Manufacturing, the past of Philadelphia: A communicative approach to understanding how historic preservation and planning practices created a colonial city at the expense of the 'Workshop of the World'.

摘要

Philadelphia once hailed as the "Workshop of the World," yet today, the city's industrial patrimony has largely been forgotten while its earlier identity as the "Cradle of Liberty" has proliferated in public memory. This project questions what the implications will be for both future constructs of identity and narratives of history if indifference pervades regarding either the presence or the absence of particular types of architectural structures within the built environment. Within this thesis architecture and the built landscape are examined for their abilities to operate in a rhetorical fashion, ideologically constituting individuals in the present, affecting future constructions of identity, and communicating particular ideas of the past. The impact of historic preservation and urban planning practices is also analyzed in relation to the narrative of history told through the built landscape in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Both archival and phenomenological investigations of the formation and development of Independence National Historical Park help reveal how razing, repurposing, or restoring edifices can profoundly shape history by determining both what is remembered and how people are collectively constituted via the physical makeup of the built environment.