The City: One Percent for Art

A mosaic, a piece of sculpture, a tapestry or a painting is apt to be expensive, and it is certainly not functional. Thus when it comes to public projects or low-cost housing, watchdogs of the public purse tend to consider such fine arts frivolous and hard to justify to the taxpayers. A good many enlightened people deplore this view, but cannot make themselves felt. But a few years ago, an enlightened Philadelphia lawyer named Michael von Moschzisker found himself in a position to do something about it. He was then chairman of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, which was charged with letting contracts for construction projects for Philadelphia’s elaborate redevelopment program.

Sterility Banished. “One day,” he recalls, “I said to the other four members that maybe we could let it be known that we would look with favor on bidders who offered to spend 1% of construction costs on frescoes, murals, bas-reliefs, mosaics, stained-glass windows, and fountains with statuary in or around them.” At the National Conference of Editorial Writers, Von Moschzisker argued his case: “The psychologists and efficiency experts now find that beauty increases productivity. It necessarily follows that true functionalism in man-made edifices must include artistic expression. Sterility and her handmaiden, monotony, must be banished.”

It is not its efficiencies but its eccentricities that give a city its particular character, Von Moschzisker argued in effect. “The most famous meeting place in Philadelphia is the statue of the eagle in Wanamaker’s, and the most memorable outdoor object to whole generations growing up in center city has been the goat in Rittenhouse Square.” His colleagues on the Redevelopment Authority agreed, voted formally to write the 1% clause into all redevelopment contracts.

Scattered Sculpture. So far, $230 million worth of construction has been approved under this system—meaning that Philadelphia will surround its new buildings with more than $2,000,000 worth of art. Late last year, the Federal Housing Administration amended its rules to permit guarantee of loans that included the fine-arts provision. Last week ground was broken for the first major project to be financed by FHA under the new provision —a $40 million redevelopment of Philadelphia’s shabby Society Hill section. At the 1% rate, Contractors Webb & Knapp and Chief Architect I.M. Pei will have a handsome $400,000 to spend on fine arts or sculpture to scatter among the planned five apartment towers, 225 town houses and shopping centers that replace the section’s warehouses and dilapidated rooming houses.

With luck and good will, Society Hill can provide a pattern for fine-arts allotments in FHA-financed projects across the country.