Year: 2007

Categories
Historic Sites

The Divine Lorraine Hotel


 

Standing at the corner of Broad and Fairmount Streets in North Philadelphia is a building that is historically significant on a number of different levels. The Divine Lorraine Hotel, formerly known as both Lorraine Apartments and the Lorraine Hotel, was designed by architect Willis G. Hale and built between 1892 and 1894. The building originally functioned as apartments, housing some of Philadelphia’s wealthy residents.

Both the location of the building and the architecture itself reflect the changes that were occurring rapidly in the city of Philadelphia and in the country at the time. North Philadelphia of the 1880s attracted many of the city’s nouveau-riche, those individuals who became wealthy as a result of the industrial revolution. The Lorraine was a place of luxurious living, providing apartments with new amenities such as electricity. In addition, the building boasted its own staff, eliminating the need for residents to have private servants. There was also a central kitchen from which meals were delivered to residents.

The Lorraine Apartments were also an architectural feat. Prior to this period, the majority of Philadelphia’s buildings were low rise, generally being no more than three or four stories tall. Not only were construction materials and techniques not capable of supporting taller buildings, but also imagine the inconvenience of the many flights of stairs one would have to ascend in order to get to higher floors in the absence of an elevator. However, around the time of the industrial revolution, improvements in building materials made taller buildings possible. The Lorraine, at ten stories tall, was one of the first high rise apartment buildings in the city. An earlier high rise apartment building was also designed by Hale, which was built at 22nd and Chestnut Streets in 1889 and stood until demolished in 1945.


 

In 1948 the building was sold to Father Divine (aka George Baker or Reverend Major Jealous Divine). Father Divine was the leader of the Universal Peace Mission Movement. After purchasing the building, Father Divine renamed it the Divine Lorraine Hotel. His hotel was the first of its class in Philadelphia to be fully racially integrated. The Divine Lorraine was open to all who were willing to follow the rules of the movement. Among other things, these rules included no smoking, no drinking, no profanity, and no undue mixing of the sexes. Men and women therefore resided on different floors of the building. Also, guests and residents were expected to uphold a certain level of modesty, meaning that women were expected to wear long skirts – no pants. Believing that all people were equal in the sight of God, Father Divine was involved in many social welfare activities as well. For example, after purchasing the hotel, several parts of it were transformed for public use. The 10th floor auditorium was converted to a place of worship. The movement also opened the kitchen on the first floor as a public dining room where persons from the community were able to purchase and eat low cost meals for 25 cents each.

Divine’s followers ran the hotel after his death until its sale in 2000. The Universal Peace Mission Movement still exists in the form of a network of independent churches, businesses, and religious orders. Its followers also run another hotel, the Divine Tracy in West Philadelphia. The Divine Lorraine received a historical marker from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 1994 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 as a site significant in terms of both architectural and civil rights history. After its most recent purchase in 2006, future plans for the hotel included converting it into condominiums.

References:

  • ARCH: Pennsylvania’s Historic Architecture and Archaeology. http://www.arch.state.pa.us/. (accessed 29 March 2007).

  • Hotes, Robert J., et al. “Divine Lorraine Hotel Honored with Landmark Building Award.” Preservation News. http://www.preservationalliance.com/news_divine_2.php (accessed 26 March 2007).

  • Newall, Mike. “Left Behind: A rare look inside North Broad’s Divine Lorraine, a hotel with a heavenly past on the cusp of (commercial) resurrection.” Philadelphia City Paper. 13-19 January 2005. http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2005-01-13/cover.shtml (accessed 28 March 2007).

  • Rohrer, Willa. “Noble Savage: Selling the guts of a Philly landmark.” Philadelphia Weekly. 18 October 2006. http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=13214. (accessed 28 March 2007).

  • “The Universal Peace Mission Movement of Father Divine.”16 June 1997. http://www.americanreligion.org/cultwtch/frdivine.html. (accessed 28 March 2007).

