Edmund N. Bacon (1910-2005)

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1999

When the Pennsylvania Railroad opened Broad Street Station in 1881 and enlarged it in 1893, it became for a time the world's largest railroad passenger terminal, its great arched train shed a marvel of the age. The long elevated stone viaduct feeding it—nicknamed the "Chinese Wall"—cut across the city until the station and its tracks were finally demolished in 1952–53.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2008

In 1938, with the Great Depression squeezing city budgets, some 3,000 Philadelphia municipal workers walked off the job to protest wage cuts and layoffs—one of the first major public-employee strikes in a large American city. After eight tense days they won a collective bargaining agreement, a breakthrough for workers whose government employers had long insisted they had no right to organize. Out of that victory grew AFSCME District Council 33.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1994

In July 1903, the Irish-born labor organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones launched her famous March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia, leading textile workers and children maimed by factory machinery on a long walk to dramatize the toll of child labor. A fearless presence in the coal, steel, and textile struggles, she made the nation look at the young hands turning its looms. Her march helped push child-labor reform onto the American conscience.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1998

John Wanamaker opened his first Philadelphia store in 1861 and, in 1876, unveiled a "new kind of store" that helped invent modern retailing. He pioneered the fixed one-price system and the money-back guarantee, treating customers with a fairness that reshaped how Americans shopped. As U.S. Postmaster General he championed rural free delivery and introduced the commemorative postage stamp.