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How Philly Got Flat: Piling it on at the Logan Triangle

1895: Detail of Wingohocking Creek and the projected street grid from the G. W. Bromley Philadelphia Atlas. (Philadelphia GeoHistory Network)

Rolling Hills? Maybe once upon a time. But at the dawn of the 20th century, when the City of Homes meant rowhouses, as far as the eye could see, Philadelphia had to be flator as close to flat as humanly possibleif it was to have any value on the real estate market.

And so, one by one, Nature’s dips, rises and rolls were raised up or shaved down as the city grid marched north. Once flattened, Philly invited horse drawn streetcars on its newly leveled streets, which meant developers and then new residents. Mile by mile, that’s how the city boomed to more than double its population between the Civil War and 1900.

1903: Taking the Wingohocking underground. Sewer Construction at 7th and Courtland Streets. Detail. (PhillyHistory.org)

As mid-century became turn-of-the-century,Broad Street forged northward past Ridge Avenue to Monument Cemetery (Temple University, today). It then trundled over the bridge at Cohocksink Creek (soon to become Dauphin Street), over Gunners Run (just south of the would-be Allegheny Avenue) and past Hunting Park, where a race-course-turned-public-park sprawled to the east. Now, little more than a wide lane, Broad Street approached the largest creek so farthe Wingohocking. And as it flowed eastward to join Frankford Creek, the Wingohocking did what creeks do: it meandered a bit to the north, and then a bit to the south, crossing where Courtland Street was supposed to be, no less than four times from Broad to 6th.

What’s to be done when the dips are gullies are actually valleys surrounded by rolling hills? Philly’s flatlanders had a ready-made solution. Run the creeks through giant culverts: massive, man-made, underground masonry aqueducts large enough to allow Mother Nature to carry on unimpeded—out of sight— and possibly out of mind. And even more convenient: these hidden, creek beds could double as the city’s backup sewer system, on an as-needed basis, when the occasional flood strikes. Above, on the level, it’s business as usual.Or that was the idea.

So they channeled the Wingahocking where it meandered. And over it, and over anything that laid lower than the idea grade for Philadelphia, well, that, too, would be covered with a deep layer of fill. Ambitious? To be sure. But doable.

2000: Detail of Map Showing the Distribution of Fill in the Frankford and Germantown Quadrangles (U.S. Department of the Interior / U.S. Geological Survey) Click image for original map (7.2MB PDF).

By the 1880s, historians Scharf and Westcott had seen it happen, again and again. “There have been great changes in the face of [Philadelphia], in its levels and contour, and in the direction and beds of its water-courses… Some streams have disappeared, some have changed their direction, nearly all have been reduced in volume and depth…in the building of a great city.” Scharf and Wescott had seen a lot, but nothing like was about to happen along the Wingohocking. As water historian Adam Levine tells it: “In some watersheds, it took many years to completely obliterate the main stream and its tributaries.” West Philadelphia’s conversion from Mill Creek to sewer “took more than 25 years, and the city’s largest such project, the burying of both branches of Wingohocking Creek, took about 40 years.” Raising the 80-acre Winghocking valley up to city grid grade would require as much as 40 feet of fill.

Aside from urban esthetics and environmental ethics, this massive project had every reason to work—if only the contractors had used rock and soil for fill. But, in one of Philadelphia’s most egregious and purposeful bungles, the fill hauled in by specially-designed streetcars was ash and cinder, an estimated 500,000 cubic yards of it. In time, the consequences would be as dire as the hauling and dumping project had been efficient. “It took decades for the inadequacy of the ash to be revealed,” writes Levine. But when the fill washed away, gas lines ruptured and the neighborhood above found itself in the midst of “an epidemic…of sagging porches, cracking foundations” and worse, much worse.

The saga of Philadelphia’s Logan Triangle had begun.

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Hungry for Authenticity at Second and Walnut

John Krider’s Gun Shop, Southeast corner of Walnut and Second Streets, Photograph by John Moran, ca. 1869. (PhillyHistory.org/Free Library of Philadelphia).