  • Wikipedia. “North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Philadelphia,_Pennsylvania. (accessed 28 March 2007).

Categories
Public Services

Fires, Fights and Benjamin Franklin: Philadelphia’s Volunteer Firemen, Part Two


 

By 1752, there were already eight active fire companies in Philadelphia. That same year, Franklin built on his own achievement by helping to found the Philadelphia Contributionship, the oldest fire insurance company in America. Interestingly, though Franklin modeled his creations after their English counterparts, the American system was fundamentally different. In England, fire brigades were founded and administered by insurance companies, whose properties they protected exclusively. In America, the sequence was reversed. Though Franklin´s Contributionship and the companies that sprung up soon after followed the English practice of issuing their policy holders “fire marks” to display on their homes – many of which are still visible – Philadelphia´s fire companies would respond to any fire in their area, regardless of who insured the premises or if they were insured at all. Whether they responded more zealously to fires at buildings insured by their affiliated insurance companies – which were known to reward the firemen for saving as much of the property as they could – remains an open question.

Yet the atmosphere of selflessness and civic duty was charged with rivalry from the start. No sooner had Franklin´s Union established itself as a positive, respected force in the community than his rival Andrew Bradford, whose American Mercury competed with Franklin´s Gazette and whose violent dislike of his competitor was well known, founded his own fire company, Fellowship, in 1738. Rivalries between fire companies became especially destructive as Philadelphia´s unparalleled municipal water system ushered out the bucket-fed fire engine and ushered in the age of hose. The new equipment took some getting used to – one company records an unfortunate incident where a newly bought hose rotted after being stored in a barrel of dill pickles. But as pressurized fire plugs spread and fire brigades founded corresponding hose companies, things took an unfortunate turn. .


 

Once attached to a fire plug, a hose company could prevent rival companies from sharing the honor of fighting the fire. Wild races to be the first to connect to the plug – and violent fights to capture or recapture them – naturally ensued. Feuds between companies, as described in the song quoted above, were brutal and sometimes deadly, involving shootouts and, ironically, false alarms and acts of arson. By the mid-19th century, it was widely held that the volunteers were “a reproach to the city.” An entire melodramatic novel, “Jerry Pratt´s Progress or Adventures in the Hose House”, chronicled how a fresh-faced young country boy lost his morals – and, in a fight between hose companies, his life – after becoming a volunteer fireman. .

Though they remained political powerhouses, reportedly milking the city budget for unnecessary equipment and salaries to a shocking extent, the social makeup of the volunteer companies changed dramatically since the days of Franklin and Washington. Once made up of the city´s elite and professional classes, the companies came to be synonymous with the bare-knuckle politicians of Philadelphia´s infamous political machines. Despite a burst of renewed confidence in the volunteer companies during the Civil War, during which many volunteers gave their lives on the battlefield, the city finally voted to disband the volunteer companies and established a professional municipal department in 1871.

“Here´s health to Benjamin Franklin
And all who revere the name:
To the members of the Franklin Hose
I do allude the same”

(“The Franklin Hose Song,” c. 1850)

References:

  • Johnson, Harry M. &quote;The History of British and American Fire Marks.” The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Vol. 39, No. 3. (September, 1972), pp. 405-418.

  • Neilly, Andrew H. The Violent Volunteers: A History of the Volunteer Fire Department of Philadelphia, 1736-1871. University Microfilms, Inc. Ann Arbor, 1959.

  • The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Franklin & Fires: His interest therein and his effort to Protect the Citizens of Philadelphia from Devastation., J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1906.

  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. A Philadelphia Story, 1752-1952: The Philadelphia Contributionship., Wm. F. Fell Co. Philadelphia, 1952.

  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. “Philadelphia’s Eighteenth-Century Fire Insurance Companies” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.,New Ser., Vol. 43, No. 1. (1953), pp. 247-252.

