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Buy New & Used. . .
By Jay Sylvestre
Well, probably just new.
Though not readily apparent from the darkness of the picture, the featured building is the Oakland Car Dealership on Broad St. Taken in 1926, this picture highlights an early example of the Art Deco style of architecture heavily favored by businessmen looking to sell cars. The smooth corner of the building, large windows punctuated by striking vertical columns, and an upper level of decorative windows convey a sense of luxury on the part of the automobile and its salesman. Shiny new vehicles, most likely 1926 Pontiacs, adorn each of the...
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Finish Your Dinner, We're Going to See a Show!
By Heather Newlin
The images found in the Department of City Transit record group are about so much more than simply recording the construction of subways and trolley lines. This photo, taken in 1919 around 10th and Arch Streets is a prime example. Yes, a trolley car and tracks can be seen in the picture, but we also see examples of World War I propaganda and other forms of period advertising, as well as the historic Trocadero Theatre.
The theatre, seen here on the right hand side, was first built in 1870. It was damaged by...
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Look Mom, I'm Flying!
By Heather Newlin
Throughout Philadelphia's history, photographers have enjoyed taking pictures from the upper levels of City Hall. This photo shows the hustle and bustle of Broad Street in the late 1920s. These kind of shots are helpful for seeing just how "broad" Broad Street really is, as well as for demonstrating traffic patterns during the period. In the center of the street is a pile of wood and other construction materials. What was being built? Possibly, workers used them to build the south extension of the Broad Street Subway. They completed the first section a...
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Keeping the Children Well
By Heather Newlin
Today we take the school nurse for granted. Whenever a child scrapes his knee at recess or becomes ill and needs to go home early, the nurse is there. However, the school nurse and school medical inspections are, in America, largely a creation of the twentieth century. This photo, taken at the Alexander D. Bache School in 1912, is labeled "Medical Inspection Branch." It dates from the late Progressive Era when the health and welfare of the poor was a matter of growing concern among social workers. For many reformers, efforts aimed toward...
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Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: Newsboy Turned Schoolboy
By Heather Newlin
Here is another window into education reform during the Progressive Era. Still holding a stack of newspapers tucked under his arm, this Philadelphia newspaper boy looks as though he was just pulled from his job on the street and put in front of the camera at school. Indeed, this photograph is labeled "Compulsory Education-Newsboy." Taken in December 1906, such a scenario could very well have occurred.
Most states had enacted compulsory education laws by 1918. It appears, however, that in 1906, just as today, there were problems enforcing these rules. There are many explanations...
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Mmmmm . . . Beeeer
By Jay Wyatt
Any trip to a Philadelphia pub will reveal that Philadelphians, by and large, have an acute affinity for beer. Despite this, it is a little known fact that, in the fifty years between 1870 and 1920, Philadelphia was a national center for beer production. Early in this period, most of the city's beer makers were German immigrants operating out of small breweries in neighborhoods like Kensington and Northern Liberties. To store enough beer to last through Philadelphia's long and notoriously hot summers, and to keep the populace happy, the brewers used large storage...
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Buying Happiness
By Heather Newlin
A pioneer in advertising, John Wanamaker opened his first store in Philadelphia in 1876. He later moved the store to the location in this photograph, the site of the old Pennsylvania Railroad Depot (seen on the right). This new store, the "Grand Depot," was the first department store in the city, and at one time also the city's largest store. It was billed as "the largest space in the world devoted to retail selling on a single floor."
Unlike the owners of other stores, Wanamaker used a great deal of advertising to gain customers....
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See and Hear the World's Greatest Entertainer!
By Zach Lechner
In 1921, the Stanley Company opened the 1303-capacity Aldine Theatre at the southeast corner of 19th and Chestnut Streets. The theater played movies for some seventy years, with a few gaps during the 1950s-1970s. Over the years, it was rechristened the Viking Theatre, then the Cinema 19 Theatre, and finally, Sam's Place Twin, after Sam Shapiro's Sameric Company purchased the movie house and divided it into two smaller screening rooms in 1980. The building today houses a pharmacy.
