1950
Duchamp, Large Glass
July 25, 1954 photograph of installation of Duchamp’s Large Glass at Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia Inquirer .
1950
1950
Society Hill Renewal
Federal legislations for conservation and rehabilitation of blighted areas are passed, allowing Society Hill renewal to move forward. Speculators begin to buy properties and values rise.
1950
1950
1950
1950
Joe Carreiro Industrial Design Chair at PMCA
From 1954 – 1964 Joe Carreiro is the Industrial Design Chair at PMCA. With a modernist design aesthetics he the program's emphasis is on business and industry.
1950
Bill Haley & The Comets, Rock Around the Clock
March 1955 -After being used in the hit film about juvenile delinquency “The Blackboard Jungle,” Bill Haley & The Comets “Rock Around The Clock” becomes the first rock record to top the Pop Charts, holding the #1 position for two months and remaining in the Top 100 for a then-record 38 weeks. It would be 39 years before that mark was broken.
1950
1950
1950
1950
1950
Group 55
Group 55: Association of Philadelphia painters, composers, architects and art historians meet monthly on Friday evenings at the Lecture Hall, Philadelphia Free Library. Several hundred attend. Participants include Doris Staffel, Quita Broadhead, Jane Piper, Sam Fried and composers George Rochberg, Joseph Castaldo and Vincent Persichetti
Topics: “Expressive Uses of Space,” “What do Abstract Forms Communicate?” “Artist’s Vision and the Public’s Views,” “New Dimensions of Man” Sam Feinstein, MA: Fields Publishing, 2008 p. 104
1950
Jungian Influence in Philadelphia
Heavy Jungian influence in Philadelphia. Analytical Psychology Club of Philadelphia meets at 2008 Chancellor Street that serves as Jung Center of Philadelphia. Influential members include Anne Tyng and Barbra Crawford. Patricia Stark Feinstein, Sam Feinstein, MA: Fields Publishing, 2008 p. 105
1950
"Decorated Shed"
Robert Venturi comes back from Rome after two years and begins working in Louis Kahn’s office. In 1956 Wharton Esherick and Louis Kahn collaborated on a building on Esherick’s Paoli property. With its nonfunctional allusion to dovetail joinery, it was literally a decorated shed, a kind of signifier as to the use of the building within. As an idea, this surface ornamentation applied to an architectural façade quickly had significant ramifications via Denise Scott Brown's concept of the “Decorated Shed,” one of the tenets of postmodernism.
1950
Cameo Records
December 1956 – Bernie Lowe and Kal Mann found Cameo Records. Hits were generated by a relationship with Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.
1950
Clark-Dilworth Era
After Mayor Joseph S. Clark runs for United States Senate, Richardson Dilworth runs for and wins the mayorality. A period of reform begins; Independence Mall and Society Hill emerges, the Chinese Wall is torn down and the Penn Center created.
Richardson K. Dilworth becomes 91st Mayor of Philadelphia from 1956 to 1962. Dilworth
was at the forefront of a post-World War II reform movement leading to the adoption of a modern city charter consolidating city and county offices and introducing broad scale civil service examinations to replace the existing patronage system.
Clark and Dilworth introduced a variety of reforms and innovations including extensive high-rise public housing that was later condemned as a breeding ground for poverty and crime. They greatly strengthened the city planning function retaining Edmund Bacon as Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. The Clark-Dilworth era is recognized as a high water mark for planning, during which the decline of Center City Philadelphia as a commercial, residential center was reversed and priority was given (particularly during Dilworth's administration) to saving the city's historic and irreplaceable Society Hill district.
Contribute to the Chronology
We welcome public contributions to this chronology! Please email Sid Sachs at ssachs@uarts.edu with a reference to your contribution.