Back when big fish like Frank Sinatra, Elisabeth Taylor, Joe DiMaggio or John Wayne dined at Bookbinders, Philadelphia was still a W.C. Fields joke, rich in history and starved of self-esteem. The restaurant was more about fine spin than fine cuisine, but there weren’t many choices back then. So, again and again, from the 50s through the 80s, Bookbinders got to call the shots when it came to its many expansions, often at the expense of the very history it claimed to serve up as a side dish.

The first example: the 200-year-old Drinker-Krider building at 2nd and Walnut Streets. Soon after Bookbinders bought it, they demolished it.

Legend has it, John Drinker built this house in 1751, many years after having been born in a log cabin on the same site. (Legend also has it that Drinker witnessed William Penn’s arrival in the 1680s.) In the middle of the 19th century, a gunsmith named John Krider bought the place and operated what became a famous gun shop and taxidermy business there. Hunters and fisherman found everything there,  from Krider’s hand-crafted guns and bamboo rods to his hunting books and dog biscuits. The building at 2nd and Walnut became one of those anecdote-rich, go-to sites for artists, documentarians, and, of course, tourists.

Now, with a new owner in July 1952, this historic building itself was about to fall prey.

2nd Street South: Northeast Corner Walnut, John Drinker House Kreider’s Gun Store. Book #5, Survey of Philadelphia (1930). Photograph by Carollo R. Widdop. (PhillyHistory.org)

“Nowhere in the country is there a comparable collection of early buildings, wrote architect Grant Miles Simon in 1953, noting losses from “ruthless destruction…in the name of modern progress.”  These survivors, wrote Simon, “constitute an invaluable part of the documentation of American history. They were lived in by, and were familiar sights to, the many great figures of the Revolutionary and the Federal eras. Their days are few unless a tardy appreciation makes a permanent place for them in the City plan.”

When push came to shove, would Simon stand up for the lowly Drinker-Krider place? We’d like to think he saw it bordering the grand, Beaux-Arts, shrine-studded greensward he proposed eastward from Independence Hall in 1947. We’d like to think he imagined a role for near-shrines and even for non-shrines.

But the Drinker-Krider building was found to be flawed. A report by the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) found “the brick bearing walls…in poor structural condition…the south end of the party wall was extremely weak…the timber framing was badly deteriorated in spots and was in a generally weakened condition.” But instead of strengthening the walls and the framing, the building’s new owners chose to have the building condemned. They allowed HABS in for thorough documentation, then they pulled it down.

Wanting to have history both ways, Bookbinders hired Simon, who in 1956 was freshly appointed to chair the Philadelphia Historical Commission, to design a “meticulous copy” of the Drinker-Krider building, one that would allow them to expand their restaurant. On December 20, 1960, Mayor Richardson Dilworth, Mrs. Bookbinder and another official used a three-handled shovel to break ground for the new wing. With a new presence on this historic corner, across from the new Independence Historical National park, the restaurant would be able to open two new venues: the “Signers’ Dining Room” and the “Hall of Patriots Banquet Room”.

Northeast Corner of 2nd & Walnut Streets, November 29, 1961. Photograph Carollo R. Widdop. (PhillyHistory,org)

As it turned out, the reconstruction wasn’t meticulous. The new brick color lacked the hue and richness of the original; its fresh patina wasn’t anything  like what had been demolished. By comparison, the plaster cove cornice wasn’t as gutsy (HABS documented the orignal) and the shutters seemed soulless. Character and authenticity were gone. The reconstruction introduced a sad whiff of mid-20thcentury uncertainty to the heart of Philadelphia’s historic district.

The past isn’t about great shrines or grand vistas. Real historic cities grow over time, and they grow unpredictably. They can’t be intentionally made, and they certainly can’t be remade. At its fleeting best, Philadelphia is always about its many modest, authentic gems. Each has its own story, texture, character, and distinctiveness. Kind of like a great meal.

So far as authentic history was concerned, Philadelphians would go hungry at 2nd and Walnut. That banquet would have to be found elsewhere.