© Preston Thayer and Jed
Porter, Workshop of the World (Oliver Evans Press,
1990).
The West Philadelphia story
is one that is generally associated with transportation.
The Schuylkill River was an obstacle over which much
pioneering bridge building stepped, and in the early
years of the twentieth century, West Philadelphia became
a "streetcar suburb."
Thomas Paine, pamphleteer of the American Revolution,
drew up plans for an iron bridge to cross the Schuylkill.
A model was made and exhibited in both Philadelphia and
Paris, but the design was never executed. Had it been, it
would have been the first iron bridge in America.
The first covered bridge in America crossed the
Schuylkill at Market Street (1801-1805), and the Spring
Garden Bridge, which opened in 1813, had an arch chord
measuring 340 feet, nearly 100 feet longer than any other
span at that time. Also a covered bridge, the Spring
Garden Bridge was designed by Louis Wernwag,
"architecturally assisted" by Robert Mills. Wernwag's
bridge was known as the "Upper Ferry Bridge." It, in
turn, was replaced by an early wire suspension bridge in
1842, to a design by Charles Ellet, Jr., also called the
"Wire Bridge." 1
Not only did the present-day residential setting arise
from improved access to Center City Philadelphia
engendered by the Market Street Elevated Railroad, but
the industrial activity in West Philadelphia was to a
large extent comprised of carriage and wagonworks,
blacksmiths, and livery stables. The Greenville section
(bordered by Market Street, Powelton Avenue, and
Lancaster Avenue) for instance began as a drovers'
meetingplace in the nineteenth century.
West Philadelphia north of Market Street has undergone a
number of transformations since the first half of the
nineteenth century, when speculation in real estate
established it as an early suburb. By the 1840s, cottages
had appeared in Powelton, Hamiltonville, and
Mantua. 2
The second half
of the nineteenth century witnessed a rapid expansion of
housing, almost entirely row houses, constructed to
accommodate middle-class Philadelphians leaving older
neighborhoods. That development was continued by the
construction of the Market Street Elevated Railroad
westward between 1904 and 1907. An advertisement in 1909
for D. F. McConnell, a developer who occupied offices at
5908 Market Street, noted that "these modern porch
houses" 3
were near the
elevated railroad and, hence, a journey of only ten
minutes to Center City. Lancaster Avenue was lined with
shops, bakeries, and confectioneries to serve a new
clientele. 4
Just as
immigrants from Europe occupied and then abandoned
neighborhoods as their mobility increased, so in the
1920s, African-Americans from the South found the only
affordable housing in parts of North and West
Philadelphia. 5
South of Market Street, a thriving light industrial
center grew up around the Pennsylvania Railroad's 30th
Street yards by the mid-nineteenth century. Dominating
dozens of small manufacturing buildings at that time were
the Allison & Sons Car & Tube Works (31st-32nd
Streets; south of Chestnut Street to the Schuylkill
River) and Job T. Pugh's Auger Works (Pugh Alley, west of
30th Street). The latter, established in 1774, was one of
the many metalworking companies in West Philadelphia and
remained active into the twentieth century.
With the purchase of 10-1/2 acres from the City of
Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania abandoned
its site at 9th and Chestnut Streets in Center City and
established its campus on the west banks of the
Schuylkill River. The cornerstone of College Hall was
laid in June 1871, and other construction soon
followed. 6
The expansion of
adjacent Drexel University (begun in 1891, with its chief
objective being the "extension and improvement of
industrial education"), the creation of the University
City Science Center, and commercial development likewise
had an impact on the eastern section of West
Philadelphia.
Although such a concentration of factories, such as the
Bonney Vise Works at 3015 Chestnut Street, the Junction
Car Works at 32nd and Chestnut Streets, and the Otto Gas
Engine Manufacturing Company at 33rd Walnut Streets
(which were all demolished), was not typical of West
Philadelphia north of Market Street, nevertheless, in the
last years of the nineteenth century and in the early
decades of this century, the neighborhoods boasted an
extraordinary collection of enterprises, remarkable for
its diversity as well as its shifts in scale. Found along
the area's streets were carpenters', printers', and
marble cutters' shops, bakeries, slaughterhouses, ice
houses, milk depots, livery stables, and small factories
which produced cigars, mirrors, and frames; as well as
larger facilities like the Standard Roller Bearing
Company factory (Merion Avenue between 48th and 51st
Streets), now partly demolished, and the Robert Smith Ale
Brewing Company (38th Street and Girard Avenue), which
was demolished. Other industries included the
Chambers Brothers Machine Works and Foundry (52nd and
Media Streets), the Oriental Mills of George Brooks and
Son (55th and Pennsgrove Streets), the Penn Worsted Mills
(54th and Poplar Streets), Yewdall's Mills (55th Street
and Girard Avenue), the Philadelphia Elevator Company
(3207-11 Spring Garden Street), and the Eclipse Cement
& Blacking Company (Belmont Avenue at Thompson
Street).
In those neighborhoods which were predominantly
residential, a configuration emerged: a string of row
houses was bounded at its corners by a grocery or tavern;
a surprising number of blocks also included a Chinese
laundry.
Those sites spared demolition in recent decades have not
always enjoyed a kinder fate; renovation has radically
altered their character as can be seen in the blocks of
Lancaster Avenue between 39th and 46th Streets, and
neglect has taken its toll on the row houses. Still, West
Philadelphia has retained its vitality despite its losses
and is home for working and middle-class Philadelphians,
whose efforts, along with gentrification in University
City, have prevented further encroachment of decay.
Today West Philadelphia's industry is concentrated at the
southern edge of the district and along the main line of
the Pennsylvania Railroad.
1 M. Lafitte
Vieira, West
Philadelphia Illustrated (Philadelphia, 1903).
2 Edwin Wolf II,
Philadelphia:
Portrait of an American City (Philadelphia, 1975), p. 180.
3 Edward Teitelman and
Richard W. Longstreth, Architecture
in Philadelphia: A Guide (Cambridge, 1974), p. 277.
4 Teitelman and
Longstreth, p. 183.
5 Wolf, p. 264.
6 Teitelman and
Longstreth, p. 229.