Who Owns History? The Construction, Deconstruction, and Purpose of the Main Line Myth
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2007
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Bryn Mawr College. Department of Growth and Structure of Cities
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Abstract
This thesis analyzes class duality in suburban Philadelphia between 1870 and 1930. The story below begins with the creation of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1846 and the subsequent construction of a “main line” to Philadelphia. In response to urban industrialization – a push – and the emergence of a suburban pastoral ideal – a pull – social elites fled from Philadelphia during the second half of the nineteenth century and constructed country estates atop the hills overlooking the rail line. The society that the elites mythicized on the Main Line crumbled in the hands of the 1929 Great Depression, marking the end “the Golden Age.” This thesis argues that the Main Line social elites, on account of exclusionary town planning and estate architecture, spawned a myth that masked the existence of a suburban servant underclass, which the elites themselves created and sustained through the maintenance of their country estates. Questions concerning the myth’s definition, makers, and ultimate purpose and societal function frame the argument.