Categories
Public Services

Fires, Fights and Benjamin Franklin: Philadelphia’s Volunteer Firemen, Part One


 

“The alarm of fire being given
Onward we did go
Their house we broke, and their engine took
And beat their members also.”

(From “The Franklin Hose Song,” c. 1850)

Tracing their roots back to a proud roster of founding fathers and fires fought, the volunteer fire companies that preceded the establishment of the Philadelphia Fire Department combined the best and worst traits of the city they served. Community-minded, innovative and tough, Philadelphia’s amateur firemen also earned a reputation for brawling, boozing and bitter rivalry equal to anything ever reported to have happened in the parking lot after an Eagles game.

A rapidly growing city of “about 700 dwelling houses,” Philadelphia had no fire service to speak of in the early 18th century. Though bucket brigades had existed in New England since the 1690’s, it would be decades before anyone took an organized approach to colonial emergency services. Meanwhile, Philadelphians doubtless looked nervously at the eminently combustible wooden warehouses along the Delaware waterfront, the boiling pitch-cauldrons and glowing forges of nearby shipyards and the pitiful resources the city could muster to protect its citizens.

During a fire, the victim depended on civically-minded neighbors with their own buckets, ladders, rope and hooks, the latter being used both to pull valuables from burning structures and to tear down buildings in the fire’s path to keep it from spreading An English fire engine was purchased for the city around 1718 – partly funded through fines collected from a colonial smoking ban enacted against those “presuming to smoke tobacco in the Streets of Philadelphia either by day or night” – but wasn’t much of a help; clumsy water-tanks on wheels, engines had to be hauled to the site of the fire, pumped by hand and continuously refilled by bucket chains.


 

This slow, exhausting process yielded predictably poor results. As reported by Benjamin Franklin in his Pennsylvania Gazette, one particularly destructive blaze in 1730 started on the riverfront and moved quickly into the city, consuming thousands of pounds worth of real estate and goods despite calm winds and generally favorable firefighting conditions.

After writing a series of articles on the subject, Franklin rose to the challenge. On December 7th, 1736, he and four friends founded the Union Fire Company, which survives today as Engine 8 of the Philadelphia Fire Department. One of the oldest organized fire brigades in the United States, the Union saw its ranks quickly filled to the agreed-upon maximum of 30 members. Other companies were founded by latecomers, all, according to one company’s records, “the most eminent men in Philadelphia, embracing merchants, physicians, lawyers, clergymen and citizens of wealth and refinement.” Indeed, fire company membership was a mark of honor, a sort of proxy social register of city notables from the mayor on down. This seems to have been the case throughout the colonies; George Washington, for example, was a member of his local volunteer fire company in Alexandria, Virginia.

to be continued…

References:

  • Johnson, Harry M. “The History of British and American Fire Marks.” The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Vol. 39, No. 3. (September, 1972), pp. 405-418.

  • Neilly, Andrew H. The Violent Volunteers: A History of the Volunteer Fire Department of Philadelphia, 1736-1871. University Microfilms, Inc. Ann Arbor, 1959.

  • The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Franklin & Fires: His interest therein and his effort to Protect the Citizens of Philadelphia from Devastation., J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1906.

  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. A Philadelphia Story, 1752-1952: The Philadelphia Contributionship., Wm. F. Fell Co. Philadelphia, 1952.

  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. “Philadelphia’s Eighteenth-Century Fire Insurance Companies” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.,New Ser., Vol. 43, No. 1. (1953), pp. 247-252.

Categories
Historic Sites

An Iron Baron’s West Philadelphia Castle

Nathaniel Burt wrote of Philadelphia iron-making entrepreneurs such as the Whartons, Brookes, Rutters and Potts: “Along with the New York patroon and the New England shipowner, he does provide something of a landowning equivalent to offset the more purely trading wealth of the region’s old families.” 1 Thus the Whartons became the lords of Batsto, the Brookes’ of Birdsboro, and the Potts’ of Potttown and Pottsville.

