reached beyond its humble origins to shine on a par with the best towns of the state. Theatres and electric signs helped each town achieve its plans for becoming a White Way, a miniature Broadway. To establish such an image or reputation was once a very real phenomenon, part of the epidemic of boosterism that swept across America during the 1910s and 1920s. My photograph of Electra’s Grand theatre, with its heavenly meteorological setting, seemed to speak to this way of thinking. A century after the completion of the Grand, bold investment and incongruous faith have risen up again through restoration. A phoenix has risen.

When I first encountered Electra, I felt as if I had entered a surreal place, a town so haunted by ghosts and silence that I had stepped backwards, away from the world. Then, suddenly, I discovered this Jerusalemic vision, a heavenly jeweled temple illuminated by golden sunlight. It was impossible to comprehend, difficult to take in at first. But as my imagination calmed, it became clear that what shone brightest was not just the building but a true act of courage and love and faith. The stewards of the Grand theatre had shown tremendous allegiance to this place with an act disengaged from the reality of the context. And I remembered something I often forget: faith is a commitment in the face of a daunting challenge.

I quietly whispered a thank you to the people of Electra and the region for their dedication to this tremendously challenging preservation project and to keeping the theatre alive with patrons. My visit, around sunset, and the hush that greeted me, permitted me to step out of time and feel something great, to let my mind wander and wonder, and to understand what is possible when looking way, way up, and to search within myself about what is most significant in life. It is my hope that through my photographs and writing I can help others to perceive the value and significance of places like the fascinating town of Electra, Texas.

I am safe as I scan from above, and there is much to be gained from solitary, aerial exploration. I learn a great deal about historic settlement patterns, about different arrangements for courthouses and open space within the urban grid, about density and scale. Yet I ponder whether it might be time for me to leave the exile of my desk, brave the ever-changing, risky frontier of America, on the road and sidewalk. I long to be wandering on foot with my camera, my sketchpad, and my notepad.

Looking at the country through the lens of a satellite offers merely frozen images, glimpses from the recent past, from cameras that whizzed through American streets years ago. Months back, as the world seemed suddenly immobilized like that haunting scene from The Day the Earth Stood Still, clocks appeared to stop. We surrendered to the surreal. The entire planet seemed to be in shock. And looking at old satellite images during the months that followed seemed almost like real-time snapshots from the air: stationary cars, pedestrians in mid-stride. But American streets have become progressively animated in the weeks that followed our collective deer-in-the-headlights moment in March and April.

As activity has unevenly ramped up across the country, it has become clear that we need more space, and plenty of it. But not just empty space in the countryside, though many are probably longing precisely for that alone. Safety and solace may surely be found in nature, but the wilderness rarely offers us a sense of community; and in uncertain times, it is often necessary to see others, avow our peace with them, place ourselves around the contagion of enthusiasm and joy. We urgently need more space in our cities and towns, areas shaped by buildings and steps and fountains and shade trees. Main Street has suddenly become more important than ever. It has a significant edge over roadsides, highways, shopping malls, and strip centers, despite the energy and sense of normalcy these everyday places impart.

The central commercial corridor of a town or a neighborhood, with its sidewalks and shops and civic buildings, is a powerful point of convergence. This is typically where commerce and culture and polity meet. Here we can shop and dine, or confer with a librarian, acquire a business loan, or attend a town council meeting. This array of uses super-charges Main Street. And whether or not it is currently vibrant and vital economically, Main Street can still be seen as the agora of modern America (or at least it has the potential to be so). The agora in ancient Greece was the place where citizens gathered for social, political, and mercantile purposes.

To this day, people meet along Main Street or the courthouse square to discuss business matters over a cup of coffee, review pending legislation, or simply buy a hammer. This is a far more effective place to stage a protest or a celebration than waving signs at drivers moving at fifty miles an hour in six lanes of traffic on the outskirts of town. A protest sign has more power and influence held high on Main Street than it does along the highway. This point alone attests to how urgently this public space is needed right now. Throughout American history, all eyes have been on Main Street; it has been the stage for much of our history, both good and bad. From slave-trading to face-painting, the tragedy and comedy of the American experience has been showcased here.

Recent photographs across the United States have proven how effectively urban space like Main Street has been used to persuade the public of the virtue of a cause. Small town urban spaces are just as important as the Main Streets of the mega-metropolis. In many county seats across America, Main Street intersects the courthouse square, which is obviously even more hospitable to public gatherings. Here, linear space blends with a hub, a space created around a focal point (note, however, that business tends to favor the Main Street side of the square). It is worth realizing that marches of protest or celebration cause less traffic disruption in the heart of town than they do on the periphery. The traditional pre-WWII American grid of streets offers a multitude of alternative routes to drivers, a freedom not available when traffic is slowed or stopped along arterial roadways.

Spaces such as Main Street and the courthouse square are charged visually in ways that are completely missing along the commercial strip. They are marked with architectural symbols that convey the presence and importance of civic life. The courthouse, for instance, is often topped with a tower or possibly a dome. In architectural history such a grand form is known as the tholos, which by narrow definition refers to a circular space (usually topped by a drum form or dome). This is a powerful shape, suggesting community, or equality, but also indicating something beyond, a connection to the heavens, a link to a higher power. It reminds us of the importance of working together for great things. Clock towers also suggest a relationship with the heavens, but also the practical matters awaiting our attention on earth. The courthouse also communicates its importance by being elevated above the ground, accessible by broad steps. But wide doorways opening on two or more sides of the building convey accessibility, transparency, even welcome. Space itself is symbolic in the old town, and this is especially true of the space around or in front of the courthouse. This space reminds us of the link between the town and the vast rural landscape beyond. The courthouse square, with its trees and grass, is conceptually connected to the countryside. The courthouse marks the county seat, and its tholos or tower can be seen from great distance beyond the borders of town, a commanding visual landmark that symbolizes its authority over the territory.

