Author Archives: Steven Ujifusa
A Philadelphia Quaker and Fabric Row
“He is genial, yet you take no advantage of it; he is kindly, but his eyes can grow hard upon necessity,” said one journalist about Philadelphia mover-and-shaker Clement Acton Griscom (1841-1912), the most powerful shipping mogul in 1900s America. Clement Griscom was a birthright Quaker, but plain he most definitely was not. He dressed in [...]
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When Biddle Met Duesenberg
The early twentieth century was the Wild West of the American automotive era. Hundreds of manufacturers sprung up in cities and towns across the nation. Most failed within a year, usually after producing only a dozen machines. In 1915, Philadelphia auto enthusiasts opened their magazines to see advertisements trumpeting a new American luxury car. The [...]
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The Night Philadelphia Met Mahler
When the wild-haired Leopold Stokowski took command of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912, his theatricality was greatly at odds with his proper Philadelphia patrons. Tall, dapper, charming with the ladies, and more than a little vain, he was the epitome of European cosmopolitanism. The London-born son of a Polish father and an Irish mother, Stokowski [...]
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Before the Academy: Classical Music in the Quaker City
During the late eighteenth century, Philadelphia’s Quaker elite had a dim view of the performing arts. For a sect that prized plainness, industry, and silence, European high culture represented frivolity and unnecessary “fanciness.” Having a harpsichord or fortepiano in one’s house could mean being “read out” of meeting, and Friends schools forbade keyboard instruments until [...]
The First and Only to One of Many: How a Coffee Shop Helped Transform Spruce Hill
Soon after moving to West Philadelphia in 1995, Douglas Witmer joked with his brother-in-law Dan Thut that one day they would open up a coffee shop in the Spruce Hill section of West Philadelphia. Neither had business experience. Douglas studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His wife’s brother Dan had a background in [...]
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William Warren Gibbs: The Rise and Fall of A Gilded Age Promoter
William Warren Gibbs arrived in Philadelphia around 1880 with little more than a smooth tongue and gas-making equipment for sale. Born in 1846 in the small town of Hope, New Jersey, Gibbs dropped out of school to work in a local store, and then married Frances Ayres Johnson, the daughter of a prominent Hackettstown merchant. [...]
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Gothic Ruins: A Last Glimpse Inside Northeast Manual Training High School
The former Northeast Manual Training High School looks as if it had been plucked from the Princeton campus and dropped into the middle of North Philadelphia. Constructed in 1903 at the intersection of North 8th Street and West Lehigh Avenue, the “Collegiate Gothic” building has walls of granite, traceried windows, and gargoyles sprouting from the [...]
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“The Cliffs”: Fairmount Park Ruins with a Link to Joseph Wharton
During the winter months, drivers along the Schuylkill Expressway may notice the broken shell of a house near the Girard Avenue Bridge. Its battered, honey-colored walls are marred by bright graffiti. Its roof is gone, windows vacant. This forlorn ruin, once known as “The Cliffs,” was long ago the childhood home of one of America’s [...]
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The Bernsteins Move to Wynnefield
This is a continuation of the story of the Slifkin family, which had settled in Parkside in the early 1900s. By the end of the 1920s, many upwardly-mobile Jewish families were leaving Parkside-Girard and moving to the Wynnefield neighborhood, nestled to the south of City Avenue. Unlike the rambling (and increasingly outdated) Victorian mansions and [...]
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1601 Locust Street and “The Perfect Square”