This October 1928 photograph shows the lavish displays for director Lloyd Bacon's The Singing Fool....
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Cradle of Independence
By Heather Newlin
Every July Fourth, the nation gears up for a big party celebrating its independence from Great Britain. Nowhere is this more true than in Philadelphia, which has been at times called the "Birthplace of a Nation." It was here in 1776 that the Second Continental Congress met to commission and adopt the Declaration of Independence. Meeting in the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall, above), the body selected a "Committee of Five" to draft a list of their grievances against the British Crown. For a time after independence--between 1790 and 1800--Philadelphia stood...
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Does This Look Like a Stadium Yet?
By Zach Lechner
The Stadium Complex in South Philadelphia is a mecca for area sports fans. How about a baseball game? Check. Football? Yep. Basketball? It's covered. And eating contests? Oh, my . . . .
Philadelphia Municipal Stadium, renamed John F. Kennedy Stadium in 1964, stood here for over 65 years. It hosted a variety of sporting events and received notoriety as a venue for Army-Navy football games. Big touring bands often stopped by. The Beatles and Barbra Streisand both performed here in 1966. Live Aid occupied the venue in 1985, proving that nothing rocks like...
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In League with Lincoln
By Zach Lechner
A striking building in a city of arresting architecture, the Union League of Philadelphia building stands at 140 South Broad Street in the heart of Center City. It was completed in 1865 and features a French Renaissance design.
The story of the League began in December 1862 when two weeks after the crushing Federal defeat at Fredericksburg, Virginia, Dr. J. Forsythe Meigs held an organizational meeting for a "Union Club" at his Walnut Street home. Members dedicated themselves to upholding the Constitution and to supporting President Abraham Lincoln's often unpopular policies. Lincoln's...
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The Hidden River, Part One
By Jay Wyatt
Dividing Center City and West Philadelphia, and stretching more than 100 miles into the interior of Pennsylvania, the Schuylkill River has long been an integral part of life in the Philadelphia region. Native Americans used the river as a food and water source and called it Ganshohawanee, meaning "rushing and roaring waters." Early European settlers later gave the river its current name, which means "Hidden River," because of its secluded entrance near its confluence with the Delaware River. Yet, despite its proximity to Philadelphia and the Atlantic Ocean, the Schuylkill River did...
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The Calm after the Storm
By Heather Newlin
Philadelphia's first public recreation facility, Starr Garden, was built at the corner of 7th and Lombard Streets in 1908. Seeing the location in this 1907 photograph and the many people there enjoying free time outdoors, it is hard to imagine that this same location laid along a path of violence and destruction in the fall of 1842. Marked today by one of the many familiar blue and yellow markers of the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission at 6th and Lombard Streets, the area between 5th and 8th Streets on Lombard was...
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Views from Center City
By Zach Lechner
As the geographic heart and Central Business District (CBD) of Philadelphia, Center City is busy hub of activity. It is bounded by South Street to the South, the Delaware River to the east, the Schuykill River to the West, and either Vine Street or Spring Garden Street (depending on whom you ask) at the North. While Center City continues to grow and transform, the following images from the past offer unique glimpses of the area's physical continuities and changes.
The first markets were held at the corner of Front and High (Market) Streets...
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The Convention City
By Zach Lechner
The 2008 presidential election already looms on the horizon. In addition to selecting candidates, the two major parties must decide where to hold their nominating conventions. Although it is not in the running in 2008, Philadelphia has a strong history of welcoming presidential conventions, most recently in 2000, when the Republican Party nominated George W. Bush at the First Union Center (now the Wachovia Center). The Republicans have met in the city six times. They held their first presidential convention here in 1856. Why this strong legacy? Because of Philadelphia's overwhelming support...
