For eighty-two years, I either lived in Philadelphia or worked there. Some of my fondest memories of living in the city included watching the doings of its mayors. When my friends asked why, I gave H.L. Mencken’s reason for enjoying politics: “Why do people go to zoos?”

Perhaps Philadelphia didn’t produce anyone as colorful as the Big Apple’s Fiorello LaGuardia, reading the Sunday comics on the radio to kids during a newspaper strike, or Boston’s James Michael Curley, who once won an election while sitting in jail, but it came close. After all, it had been described early in the 20th century as corrupt and contented.

During my four score and eight, Philadelphia has been guided by nine mayors. When I was born, the mayor was S. Davis Wilson, known as “Ashcan” because he had his name stenciled on all the city’s trash cans. He was a political chameleon, changing parties to suit his needs — starting as a Republican, switching to the Democrats, then back to the GOP in 1935, when he defeated John B. Kelly, Sr. (Princess Grace’s father) in an election that saw charges that he had Democratic ballots cast into the Delaware River to guarantee his election. They did things like that in the “good old days.” After a rabble-rousing three years — he publicly carried a gun, once drove a trolley car to celebrate the city’s takeover of public transportation, and had a fistfight with a city councilman – Wilson died in office. I understand the city breathed a sigh of relief. 

His eventual successor, Barney Samuel, is the first of the city’s mayors I remember. The last Republican mayor, he presided over the death rattle of the GOP in the city. He had the face of a sad-looking basset hound and was personally honest, if slightly eccentric. When my college, LaSalle, celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1948, he declared a day in its honor. I heard from one of the people who went to City Hall (a Christian Brother, so there can be no doubting his word) to receive the award, that he welcomed them lying on his desk. Samuel also was the city’s longest-serving mayor, nearly twelve years, something that can’t happen again – thank God – because of term limits.

The first of a string of Democratic mayors began with a reform administration led by Joseph Clark as mayor and Richardson Dilworth as district attorney. Dilworth would also be Clark’s eventual successor in the mayor’s office. They gave Philadelphia a decade of good government and modernized the city, but their attention span was limited. Clark lasted one term before getting himself elected to the United States Senate, where he served two terms of no particular accomplishment. 

Dilworth was probably the city’s best mayor. He was a good politician and a man of honor – a Marine, he served in World War I and then rejoined at age 43 and served with distinction in the Pacific during World War II. Before finishing his second term in office, he resigned to make a second unsuccessful try for the governor’s office. 

Philadelphia then passed into the hands of the Democratic machine in the person of William Green, Jr., the real architect of the Democratic takeover in the city. The first of the party’s machine candidates was James H. J. Tate, a North Philadelphia rowhouse pol. 

Tate was a good-looking Irishman, bland and personally honest but sensitive to criticism. For example, he stopped the tradition of the mayor throwing the ball out on Opening Day of the baseball season because the fans booed him. I remember meeting him in Horn and Hardart on South Broad Street and having a cup of coffee. He had no airs. He tried to continue Clark and Dilworth’s work, but the party bosses were tired of good government and the city’s descent into its present state of political hackdom really began during his days in office.

Then, things suddenly got interesting. Philly’s new mayor Frank Rizzo was many things but never bland or dull. A tough former police commissioner, he was loved by his supporters and hated by all the right-thinking beautiful people. He endeared himself to them by saying that when he was mayor he would make “Attila the Hun look like a faggot.” He denounced pornography, which was spreading in the 1970s, by saying he couldn’t understand its appeal as “he never saw his mother naked.” 

Rizzo once took a lie detector test to combat a charge against him and was found to be lying. It didn’t matter: his people still loved him. After two terms — he tried unsuccessfully to change the City Charter so that he could run for a third — Rizzo remained a powerful force in the city, hosting a popular radio program, berating the Democrats who ran the city, and dying in 1991 while plotting another run for mayor.

There had been talk that it was time to recognize the key role that the black community had played in the success of the Democrats. The Clark-Dilworth regime had begun hiring blacks to government positions, but there were few in elective office. In the City Council in the early 1950s, there was just a single black member, Raymond Pace Alexander, though more would follow, starting with Marshall Shepard in 1955. Interestingly, the one city department with a considerable minority presence was the Police Department under Rizzo.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, which had been purchased by the Knight Ridder chain in 1969, began pushing for a black mayor in the 1970s. The problem: there was no logical black candidate. The two best known black Philadelphians were the Rev. Leon Sullivan, who wasn’t interested in elective office, and Cecil B. Moore, president of the local NAACP, who was considered too radical to appeal to white voters. Then the Inquirer found its man: Wilson Goode. You couldn’t read the Inky for long in the late seventies without a favorable reference to the young, up-and-coming Goode. Bill Green Jr. got him appointed Public Utility Commissioner while the Inky polished his resume. A friend of mine worked for one of the city’s gas companies. His job was to meet frequently with Goode to discuss matters. I asked him for his view: nice man but not too bright, was his answer.

Rizzo was succeeded as mayor by Bill Green Jr.’s son, Bill Green III, who had been plucked out of Villanova Law School when his father died and sent by the party to the House of Representatives where, after four terms, he made little impression. After four years as mayor, he retired to run a restaurant in Manayunk. I ate there once and remember only that the food was costly and that there were ferns in the window.

After Green Jr.’s bland four years, the Democrats nominated Goode for mayor, and he won handily. The Inky was thrilled, but the thrill didn’t last long. In May 1985, an ongoing dispute with a black back-to-nature group called MOVE resulted in a bombing of their headquarters in a row house in West Philadelphia that destroyed an entire city block and killed eleven people, including two children. Around the nation, newspapers headlined: Mayor Bombs His City. One wonders whether, had this outcome happened under Rizzo, the city might have burned down and become another Detroit, a city that destroyed itself.

Goode apologized, was reelected, and did his best to heal the city’s wounds. He became a minister and wound up being a better human being than a mayor. 

His successors, especially Ed Rendell and Michael Nutter, helped to restore the city’s reputation, particularly in rebuilding the downtown area. Philadelphia even held a major political convention in 2000 for the first time in a half century. Nutter’s successor, Jim Kenney, served two lackluster terms plagued by the spread of homelessness and an open drug scene in Kensington. But Kenney boasted one success: a soda tax, which would supposedly improve the health of city residents. There is no evidence that it had any impact beyond helping suburban food stores sell more soda to Philadelphians. Kenney’s successor, the city’s first black female mayor, Cherelle Parker, has her hands full. 

John Rossi is professor emeritus of history at La Salle University.