Author: Jay Wyatt

Categories
Entertainment

There Used to Be a Ballpark Here


 

It is hard to envision the corner of Broad and Lehigh in North Philadelphia as the site of the first ‘modern’ baseball stadium in America. Yet, before there was Citizens Bank Park, or the Vet, or Connie Mack Stadium, which was originally know as Shibe Park, National League Park was the destination of choice for Philadelphia’s baseball fanatics.

The park was erected in 1887. After a fire destroyed most of the stadium in 1894, team ownership rebuilt the stadium using steel, brick and concrete. The choice of building materials was intended to prevent future fires, but they also allowed architects to push the boundaries of stadium construction. Then, as today, sports stadiums were places where cities could show progress and modernity. The rebuilt park cost more than $80,000, seated 18,000 people and became the first to include an upper deck supported by cantilevers. The cantilevers made headlines because they removed the need for the unsightly support columns that obstructed the views of fans sitting in the stadium’s lower level. Small field dimensions also distinguished the stadium and garnered it the nicknames “The Cigar Box” and “The Band Box”. In right field a 40 foot wall stretched skyward and helped turn sure home runs into singles or doubles. The wall eventually climbed to 60 feet and became prime advertising space. A hump in center field covering a partially submerged railroad tunnel led many to give the stadium another nickname, “The Hump”. After William F. Baker purchased the Phillies, the stadium acquired its most endearing moniker, “The Baker Bowl”.


 

Unfortunately for Phillies fans, the new ownership did not help the perennially poor performance of the team. In the 51 years that the team called the Baker Bowl home (1887-1938) it won only one pennant (1915) and consistently finished at or near the bottom of the league standings. Even the presence of future baseball hall-of-famers Chuck Klein and Grover Cleveland Alexander could not raise the team above mediocrity. Putting a poor product on the field resulted in poor attendance and diminished profits. To compensate, ownership began using the stadium for purposes other than baseball. A cycling ring was installed in an attempt to capitalize on the cycling craze of the early twentieth century. During the 1910s and 1920s local police and fireman’s organizations rented the ballpark for large events. They held rodeos and parades there. The accompanying photos depict a few of the Philadelphia Police Department’s annual reviews, which featured marching bands and military-style processions.

Despite the performance of the hometown team, the Baker Bowl left Philadelphians with many lasting memories. In 1915 Woodrow Wilson sat in the stands of the park, becoming the first president to attend a World Series game. In 1935 Babe Ruth made his last professional appearance there when he withdrew from a game at the stadium. And, Negro League World Series games were played at the park from 1924-1926. Even the fledgling Philadelphia Eagles franchise played there for time during the 1930s.


 

The Phillies left the Baker Bowl for nearby Shibe Park in the middle of the 1938 season. Years of low attendance and flagging profits had taken their toll on the park and left it in disrepair. Between 1938 and 1950 the stadium, for the most part, remained vacant. Long gone were the days when reporters from across the nation marveled at stadium’s grand design elements and fans jammed the grandstands. During the 1940s a fire gutted much of the park and ensured that it would never be renovated. In 1950, a wrecking bowl tore down the last remnants of the Baker Bowl. Today, a historical sign is the only marker that a ballpark once stood at Broad and Vine.

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Categories
Entertainment

Nearly Everybody Read the Bulletin


 

“Nearly Everybody Reads the Bulletin.” Or, so claimed one of Philadelphia’s oldest and most revered newspapers, The Evening Bulletin. Factory workers and businessmen streamed down the streets of Center City during the hustle-bustle madness of Philadelphia’s evening rush hour. Hurrying to catch the next train or trolley, they often found the time to stop at a sidewalk newsstand and pick up the latest edition of the “The Bulletin.” Indeed, by the 1960s, the paper stood as America’s largest evening daily with a circulation over 750,000.