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An Unusual Display
By Heather Newlin
Although one would never think of displaying such material today, in the past scalps and scalp locks such as those above would have been considered appropriate artifacts for museum exhibits. Until the passing of laws in the 1990's, scalps were displayed in many museums. This was true, even in Philadelphia. The scalp and scalp locks in this 1921 photo were displayed in Independence Hall (then owned and operated as a museum by the City of Philadelphia) early in the 20th Century.
The scalp and scalp locks were included in a large list...
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Chinatown at a Glance
By Zach Lechner
Despite years of transition, Philadelphia is still a city of neighborhoods. South Philadelphia, Germantown, Brewerytown, Fishtown, Eastwick, and Strawberry Mansion are just a few of the neighborhoods that give the city its distinctive and diverse feel. One of its most unique areas lies within Center City. It stretches from Arch to Vine Street, and from 8th to 11th Street. Pass through the "Friendship Gate" at 10th and Arch Streets and you will find yourself in Chinatown.
Philadelphia's Chinatown, like those in other American cities, has sad beginnings. Chinese immigrants came to America...
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Driveway to the Arts
By Heather Newlin
Cutting diagonally across William Penn's original grid-like plan for Philadelphia's streets, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway is center city's connection to recreation and cultural resources.
When planners first entertained the idea of building a parkway through the city, this street was intended to be a direct and interesting link between City Hall and the Art Museum. It would be at the same time an enjoyable drive down a wide grass and tree lined street as well as a quick way to escape the congestion of the city. Drivers could use this road to take...
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Natural Healing
By Heather Newlin
In its most recent past, the buildings of the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry, pictured here, were in a state of ruin. These ruins, combined with the less than desirable reputation the hospital had come to possess, attracted thrill seekers and urban explorers alike. It was rumored to have been the site of numerous activities ranging from satanic rituals to dance parties complete with DJs. However, all of this changed in 2004 when the site was sold to the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, which intended to use the site for office buildings...
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A City of Firsts
By Jason Hutchins
Philadelphia is a city of firsts. One area where this is exemplary is in the list of accomplishments for its churches. Philadelphia is home to Gloria Dei (Old Swedes' Church), which is located at 916 Swanson St (Columbus and Christian) in South Philadelphia. The original church was founded as part of the New Sweden settlement on Tinicum Island in 1646. Later, the church was moved to its present location, and was consecrated on July 2, 1700. This early lineage makes Gloria Dei, the oldest church in Pennsylvania.
Gloria Dei would have the distinction...
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Learning for the Real World
By Heather Newlin
Late in the 19th century and early in the 20th, child labor reformers were busy trying to devise a plan for keeping the nations children out of the factories and in the schools for as long as possible. However, the things they were doing to extend the amount of time a child spent in the school system failed to keep all children in school. They wondered why, until the idea was presented that perhaps the children continually left school early because they did not understand the value an education in traditional academic...
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The Snow Piled Six Feet High
By Heather Newlin
This year, local meteorologists are predicting a very snowy winter for Philadelphia. With such a forecast looming in the future, snow is probably the last thing that residents of this city want to think about. It is likely that Philadelphians did not want to think about the prospect of snow in 1914 either, especially as spring was nearing.
However, March 2 and into the early morning of March 3, 1914, the snow was practically all people were talking about. On that night, a storm blew in from the Atlantic Coast, causing great troubles...
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There Used to Be a Ballpark Here
By Jay Wyatt
It is hard to envision the corner of Broad and Lehigh in North Philadelphia as the site of the first 'modern' baseball stadium in America. Yet, before there was Citizens Bank Park, or the Vet, or Connie Mack Stadium, which was originally know as Shibe Park, National League Park was the destination of choice for Philadelphia's baseball fanatics.
The park was erected in 1887. After a fire destroyed most of the stadium in 1894, team ownership rebuilt the stadium using steel, brick and concrete. The choice of building materials was intended to prevent...
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Photographic Firsts
By Heather Newlin
Philadelphia is famous for many things, including its inventors. Perhaps most famous of these is Ben Franklin. However, another Philadelphia inventor, Joseph Saxton, was responsible for creating one of the first photographs made in America. That photograph was taken in 1839 from the United States Mint (pictured above), where Saxton worked. In it he captured Central High School and a portion of the State Arsenal.
