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The Society Hill based H.O. Wilbur & Sons Chocolate Company started making and selling Wilbur Buds in 1894. The lookalike Hershey Kiss was first marketed in 1907. There are differences. One might argue that the Kiss has long been the runaway winner in terms of candy making and marketing. But in 1926, the Bud had […]
Rebuilding rendered the brick building at Pine and Quince Streets barely recognizable. But the three-story structure, once known as the J. Sylvester Ramsey School carries with it a web of worthy associations. Those of a certain age will remember the building as Phineas Meade’s antiquarian den, an overcrowded haven for all things old, dusty and […]
Passing the so-called Dirty Frank’s Bar, an amble down Pine Street soon becomes unremarkable. That wasn’t always the case. A century ago, 1237 Pine Street, also known as James Eham’s Antique Store, formed a distinctive western anchor on what would become known as Philadelphia’s Antique Row. Eham’s eclectic tastes were on full display here. As […]
Everyone in the ceremonial photo-op at the gigantic “Reading Depression” featured in our previous post at PhillyHistory knew handshakes could only go so far. The December 17, 1898 celebration was tainted by the knowledge of a recent death of a laborer. And that was hardly the first causality. Michael O’Hearn, aged 38, and Benjamin F. […]
One September afternoon in 1898 an Inquirer reporter, accompanied by an artist, “walked over the entire route” of the Reading subway, a massive project stretching from 12th Street to 30th Street. When completed, this now-defunct subway would accommodate locomotives hauling raw materials and freight through one of the city’s most industrialized neighborhoods. Yet one wouldn’t […]
It was 1952 and Philadelphians were searching for a new identity. Democrats had taken City Hall and urban renewal dollars were poised to pour in from Washington. Gimbel Brothers Department Store at 10th and Market Streets had sponsored a “Better Philadelphia Exhibition“ and now, with the betterment begun, executives wanted to celebrate the new and […]
Something had to give. Philadelphia’s outbursts of street violence in the 1830s grew even more familiar in the following decades. “By any measure,” writes historian Michael Feldberg, “the period from 1835 to 1850s was the most violent in Philadelphia history.” And then something gave. A group of well-intentioned, philanthropic citizens donated $34,000 for what they […]
”A brand new idea in motion picture theaters here was launched last night,” boasted Inquirer film critic Mildred Martin. In the depths of the Great Depression, this brand new “intimate auditorium,” an Art Deco confection called the Trans-Lux, promised to transform traditional movie goers into 20th-century citizen-spectators. Instead of screening Hollywood’s latest feature films, the […]
Morton Livingston Schamberg believed in the power of art, specifically modern art. As a Philadelphia-born and trained artist who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts then Paris, Schamberg put his work, and his faith, in New York’s Armory Show in 1913. He also stepped up as both practitioner and advocate for all […]
Alba Johnson, president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, believed Philadelphia was due for “a moral awakening.” Citizens had drifted away from “the virtues which made the American people what they are: purity, modesty, contentment and thrift.” An obsession with material things, which Johnson characterized as “the universal craze for riches,” sapped the city’s “moral strength.” […]