The Bulletin occupies a special place in the history of Philadelphia newspapers. Founded by Alexander Cummings in 1847 under the moniker Cummings’ Evening Telegraphic Bulletin, the newspaper gained notoriety for its balanced and thorough coverage of the Civil War. After an extended downturn, the Bulletin again hit its stride during the industrial period. Under the guidance of new owner William L. McLean, the Bulletin became popular with the city’s working-class residents and by 1915 the paper ranked first in circulation among Philadelphia’s 13 dailies. The Bulletin was the evening news source for thousands of workers. Through its coverage of World Wars and World Series, stock market booms and stock market crashes, the Bulletin linked Philadelphians to the world beyond the city’s borders.


 
Despite its popularity during the 1960s, the Bulletin encountered numerous obstacles in its drive to remain an integral part of Philadelphia’s news community. Television began siphoning customers away from newspapers in large quantities during this period. And, though all newspapers felt the crunch from the new medium, evening dailies like the Bulletin took the brunt of the blow. The televised local and national evening news programs removed the need to pick up a paper on the way home. And, as workers left the city in droves for the greener pastures of the suburbs, fewer commuters took public transportation. Rather than read the paper as they had on the train ride home, automobile commuters instead tuned their radios to one of Philadelphia’s numerous radio stations to fill up on local and national events.

The consolidation of media outlets was another hurdle for the Bulletin to overcome. The Bulletin remained a family-run paper in the 1960s and 1970s. This bucked both local and national trends. Most of Philadelphia’s independently owned newspapers had folded or been bought out and incorporated into larger corporate bodies. Despite the odds, the McLean family held out, a fact that no doubt further endeared the paper to Philadelphians. In the end, however, the challenge proved too great. In the face of increased competition from the revamped and corporately backed Philadelphia Inquirer, the Bulletin folded on January 29, 1982.

Yet, the demise of the Bulletin was not to be permanent. On Monday, November 22, 2004, The Evening Bulletin reappeared on newsstands throughout Philadelphia. A local entrepreneur bought the rights to the name from the MacLean family and gave the defunct paper a second life. Spurned on by the renewed interest in locally owned and independent news sources, The Evening Bulletin is once again bringing the news to those commuting in and out of Philadelphia.

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Categories
Urban Planning

The Hidden River, Part Two


 

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 part of Philadelphia’s growth. Inland sections of the river brought coal and other goods into the city from Pennsylvania’s interior. The open areas along the river’s southern regions were also developed. Large oil refineries were built to service Philadelphia and beyond. Transport vessels became ubiquitous on the river. Workers filled tankers with oil along the river’s banks while smoke billowed from tall smokestacks in the background. Many of the vessels crossed the Atlantic and helped supply the nations of Europe with the oil they needed to continue their own industrial growth. The Hidden River, it seemed, was not so hidden anymore.


 

The largest of the refineries constructed along the Schuylkill was that of the Atlantic Refining Company. Originally founded in 1866 as the Atlantic Petroleum Storage Company, the company did not come into its own until it was bought out by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller in 1874 and integrated into his Standard Oil Trust. The break-up of Standard Oil in 1911 left Atlantic on its own and in control of the oil supply for Pennsylvania and Delaware (Standard Oil of New Jersey had jurisdiction in that state). The large refinery located near the Point Breeze section of the Schuylkill became the hub of its operations.

By the time the Great Depression swept the nation in the 1930s, Atlantic had expanded west and into the field of oil production. Despite its broad corporate goals however, the company remained rooted in Philadelphia along the Schuylkill. In 1966, Atlantic merged with Richfield Oil, a California based company, to form ARCO, one of the nation’s largest oil-companies. Later, after a series of mergers and spin-offs in the 1970s and 1980s, Atlantic was purchased by Sunoco, another Philadelphia-based oil company with a presence along the Schuylkill.


 

Today, Philadelphia is the largest oil-refining center on the eastern seaboard with seven oil refining plants producing over $100 million in petroleum and oil-based products. Yet, the legacy of industrialization, oil, and refining along the Schuylkill is mixed. Years of overuse and neglect along the river have led to dramatic environmental changes that continue to plague the river and those that inhabit the neighborhoods close to its shores. Decades of conservation efforts on the part of the city and community groups have helped restore some of the Schuylkill’s lost beauty although this work is not complete. The increased presence of new, environmentally-friendly technologies within the oil industry offers hope that commerce and environment will find a way to amicably coexist along the shores of the Hidden River.