In 1839, photography was in its infancy. The first practical form of photography, the Daguerreotype, had been introduced to the world on January 7 of that same year....
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The Broad Street Subway
By Heather Newlin
Providing around 1 million rides a day, SEPTA is an important resource in the city of Philadelphia. The man pictured in one of the accompanying photos was just one of the many involved in building a part of that transportation system, the Broad Street Subway. The photograph was taken December 14, 1925 as the unidentified man worked on the subway at Broad and Master Streets.
Work began on the line in 1924. In the four years it took to build the initial section of the...
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Photography: A Mini-History
By Heather Newlin
1839 was an important year in the history of record-keeping. It was in this year that the first practical form of photography, the Daguerreotype, was invented. Without this invention almost 170 years ago, PhillyHistory.org would not have been possible. Most of the images on this website come from one of three photographic types: the negative, the print, and the digital photograph. The majority of these, however, come from the incredibly large collection of negatives in the city's possession.
Not all photographic negatives, however, were created the same. Over the short history of this...
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An Iron Baron's West Philadelphia Castle
By Steven B. Ujifusa
Nathaniel Burt wrote of Philadelphia iron-making entrepreneurs such as the Whartons, Brookes, Rutters and Potts: "Along with the New York patroon and the New England shipowner, he does provide something of a landowning equivalent to offset the more purely trading wealth of the region's old families." 1 Thus the Whartons became the lords of Batsto, the Brookes' of Birdsboro, and the Potts' of Potttown and Pottsville.
The house at 3905 Spruce Street, built by the iron baron Joseph Potts in 1876, befits the residence of businessmen who helped make Pennsylvania a...
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The Divine Lorraine Hotel
By Heather Newlin
Standing at the corner of Broad and Fairmount Streets in North Philadelphia is a building that is historically significant on a number of different levels. The Divine Lorraine Hotel, formerly known as both Lorraine Apartments and the Lorraine Hotel, was designed by architect Willis G. Hale and built between 1892 and 1894. The building originally functioned as apartments, housing some of Philadelphia's wealthy residents.
Both the location of the building and the architecture itself reflect the changes that were occurring rapidly in the city of Philadelphia and in the country at the time....
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A Man Full of Trouble: Philadelphia's Last Surviving Colonial Tavern
By Kim Burton
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Philadelphia was unquestionably a city of taverns. They were a one stop source of food, entertainment, and cheap drinks. Furthermore, they were the largest and most abundant (about one for every 25 men) public buildings available for community interaction. As a result, taverns, or "public houses," became the center of social, business, and political activity in the city.
The colonial elite were inclined to patronize more fashionable "upscale" establishments. Perhaps most recognized of such venues in pre-revolutionary times was the City Tavern, whose patrons...
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The Life of the Schuylkill: Part Two
By Spencer Willig
Jaundice. Vomiting. Kidney failure. Bleeding from the mouth, eyes, nose and stomach. Death.
Many Philadelphians today would probably not have a hard time believing that the list above is a catalogue of consequences one might reasonably expect to suffer after drinking out of the river. Yet it was precisely these agonies - the agonies of yellow fever - from which Philadelphia depended on the Schuylkill for protection at the turn of the 19th century.
Convinced that the city's filthy drinking water was behind a series of yellow fever epidemics that killed a quarter of...
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The Life of Thomas McKean
By Jason Hutchins
Though the majority of the images in PhillyHistory are 'geocoded' or associated with a specific address, there are quite a few images and documents that either had no location associated with their creation or did not contain enough location information from the original photographer or author to determine an accurate location. I often conduct searches on PhillyHistory.org with the "Include records without a location" box checked and stumble across some fascinating images.
Recently I came across one such image - a portrait of a man named Thomas McKean (pronounced McKane).
McKean was...
