Author: Steven Ujifusa

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Historic Sites Neighborhoods Snapshots of History

As Times Goes By on Lancaster Avenue: 1:05pm, April 22, 1914

The date is Wednesday, April 22, 1914.  On that day, George Herman “Babe” Ruth played his first professional baseball game, pitching for the (then minor league) Baltimore Orioles, in an exhibition game against the major league Philadelphia Phillies. To the amazement of the spectators, Babe Ruth proved to be one of those rare pitchers who could also hit! He left the game with a six hit, 6-0 win.  Incidently, Baltimore’s Major League Team at the time was the quaintly-named “Terrapins,” the main ingredient in the city’s famous turtle soup.  The terrapins went the way of the dodo the following year, and the Orioles replaced them as Baltimore’s MLB team.

The residents of the Philadelphia neighborhood of Belmont, like so many other Americans, were bewitched by baseball.  However, sports radio broadcasts were still a decade away.  Like telegraphs, wireless radio receivers of the time could only pick up Morse code dots and dashes.  Those unable to attend a baseball game at Shibe Park due to work or family obligations had to be content with detailed newspaper accounts published in the evening papers.

Belmont at the time was a solidly middle class neighborhood, largely a mixture of German, Italian, and Eastern European Jewish families. Although residents of Belmont enjoyed more leisure time than the factory workers of neighborhoods like Kensington, they still toiled long hours in the shops, groceries, law offices, and other small enterprises that lined Lancaster Avenue.  At 1:06pm at this day, the streets, were relatively empty, aside from a lone pedestrian and a couple of electric trolleys whooshing by. According to architect Robert Morris Skaler, whose family owned  L. Skaler & Sons kosher butcher shop, the owners usually lived above the store and all children were expected to help out with the chores. After hours, the adults would retire to the local pubs such as Trench’s Saloon to scan the Evening Bulletin and discuss the merits of various players, the rising star Babe Ruth among them.  After leaving classes at E. Spencer Miller School, the kids would have the same debates while hanging out at Furey’s ice cream parlor.  Or they would reeanct the game in games of half-ball on Belmont’s side streets, which at the time were almost car-free. On warmer spring nights, the sounds of upright pianos and Camden-made phonographs (popularly known as Victrolas) emanated from rowhouse windows.  Those who could spare a few dollars for a vaudeville show flocked to the William Penn Theater at 4063 Lancaster Avenue, completed two years earlier and able to seat 3,200 people at a time.

Students at the E. Spencer Miller School, 43rd and Westminster Avenue, June 14, 1933, 19 years after the railroad clock photograph.

The clock that stood outside 4255 Lancaster Avenue, located outside of the Walter M. Engle jewelry store, proudly noted that it kept railroad time. Inside the ornate little Engle store, another wall clock reminded the customers that it kept “True Time.”   Until the fall 1883, almost all cities and towns in the United States kept their own local time, based on when the sun reached its highest point in the sky.  Yet railroads such as the Pennsylvania, Union Pacific, and the Chicago Burlington & Quincy had greatly reduced the time it took to transport freight and passengers across the country.  Morever, railroad managers needed uniform time schedules to keep hundreds of trains on schedule and from crashing into each other.  Finding local time too burdensome (and it was), the railroads divided the country into four time zones, very close to the ones we know today. Despite a fair amount of local grumbling, most Americans adapted their lives around this executive fiat.

In 1914, a clock marked”Railroad Time” in front of a store on Lancaster Avenue signified modernity and predictability, essential traits in industrial powerhouse city such as Philadelphia. So did the dangling electric streetlight and the telephone wires overhead.  On Sundays, the bells of Belmont’s many  churches chimed in sych with the subtle thunk of the Engle clock’s minute hand.

The city of Philadelphia on April 22, 1914 had its share of poverty and labor unrest, but by and large, was prosperous and secure.  Yet within a few months, the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary would plunge the world into the bloodiest war in history. American joined the fight on the side of Britain, France, and Russia in April 1917. Scores of the young men of Belmont would leave their jobs, families, education (and their old time zone) behind to fight in the trenches, patrol the seas, and soar in the skies. Industrial production ramped up, the pace of life quickened, and time became even more precious.

At war’s end, Congress made the five zones of “railroad time” synonymous with national time.

Sources:

“What Happened on April 22, 1914,” OnThisDay.com, https://www.onthisday.com/date/1914/april/22, accessed April 8, 2020.

“Railroads Create the First Time Zones,” History.com, November 16, 2009,  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/railroads-create-the-first-time-zones, accessed April 8, 2020.