Main Street is often the location of the town hall, which is rarely set apart from its neighboring commercial buildings. A prominant classical portico may indicate its special presence, and a clock may be located somewhere on the facade, reminding us of the importance of our time, of our work and other obligations, as well as the potential for the day. The teatro is another form/building typology from classical Greece that makes its way to Main Street, though in a highly modified form. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the theatre has been a place where moral lessons have been imparted through performance. Choices and consequences play out on the big screen today (or live stage, in some cases) and inform the citizen directly or indirectly. The old movie house has a powerful visual presence along Main Street, appearing as an aberration among generic commercial buildings. The facade aspires to be important, presenting an architectural flourish of some kind, distinguishing it from its neighbors. Older cinemas traditionally employed a grand arch, referring obliquely to the semicircular plan of the ancient teatro, but also more directly to the classical triumphal arch, employed throughout history to mark significant public events as well as entrances to great cities. But it is the canopy marquee, hovering over the sidewalk, boldly beckoning in neon, that tells us most powerfully that this is an important place, and we are encouraged to attend.

As the world opens its doors and tiptoes into places where the public will safely encounter strangers, the forbidden “other” of our hibernation months, Main Street offers the best common ground for re-encountering fellow citizens. Many states have begun the reopening process by advancing outdoor activities first. Restaurants, cafes, and bars, all struggling to prevent financial collapse, are now able to serve tables outside, as long as they are widely spaced. Main Street provides the ideal opportunity for this big step forward. It can reasonably be converted to pedestrian-only use, offering all these businesses space that might otherwise be used by automobiles. One might argue that tables could just as effectively be set up in the parking lot of the local Olive Garden. But consider how well Main Street is suited to give what patrons seek most longingly: the opportunity once more to see and to be seen. The old commercial corridor in the heart of town offers a collective experience, a super-charged space, where the guests of multiple businesses interact. It is only natural that some sort of promenade from place to place would naturally evolve, recharging the spirits of all who partake. The world is still alive, and we share this space, this unique time, despite any division in political beliefs, despite the fear and uncertainty that may still linger from the lockdown and the protests.

This sense of community, of not feeling so alone, can be powerfully generated by the experience of seeing faces near and far, up and down the street, hearing the hum of conversation and distant laughter. We urgently need to employ this magnificent if underused space to its maximum potential. We are sitting on the possibility of filling the street, or at least parts of it. Let life flow beyond the curbs and parking meters. Once word gets out that the Main Street has been fully employed, that the sweet summer air flows generously and safely around everyone, an enormous sigh of relief will flow through town. The power of a shared experience of this kind should not be underestimated.

We are fortunate indeed that Main Street has been waiting for us, is available to be central, if not essential, to our lives once more. Will we get through this trying time, and is Main Street a potential key to our survival? Will the restaurants really stay afloat in the months ahead? Will the county still have anything left in its budget to operate the library this fall? It’s all too early to tell. But if we are to focus our dollar-spending anywhere, I would venture to say that Main Street is where we should do it. I don’t think people really imagine themselves living in the antiseptic bubbles provided by life as lived in an automobile, gathering dinner from a drive-up window, or wandering nervously through a parking lot into the supermarket or the Home Depot, and racing home as quickly as possible. We are justifiably anxious to resume our lives. And yet we need space to do this safely, to avoid backsliding into a new wave of infection. But not just ANY space will do. Main Street, the courthouse square, and the old town center offer the best KIND of space. Main Street was erected more than a century ago to be an outpost of civilization in a formidable and threatening wilderness. This is a powerful thing to remember during these troubling times; it could inspire us to turn here once more for the strength and comfort so sorely needed today.

As I write, restrictions on activity are gradually being lifted in places, making possible a slow return to business for some but not all. This is not the first catastrophe to hit the old center of town, our long-cherished but sidelined Main Street; but it most certainly is the swiftest and most unexpected upheaval yet experienced, a true blindsiding. With lightning speed, much of Main Street’s slow climb up from the economic obsolescence caused by corporate big-box stores over the past few decades seems to have been undone. With government policy permitting big-box stores and delivery warehouses to operate as usual throughout the crisis (only because part of their business is selling groceries), it almost seems as if the intent is to squash small, locally owned businesses; the big-box chains are rapidly selling the same books and dresses and chairs that are behind locked doors on Main Street. And since chain restaurants out on the strip have been engineered since inception for curbside delivery, once again corporate America is favored over local ownership; small restaurants and cafes re-worked for curbside pick-up are really struggling to make the numbers work.