The house at 3905 Spruce Street, built by the iron baron Joseph Potts in 1876, befits the residence of businessmen who helped make Pennsylvania a center of the American industrial revolution. As landowners and founders of the iron-mill towns of Pottstown and Pottsville, they also possessed something of a feudal mystique.

When Old Philadelphia families started crossing the Schuylkill into West Philadelphia in the years following the Civil War, the social rule of thumb of living between Market and Pine continued, with families clustering around the newly-moved University of Pennsylvania. 3905 Spruce sits comfortably within these prescribed boundaries, although in the 1870s West Philadelphia was still largely rural and undeveloped.

3905 Spruce is built in a Ruskinian Gothic style that mirrors Penn’s nearby College Hall. The mansion, designed by the Wilson brothers, on one hand possesses elements of a feudal castle with its pointed windows, chiseled chimneys, and slate roof. At the same time, the house was a showcase for the products of the workshop of the world, with its cast-iron roof decorations and conservatory and polychrome exterior brick walls. The interiors were a tour-de-force of the Philadelphia woodcarvers art, boasting a massive three-level carved oak central staircase, pocket doors of birds-eye maple, and fireplaces supported by snarling griffins and bordered with tiles.

Potts’ son William graduated from Penn in 1876 – the year his father’s house was completed, and subsequently became a very generous financial supporter of the school. By 1917, the neighborhood had become less fashionable, and Penn was swallowing up many surrounding properties around the Potts castle. That year, William Potts donated the family mansion to Penn and decamped, like many of his social compatriots, to the Main Line suburbs.2 The building was used subsequently housed Penn’s International House and later the WXPN radio. During those years, the house suffered rough treatment and deferred maintenance.

But at least the Potts mansion was left standing. Most of the compounds of the Philadelphia aristocracy belonging to the Drexels, Clarks, Swains, and Sinnotts have been replaced by denser row house development or razed by the University of Pennsylvania. Remnants of this enclave of industrial wealth, such as St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and two Drexel mansions currently used as fraternity houses, now sit high and dry in a desert of concrete high rises and brick plazas known as the “Superblock.”

Today, the weary Potts mansion stands stripped of its ornamental features such as the domed roof on the cost iron conservatory, the glass-enclosed porch facing Spruce Street, and its port-cochere. Its brick walls and slate walls are smeared with grime, and the chimneys lean precariously. Nonetheless, it was benevolent neglect that allowed much of the house’s extraordinary interior detailing to survive intact. The house built by Joseph Potts is one of the few survivors of the Golden Age of West Philadelphia. Its association with one of the regions most distinguished industrial families, and the high quality of construction and craftsmanship makes Potts mansion at 3905 Spruce makes one of the most significant and underappreciated historical and architectural jewels of University City.

References:

1 Nathaniel, Burt The Perennial Philadelphians (University of Pennsylvania Press), 1999. 180.

2 http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/3905spruce/3905spruce1.html

    Categories
    Public Services

    Photography: A Mini-History


     

    1839 was an important year in the history of record-keeping. It was in this year that the first practical form of photography, the Daguerreotype, was invented. Without this invention almost 170 years ago, PhillyHistory.org would not have been possible. Most of the images on this website come from one of three photographic types: the negative, the print, and the digital photograph. The majority of these, however, come from the incredibly large collection of negatives in the city’s possession.

    Not all photographic negatives, however, were created the same. Over the short history of this medium, there have many different types of both negatives and photographs, especially in the first few decades after 1839 when photography was in its infancy. The first of these forms that could be used in a practical manner, the Daguerreotype, was introduced by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre.

    Although Daguerre’s was the first practical method of photography developed, there were successful earlier attempts. For example, in 1826 Nicephore Niepce invented what he called a “heliograph.” He took a photograph of his courtyard by exposing a sheet of pewter covered in light sensitive materials, using sunlight as his only light source. However, this process took over 8 hours to complete, making it much less practical to use as a method of record keeping than the much faster Daguerre method. (To read more about Niepce’s first photograph, see the Nicephore Niepce website link in the references section of this blog).

