During the urban renewal initiatives of the 1950s and early 1960s, approximately 25 percent of the structures in Society Hill were demolished. Under the direction of city planner Edmund Bacon, many commercial, institutional, and Victorian-era buildings were removed to make way for large-scale residential redevelopment. This transformation was anchored by I. M. Pei’s design of the Society Hill Towers and surrounding townhouses, while local Philadelphia architectural firms designed distinctive modern homes, single and in groups, to fill the remaining open lots.