"For the like Uses, as the Moore-fields": The Politics of Penn's Squares

The publication, in 1683, of a plan for Philadelphia, assured prospective settlers and investors that William Penn's new colony of Pennsylvania would be anchored by a well-designed commercial center (fig. 1).1 The so-called Portraiture is considered a seminal document in the history of city planning. Yet historians persistently have failed to grasp the importance of Surveyor General Thomas Holme's statement, in an accompanying commentary, that four of five public squares were included "for the like Uses, as the Moore-fields in London."2 In so doing, they have overlooked a significant category of spaces that inspired the form and meaning of what arguably were the most innovative elements of Philadelphia's plan. The Moorfields reference points to the considerable influence of landscape gardening in the genesis of the Portraiture and the moral as well as political meaning Penn invested in his ideal city plan.	1
Fig. 1. A Portraiture of the city of Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania in America, 1683. Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Conscious of the destruction wrought by the Great Fire of 1666 as it swept through the narrow and haphazard streets of London, Penn initially planned his colonial capital as a two hundred-acre commercial center within a ten thousand-acre area that comprised "the bounds and extent of the libertyes of the town." Residential lots were to be laid out along the banks of the Delaware at Upland (now Chester), in a series of strips of land with houses erected at the center of each tract so as to leave generous space for gardens and orchards "that it may be a greene Country Towne, wch will never be burnt, and allways be wholsome."3 Penn did not specify how the commercial center should be laid out, directing the commissioners who preceded him to the colony only to find a navigable stretch of the Delaware with a viable landing area where a quay could be constructed with a storehouse "wch will yet serve for Market and State houses too."4 He made no mention of public spaces such as parks or squares, nor did he direct that common spaces be reserved for houses of worship.	2
The commissioners discovered that this plan was impractical. A Swedish settlement was already well established at Upland and no adjacent site was large enough or topographically appropriate for Penn's town and the adjoining liberties. Accordingly they selected an alternate site farther upriver on a low-lying plain between the Delaware and the Schuylkill rivers and purchased a three hundred-acre tract on the Delaware for the commercial center. By the time Penn arrived in the autumn of 1682, Holme had sketched out a rudimentary layout of streets and house lots at this site, and distribution of town properties by lottery had begun.5 Because there was insufficient frontage property along the Delaware for all who had purchased land to date, Penn proposed that the town be extended westward to incorporate the east bank of the Schuylkill, lots along which would be assigned to absentee purchasers. He directed his commissioners to negotiate the purchase of Schuylkill properties and wrote back to prospective colonists in England to praise the Schuylkill's potential as the avenue into the heartland. Holme duly revised the plan.6	. . .