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Take Care of Him and I will repay Thee: A Luxurious Philadelphia Asylum
By Spencer Willig
Since the establishment of Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Pine Streets "to care for the sick-poor of the Province and for the reception and care of lunaticks," Philadelphia was a leading center of psychiatric care. The city is, after all, the birthplace of Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Rush, widely regarded as the father of American psychiatry.
Rush's belief that mental illness should "be freed from moral stigma, and be treated with medicine rather than moralizing" was reflected in his colleagues' work at the nation's first hospital. Founded by Dr. Thomas Bond and his...
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A Walk to Die For: Laurel Hill Cemetery
By Heather Newlin
Remember me as you pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now you soon must be
Prepare for death and follow me.
--Jackson (56)
In the colonial period and for some time after that, the purpose of the cemetery for the living was to serve as a grim reminder of the fate that would one day befall every person. Traditionally, corpses were buried in churchyards. However, as the 18th century neared, beliefs about the nature of death began to change. This change was...
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Corridor of Commerce
By Heather Newlin
..."if Philadelphia is indebted to England for the name High Street, which undoubtedly is the case, nearly every American city or town founded since 1700 is, in turn, indebted to Philadelphia for its Market Street, which is particularly Philadelphian in nomenclature. This...was due to the plan of Penn, who, long before his city was laid out or settled, had provided a wide High street, where markets could be held on regular days of the week under certain restrictions and rules."
-Joseph Jackson
Market Street, known as High Street until just before the...
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Philadelphia's Italian Market
By Erica Stefanovich
In the late 1880s, 9th and Fitzwater was outside of the plan for Philadelphia. Not included in William Penn's original outline for his city, the neighborhood sprang up quite by accident. Antonio Palumbo built his boarding house there, and received an influx of immigrants looking for work in the developing city. As the community grew they began to open up stores along 9th Street until it took on an appearance not dissimilar to what one finds in the same neighborhood today. Some of the many stores included butchers, cheese shops, cook ware...
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Eastern State Penitentiary
By Heather Newlin
In the early 19th century, a system of punishment was created that could be traced back to the Quakers. Called the Pennsylvania system because it was first used here, this method involved the use of solitary confinement to rehabilitate criminals sent to prison. The underlying belief of the Pennsylvania System was that solitary confinement would give prisoners time to reflect on their lives and change the wrongs within it. In other words, if prisoners were forced to think about their crimes, they would become penitent (this is also the origin of the word "penitentiary").
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Up, Up and Away
By Heather Newlin
Before there were space shuttles or airplanes, men experimented with other options of ascending into the heavens. Some means were less successful than others, contraptions attached to the body imitating the wings of birds being but one example. In the late 18th century, men experimented with another possible method of flight, the hot air balloon. At first the balloons were launched with no passengers, then with various animal riders, and finally carrying men.
The first recorded manned flight in a balloon left from Paris on November 21, 1783. This 22 minute flight...
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Soft Pretzels: A Philadelphia "Culinary" Tradition
By Kimberly Burton
Just like other major cities and tourist hot spots, Philadelphia has its own unique set of delectable edibles. New York is known for bagels, Chicago for its buttery crusted deep dish pizza, and Savannah for its heavenly pralines. Philadelphia has made its way into similar culinary fame, not only for cheese steaks and water ice (characteristically known as "wudder ice" by the locals), but also for the delicious, chewy, salty, "get-em just about everywhere in Philly," soft twisted pretzels. Philly's soft-pretzels are breakfast for many a commuter on the run, dependable...
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Rittenhouse Square
By Matt Johnson
Originally named Southwest Square and later renamed after David Rittenhouse, a famous Philadelphian astronomer, Rittenhouse Square is one of five original open-space parks planned by William Penn. Although it is now one of the most fashionable public spaces in Philadelphia, the park was not always a popular gathering place for the city's residents. In the eighteenth century the park provided pasturage for local livestock and by the late 1700s brickyards surrounded the square. Not until the 1880s, when the city's elite began to move into the area, did the park begin...