Robert Morris Skaler, West Philadelphia: University City to 52nd Street (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2002), pp. 95-99, 107.

Jeff Gamage, “A Collection of Postcards Captures Phila’s Changes,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 8, 2014,

https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/20140208_Collection_of_postcards_captures_Phila__s_changes.html, accessed April 8, 2020.

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Uncategorized

The Persian Building at the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition

The dedication of the Persian Building, October 6, 1926. 20th and Pattison.

The 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition’s most iconic image is the oversized replica of the Liberty Bell, illuminated by hundreds of incandescent bulbs.  However, there was another structure that captured the imagination of the fairgoers: the Persian Building, designed by Philadelphia architect Carl Augustus Ziegler.  Situated on the banks of Edgewater Lake, the mosque-like dome and towers rose above the squat rowhouses of South Philadelphia like a shimmering apparition.  Inside, visitors could admire ancient manuscripts, tapestries, and other priceless art and artifacts.

One would expect that the Persian government would have selected one of its own to design its pavilion, but Carl Ziegler had a track record of designing intricately detailed, historically inspired structures.  Born in 1878, Ziegler attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his certificate in proficiency in architecture.  He then worked in the offices of several prominent architects who masterfully blended impeccable historical detailing with modern needs, most notably Cope & Stewardson (designer of dormitories at Princeton and Penn) and Frank Miles Day (designer of the Jacob Reed building).  In 1898, he joined up with architects Louis Duhring and R. Brognard Okie to form the firm of Duhring, Okie & Ziegler. This team became most famous for their Pennsylvania “farmhouse” revival country homes. Their rough-hewn simplicty was a stark contrast to the stiff Gilded Age palaces previously so in vogue with the city’s elite.

In 1924, Ziegler broke from the Duhring firm and struck out on his own as a historical consultant, where he helped supervise the restoration of Independence Hall and Carpenter’s Hall.  The 1920s marked resurgence in the popularity of the Colonial Revival and Georgian modes.   Yet Ziegler showed himself to be quite adept at learning other historical styles, and the polychrome Persian Building was truly beguiling, standing out in quality and detail from the fairground kitsch that surrounded it. He continued to practice until the 1940s, by which time his encyclopedia knowledge of historical styles (including Persian) had fallen out of favor.

Sadly, the Exposition proved to be a failure, attracting only about 4.6 million paid attendees rather than the 30 million the organizers preducted. Like almost every other structure at the Sesquicentennial Exposition, the Persian Building met the wrecker’s ball.   Today, the fairground is the site of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park and the Sports Complex.

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park golf course, 20th and Pattison, John McWhorter, photographer. March 29, 1954.

Sources: 

James D. Ristine, Philadelphia’s 1926 Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition(Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2009), pp.70-71.

Sandra Tatman, “Ziegler, Carl (or Charles) Augustus (1878-1952),”Philadelphia Architects and Buildings, The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, 2020, https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/23435, accessed

Martin W. Wilson, “Sesquicentennial International Exposition (1926),”The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, Rutgers University, 2012, https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/sesquicentennial-international-exposition/, accessed April 2, 2020.

 

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Behind the Scenes

The Old Rittenhouse Hotel: Have You Dined and Danced in ‘The Box’?

The entrance marquee of the Rittenhouse Hotel, 22nd and Chestnut, October 25, 1920.

The original Rittenhouse Hotel was opened in 1893 on the 2200 block of Chestnut Street. Its designer was the now-forgotten Angus S. Wade.  Wade was a Yankee transplant, born in Montpelier, Vermont in 1868.  As a young man, he moved to Philadelphia to train in the studio of the highflying Willis Hale, the favorite architect of trolley tycoon Peter A. B. Widener.  Like his mentor, Wade was more of a theatrical set designer than an architectural artist. He skillfully layered ornamentation onto rather formulaic structures.  His buildings, although beguiling and playful on the surface, lacked the lively silhouettes and bold massings that characterized the oeuvre of Frank Furness.  As commercial structures, Angus’s buildings were meant to charm and entice, rather than impress or trascend, the passerby.

The Rittenhouse Hotel fulfilled its theatrical role admirably, serving as a fashionable lodging house during its namesake square’s Gilded Age heyday. An advertisement for the Hotel Rittenhouse in a 1904 edition of The Apothecary advertised that the establishment was only half a block from the College of Physicians, and that it “gave special attention to ladies traveling alone.”   The hotel offered both so-called “European” and “American” plans.   The former meant that patrons could pay $1.50 (about $43 today) and up per night for rooms only, and the latter $4.00 (about $115 today) and up per night for rooms and all meals in the dining room.

