Penn Collaborative History — The University City Science Center and the Black Bottom

Penn’s own collaborative-history archive documenting the role of the West Philadelphia Corporation (a consortium led by the University of Pennsylvania as majority shareholder, with Drexel Institute, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, Presbyterian Hospital, and the Osteopathic Medical School) in the urban-renewal clearance of the Black Bottom neighborhood. Records that Unit 3 displaced 2,653 residents (approximately 78% African American), the Science Center was incorporated in 1963, the Redevelopment Authority condemned Unit 3 properties in 1966, and bulldozers leveled the blocks in 1967–1968. Documents that University City High School, planned by the WPC as a science-and-technology magnet affiliated with the Science Center, was built on cleared Black Bottom land and operated 1972–2013.