Author: Steven Ujifusa

On April 15, 1959, Mayor Richardson Dilworth, resplendent in a three piece suit, mounted a ladder and extinguished Philadelphia’s last gas streetlight.  The frilly fixture, dating from the early 1900s, was located at 45th and Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.

Residents smiled and applauded, glad that this vestige of the Victorian era was gone.  In postwar Philadelphia, there was little room for Gilded Age nostalgia. The city had suffered greatly since the stock market crash of 1929.  Streets were crumbling, water and gas mains constantly breaking, and the housing stock dilapidated and overcrowded.  Federal money was flooding into the city, and government officials were happy to use it to tear down the old and build anew, especially new housing developments and highways.  Dilworth was also planning the revitalization of the 18th century fabric of Society Hill, arguably the first residential historic preservation initiative in a major American city.  Under city planner Edmund Bacon’s supervision, Society Hill’s streets would be marked by lampposts modeled on those from the Early Republic, only lit by electricity.

When it was first introduced in the mid-19th century, however, gas lighting was on the cutting edge of technology.  Before gas, whale oil candles provided the best source of light after dusk, especially those made from the precious “spermaceti” oil found in the heads of sperm whales. In their relentless, around the world pursuit of home lighting fuel and industrial lubricants, the men of Nantucket and New Bedford hunted many species of whales to the brink of extinction.

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Mayor Joseph Sill Clark introduces the 1950s documentary “Philadelphia: Our Changing City.”

Unlike natural gas, coal gas is manufactured rather than drilled, the byproduct of the so-called coking process, in which bituminous coal is “destructively distilled” in beehive ovens into a porous, low-sulfur product in a process similar to how charcoal is created from wood.   Coke became the essential fuel in iron and steel production, which was why the “steel king” Andrew Carnegie of Pittsburgh went into a star-crossed business partnership with the “coke king” Henry Clay Frick.  A harsh, uncompromising, and utterly humorless man, Frick did not much think of his workers.  After a public row with Carnegie following the Homestead Strike of 1892, Frick — who had survived an assassination attempt — supposedly wrote his cheery, library-building former partner, “Tell him I’ll meet him in Hell.”

Mining and coking coal it was a brutal business — conditions were appalling, deadly, and completely unregulated.  Yet coal its byproducts built many a great Philadelphia family fortune. It was the energy boom of the 19th century, and formed one part of what social historian Nathaniel Burt called the “iron triangle” of Philadelphia’s industrial economy: iron, coal, and railroads. Some business owners became increasingly intransigent as labor unrest festered.  As George Baer, president of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad put it when the miners went on strike in 1902:

“The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of this country.”

Such language made President Theodore Roosevelt foam at the mouth, and caused Baer to be called “Divine Right” George behind his back.

For most of the 19th century, Philadelphia’s middle and upper class families illuminates their homes from top to bottom with coal gas, which came from mains under the streets and piped directly into houses. Each sconce had to be lit manually, and chandeliers had to be lowered from the ceiling using a weighted pulley.  If gas offered relatively convenience compared to the candles of the past: it did have one significant drawback: the quality of the light.  Rather than the warm glow of whale oil candles, the light from gas sconces and chandeliers  had a rather grayish, ghostly hue. Many women of the era disliked how they looked at a gaslit ball or house party.  And if a gas flame flickered out while the valve was still on, the occupants of a house could be asphyxiated in their sleep.

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A look inside a gas lit home.

By the 1880s, however, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb had arrived, and those that had the means ripped open the walls of their homes and installed electric wiring.  The discovery of petroleum in Western Pennsylvania in 1859 led to another energy boom, as kerosene became a preferred home lighting fuel, especially in smaller communities that did not have a gas works. Yet coal gas continued to light Philadelphia homes well into the twentieth century.

The United Gas Improvement Company, a trust created in 1882 by streetcar magnate and developer Peter Arrell Brown Widener and his cronies, held a near-monopoly of the city’s gas business for many years, and wielded vast power in City Hall. Photograph of suburban West Philadelphia in the 1910s shows upper-middle class housing developments following the gas lines westward into what was previously bucolic farmland. The gas lights may be gone, but to this day, many old Philadelphia homes still have gas lighting lines buried behind their plaster walls.  Then as now, the source of our home energy is usually kept out of sight, and out of mind. 