 

1909 advertisement for the Rittenhouse Hotel that appeared in The Apothecary.

By the end of World War I, however, Victorian hostelries like the Rittenhouse Hotel were looking dated, even chintzy.  A photo taken in the autumn of 1920 shows that the entrance marquee adorned with theater style lights that advertised the hotel’s night club  (“The Box”) rather than the hotel’s name.   The featured band at “The Box” was the “Tierney Five” ensemble, which probably played a mixture of ragtime and early hot jazz.  The advertisement is oddly suggestive: a dancing girl superimposed on the profile of an old man.

“Have you dined and danced in The Box?” the advertisement queried.

Advertisement for “The Box” from October 15, 1920, ten days before the photograph was taken. What did the Tierney Five sound like? Probably something like the Louisiana Five. 

Since Prohibition had gone into effect only ten months earlier, it is probable that “The Box” was also a speakeasy.   If so, it probably earned more money for the owners than the hotel rooms. The sign certainly is a clue!

The dowdy “grande dame” came crashing down in the 1940s, and was replaced by Louis Magaziner’s modernist Sidney Hillman Medical Center. The current Rittenhouse Hotel arose on the site of the old Alexander Cassatt mansion in the 1980s.

Sources:

“Angus S. Wade,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 24, 1932.

Robert Morris Skaler and Thomas Keels, Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square (Mount Pleasant: Arcadia Publishing, 2008), p.33.

The Evening Public Ledger, October 15, 1920, p.4.

The Apothecary, Volume 21, MCP Publications, 1909, p.27.

Categories
Neighborhoods Snapshots of History

Mysterious Photos of the Comegys Mansion at 4203-4205 Walnut Street

The Comegys mansion (right) at 4205 Walnut Street, 1963. The house to the left at 4207 Walnut Street is now the main building of Walnut Hill College.

The name of Benjamin Bartis Comegys (1819-1900) lives on in a West Philadelphia elementary school that bears his name.  However, a cursory Google search of the man reveals very little information aside from his obituary and funeral notice.    His father Cornelius P. Comegys served as governor of Delaware between 1837 and 1841.  His son Benjamin moved to Philadelphia at the age of 18 after receiving a “common school education” and was “attracted to a mercantile pursuit.” In the days before an undergraduate business degree, that meant starting off as a clerk in a bank, in which the young man learned the basics of accounting and bookkeeping on the job.  After eleven years at the counting house of Thomas Rockhill & Company, Comegys was hired by the Philadelphia National Bank, eventually rising to the position  to its presidency. In 1887, he reached the pinnacle of the Philadelphia business establishment by joining the board of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

When he died after a brief illness in 1900, the funeral at the Second Presbyterian Church at 22nd and Walnut attracted a delegation of mourners from Girard College, Jefferson Medical College, as well as heavy hitters from the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Philadelphia National Bank. Among the pallbearers were Pennsylvania Railroad president Alexander Cassatt and shipping tycoon Clement Griscom.  According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“The church service was one prepared by Mr. Comegys himself. Beethoven’s Funeral March from the Twelfth Sonata, the anthem ‘Happy and Blest Are They Who Have Endured,’ from Mendelssohn’s St. Paul, and the recessional, ‘I know That My Redeemer Liveth.'”

The Comegys family mansion at 4205 Walnut was a free-standing Italianate villa, is featured prominently in a series of City Archives photos dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s.   Fifty years after Comegys death, West Philadelphia was no longer the affluent stomping grounds of the Clarks, Drexels, and their ilk. The house was at the time was still occupied, although it appears to have been divided into apartments and was listed as two addresses: 4203-05  A photograph shows a family gathered for a meal in one of the rooms, still furnished in the Victorian style but with metal filing cabinets shoved into a corner and children’s art on the walls. Who they are remains a mystery, although the tag “E.T. Comegys House, 4203 Walnut Street” gives a clue.  (Benjamin Comegys had two daughters and a son who died young, and an Lieutenant Edward Theodore Comegys of Baltimore was killed in action during World War I).

Anonymous family dining at 4203-05 Walnut Street, 1963. Does anyone have any information on who these people are?

Another photos is the one of the library of 4903-05 Walnut which is remarkable condition considering the house’s shabby condition.  According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“A valuable library was among Mr. Comegy’s most loved possessions. Next to his relatives and friends his books held his affections. He insisted that there were few lives so busy that they could not find time for the cultivation of a taste for art, science and literature. Though he never pretended to be a great scholar, his selection of books, next to the choice of friends, would probably be the highest proof of his sterling character. His library represents the work of his whole life.”

