Tinicum & Eastwick

When plans to overhaul Southwest Philadelphia in the 1950s scheduled both the integrated neighborhood of Eastwick and the ecologically valuable Tinicum marshes to be razed, two grassroots movements took up the cause—battling eminent domain in the name of environmental conservation and economic injustice.

In the 1950s, the City of Philadelphia began planning the country's most geographically expansive "slum clearing" project in the marshy reaches of the city’s southwest.

The Eastwick neighborhood’s resistance to the project was racially diverse and working class in nature. Led by housewives, the resistance went toe to toe with a massive government bureaucracy hungry for progress. As the neighborhood rallied to defend itself, a parallel grassroots effort by bird watchers desperately worked to save the embattled Tinicum marshes. The unspoiled remains of Pennsylvania's last freshwater tidal marsh came under threat as city government pursued its visions of a “city-within-a-city” in Eastwick.

Amid protest marches and bomb threats, political intrigue and outrage, a question emerged that would forever influence the region: Who deserves a home? Should the homes of people be saved, or the homes of birds? Or would all of it be buried in dredged silt and cinder, with beloved wilderness and homes a mere footing for ambitious urban planners?

Decades later, the story is not over. The legacy of urban redevelopment and environmental conservation has forever changed the lives of thousands in Southwest Philadelphia and Delaware County. Through oral history and exhaustive research, Tinicum & Eastwick documents one of the most egregious civil rights violations in Pennsylvania history, as well as one of the state’s greatest environmental triumphs. Author Will Caverly confronts the intersection of eminent domain and environment, told through the struggles everyday residents of Southeastern Pennsylvania endured to pursue justice.