It is worth examining, at this point, Main Street’s long history of challenges and setbacks, if only to provide hope that it may survive yet another catastrophe. The fallout from COVID-19 is far from the first major trial for this steadfast street. The growth of train and automobile use introduced perhaps the first major challenges to Main Street’s hegemonic status in America. At one time, each small town or village commercial center enjoyed a “captive audience” of customers. Up through the mid-19th century, village residents and farmers were limited by how far they could comfortably haul groceries and dry goods on foot or by horse. However, once it became possible for trains to take customers easily to other towns, local merchants no longer held a monopoly over their in-town customers. Naturally, food items and heavy equipment were always acquired locally. But discretionary spending could often be accomplished with a great deal of choice. This shopping freedom was accelerated exponentially by the motor car. County seats benefitted initially from the freedom of choice offered by improved transportation. They were magnets for customers because of the large number of merchants gathered around the courthouse square, but also because so much business was generated by government. They were also hubs for rail transport: regional trains, intercity lines, and local horsecars and electric streetcars. As rail and shipping crossroads, they were natural market centers. They provided more than basic sustenance, but increased social opportunities and cultural experiences. Smaller towns began losing population as the nation began its long transition from being a rural populace to becoming increasingly an urban nation, thanks to job opportunities created by the industrial revolution and national food processing, among other phenomena. As early as the turn of the 20th century many small villages that once thrived in the 19th century were merely ghost towns.

But eventually even the county seats were dramatically challenged. Chain stores like the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (the “A&P”), J C Penney Company, Sears, Roebuck and Company, and F. W. Woolworth were the first signs of a new momentum that would threaten local merchants for decades. Ironically enough, most of these corporations were born and gestated in smaller to mid-size county seats. That’s where business could thrive in the late 19th century, and that’s when the menace began. By the first decade of the 20th century, most of these chains were well established. The edge they possessed over the locally-owned stores was the ability to buy in bulk and then pass on a significant savings to customers. By the 1920s, local and national editorials frequently discussed how great this threat had become; citizen groups were formed to discourage buying from such establishments.

Post-World War II retail trends required more floor space for retail and prioritized the automobile, and thus the trend toward development outside of the old town center began in earnest. This favored chains, but did not exclude local business. At first, modest establishments just out of the town center were built, each providing space for less than a handful of merchants and a small area for cars to pull off the road. But then large shopping “plazas” were developed farther out, with vast fields of parking. And, of course, the ever-present one-off drive-in restaurant made its way to small-town America, modeled after successful auto-oriented dining long-established in sunbelt cities like Los Angeles and Houston. Such an establishment was usually the unique creation of a local proprietor, and it ruled the town for perhaps a decade or so before the likes of McDonald’s muscled in. The same auto that helped county seats draw customers from smaller towns, leading to their economic demise, now made regional shopping centers possible, offering even MORE selections than did the shops around the courthouse square.

By the early 1970s, many small towns with strong leadership attempted to compete with the new local and regional shopping centers. This effort to help Main Street followed loosely on the heels of ambitious programs launched in the mid-1950s by big cities responding to the steady decline in customers for once-powerful urban retail magnets like State Street in Chicago. Often the plans aimed to emulate the superficial attractions of the new shopping developments. Continuous metal marquee awnings were mounted over shop windows up and down Main Street. Older facades were often covered with aluminum panels in a quick effort to modernize. But perhaps the most startling visual effect was not an addition but a subtraction. Projecting signs were eliminated en masse, either through direct ordinances requiring swift removal or by way of amortization schedules with imminent deadlines, thus quickly encouraging merchants to substitute grand neon store identities with cheap, plastic replacements fastened flat to storefronts. The desired effect, all things considered, was UNITY. Instead of allowing each business to shout for attention, Main Street aimed for an atmosphere of serenity, something like the new malls being built everywhere. In all honesty, Main Street was rather brutally altered, and the benefits were fleeting. It was difficult to compete with corporate America. Few big chains were interested in the smaller spaces available in 19th century buildings, so corporate retail mostly avoided Main Street.

By the 1990s, Main Street realized that competing with shopping centers by aping them was leading nowhere. So an about-face occurred, assisted by agencies such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Instead of hiding history, small towns everywhere decided to MARKET history. Main Street uncovered its older buildings and used the architecture to its advantage. Increasingly the market for Main Street was composed of visitors. The influence of Disneyland’s Main Street has been discussed at length by authors like Miles Orvell and Richard Francaviglia, work I recommend highly. The National Trusts’s Main Street program offered its own bias as it aimed to guide restoration while simultaneously coaching businesses in practical matters. These are forces, among others, that explain why many Main Streets appear the way that they do today. To put it crudely, the result is a sanitized, radically edited version of history. However, in defense of the various Main Street programs, it must be said that their strategy has helped many businesses stay afloat. And commerce must thrive in order to keep buildings in good repair. Main Streets are being shepherded to future generations, where conditions will hopefully be more favorable and respectful.

In the early 1990s, as I began studying the architecture of America’s Main Streets for my book Signs, Streets, and Storefronts, small-town shopfronts everywhere were peeling away ill-fated efforts to modernize from earlier decades. The new strategy of leveraging history was well underway when a new bomb hit town, square in the middle of courthouse square, so to speak. County seats everywhere were targeted by a mega-merchant enjoying a meteoric ascent over America. No plan had yet been so carefully (or diabolically) aimed at the healthy market enjoyed by county seats, the very market made possible by the train and automobile when these civic hubs sucked the life out of the smaller towns around them. I will describe the battle as I experienced it visually along Main Streets across the United States in my next essay.

Main Street survived a true economic Hiroshima in the 1990s and early 2000s. It is worth considering that fact, today, as businesses everywhere contend with the loss of customers because of the recent pandemic and civil unrest. Ponder the profound resilience and potential of the historic city center, both big and small. Main Street is still standing, defying all the odds. One need only travel America in a few month’s time to see the slow but steady reemergence of a determined survivor.