Sadly, by the time the photo was taken, Benjamin Comegy’s library at 4205 Walnut Street was devoid of books.

The library at 4203-05 Walnut Street, April 20, 1959.
Comegys mansion listed for sale, April 20, 1959.

The Comegys mansion at 4205 Walnut Street, like so many other West Philadelphia houses of its size, eventually met the wrecker’s ball. It is now the site of a Seven Eleven and International Food & Spices Indian grocery store.

Sources:

“Career of B.B. Comegys Ends at Ripe Old Age,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 31, 1900, as quoted in “Find A Grave,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/102563143/benjamin-bartis-comegys, accessed March 19, 2020.

“B.B. Comegys is Buried,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 1, 1900, as quoted in “Find A Grave,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/102563143/benjamin-bartis-comegys, accessed March 19, 2020.

Michael Robert Patterson, “Lieutenant Edward Theodore Comegys, First Lieutenant U.S. Army Air Service,” Arlington National CemetEry Website, http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/etcomegys.htm, accessed March 19, 2020.

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Historic Sites Public Services Snapshots of History

Irving T. Catharine, Philadelphia’s School Design Czar

The Joseph W. Catharine School, S.66th Street and Chester Avenue. October 26, 1937.

The buildings of Frank Furness and Louis Kahn are known world-wide. Yet below the architectural superstars were the work-a-day architects who made their livings designing prominent structures that still dot the city. These included department stores, theaters, police and fire stations, parish churches, and warehouse blocks.  These architects saw their business as a service, and made comfortable livings in good economic times, especially if they had a steady corporate, ecclesiastical, or public client.

Irwin Thornton Catharine (1884-1944) was one such architect.  His name might be forgotten, but during his career he was one of the city’s most prolific builders. Trained in architecture at the Drexel Institute, Catherine’s career received a strong boost in the education sphere due to (in typical Philadelphia fashion) a family connection: his father Joseph Catharine was the long-time chair of Philadelphia’s Board of Education.  Appointed to the position of Superintendent of Builing in 1923, the junior Catharine was now insulated from the economic uncertainty that plagued the architectural profession.  From 1918 to 1937, he supervised the construction of 104 new public schools within the Philadelphia city limits, oversaw additions to 26 old ones, and substantially renovated at least 50 others. Working within a limited but defined budget, Catharine’s work was both elegant and utilitarian. During the 1920s, Catharine’s studio produced buildings in a stripped-down collegiate Gothic style, blocky three or four-story structures punctuated by turrets, high arched windows, and a grand central entrance. By the 1930s, however, Catharine shifted to a more streamlined variant of the Art Deco style, popularly known as “Moderne”, at Bok High School and John Bartram High School, although he also toyed with Mediterreanean motifs at South Philadelphia’s Charles W. Bartlett Junior High School (now the Academy at Palumbo).

Charles W. Bartlett Junior High School, 11th and Catharine Streets, November 26, 1932.

In addition to soaring auditoriums, libraries, rooftop playgrounds, and gymnasiums, Catharine added a novel feature to public school buildings in the 1920s: indoor public bathrooms on each floor (replacing the outdoor latrines in many older school buildings), with marble partitions betwen the toilets.  In a 1925 newspaper interview, Catharine claims to have solved the pesky graffiti problem in school bathrooms:.”Once every [toilet] partition put up was wood; nowadays white marble is used,” he said. “And the children have been the direct cause of this. There is something in the nature of every boy which makes him want to carve his initial or whole name in a wall. If he isn’t clever enough with his pocket knife, he writes his name. White marble partitions and walls make it impossible for him to use his knife.”

Auditorium of the Joseph W. Catharine High School.

One of his last projects was a school at S.66th and Chester Avenue, named in honor of his father Joseph.

Irwin T. Catharine died in 1944.  After World War II, Philadelphia’s school designs veered away from Catharine’s brick and stone historicism and toward the the steel and concrete of the International style.

Sources: 

“Irvin T. Catharine,” Philadelphia Architects and Buildings, The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, 2020, https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/22844, accessed February 27, 2020.

“63-Prop, Philadelphia Public Schools Thematic Nomination,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form,” United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, October 20, 1986, https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000730_text, accessed February 27, 20202.

Philip Jablon, “Why All Philly Schools Look the Same,” Hidden City Philadelphia, June 29, 2012.

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Uncategorized

Thomas Mitten’s 5200 Trolleys

The intersection of 49th Street and Baltimore Avenue, with two 5200 trolleys. Photo dated April 20, 1955.

