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Point Breeze
By Steven B. Ujifusa
Since the time of its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, Point Breeze has been a no-frills working class neighborhood. It was first settled by Eastern European Jews, many of whom set up shops on Point Breeze Avenue and lived in apartments above their businesses. Italian and Irish immigrants soon followed.i Conditions were primitive: chickens in backyards were a common sight. By the 1930s, these immigrant groups were joined by African-Americans from the Deep South, who had come to Philadelphia looking for work and to escape Jim...
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West Philadelphia: A Suburb in a City
By Steven B. Ujifusa
When the University of Pennsylvania moved to its new campus in 1873, West Philadelphia was almost entirely rural. The University enrollment at the time was small and the student body almost entirely local. There would be no dormitories for another thirty years. Students either lived in rooming houses or commuted to campus from their parents’ homes. Each undergraduate class had fewer than 20 students. Law students spent most of their time learning on the job from partners at the prominent downtown firms, not in the classroom.
Penn’s relative...
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An Irish Village in Philadelphia: Grays Ferry
By Steven B. Ujifusa
The area now known as Grays Ferry was named after George Gray, who maintained a floating bridge across the Schuylkill in the mid-18th century. He also operated a well-known pleasure garden popular with Philadelphians who, according to one guidebook, “sought a few hours’ relaxation from the cares of business; near enough to court the visits of the idler and pleasure-seeker, and abounding in facilities for rational enjoyment…”
But as the nineteenth century progressed, so did the march of industry. As the same publication lamented, “the age of utility has shorn Gray’s Gardens of...
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The Lost World of North Broad Street
By Steven B. Ujifusa
Mention North Broad Street today, and the image that comes to mind is one of desolation and decay. But in the late nineteenth century, this thoroughfare was a boulevard for the Gilded Age industrial rich. Rittenhouse Square might have been Philadelphia’s most prestigious residential address, but North Broad Street was arguably the most colorful and fanciful. There was a Frank Furness-designed temple for Congregation Rodeph Shalom, a Willis Hale-designed baroque castle for Peter Widener, and the world’s largest opera house designed by William H. McElfatrick. These large structures, to borrow a phrase...
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After the Fair: The Development of Parkside
By Steven B. Ujifusa
After the 1876 Centennial Exposition closed, all but two of the fair’s buildings, as well as the surrounding temporary hotels on Elm Avenue, were torn down. Even the Main Exhibition Building – its 21.5 acres of floor space made it the largest building in the world -- wasn’t spared from the wreckers.i Only Memorial Hall, a massive granite edifice capped by a glass-and-cast-iron dome, remained as a visible reminder of the exposition that attracted over 10 million visitors and showcased industrial Philadelphia to the world.
As part of Fairmount Park, the...
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The Callowhill Neighborhood
By Deborah Boyer
Located north of Center City, the Callowhill neighborhood is bordered roughly by the Vine Street Expressway to the south, Spring Garden Street to the north, 8th Street to the east, and Broad Street to the west. The neighborhood takes its name from Callowhill Street, which runs east-west through the center of the neighborhood. Originally designated by William Penn as New Street, Callowhill was later renamed to honor Hannah Callowhill, Penn’s second wife.
Much of Callowhill was farmland until the 1840s. When the gigantic Baldwin Locomotive Company built its plant near Buttonwood Street west of...
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The Jewish Quarter of Philadelphia
By Harry Boonin
Years ago, cities and towns in Europe had Jewish quarters. Most were finitely defined. When the east European Jewish immigrants began coming to the United States en masse, Jewish quarters sprung up in cities along the eastern seaboard. Some were loosely defined, others more precisely. In the early years of Jewish mass immigration, a fairly sizeable Jewish quarter was established in a well-defined area of old Philadelphia, today known as Society Hill and Queen Village. In The Presbyterian, a weekly journal published in Philadelphia in 1889 for the Presbyterian community, the editor wrote:...
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Immigrant Jewish Philadelphia: School Days
By Harry D. Boonin
Going through photographs on PhillyHistory.org, I was struck by the number of photos showing Philadelphia public grade schools from years ago, most now torn down although some still remain. These photographs show the construction of new schools during the period of heavy immigration into the country at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries as well as the inside of classrooms, the first day of school, schoolyards, formally posed photographs of classes and informal scenes of children playing in the schoolyards. In The Immigrant Jew in America, edited by Edmund...
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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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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...