For 36 years I owned and operated Millstone Farm, a commercial equestrian business in Central New Jersey. I never dreamed that one day I would leave my farm to return to my roots in Berks County, PA where I would begin an entirely new career as the proprietor of a small town cafe. Life has many twists and turns, many of which are not planned or foreseen.

I loved the view of my barns and pastures from the windows of my 18th century farmhouse kitchen. But 2013 was the year of some huge changes that forced me to re-think my life. As I look in the rear view mirror, my life was full of the kind of stressors that we all experience. At one point that stress carried me to a weight of over 200 lbs. I was unhappy with myself physically, mentally, and spiritually. As I exited my cardiologist’s office, I said to myself: you have a choice to live like your mother, Helene (who lived until age 93 and filled her life with teaching Bible classes, being a regular at the gym, sharing her wisdom and love with all of us, and eating organic non-GMO food) or live like my father, Tom, who worked very hard but did not take care of himself and suffered from diabetes and heart disease and died before most of his grandchildren could get to know him.

My road back to a healthier lifestyle was fueled by the knowledge that I did have choices, and my choices determined my wellness and my future.  We are all given the responsibility of stewarding our bodies. I remind myself daily that that is a gift to be shared and an opportunity to learn and overcome.

I began to visualize a small, cozy, organic cafe, located on Penn Avenue, the Main Street of West Reading, PA. The Farmhouse Kitchen café would be my way of sharing the gift of wellness with others, I wanted to create a place that had the atmosphere of my old farmhouse kitchen in New Jersey, a place where people could enjoy healthy, life-sustaining food in a comfortable, rustic atmosphere. I also wanted to offer classes that provided information on all aspects of a health-directed lifestyle.

Since we opened in 2017 we have served our community and our community has filled our café with joy and laughter and countless gestures of kindness. We have become an epicenter in Berks County for a growing awareness of natural living. Our classes on a huge range of topics have drawn teachers and students from all walks of life. This has been an exciting three years of growth and development.

Today is May 11, 2020. We had to close our operations for several weeks because of the Coronavirus, but we re-opened last week and resumed serving our guests (with carry-out food orders only, by order of the State). This evening as I sit and contemplate my day, I am filled with gratitude. I have been blessed with the gift of owning and operating The Farmhouse Kitchen. I love this place, I love the people that have chosen to work here, I love the strangers that have become friends who are our guests, I love the collaborative effort we all make to serve the healthiest food and drinks possible. I am living my dream.

But my dream — as are the dreams of many business owners today — is becoming a blurred nightmare because of constantly-changing state government regulations that appear to be based on some truths, but also some deception. I do not question that COVID-19 is real. It appears to have taken many lives in a way that is shrouded in unknowns. The death rates and how they are calculated are moving targets. What is known is that all the government assistance that is granted cannot provide the interconnected support system that our economy needs to survive at the local level.

What can support it is to allow people to be innovative, energetic, and to put their God-given talents to work. We as a collective are unstoppable. We have the talent, strength, and drive to put this economy on our backs and lift it up.

Continually changing the dates of our Stay-At-Home Order, will put our State, our Community, and our personal lives at risk a long time after COVID-19 rides out of town.

We as individuals and as a collective can open up our businesses and safely protect ourselves and our customers and those we love. If this cannot be done in the very near future all the stimulus in the world cannot save us. We are citizens of the United States of America. Hello Harrisburg! What’s going on? We’re wasting time! Let’s get going!

But in my rich imagination, I am on the road again, doing what I have done for many years, following my intuition, my research, some playful map-reading, and perhaps a road tip from a friend. I am exploring small town Main Streets with my camera and my note pad. And since this particular excursion is the creation of my own thoughts, I am going to embellish it with a vintage car to convey me; the top is down, the radio plays cool jazz, and the steering wheel glides easily in my hands as I make one final turn for my approach to Main Street.

After a cursory sweep at the wheel up and down this central commercial corridor, I park and step out onto the sidewalk. The rest of my journey this evening will be on foot. The town is very quiet, which is not unusual in smaller towns at this time of day. The shops are all closed and the town hall and library are dark. The tavern, around the corner, is out of view. It’s too early for the restaurant. I make my acquaintance with the street and the buildings at my leisure. No one is around to puzzle over the camera hung on my neck or question my slow, curious pace. For a time, as the sun gets lower and bathes the street with a very flattering rosy gold, this place is mine. It is a charmed time for me. This is the “magic hour,” when photographers hasten their pace to capture the fleeting golden light as the sun begins to set and transform ordinary views into enchanted landscapes.

Arriving in a small town like this, I often find myself fantasizing, projecting myself into its history. I imagine myself growing up here, and dream a lifetime of memories at the old movie theatre. What if I had been a projectionist there while I was in high school? I see an old café across the street during my dream visit, a place where I might have hung out after school, or where I habitually met my dad for a quick cup of coffee before our workdays began. I can see a physical accretion of time on the façade of the café building. The old streamline moderne porcelain enamel panels of the storefront were covered in the late 1970s by rough wood siding. It might have seemed, while I was in my teens, like a great way to update that old place. But right now, in my dream visit in 2020, it disappoints, looks rough and neglected. I want the 1930s back. But I confess to myself that I rather like seeing layers of history.