In 1923, the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (PRT) placed an order for 135 double-end passenger cars and 385 single-end passenger cars from the J.G. Brill Company for their extensive web of trolley lines throughout the city.  According to the Electric City Trolley Museum Association, the PRT’s purchase represented the largest single order for surface passenger equipment in American history of that time.  What the Baldwin Locomotive Company was to steam engines, J.G. Brill was to trolley cars. These 5200 series steel trolley cars were a vast improvement over their wooden predecessors. They were equipped with two Brill 39E2 trucks, two General Electric (GE) #275 motors, and General Electric K68 controllers. Despite their modern engineering, they still bore a strong resemblance to the old horse-drawn streetcars of only a few decades earlier. An additional series of updated 5200 trolleys, known as 8000s, arrived a few years later.

The president of the PRT from 1911 to 1929 was a British immigrant named Thomas H. Mitten, who oversaw the vast expansion of Philadelphia’s public transportation system after the Widener family turned its attention to other enterprises. Mitten’s renewal of Philadelphia’s aging Victorian-era trolley fleet might have been part of his desire to improve labor relations: the PRT had long been plagued by strikes and other forms of labor unrest.  To make the PRT workers happier, Mitten organized employee outings to Willow Grove Park, started a formal worker education program (with the goal of improving trolley operations), as well as sick, death, and pension benefits.  Mitten also announced that workers would draw their wages from a pool of 22 percent of gross passenger revenues.  Some heralded the Mitten Plan as a new era of harmony between capital and labor. Others saw it as merely another form of “welfare capitalism.”

On October 1, 1929, Thomas Mitten was found dead in a lake near his summer home in the Poconos.  It remains unclear whether his death was an accident, suicide, or foul play. Regardless, the city had launched an investigation into Mitten’s personal finances.  In 1927, Mitten had purchased a bankrupt bank and resurrected it as the Mitten Bank Securities Corporation. He then gave the PRT workers the opportunity to put their holdings of PRT stock into accounts at MBSC. Mitten then swapped out his workers’ stock holdings for $18 million worth of MBSC stock. Within a few weeks after Mitten’s death, the stock market crashed, and both the MBSC and the PRT spiraled into bankruptcy, destroying the life savings of 26,000 deposit holders.  Financier Albert Greenfield oversaw the reorganization of the PRT, which would finally emerge in 1940 as the Philadelphia Transit Company.

In the late 1930s, the first of the Art Deco “Streamliner” trolleys appeared on Philadelphia’s streets.  However, scores of Thomas Mitten’s updated and overhauled 5200s and 8000s remained in operation well into the 1950s.

James Wolfinger, Running the Rails: Capital and Labor in the Philadelphia Transit Industry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016), pp.95-97, 119.

“Trolley Tracks: Trolley Beginnings,” Philadelphia Trolley Tracks,  http://www.phillytrolley.org/Phila_trolley_history_1924/Phila_trolley_history_1924.html, accessed February 14, 2020.

“The Rise and Fall of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania, December 7, 2012, https://hsp.org/blogs/fondly-pennsylvania/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-philadelphia-rapid-transit-company, accessed February 14, 2020.

“5205 – Historic Background,” Electric Trolley Museum Association, http://www.ectma.org/5205html.html, accessed February 14, 2020.

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Uncategorized

“An Entirely Unsuitable Home” for the Free Library of Philadelphia

The Free Library of Philadelphia, 1217-1221 Chestnut Street, 1910.

It’s shocking to imagine this ramshackle structure was the home of the Free Library of Philadelphia between 1895 and 1910.  The Free Library came into existence in 1891 thanks to efforts of Dr. William Pepper, a celebrated physician and provost of the University of Pennsylvania. Pepper used $225,000 of his  family’s money to start Philadelphia’s library system, but that wasn’t enough to provide the main branch of the Free Library with a suitable building.  Other people of Pepper’s class opened their pockets to pay for the construction and maintenance for private libraries, most notably the University of Pennsylvania and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. Public institutions got the short end of the stick.

University of Pennsylvania Library, designed by Frank Furness and completed in 1891, the same year as the founding of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Photographed on March 17, 1961

In 1895, the Free Library moved from its cramped quarters in City Hall into an old concert hall on the 1200 block of Chestnut Street.  The Italianate-style building dated from the 1850s. It was supposed to be a temporary home. Unfortunately, the Free Library would remain in this decrepit structure for over a decade.  The library employees were outraged at this set-up, describing it “as an entirely unsuitable building, where its work is done in unsafe, unsanitary and overcrowded quarters, temporary make-shifts.” The ground floor of the building was occupied by Hanscom’s Cafeteria, which advertised potential readers: “Cafeteria in basement. Stop in and help yourselves. Lunch in basement.”  The library was flanked by two second-rate theaters, not exactly the best neighbors for readers seeking peace and quiet.

