This week's installment of Billy Penn's neighorhood postcard series, we visit Fitler Square, the neighborhood that was the inspiration for the movie 'The Sixth Sense,' and whose park was named for Edwin Henry Fitler, the former Philadelphia mayor. "According to the book "Cities in a Race With Time," the Fitler Square neighborhood was blighted and deteriorating prior to the 1950s, and the park was once described as a "mudhole inhabited by drunks and empty bottles." Members of the Center City Residents' Association were able to convince then-Mayor Joseph Clark to free up some money in order to build new homes and rehab the area. Then, in the eighties, with the help of the Fitler Square Improvement Association, the park and its surrounding areas finally underwent revitalization that stuck." [Billy Penn]
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