I have seen plenty of towns over the years to help fuel my imagination for this fantasy visit today. I explore the silent shop windows, poke around the corner here and there to discover what’s on the side streets, admire the old houses with great front porches. This town of my imagination still has a hardware store, a true marvel considering that it competes with a Home Depot in the county seat nearby. And there is a handsome brick town hall at the end of Main Street, where it intersects the main highway. There is also a library and a working post office, both modest in design, but still delivering energy and information and life to the street.

I am not anxious about my photography this evening, because I know I will be here for a full day tomorrow and I will enjoy the magic hour once more. I will meet people and ask questions and make notes, and start to piece together a real sense of the town’s history and how it manages to survive today. I will meet the pharmacist who owns the drug store with his son-in-law, and I will chat with a few shop owners and listen with great interest to their dreams and disappointments. I will dig into the local archives and befriend a couple of very committed librarians. I will praise the owner of the cinema, a man in his 70s who makes no profit on movie showings, but he isn’t going into the red somehow. And the neon of marquee is at least 80 percent operational: no small miracle, considering the expense.

Had my visit to this small town been real and there was no virus shutting the world down, I would awaken the next day to a street with fleeting, sporadic moments of activity and the bright white glow of morning sun. I would order breakfast at the cafe, I would buy something at the pharmacy, I would prepare for my visit to the library. I would watch the comings and goings of cars at the hubs for idle conversation, the small cafes, bars, and restaurants. I would have a very full day studying the architecture and watching the people, finished off with a flourish as I watch the neon theatre marquee light up at dusk.

But this is Spring of 2020, and the harsh reality is that none of this will happen on a real visit. Business may be hurting everywhere, but Main Street is particularly devastated. Although the pharmacy is open, it is facing tough competition from the Walgreen’s on the highway with its drive-through window for medications and minimal exposure. The restaurants are all shuttered, and they, too, face competition from coffee drive-throughs and home brewers; so curbside sales are nil. Conversation is a luxury we cannot afford at the moment, unless it’s online. The hardware store opens for limited hours, but that’s the extent of retail at the moment. If somebody wants a book from the book shop, they must turn, instead, to the Walmart in the next town. Same story for the appliance and furniture stores. And the dress shop. Because Walmart sells food, the entire store is mysteriously seen as essential, the result of clumsy, short-sighted government rules for addressing the Coronavirus. In contrast, Main Street is largely padlocked. This entire reaction to the crisis has somehow, monumentally, favored corporations over small businesses. The movie marquee is dark at night, every night, and there’s little hope for opening up a business that barely makes it month to month. Yet it is seen by many as the beating heart of Main Street.

I have been writing about Main Street for many years. It chills me to think that I have been documenting something that might not survive this crisis, that may exist someday only in photographs. That’s not such an extreme statement when you consider how the merchants have been operating with such thin profit margins for a long time, and they may now live many months with no income at all. Restarting failed businesses may take decades. And buildings need tenants and cash flow, or they are neglected and fall eventually to rubble. Sometimes I am questioned about the relevance of Main Street. I sometimes hear, “It’s just a museum of its former self. It isn’t real, it’s a theme park.” That has not been my experience. Main Street is indeed greatly changed from what it was fifty years ago, but it has responded to its challenges with very well-reasoned strategies, like emphasizing experiences and services over everyday goods. And Main Street is still the center of town, and certainly more than a shopping center. It is the home of local government and culture, a repository of history, and a place where people live. It is where parades happen. It is the supreme American gathering place.

As we have sheltered in place for months now, it has been suggested that we have collectively realized that we can survive, if not thrive, without being in each other’s presence nearly as much as we used to be. Instead, I believe we have learned, with a vengeance, how very essential it is to be truly face to face. This real proximity allows us to focus better, to comprehend more clearly via body language and eye contact, and to spontaneously break away from group conversations to share one-on-one. Although my focus is primarily on the architecture of Main Street, what resonates most for me is what I have learned by talking to the citizens who use this street. My conversations have truly colored the way I see it, how I understand its historic evolution, how it adjusted to change, how and why its buildings are loved or abused. The conversations held at libraries every day are small but essential. So are the talks held at the cafes and taverns. And the idle chats between merchants and customers.

As much as I cherish arriving in a new town during that special quiet spell before sunset, what brings greatest pleasure for me is the next day, when people start moving about and the place hums as best it can. And at night, when I thrill to the illumination of the neon on the façade of the movie theatre, the greatest gratification actually comes from seeing people start to arrive for the movie, pausing under the marquee for a moment, one by one, buying their tickets. And when a movie showing ends, and a small surge of people step outside under that illuminated canopy to share thoughts about their experience, or plan their next step, I feel a sort of envy… or perhaps ecstasy. My heart swells, seeing not only that this great little building has been preserved, but that it continues to be used and enjoyed. I vividly realize that this place, the whole street, seems very much alive…and quietly, though resolutely, valued by its citizens. And that burn of emotion I feel when I stand there watching, yearning to join them, reminds me how important it is that this life is able to continue.

It is late April in the year 2020 AD. The stay-at-home order prevails across much of the US. Just as in towns across the country, the historic commercial core of Carlisle, Pennsylvania stands almost empty today. The friendly cafés, the bookshop, the banks, the courthouse, as well as the libraries and schools are closed until further notice. We are reminded of the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still in which an alien lands and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets. Though he comes as a messenger of peace, the nation is spellbound in fear.