Owen Wister, who spent much of his leisure time (and some of his writing time) at the nearby Philadelphia Club, must have had the Free Library in mind when he wrote scathingly of his native city:

The city is a shame. They’re proud of it, yet take no care of it. . . . The bad gas, the bad water, the nasty street-cars that tinkle torpidly through streets paved with big cobble-stones all seem to them quite right. . . . Their school buildings are filthy. I heard a teacher who spoke ungrammatically and pronounced like a gutter-snipe teaching the children English. . . . Isn’t it strange that such nice people should tolerate such a nasty state of things?

Things were different in New York and Boston.  While the patrons of the Philadelphia Free Library read in rickety Victorian gloom, the New York Public Library and the Boston Public Library rapidly raised funds to construct magnificent Beaux-Arts style structures by Carrere & Hastings and McKim Mead and White, respectively.

It wasn’t until the 1920 that the Free Library raised the funds for architect Horace Trumbauer to design a new structure on Logan Circle, modeled on the Hotel de Crillon in Paris. A bronze statute of Dr. Pepper graces the landing of the grand staircase.

Sources:

“History of the Library,” Free Library Company of Philadelphia,” https://libwww.freelibrary.org/about/history/. accessed December 11, 2019.

James M. O’Neill, “Owen Wister’s Lost Tale of Phila Published,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 4, 2001, http://articles.philly.com/2001-10-04/news/25305723_1_owen-wister-romney-philadelphia-area-locales, accessed December 1, 2015.

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Neighborhoods Snapshots of History

The Greenwich Street Gas Explosion of 1941

Greenwich Street after the gas explosion of February 11, 1941.

At 5:00am on the evening of February 11, 1941, the residents of the 1100 block of Greenwich Street were all sound asleep in their snug two story row homes.  The surrounding neighborhood (today known as East Passyunk — a popular shopping and dining district) was a tight-knit, mostly Italian-American community, in which daily life revolved around the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.   Beneath Greenwich Street. However, over the past couple of years, clay erosion had been causing the street’s ‘s six inch gas main to slowly settle. Residents had been complaining about the smell of gas to the Philadelphia Gas Company, but to no avail.  That night, one of the feedpipes tore away from the sinking main, causing a cloud of live gas to seep into the basement of 1112  Greenwich Street.

An open flame heater in the basement set the gas alight.  The house blew up as if hit by an aerial bomb.

“The first explosion, which blew both front and rear out of 1112 Greenwich Street,” John McCullough of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “leaving only the sagging roof and the debris-littered second floor, sent swords of flame through adjoining walls as though they had been made of papier-mache.”

“The window glass shattered over the floor and we got out of bed, frightened, “17-year old Tina Pellicano recalled. “I saw a man in the street with his clothing on fire. Flames were shooting out of the front of houses. My mother fainted.  It was a terrible ordeal. We were all terrified. People were running from their homes and the commotion was just like an earthquake.”

A second explosion followed 15 minutes later.  Firefighters arrived within minutes, but the entire block was “canopied” in flames.

“Mighty sheets of flame roared east as far as 1106 and west to 1122 Greenwich Street,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “In the lurid glare, a man with blazing nightshirt stumbled blindly amid the crumpled bricks of his home, as his son slapped at his burning clothing.”

By 6:10am, a crew from the gas company got to work plugging the gas main, shooting grease through the service pipe to block it.  Crowds of curious spectators and anxious relatives of Greenwich Street residents gawked at the conflagation from behind police lines.

But even with the gas main plugged, the worst was yet to come.   At 8:20am, an ember ignited 1600 cubic feet of accumulated gas trapped underneath the streetbed.  The massive explosion blew the entire street to pieces, sending paving stones and bricks hurling through the air.

By daybreak, Greenwich Street looked like it had come right out of the newseels that showed London on fire after a Luftwaffe raid, only in living color.

In all, five people died in the Greenwich Street gas explosion, including one police officer and one fireman.

  • Patrolman James Clark, 56
  • Fireman Frank M. Ruhl, 56
  • Angelina Treretola, 41
  • Michilena Treretola, 21
  • Marie Treretola, 14

30 were injured, and were treated either at St. Agnes Hospital, Methodist Hospital, or on the scene by medical personnel.