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Categories
Urban Planning

The Hidden River, Part One


 

Dividing Center City and West Philadelphia, and stretching more than 100 miles into the interior of Pennsylvania, the Schuylkill River has long been an integral part of life in the Philadelphia region. Native Americans used the river as a food and water source and called it Ganshohawanee, meaning “rushing and roaring waters.” Early European settlers later gave the river its current name, which means “Hidden River,” because of its secluded entrance near its confluence with the Delaware River. Yet, despite its proximity to Philadelphia and the Atlantic Ocean, the Schuylkill River did not develop as a highly used port during the colonial era. The Delaware River dominated that aspect of economic life in early Philadelphia. Instead, during the nineteenth century, it was mainly used to feed the city’s increasing water demands through the Fairmount Waterworks. However, as the industrial age descended upon Philadelphia, the Schuylkill emerged as a key component to the city’s economy. Technological innovations in production and transportation allowed people and companies to expand into previously underutilized areas during the industrial period. As a result, Philadelphia underwent a rapid expansion westward and northward. Thus, the Schuylkill’s location made it a highly attractive location for expanding businesses. In 1912, the Penn-Lippincott Publishing Company hired renowned local architect Mahlon Dickinson to design its new production facility (pictured above) along the Schuylkill at the corner of 25th Street and Locust Street. Locating the new plant along the river promised an ample supply of water for generating steam-based power and placed it within close proximity to Center City and the local rail yards. It should be no surprise that Penn-Lippincott was among the first wave of corporations to develop the Schuylkill River within Philadelphia’s borders. The company was founded in 1792 when two local bookstall operators, Jacob Johnson and Benjamin Warner began publishing small texts. By the mid-nineteenth century, Penn-Lippincott had grown into one of largest publishers in the English-speaking world. Its presence, along with that of the Curtis Publishing Company, helped make Philadelphia the hub of the nation’s publishing industry, a status the city held until well into the twentieth century.


 

The new factory (along with the monotype facility, pictured at left) drew workers to the edge of the Schuylkill. The numbers of families living in the Rittenhouse and Fitler Square neighborhoods rapidly increased. In these vibrant communities workers walked to work and, along with their families, often used the river and its banks as a source of recreation.

In keeping with the growth of the local community, the factory became both a neighborhood and city landmark. A renovation in the 1980s converted the factory into a loft-style apartment building. Now, the factory houses many students and young professionals, thereby continuing its legacy as a central part of life along the Hidden River.

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Categories
Neighborhoods

Mmmmm . . . Beeeer


 

Any trip to a Philadelphia pub will reveal that Philadelphians, by and large, have an acute affinity for beer. Despite this, it is a little known fact that, in the fifty years between 1870 and 1920, Philadelphia was a national center for beer production. Early in this period, most of the city’s beer makers were German immigrants operating out of small breweries in neighborhoods like Kensington and Northern Liberties. To store enough beer to last through Philadelphia’s long and notoriously hot summers, and to keep the populace happy, the brewers used large storage vaults located in the city’s northwest suburbs. Ice culled from the Schuylkill River kept the beer from spoiling.

During the 1880s, word of Philadelphia’s delectable lagers spread. To keep up with the increased demands (and to take advantage of new advances in refrigeration technology) Philadelphia’s brewers moved to large state-of-the-art breweries in the city’s 29th ward, earning it the moniker, Brewerytown. By the turn of the century, eleven large breweries had made Brewerytown their home. Immigrants eager to find jobs and to support such industries as malt houses, equipment suppliers, and and saloons followed close behind and turned the area into one of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods. The footbridge featured in the picture above (located near 29th and Parrish) likely carried workers to and from their jobs at the Bergdorff Beer plant that stands tall in the background.

References:

  • Dochter, Rich, and Rich Wagner. “Brewerytown U.S.A.” Pennsylvania Heritage 17 (Summer 1991): 24-31.

  • Wagner, Rick. “Brewerytown, Philadelphia – The Grand Daddy of ‘Em All!” http://pabreweryhistorians.tripod.com/grandaddy.htm (accessed 30 May 2006).