Our Philadelphia — Edition Insights

The City as a Grid of Character

Pennell devotes considerable attention to Philadelphia's street plan, which she insists is not monotonous but serene. She contrasts the city's “long straight lines” and right angles with the “disorderly picturesqueness” of Boston or New York, whose streets follow old cow tracks. Her language is precise: she borrows from Mrs. Gilchrist the phrase “vista-converging lines” that stretch out “as if they must certainly lead somewhere very pleasant.” This is not mere boosterism; Pennell argues that the grid gives the city “repose” and “serenity,” qualities she links to great art. She even takes a swipe at Ruskin, who “did not include order among his Seven Lamps,” asserting that Paris teaches more about architecture “at a glance than all his rhapsodies.” The grid, for Pennell, is not a practical convenience but an aesthetic and moral choice, stamped with the personality of William Penn himself.

Penn the Pragmatist, Not the Prig

Pennell's William Penn is no “shadowy prig of the school history” but a man with “a level head, big ideas, and the will to carry them out.” She emphasizes his attention to material details alongside spiritual ones: he did not stop to preach about town-planning and garden cities but actually built them. This characterization emerges from her walks through the city, where she finds Penn inescapable. Her tone is combative—she dismisses the “weakling of to-day” who would find Penn's fight for liberty of conscience overwhelming. The passage reveals Pennell's own values: she admires practical accomplishment over abstract idealism. The city's layout becomes a monument to Penn's genius, and her description of it is laced with a pride that is personal, not merely civic.

The Lost Philadelphia and Its Architecture

Pennell mourns the Philadelphia she knew before her long absence. She writes that the city “did more to let the old character go to rack and ruin during the years I was away from it than during the two centuries before.” The new Philadelphia, she notes, is “repenting in miles upon miles of sham Colonial,” but repentance cannot bring back the old. Her observations are specific: she contrasts the Queen Anne style praised by Mrs. Gilchrist with the Georgian that most authorities would name. The lithographs by Joseph Pennell are meant to capture what is vanishing—the “old Philadelphia that has passed” and the new that is “passing.” This sense of loss is not nostalgic in a vague way; it is grounded in architectural detail and a clear chronology of change.

A Personal Return, a New Way of Seeing

Pennell credits her husband J. (Joseph Pennell) with teaching her to see the city's beauty. She admits that before her return, she had confused symmetry with monotony, a mistake she says most Philadelphians still make. Her walks with J. opened her eyes to the “green, well-shaded streets” and the “symmetry” of the grid. She even offers a small, self-deprecating anecdote: “Had the measuring worm not retreated before the sparrow, I might perhaps have been less prepared … to admit the beauty of the trees.” The passage is revealing because it shows Pennell's willingness to revise her own earlier judgments. The book is not a static tribute but a record of a changed perspective, one shaped by absence, return, and the companionship of an artist who saw the city differently.

Readers should approach Our Philadelphia as a hybrid work—part memoir, part architectural criticism, part social history. Pennell's voice is opinionated and precise, and she expects her audience to share her interest in the material fabric of the city. The lithographs are not decorative; they are integral to her argument about what has been lost. Those who enjoy detailed descriptions of streets, buildings, and urban planning will find much to admire, while those seeking a conventional narrative may need to adjust expectations. The book rewards attention to its specific, often combative, observations.

Flipping through Pennell’s lithographs, I remembered my own grandmother’s house—those same heavy cornices, the hush of afternoon light on worn stairs. She’d talk about change the way Pennell does, without nostalgia, just noting what’s gone. Prentice Mulford's story: life by land and sea — Reading Companion gave me that same patient ache, watching a place reshape itself around a life. Both books feel like sitting with someone who’s learned to see quietly.