The residents of South Greenwich Street had complained about the smell of gas for months, but the Philadelphia Gas Works had ignored the problem. On January 4, 1943, after a two month trial, Justice Maxey of the Pennsylvania State Surpreme Court ruled in favor of the widow of Frank Ruhl, who had sued the Philadelphia Gas Company and the City of Philadelphia for negligence.  In his opinion,  Maxey noted that, “The gas company was in exclusive possession and control of its gas and gas mains. For two years the neighbors had smelled escaping gas and had notified the gas company. The last notification was three days before the explosions. The gas company did not try to locate the leak. It did not repair its leaking main or shut off the gas.”

The court awarded Alice Ruhl $17,892.65 in damages for the death of her husband.

Sources:

“List of Victims in S. Phila Blast,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 12, 1941.

Ralph Crocker, “Terror-Stricken Victims Thought It Was a Quake As Their Houses Toppled,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 12, 1941.

John M. McCullough, “4 Houses Are Wrecked as Fire Adds to Terror Caused by 3 Explosions,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 12, 1941.

Ruhl v. Philadelphia, 346 Pa. 214, 215 (Pa. 1943), https://casetext.com/case/ruhl-v-philadelphia-et-al, accessed December 5, 2019.

 

 

Categories
Historic Sites Snapshots of History

The Model T with the “Mother-in-Law” Seat

A Ford Model T roadster with a “mother-in-law” seat parked in front of townhouses at 216 and 218 North 19th Street, August 8, 1912.

In the early 1900s, the government was not in the business of regulating car design and safety.  The only real government requirements when it came to owning one were license plates and registration.  Luxury cars of that era, especially European imports such as Mercedes and Napier, were so complicated to drive and service that most owners had live-in chauffeurs who doubled as mechanics.

In 1908, the Ford Motor Company rolled out its $850 Model T.  Powered by a twenty-horsepower in-line four cylinder engine, the car had a top speed of about 43 miles per hour.  It was also mechanically simple, had interchangeable parts, and was easy for self-trained owners to fix. Thanks to Henry Ford’s pioneering use of the assembly line, Model T’s dropped steeply in price over the next decade, to a low of $250 by the early 1920s.  When the Highland Park plant outside of Detroit was operating at top speed, a Model T Ford could be assembled in only 93 minutes, from start to finish.  Yet the Tin Lizzie’s reign over the American auto market could not last forever. By the early 1920s, General Motors’ Chevrolet marque was beating Ford on price, style, and amenities, especially color choices. Due to dropping sales and its outdated technology, the Model T was phased out in 1927 and replaced by the more modern and stylish Model A.  Over the course of its 19-year production run, Ford had built a staggering 10 million Model Ts.

After-market “isenglass” side curtains on a Ford Model T touring car, in a c.1915 advertisement.  The song “The Surrey with the Fringe on the Top” from the musical Oklahoma! references the use of isenglass in bad weather. Source: The Old Motor.

The most popular and practical body style for the Model T was the four door “touring car.”  The roof was a collapsible leather top. In very bad weather, the owner could roll down transparent “isenglass” (made from fish air bladders) side curtains to keep the rain and wind out.   Few Ford Model T’s were enclosed — a closed body added significant weight and reduced the top speed to around 35 miles per hour.  A closed body also raised price beyond the reach of the typical Ford customer.  Enclosed sedan and limousine bodies needed much more powerful engines, and as a result were the domain of much more prestigious automakers such as Packard and Pierce-Arrow.

Driving a Model T is very different from today’s modern cars. See how to drive one here. 

For Ford Model T customers who preferred something sportier, Ford also offered the two-seat “roadster” body style.  It was a great car for young couples. However, what if the proverbial “third wheel” wanted to come along for the ride?  Ford solved this problem by adding a single spare seat between the rear fenders.  Given its isolation from the passenger and driver, as well as being entirely exposed to the elements, this seat became the butt of jokes.  Wags would call it the “mother-in-law” seat.  It also made the already frumpy looking roadster look even more awkward.

Often situated atop the gas tank, the mother-in-law seat was also the most dangerous in the car!

Ford and other automakers got the message. By the 1920s, this extra rear seat would be merged into the body of the car and get a more charming name: the rumble seat.

Sources:

“Turn Your Tin Lizzie Into a Limousine,” The Old Motor, December 14, 2014, http://theoldmotor.com/?p=134906, accessed November 21, 2019.

“Celebrating the Model T: Only 100 Years Young,” Auto Atlantic,  http://www.autoatlantic.com/Sept08/Sept08_Ford-Model-T-is-100.html, accessed November 21, 2019.

