Philadelphia: South of Market and East of Broad
By Gus Spector
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About this ebook
Gus Spector
Gus Spector, a native of Philadelphia, is a graduate of South Philadelphia High School and Temple University. Spector is a member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia, and the American Philatelic Society. He is the author of Philadelphia: Historic Exteriors and Interiors and Center City Philadelphia.
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Philadelphia - Gus Spector
collection.
INTRODUCTION
There is no Fourteenth Street in Philadelphia. It is named Broad Street. There is no First Street in Philadelphia. It is called Front Street. The founding fathers planned Philadelphia on a grid system, which one would think easy to decipher. However, the occasional traveler lost in the city might do well to consult a guide map or, nowadays, a GPS or Internet map site, since its topographical quirks can be deceiving.
Philadelphia: South of Market and East of Broad is not meant to be a laundry list of significant Philadelphia landmarks on a street-by-street basis. Rather, the reader will find that the images contained within this book are grouped according to basic areas of the city. There are also several chapters that have been included just because they were fun to research. Chapter 1, titled Old and Older,
presents antique views of a number of Philadelphia landmarks, followed by more contemporary
(i.e., early-20th-century) images of the same areas. For example, a postcard illustrating the location at Market and Seventh Streets where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776 is matched with a comparable view from 1907.
It was impractical to illustrate every known postcard view of East Market Street in chapter 2, Market Street Days.
Instead, interesting and poignant views, spanning over 40 decades, have been presented. Market Street was replete with enough movie theaters to satisfy almost any taste. The facade of the early Unique Theatre, which ran continuous daily vaudeville performances, and the marquee of the Palace Theatre, were chosen as representative examples. Market Street was the epicenter of the city’s many department stores; a history of their rise and fall has been capsulized.
Chapter 3, Belly Up to the Bar,
is a barhopping romp through some of Philadelphia’s early 20th-century drinking establishments. As the saying goes, Philadelphia was a great place to visit
and, evidently, a great place to partake of alcoholic beverages as well.
In chapters 4 and 5, this author has utilized his editorial prerogative, loosely grouping images according to their approximate locales within the city. The 1994 edition of the Philadelphia Almanac and Citizens’ Manual and Wikipedia have been used as source material for the definitions of its various boundaries.
According to the 1994 almanac, Society Hill is located between Walnut and Pine Streets, from the Delaware River west toward Seventh Street. South Philadelphia is defined as the area south of South Street, between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. The almanac also lists Washington Square area as being west of Society Hill, between Market and South Streets. Washington Square West is defined as the area encompassed between Seventh and Broad Streets and between Chestnut and South Streets. To add to this confusion, Wikipedia states that Washington Square West and Society Hill are both part of the Washington Square neighborhood.
Chapter 6, Little Streets, Big Doings,
focuses on some of the smaller streets and walkways made famous because of their historic contributions. Camac Street has been called the Avenue of the Artists,
a moniker that has been posted on a pole directly below the city’s official Camac Street sign. Sansom Street, another of the important smaller streets, has long been dubbed Jewelers’ Row,
the scenes of which presented in this chapter are of a varied nature.
Chapter 7, North of South Street,
brings to light a number of interesting snapshots of the quaint and picturesque area located between South and Chestnut Streets. Until the 1950s, South Street bustled with retail merchandisers, many of whom literally attempted to drag passersby off of the sidewalk and into their stores. Chapter 7 also includes views of historic Pennsylvania Hospital (the first hospital in the United States), the old and new buildings of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Walnut Street Theatre, and several hotels reminiscent of a bygone era. The Starr Garden Park, located on Sixth Street near Lombard Street, is featured at a time when it was still a fledgling addition to the community. Located on Sixth Street, directly across from Starr Garden Park, was the tiny storefront business of Levis’ Hot Dogs, of which, disappointingly, no postcard exists.
Chapter 8, Heading Toward the South of the City,
portrays the neighborhood streets, the places of worship, and the nostalgia of South Philadelphia, including its Italian Market. This large section of the city, once predominately populated by those of Eastern and Western European ancestry, is now home to many of Asian and Hispanic origins.
The title of chapter 9, The Broad Street Run,
is a play on words, in this book pertaining to the length of Philadelphia’s South Broad Street. Its actual meaning, however, is a reference to an annual event that has been taking place since the 1980s. The largest 10-mile footrace in the United States, the Broad Street Run is a gala event scheduled each year on the first Sunday in May. In 2012, a total of 40,689 participants ran along Broad Street from T.S. (Taras Shevchenko) Park in the Logan neighborhood of North Philadelphia, past city hall, and down to the finish line at the Navy Yard in South Philadelphia.
Chapter 9 mentions the terms the Neck
and the Ma’sh
(marsh), which were, in the late 19th century, the southernmost limits of the city. The Neck originally