Sources:

Mary L. Knapp, An Old Merchant’s House: Life at Home in New York City, 1835-65 (New York, NY: Girandole Books, 2012), pp.48-49.

Les Standiford, “Excerpt: Meet You In Hell,” NPR Books, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4717704

Note: this article is Part II of a series.  Click here for Part I. 

 Two months ago, as we stood in front of St. Monica’s Roman Catholic Church, Frank DeSimone recalled one of his fondest childhood memories: the annual visit of the Joseph A. Ferko String Band.

In the 1950s, Philadelphia was defined not by neighborhoods, but by parishes, and the local string band was a parish’s pride and joy.

“In those days, there would be a million and half people along North Broad Street,” Frank said.  “It was HUGE!”

And every New Year’s Day, the populace of St. Monica’s Parish was serenaded by 85 very honored guests.

The Mummers Parade, which formally began in 1895, was initially a kind of subversive institution, an assertion of Roman Catholic identity in a largely Protestant city.  The Quaker founders, who strove for simplicity in life and worship, were particularly suspect of “popery.”  Like the Puritans of New England, Quakers viewed liturgical feasts such as Christmas as excuses for public revelry and mischief rather than quiet devotion.  In 1733, the city leadership grew concerned that the Jesuits had arrived in Philadelphia. The Provincial Council of Pennsylvania noted that it was: “no small concern to hear that a House lately built in Walnut Street.was sett apart for the Exercise of the Roman Catholick Religion and it is commonly called the Romish Chappell . where Mass [is] openly celebrated by a Popish priest, contrary to the Laws of England.”  Remarkably, the Council determined that Philadelphia’s fledgling Roman Catholic population was protected by William Penn’s Charter of Privileges, which guaranteed religious freedom for all.  The “Romish Chappell” in question became Old Joseph’s Church, which still stands in Society Hill. Yet the hostility continued.  In 1808, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a bill declared that “masquerades, masquerade balls, and masked processions were public nuisances”  Some of this animus against dressing up was no doubt fueled by anti-Catholic sentiment, which grew to a fever pitch during the “Know Nothing” Philadelphia riots of the 1830s, in which Protestant rioters torched Roman Catholic churches, homes, and businesses.

By the late 19th century, a huge influx of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Germany tipped the balance of political power in Philadelphia in favor of the Roman Catholic electorate.  Inspired by the religious pageants from their native lands, as well as celebrations of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the city’s burgeoning working class — whose toil in the factories and mills supported the lifestyles of Philadelphia’s Gilded Age elite — decided to put on their own annual fete.  In 1923, a new string band joined the ranks of revelers parading up Broad Street at the start of every year: the Joseph A. Ferko String Band. Its clubhouse was located near the Delaware River on 2nd Street.  The band’s founder Joseph Ferko was a pharmacist from North Philadelphia, who for nearly fifty years led the group up Broad Street, and on to twenty first place finishes.

St. Monica’s Parish — centered around the church at 17th and Ritner — was located relatively close to the parade’s starting point at Broad Street and Oregon Avenue.   So every New Year’s Day, the Ferko String Band would arrive at St. Monica’s basement and change into their elaborate customs.  At 10am, Frank recalled, the 85 men of the Ferko String Band would walk out in all their colorful finery and serenade the 35 nuns on the convent steps with their renditions of “Alabama Jubilee,” “You Are My Sunshine,” and other popular songs.

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Then, the priest of St. Monica’s Church would bless the men of Ferko, and off they would strut to the parade route.

“I wouldn’t go to the parade until I saw Ferko!” Frank said.

And the performance pleased the nuns who taught Frank and his friends at the parish school. “If you spoke out of turn in class,” he said, “you were a ‘bold, brazen article!’  The last thing you wanted was for your parents to receive a note from Sister.”

Sources: 

Interview with Frank DeSimone, March 22, 2015.