    Like Niepce’s process, the daguerreotype also consisted of an image created on a sheet of metal. In this case the medium was a copper plate coated with silver iodide. Unlike Niepce’s process, however, the photograph created was a direct positive image. These photos were the predecessors of the types of images added to PhillyHistory today.

    The first negative/positive process was patented the same year as the daguerreotype by William Talbot. This process, or the Calbotype process, created a paper negative which could then produce a positive image (or multiple positive images) by placing the negative in direct contact with light-sensitive paper and exposing the paper to daylight. Slightly less than 20 years later, in 1855, glass negatives were introduced to the United States. These glass negatives were preferable to paper negatives as the image produced was of a much better quality. It was only with the introduction of the glass negative that the negative/positive process of making photographs began to replace direct positive processes such as the daguerreotype.

    The earliest glass plate negatives were “wet plate” negatives. They were called “wet plate” because this process required the photographer to coat a plate of glass with light sensitive materials, expose, and develop the photograph all before the coating dried. There was continued experimentation using various materials for emulsions (the emulsion is the layer of light sensitive material that is coated onto a base, for example glass, in which an image is formed when it is exposed to light). Some of the types of emulsions that were tried included albumen (a combination of sodium or ammonium chloride mixed with egg whites) and gelatin.

    In the Philadelphia City Archives, the earliest forms of negative we scan for the PhillyHistory website are glass plate negatives. The above photograph, taken in 1894, is an image from one of these glass plate negatives. However, as is evidenced by the cracks visible in some of the other photographs on PhillyHistory, the glass negatives were found to be problematic, mainly because they are so incredibly fragile.

    To help alleviate this problem, in 1887 George Eastman introduced cellulose nitrate film. This form of negative consisted of a nitrocellulose base and a gelatin emulsion. It was in use between 1913 and 1950. At the time, this was seen as an improvement over the glass negative, as it was much less fragile than its glass counterparts. However, today archivists have found this negative to be itself fragile as it ages. The nitrocellulose base is notoriously unstable as well as flammable, making it important to transfer the images on these to another medium (as, for example, scanning would accomplish) in order to preserve the information they contain.


     

    Between 1937 and 1956 another film created by the Kodak company, safety film, was widely used. This film was made of cellulose diacetate and was found to be much less of a fire hazard. However, this film too has been found to be somewhat unstable. Over time, the cellulose diacetate shrinks as it deteriorates, causing wrinkles in the layer of emulsion, which does not shrink at the same rate. The photograph to the left is an example of this type of deterioration. In1947, Kodak introduced another type of safety film which is still in use today, which is made of a more stable material, cellulose triacetate.

    References:

    Categories
    Urban Planning

    The Broad Street Subway


       
    Providing around 1 million rides a day, SEPTA is an important resource in the city of Philadelphia. The man pictured in one of the accompanying photos was just one of the many involved in building a part of that transportation system, the Broad Street Subway. The photograph was taken December 14, 1925 as the unidentified man worked on the subway at Broad and Master Streets.


     
    Work began on the line in 1924. In the four years it took to build the initial section of the subway, enough dirt was excavated to theoretically create, as another photo (also pictured) illustrated, a column 220 feet square and 2280 feet high. The Broad Street line eventually opened for service on September 1, 1928. On this new subway, riders could travel between City Hall and Olney Avenue. Round trip fare, at this time, was only 15 cents.


    Several years later, service on the Broad Street Subway was extended farther south. By 1930, riders could travel as far south as South Street, and by 1938 this was extended to Snyder Avenue. Expansion then continued to the north, with the Fern Rock stop being added in the 1950s. Finally, in 1973 the line was extended again to the south to run to Pattison Avenue, completing the line that exists today.

    References: