Month: June 2006

Categories
Events and People

Cradle of Independence


 

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 again in a position of great importance, serving as the country’s capital.

With such a background, it is not surprising that the government and the American people became interested in preserving the architecture surrounding these events. On June 28, 1948, President Truman signed into law a bill allowing for the creation of Independence National Historical Park, which included such sites as Independence Hall.

The area around Independence Hall did not always appear as open as it does today. When plans began to create the park, the surrounding locale was a commercial district, as is somewhat evidenced in this much earlier photograph, taken in 1900. The plans called for the demolition of “non-historic” nineteenth-century buildings, leaving behind only Revolutionary-era structures. However, because the federal government did not own the land in the proposed park, it became the first national park to require the purchase of the property it was to be built upon. The government spent close to $3 million alone for the block opposite Independence Hall (Chestnut and Market Streets). Some local businessmen opposed the proposal, suggesting that the money could be better spent cleaning up Philadelphia’s rivers and slums. Planners moved forward, regardless, ultimately creating the park we know and celebrate today.

References:

  • Grieff, Constance M. Independence: The Creation of a National Park. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.

  • Mires, Charlene. Independence Hall in American Memory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

  • National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Independence National Historical Park. http://www.nps.gov/inde/ (accessed 29 June 2006).

Categories
Entertainment

See and Hear the World’s Greatest Entertainer!


 

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. The film marked singing sensation Al Jolson’s follow-up to the 1927 smash-hit The Jazz Singer. Like the earlier film, The Singing Fool was a “talkie.” It contributed to the popularity of musicals and the standardization of sound in motion pictures. One can imagine the excitement with which Philadelphians and other Americans greeted the new technology. Although Top 40 music charts did not exist in 1927, it is estimated that the film’s song “Sonny Boy” achieved the equivalent of number-one status.

During The Singing Fool’s finale, Jolson performed “Sonny Boy” in blackface. White working-class entertainers popularized this convention during the mid-1800s. They applied burnt cork to their faces in order to portray dimwitted “darky” or “coon” characters. Blackface remained popular during the vaudeville era. We rightfully find such overtly racist imagery repellent, but, at the time, many white theatergoers accepted and enjoyed these performances, as evidenced by the prominent displays of a “blacked up” Jolson on the theatre posters. Blackface’s popularity highlights the complicated nature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century race relations. One recent historian argues that white society’s feelings toward blacks and their culture combined resentment, sympathy, and cooptation, or both “love and theft.” In the post-vaudeville era, more enlightened racial sensibilities emerged, leading to a decline in public tolerance for blackface. The practice serves as a painful reminder of America’s struggles with bigotry.

References:

Categories
Urban Planning

Buying Happiness


 

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. He ran ads and columns in newspapers, advertising not only the goods he had for sale, but what could be done with these goods and telling stories about where they came from.

Wanamaker’s Department Store is also a famous example of the emergence of shopping as a form of entertainment. Not only could shoppers come to the store knowing exactly what they wanted, thanks to the advertisements they read, but they could also take in the shopping experience. Wanamaker’s store was among the first stores to use electric lights to illuminate its interiors. Shoppers could also listen to music from the second largest organ in the world, installed during the store’s 1911 expansion.

References:

Categories
Urban Planning

Back to Nature


 

Founded in 1855, Fairmount Park was created by the City Council in an effort to protect both the Philadelphia’s water supply and the general health of the people. Several epidemics across the city, including an outbreak of yellow fever in the 1790s, prompted this interest in protecting municipal drinking water. In addition, rising pollution from factories and industry endangered the waterways.

As time passed, the park grew both in size and in popularity as a recreation spot. The park, like many of the Victorian era, was intended to be a quiet area for relaxation and a place in which people could escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Disadvantaged schoolchildren went on field trips to the park, and there were numerous opportunities for others to vacation there by staying in one of the many inns along Wissahickon Creek. Many of these buildings, however, were demolished when the park was created. The Valley Green Hotel (now the Valley Green Inn restaurant), seen in the photograph above, is the last of these roadhouses to survive.

References:

Categories
Neighborhoods

Mmmmm . . . Beeeer


 

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 vaults located in the city’s northwest suburbs. Ice culled from the Schuylkill River kept the beer from spoiling.

During the 1880s, word of Philadelphia’s delectable lagers spread. To keep up with the increased demands (and to take advantage of new advances in refrigeration technology) Philadelphia’s brewers moved to large state-of-the-art breweries in the city’s 29th ward, earning it the moniker, Brewerytown. By the turn of the century, eleven large breweries had made Brewerytown their home. Immigrants eager to find jobs and to support such industries as malt houses, equipment suppliers, and and saloons followed close behind and turned the area into one of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods. The footbridge featured in the picture above (located near 29th and Parrish) likely carried workers to and from their jobs at the Bergdorff Beer plant that stands tall in the background.

References:

  • Dochter, Rich, and Rich Wagner. “Brewerytown U.S.A.” Pennsylvania Heritage 17 (Summer 1991): 24-31.

  • Wagner, Rick. “Brewerytown, Philadelphia – The Grand Daddy of ‘Em All!” http://pabreweryhistorians.tripod.com/grandaddy.htm (accessed 30 May 2006).

Categories
Entertainment

Signs, Signs. . .


 

Some people (the Five Man Electrical Band included) may call them eyesores, but billboards reveal much about the changing urban landscape during the modern era.

By the early twentieth century, advertisers, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, had progressed beyond pasting handbills onto walls. Drivers passing the intersection of Broad Street and Girard Avenue in 1917 saw a wealth of consumables foisted upon them. Razor blades, food, and wine ads foreshadowed the increasing importance of consumption in sustaining the American economy.

But we also see that billboards often included more patriotic messages. An ad for Liberty Bonds reminded Philadelphians to assist the war effort and to remember the boys fighting the Great War “over there” on the Allied side.

More Information:

  • Gudis, Catherine. Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape. New York: Routledge, 2004.