Welcome to the era of the “Coronavirus Pandemic.” If you are one of the lone stragglers walking on the street and you are hungry for a snack or need to use the restroom, too bad. Dogs are lucky. All they need is a nice tree or a patch of green, and the thoughtful owner who carries a pocketful of doggie treats. With the face masks that we are required to wear, it is hard to see if someone is smiling at you or scowling. And physical interactions are out of the question unless you already live with someone you care for. But a mask is not a muzzle and we can still speak out and have meaningful conversations or just say hello to a stranger.

In capitals across the world, politicians are now working with the police, the medical industry and other huge corporate entities and foundations to map out the paths our lives are permitted to take. That is a scary sentence worthy of Nazi Germany. Within this labyrinth are some helpful and caring individuals, but their efforts and data points are often coopted by enemies of truth and goodness. The cause and nature of this crisis is in dispute, so non-compliance with all of the changing governmental requisites is rampant. Though estimates of death rates vary widely, no one disagrees that the COVID-19 event has been destructive to our health and the economies of our nations.

As we have been sequestered in our homes, we have had time to study the situation and to make choices about what really matters to us. Some people have chosen to ignore all the news and just play with their pets and their kids. Others have been drinking more alcohol and watching more junk TV. But many have chosen to really explore what is happening right before our eyes and they are forming their own opinions after listening to a growing number of scientists, scholars, new-thinking politicians, and other visionaries who are suggesting some paradigm shifts from where we were as a citizenry just a few months ago.

Fascinating stories play out every day on our computer screens and TVs. Not all of them can possibly be true. The story you are told is the one that complies with the agenda of your news source. Statistics are often manipulated to scare you and/or make you vote a certain way, or consume a certain way, or think a certain way. But we feel we need to get a grip on some kind of information because our lives and livelihoods are now impacted more than ever by people and agencies that may oppose our well-being. Many special interest groups have been hijacking the news. Some days it looks more like a “scamdemic” than a pandemic.

Is this a false flag operation designed to Balkanize us, so we can be controlled by someone or something? Is this an opportunity to get in touch with our divinity and overcome fear, so we can fulfill the reason for our creation? Is this an opportunity for us to say “no” to addictive consumer lifestyles? Is this an opportunity for a new system to be constructed in which your every move can be monitored by the state? Is this an opportunity to bring out into the open evil persons who have been lurking in the dark, as well as angels who have been serving our higher good? Is this a time for us to question globalism as a business model?

Answers to some of these questions stare us in the face today as we stroll through downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Governor Wolf might suggest that our business here is not essential. We beg to differ. We are advocates for a way of life that could be the antidote to many of the problems we are now facing. By coming here, we are able to breath some fresh air and to get in touch with something that is precious, something that used to be the heart and soul of much of American culture: Main Street, the local shopping district within walking distance of your home. This is a place in which you are a real face, not just a data point on some chart.

Is the current crisis an opportunity to reignite the engine of humanity, a wake-up call to reconnect with our essential need for local community and individual freedom — or is this the end of Main Street as it has been since the founding of our country, and the dawn of a new age in which big government, big box retail, big pharma, big media, and countless global initiatives run your life?

In the words of Professor Barnhardt in The Day the Earth Stood Still, “It’s only at the precipice that we change.”

With these sketches I celebrate the silent beauty of streets awaiting their next chapters.

The prosperity of most of Ohio’s small towns did not last forever. Across the state, a deluge of plant shutdowns — especially in the 1980s — shattered the economic stability of town after town. Most of these industries did not come back. During this same period big box destination stores drained retail business from Main Street. Today, some towns have reinvented themselves and are surviving and even thriving. Other towns have given up and appear to be closed down forever.

We do not intend for our photographic essay to limelight ruins and ghosts. Rather, we showcase the quiet beauty of towns in repose. Our hope is that these photographs are sympathetic and transcendent and that they honor the survival instinct of the American town while also suggesting new possibilities.

In August 2016, on the outskirts of Toledo, we began a series of road trips out of which “Still Life on Main Street” emerged. By late 2018, we had visited almost every county in the State of Ohio. Our Midwestern roots called us to this homecoming. We are outsiders who were insiders, setting out to capture in photographs Ohio’s Main Streets today. Our focus was on town centers, but we also shot the drive-in movie theaters, the motels, the shopping centers, and other suburban businesses that began to compete with the old Main Streets in mid-20th century America. Like many of the Main Streets, these aging roadside attractions had seen better days.

Our trip was full of surprises. We set out to revisit the thriving Main Streets of our remembered youths, and we did find a few of those. Soon, however, we became fascinated with the ways Main Street had evolved since we lived there many years ago. We became intrigued with the quirky, the ironic, the creative, and sometimes humorous devices used by entrepreneurs and local governments to attract business, even in towns where poverty seemed pervasive.

New themes began to emerge on these silent streets as we delighted in the unexpected juxtapositions: the pop-up gun shooting school in a 1850s Greek Revival mansion in Chesterville, the tiny back street beauty salon aspiring to be exotic and glamorous in Shreve, the deadpan stare of an abandoned Main Street that was once the thriving town center of Shawnee. There was a stillness that pervaded all of these places that was conducive to meditation. We felt a kinship with these towns. Each had its own history, its own soul, and its own potential.