“Model T Club of America,” https://www.mtfca.com/, accessed November 21, 2019.

Categories
Behind the Scenes Historic Sites Snapshots of History

Cigars with Frank Furness at 711 Locust Street

The former Frank Furness house (left, 711 Locust Street), June 12, 1958.

Reverend William Henry Furness (1802-1896), the minister of Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church, complained that Philadelphia’s architects should liberate themselves from the demure and boring “Quaker style…marble steps, and wooden shutters.”   Yet exuberant ornamentation was not only anathema to Philadelphia taste, but it was also expensive, even in the Victorian era of cheap labor.  Reverend Furness raised his own family in a plain but substantial “Quaker style” rowhouse at 1426 Pine Street. It was well-situated and within the bounds of the Furness family’s middle class budget.

His son Frank Furness broke the mold of Philadelphia’s sober and conservative architectural language, designing buildings in an aggressive, flamboyant style that still captures our imagination.  A fine Frank Furness building, such as the University of Pennsylvania’s Library and the First Unitarian Church (built for his father’s congregation), shouted “look at me” in defiance of all Quaker modesty.

However, when it came to his own house, the architect Frank Furness found himself in the same budgetary dilemma as his minister father.  Although he rubbed elbows with some of Philadelphia’s richest families, he and his wife Fannie could not afford to build a showcase house for himself, of his own design.  His architecture practice, although financially successful for the last quarter of the 19th century, simply did not bring in enough money for him to travel in the Rittenhouse Square set. So, he and his wife did the next best thing: purchasing a proper four story townhouse in the Washington Square neighborhood, which was still respectable but had fallen in status somewhat in since the Civil War. It was still safely between the “acceptable” boundaries of Market and Pine streets, a calling card detail to which Furness’s client base would have paid attention.

Dining room of the Theodore and Martha Roosevelt townhouse, 6 West 57th Street, New York. This was also the home of future president Theodore Roosevelt when he was a young man. The interior of the Roosevelt home was designed by Frank Furness. Source: Wikipedia.

If Furness’s house at 711 Locust Street was Quaker plain on the outside, the architect made the interior a glittering showcase of his own design skill.  Yet it was the “smoking room” that really caught the attention of the visitors, if they were allowed into Furness’s inner-sanctum.  Or, in modern parlance, his “man cave.”

The “smoking room” at 711 Locust Street looked as if it had been plucked from a Rocky Mountain hunting cabin and dropped right in Center City Philadelphia.  It was filled with Native American art and textiles, pelts, unframed prints, antlers, and guns that Furness had purchased on his frequent journeys out west.  Like his fellow “proper Philadelphian” creative-type Owen Wister, he was fascinated with the ethos (and mythos) of the American West.  Here, in this rustic one story addition that he built with his own hands, he would entertain his comrades from his Civil War cavalry regiment, as well as John Foster Kirk of Lippincott’s Monthly and the poet Walt Whitman.

In the early 1880s, the publisher D. Appleton & Company released Artistic Houses, a lavish book that featured interior photographs of some of the grandest homes on the United States, including several in Philadelphia. They were built by tycoons such as William Henry Vanderbilt,  Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Marshall Field. Yet there was only featured photograph of the inside of an architect’s home: the smoking room at 711 Locust Street. The editors of Artistic Houses wrote of this space:

Frank Furness’s “smoking room” at 711 Locust Street. Originally published in Artistic Houses, 1883-84. Reproduced from HiddenCity.org.

What Mr. Furness has really achieved, from a chromatic point of view, can barely be surmised from our reproduction in black and white…but those who have seen the interior of this cozy little sanctum will agree that, in felicity of arrangement, both of lines and tones, it is artistic to a high degree, while its literary interest, if we must express ourselves–its absolutely unique. 

Frank Furness’s good fortune–an endless flow of commissions and long evenings with bohemian friends in the “smoking room”–did not last.  By the early 1900s, his vibrant, bold architecture of Furness & Evans was woefully out-of-fashion, and he fell on hard times.   He moved out to Media to be near his beloved brother Horace and other extended family. He died in 1912.  His Locust Street townhouse, with its famous smoking room, is now a distant memory.

Sources: 

Artistic Houses, Volume II (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1883-84), https://archive.org/stream/Artistichouses2A/Artistichouses2A_djvu.txt, accessed November 14, 2019.

Arnold Lews, James Turner, and Steven McQuillin, The Opulent Interiors of the Gilded Age (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1987), p.101.

Michael J. Lewis, Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001), pp.142-143.

James F. O’Gorman, The Architecture of Frank Furness (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), p.15.