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,