During our sojourn, we experienced the tensions between edge and center that have eroded the roots of community in towns across the country. It is a battle between the motor vehicle and the pedestrian, between the highway and the Main Street, and between the chain store and the local store. Some of our photographs captured the awkward interface between newer highways and the old walkable town centers. At first, we were taken aback by the way tractor trailers barreled through town threatening anyone in their path. But soon we decided to have fun with this, and we played a cat-and-mouse game as we photographed these huge trucks invading otherwise quiet town centers. Trucks became a favorite subject. We were almost run over by a huge tractor trailer in Medina as we captured its raucous presence on a lovely fall day on the town square.

A typical photo shoot went something like this: the assistant, Mike, walked behind the photographer, Marty. When Marty needed to shoot from the middle of a street, Mike watched for tractor trailers, which seldom slowed down. We chatted about what we were seeing — architectural styles, urban design, social and economic trends and possibilities while vehicular traffic and a few pedestrians were moving around us and yet seldom interacting. The photographs of “Still Life on Main Street” captured the essence of our conversations.

Many shots involved long waits for the right light or multiple visits to the same site to capture various changing circumstances. Achieving the perfect shot could face some challenges. In Georgetown, we discussed the courthouse square for over an hour waiting for the sun to rise. In the foreground stood the 1851 neo-classical Brown County Courthouse–pristine-white, free-standing. The square was lined with late 19th-century polychrome-painted commercial buildings. Our goal with this shot was to portray the courthouse as the guardian of the town, with the grand open space and the shops serving as its backdrop. We did not want to see cars in this picture. It was about the relationship of the courthouse to Main Street and about the space: the square, the large blue sky. By the time the sun was just right for our shots, shoppers started to arrive and park their cars in front to the buildings we wanted to highlight. The sun was getting higher by the minute. We had only a 30-minute window to get this shot before the crisp early light would become too harsh. In this setting we patiently watched the patterns of the local citizens: how they dressed, where they went, what they bought. One woman just did not leave. Her car parked out front was holding up a perfect shot. I walked over to eavesdrop on the conversation she was having with the shop keeper. They were discussing the merits of one dishtowel over another. I was tempted to interrupt and buy both towels for the woman just to get her moving and gone. She finally bought one towel and then they began to pray together, which was touching but also tested my patience as yet another customer parked out front. I began my own prayer that all these people might soon leave. Suddenly, all the cars moved out of frame and the image was perfectly captured.

We are grateful for the wisdom imparted to us by the streetscapes of Ohio that can be shared with others through these photographs. This material and these people have given us great joy. We were welcomed virtually everywhere with kindness and friendly curiosity; we were removed by police from only one town, but that was worth the trouble because we were rewarded with a most interesting photograph and some good laughs.

In many of Ohio’s aging towns, we saw a new order that is more budget-conscious and ad hoc than prideful or civic-minded. Deferred maintenance abounded, adding a valuable layer of information to our bittersweet story. We came into town after town witnessing a once-busy Main Street with no activity whatsoever except an occasional vehicle racing by. Many of these once-thriving commercial hubs no longer have customers. Few of our photographs show any people. This is how it was. We did not need to wait for the streets to be empty to shoot most of our pictures. Georgetown was a rare exception.

At the end of our final two-week road trip through the state, we left Ohio and returned to our home bases. What were our thoughts after walking and driving and climbing on rooftops and talking and standing for hours on the Main Streets of Ohio for over two years? Many times we have longed to revisit one of the many lively Main Street Ohio coffee shops. Throughout Ohio there are exceptional coffee shops in some unexpected places. It is in these new generation small town businesses that we begin to see why some Ohio Main Streets are making comebacks. Here we see the same noble, civic-minded pluck that made Ohio great as a frontier state two hundred years ago. Another new storefront entity that we see is the prayer room. As in the movie theater of old, citizens can drop in to a prayer room and imagine a different world. And then there are the libraries. Ohio has some of the highest per capita public library patronage statistics in the US, and most town libraries in Ohio are on Main Street. In many towns the only sign of life is kids biking and walking to the library.

Ohio’s Main Streets are still living organisms, though many of them appear to have lost touch with the narratives that spurred their founding and rise to greatness. As we stood on a typical street corner, we saw buildings and the space between the buildings — streets, sidewalks, parks, and public squares — in which community had been nurtured. In the process of taking these pictures and studying them as a body of work, we were able to pause and appreciate places that once served many generations of citizens but that now appear to be empty stages waiting for Act Two.

And what might Act Two look like? It might involve more people buying dishtowels and sipping coffee and praying and driving and walking on Main Street and rejuvenating some of the historic structures that have been abandoned or underused. Perhaps busier towns will be more difficult to photograph but they will be more livable. And some day our photographs may be seen as capturing a special moment in history when Main Street was a Sleeping Beauty on the verge of reawakening.

During a recent visit, I studied the intersection of Ottawa’s Main and Hickory streets from the quiet prospect of a lawn chair on the sidewalk behind the Putnam County Courthouse. The grand neo-classical 1912 limestone courthouse is the focal point of a Main Street lined with well-preserved late 19th century commercial buildings. On this overcast Saturday afternoon in September not a soul could be seen on the perfectly maintained sidewalks around the courthouse square, and only an occasional car or pickup truck passed through town. One mile north of the courthouse the huge Super Walmart parking lot was packed with cars. Fifty or sixty years ago Ottawa would have been quite different. In those days the Saturday afternoon shopping crowd would have been downtown in full force. Though conceived as a hub for commerce and civic life, today downtown Ottawa has ceased to serve its original purpose. No longer a regional shopping center, it is now a peaceful place that lends itself to solitary contemplation. Without the busy traffic and other distractions of days gone by, one can now meditate on the carefully detailed architecture and urban spaces that still define this as a special place.

