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Carstairs Row
By Timothy Horning
Perhaps one of the things Philadelphia is famous for is its abundance of rowhouses. In fact, rowhomes are the single most numerous type of housing in the city. From small, utilitarian houses in the older sections of Philadelphia such as Queen Village to the large rows complete with porches, bay windows, and gingerbread trim in West Philadelphia, the row home provided Philadelphians with a space efficient and cost efficient means of housing in a rapidly expanding and industrializing city.
In envisioning Philadelphia, William Penn had planned a "greene country towne" where homes would occupy...
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The Pennsylvania Railroads Philadelphia Improvements, Part II
By Ron Hoess
Last month we looked at the Pennsylvania Railroads Philadelphia Improvements starting with the construction of Suburban Station followed by construction of the north wing of 30th Street Station, which opened September 28, 1930. Despite the Depression, construction would continue on the remaining major portion of 30th Street Station. From the outset, the Pennsylvania Railroad intended the station to be a magnificent structure. After soliciting numerous design proposals, the railroad finally settled on the architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White for their design of a Grecian style station built of structural...
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The Pennsylvania Railroads Philadelphia Improvements, Part I
By Ron Hoess
During the early 1920s, the Pennsylvania Railroad began planning for major changes to its infrastructure in the busy Philadelphia area, with the goal of expediting passenger traffic. While Broad Street Station presented an ideal location for the termination of inbound commuter traffic, a major drawback was its stub-ended design, which forced through trains destined for other cities to retrace their steps to West Philadelphia Station before continuing their journey.
To resolve this problem, the railroad planned two large construction projects.1 The first part of the plan was to replace the company...
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The Reading Railroad's Turn of the Century Big Dig, Part Two
By Ron Hoess
Last month, we discussed the Reading Railroad's ambitious plans for placing their City Branch below ground level. One part was the construction of a tunnel beneath Pennsylvania Avenue. The tunnel was to be 2888 feet long and of sufficient width to hold four tracks, two for the main line into the city and two for storage.1 At the time, steam power still ruled the rails, so providing suitable ventilation for a tunnel of this length was not a trivial engineering problem. Extensive correspondence over the issue survives in the Reading archives. Ultimately, the...
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The Reading Railroad's Turn of the Century Big Dig, Part I
By Ron Hoess
If one were to explore the neighborhood just north of Callowhill Street between 20th and Broad Street, the casual observer might be perplexed by what appears to be a sunken urban greenway running parallel to Callowhill Street. This trench, some 40 feet wide and 20 feet deep, is now overgrown with trees and littered with trash. While it is hard to imagine, this was once a busy railroad thoroughfare belonging to the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad. The origins of this portion of the railroad date back more than a century and represented an...
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The Olmsted Brothers' Artificial Nature: South Philadelphia's League Island (F.D.R) Park
By Christopher Dougherty
When author Christopher Morley sauntered around "the Neck" one hot summer evening in the early 20th century, to his surprise he found Philadelphians living an almost rural existence amid the marshes, ash heaps and junk yards. But Morley saw that the boggy land where the Delaware met the Schuylkill - "the canal country of South Philadelphia" - held great promise. He longed to see the "wonderful Dutch meadows of the Neck reclaimed into one of the world’s loveliest riverside parks."
Perhaps Morley knew of the city's plan for a South Philadelphia park...
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Broad Street Station
By Ron Hoess
While intercity travel today primarily involves the automobile or airplane, a century ago the passenger train represented the principal mode of long distance travel. The increasing volume of rail passengers in the late 1800's required railroads to find efficient ways of delivering passengers to their destinations. In Philadelphia, the problem for the Pennsylvania Railroad was the lack of a station that would deliver passengers directly into Center City Philadelphia. In 1879, the railroad devised a plan to construct a large passenger station at Broad and Market Streets, directly opposite City Hall. The station...
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The Schuylkill Expressway: Modern Highway or "Worst Mistake"?
By Christopher R. Dougherty
Though he later regretted his steadfast support for the intrusive road, mayor Richardson Dilworth saw the construction of the Schuylkill Expressway as a necessary component of the region's postwar transportation overhaul. To Dilworth and other transit planners, the specter of gridlocked colonial streets loomed large. As early as 1931, a regional planner had derided Philadelphia's lack of interest in the public infrastructure, calling the city a "growing child in late adolescence," or "an ailing adult . . . rotting at the core." With the Depression and World War II...
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Back to Nature
By Heather Newlin
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...
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The Hidden River, Part Two
By Jay Wyatt
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Philadelphia matured into a fully-grown industrial city. Awash in new office buildings, new factories, new neighborhoods, and new citizens, the city underwent a dramatic transformation. Immigrant newspapers proliferated. South Philadelphia developed into an enclave for Italian immigrants. German immigrants headed into North Philadelphia and Germantown. And many middle-class workers capitalized on their newfound economic stability and headed across the Schuylkill River. There they made West Philadelphia the city's first true suburb.
As the largest tributary of the Delaware River, the Schuylkill River was an integral...