Across Ohio, small towns bear witness to the transformation of American civilization from a rural-agrarian to an urban-industrial society. Most Ohio towns were established and developed during the decades prior to the emergence of the mass-production factory culture of the late 19th century. The typical county seat/market town either evolved into an industrial center or it languished. This transformation accelerated in the late 19th century. The sense of community that had been nurtured in the small towns eroded as industries began to draw workers to cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.

Pre-industrial Ohio resembled the world we associate with writers like Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson who documented the kinds of conversations and relationships that helped to establish cohesive places. The disruption of this cohesiveness began with industrialization, but small towns were to experience yet another assault in the later twentieth century: the growth of national retail chains that built stores outside the town centers and undercut local pricing. In the impressive architecture of town centers like Ottawa’s we can still see evidence of the era when Main Street was the axis mundi of local community. Stores like Walmart were part of the suburbanization of the landscape that emphasized convenience, privacy, and discounted prices over civic consciousness.

We can document the shock waves that have assaulted these precious places by forces outside the town limits — forces that threatened the intimacy that had existed among townspeople for generations. Infatuated with modern conveniences, lower prices, and higher wages to be found outside the old town center, citizens forsook their old ways for something new and modern. The spiritual corruption of industrialization was the furthest thing from the minds of those seeking change.

The diminished relationship of nature to the town center also played a role in the evolution of the small town. Fields and forests within walking distance of town one hundred years ago gave townspeople a connection with nature that has been compromised. Today the distinction between town and country has been blurred by the development of broad areas along all the arteries coming into town. This blur — also known as suburbia — distances the old town center from the landscape from which it emerged and it further isolates the inhabitants from the benefits of nature.

Though the founders of Ohio’s towns were ambitious entrepreneurs, to speak of ambition here today seems paradoxical. Today the streets of these towns are noticeably devoid of pedestrians and local traffic. Cross country tractor trailers — passing through town at high rates of speed — have replaced the smaller trucks that used to bring merchandise downtown to be sold. Many Main Street business appear to be either operating with reduced hours or abandoned. In many towns venerable institutions like pharmacies, hardware stores and movie theaters — once beacons of light and destinations for a county-wide audience — are in ruins. The movie theatre in Paulding, Ohio stands a few hundred yards from the courthouse square. This was once a popular landmark with cool modern architecture, a place that inspired the imagination of Pauldingites. Now it is boarded up and pieces of the building and other trash blow around on the sidewalk out front.

Old post cards and photographs of Ohio Main Streets froze all activity typically capturing the streetscape during off hours. These images portrayed the street devoid of the smells and noise and messy chaos of people interacting and traffic moving though town. They idealized these places as pristine peaceful oases. Today, in places like Ottawa and Paulding, with little human activity or traffic on Main Street, you can experience the serenity of a 1940s post card. Like walking onto a stage after a play has ended and the audience has left, you can study the backdrops of the grand 19th century facades and empty display windows and imagine the scenes of days gone by. As you stand there it is tempting to propose some kind of creative use for this location — like recreating the parade scene from Hello Dolly or staging a ballet or an opera here. Or perhaps creating an amazing race of some kind. With cars or just thousands of runners. Or a religious revival meeting like the one we encountered recently in Greenville, Ohio where dozens of people were witnessing to each other, sharing testimonies and reading the Bible right on the street. This dynamic was more vibrant than any shopping excursion. One thing is certain for now: the audience has definitely moved itself to Walmart. So we can enjoy Main Street all to ourselves. And we are free to imagine a new story for this beautiful old stage set.

The experience of arriving at Pennsbury today is surreal. On a recent visit we drove though a series of waste disposal sites, power plants, large moss-green pyramids (buried waste), and RV campgrounds. But the immediate precinct around the 37-acre manor site reveals how Penn saw the Delaware River as the Main Street of early Pennsylvania and you can see how anti-urban was Penn’s ideal settlement pattern.

Penn’s vision for a river community for the landed gentry and their tenants was not a workable platform for the growth of what was soon to become the largest city in colonial America. When he arrived from England in 1682 his surveyors had already laid out the grid of what was to be the plan for Philadelphia; they had not been able to obtain title to more than one mile of river frontage because most of the frontage had already been settled by Swedes, Dutch, and others. The rectangle on which the new plan would sit was purchased from three families. The site was easily demarcated: a two-mile stretch between the Delaware and Schuykill rivers, measuring one mile north to south.

To explain Penn’s aversion to cities just review what was happening in England in the mid-17th century. The old landed gentry whose power bases had been quasi-feudal country estates were giving way to the merchant/capitalists based in the cities — breeding grounds for (in Penn’s eyes) all types of human corruption including crime, disease, fire (1666), and fornication. Penn wrote that in cities one sees the works of men whereas in the country one focuses on the works of God.

Though Penn was an idealist he was also a businessman who wanted his Holy Experiment of Pennsylvania to be profitable. So he gave up his linear river colony — with the Delaware River as its main thoroughfare — for the gridded rectangle which was more conducive to real estate speculation in that smaller parcels could be easily sold off and developed.

In some way Penn’s dream has materialized as today Philadelphia has more green park space than any city in the US. Ironically, the area immediately surrounding Pennsbury Manor is a polluted hodgepodge of industrial development.