“The Joseph A. Ferko String Band,” accessed May 6, 2015. http://www.ferko.com/pages/jandband.htm

“Old St. Joseph’s in the 18th Century,” accessed May 6, 2015. http://oldstjoseph.org/blog/about-osj/history/18th-century/

In 1876, as Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition was in full swing, the Pennsylvania Railroad quietly bought up the trolley rights on Lancaster Avenue from 52nd Street to the western city limits.  The PRR shrewdly sought to control as much development as possible along its Main Line to Pittsburgh, which paralleled Lancaster Avenue — also known as US 30.  The lack of trolley cars — seen as a noisy but necessary nuisance by many residents of West Philadelphia — allowed developers to create build larger houses on more spacious lots.  One property ripe for development was the 165 acre John M. George farm, which in the 1890s had not yet been developed by traction magnate Peter Widener and his cronies.  A consortium lead by the PRR and Drexel & Company then transformed the George farm from bucolic fields to upscale housing development.

Overbrook Farms, like Chestnut Hill on the other side of the Schuylkill, was a carefully planned community of suburban-style houses built within walking distance of a train stop.  The Drexels were no strangers to development in West Philadelphia — Anthony Drexel, who died the year after his bank purchased the George farm, was responsible for much of the trolley car housing development around his family’s compound at 39th and Locust.  In Overbrook, however, commercial enterprises were banished from residential streets, confined to a circumscribed shopping area near the railroad station, rather than strung out along main trolley car routes such as Baltimore Avenue to the south.

Small wonder the real estate promoters unabashedly advertised Overbrook Farms as a “suburb deluxe.”  Compare the freestanding and twin houses of Overbrook Farms with the streetcar developments built elsewhere in West Philadelphia at the same time.  These 500 or so homes — many designed by noted architects such as William Price, Angus Wade and Horace Trumbauer — are ancestors of the suburban houses that Americans take for granted today but were so novel at the end of the 19th century.  A typical detached house in Overbrook Farms contains over 2,000 square feet per floor, and cost anywhere from $12,500 to $35,000 in the 1890s, making them the modern equivalent of million dollar plus homes. The Overbrook homes are free from the constraints of traditional row house lots, the largest of which were typically 21 feet wide and 100 feet deep.  The twin homes  Church Road, Drexel Road, and Woodbine Avenue are massive, almost mansion like in scale.  They are also more richly decorated than their boxier counterparts in West Philadelphia’s trolley car suburbs of Cedar Park and Spruce Hill, which were built at almost exactly the same time.  Rooflines are more playful and varied, and walls are ornamented with Tudor half-timbering, Spanish stucco, and Colonial Revival windows.

Another advantage of larger lots was room for on-site carriage houses, which within a few decades would be transformed into garages.  On Woodcrest Avenue, just to the south of the original Overbrook Farms development, rowhouses and twins constructed after the First World War had alleys built in the rear for parking.

Originally located outside the western boundary of Philadelphia in the 1890s, Overbrook Farms was eventually annexed by the city, making it distinct from neighboring Merion and Wynnewood, which were also developed by the PRR.  It became popular with wealthy Philadelphians such as real estate mogul Albert Greenfield and chemist/art collector Albert Barnes, who were put off by the Main Line’s exclusivity but were attracted by the high quality housing stock.

Although Overbrook shares some qualities with Chestnut Hill — a fashionable suburb located in the city limits — it never had a Henry Howard Houston or George Woodward-type landlord who carefully curated its insular, exclusive mystique by building churches like St. Martins-in-the-Fields or clubs like Philadelphia Cricket.  Churches of various denominations were sponsored by individual congregations, most notably St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Philadelphia’s city’s oldest historically African-American Episcopal congregation, which before its move to Overbrook was located at 52nd and Parrish.  Rather than the firm hand of the Houston-Woodward clan, control of neighborhood aesthetics was overseen by a more democratic entity: the Overbrook Farms Club, the oldest continuously operating neighborhood association in the United States.

The result was that Overbrook Farms abounds in character and beautiful period architecture, but it never for a second feels like an English village.  Its tree-lined streets are thoroughly American in feel and layout.  Overbrook Farms was also a taste of things to come in American suburban development, which would boom in the 1920s and 50s, coinciding with middle class prosperity and the rise of the automobile.

Thanks to the hard work of the Overbrook Farms Club, this distinct neighborhood has survived remarkably intact, despite widespread abandonment and subdivision only a few blocks away. Most of Overbrook Farms’ historic homes are still single family residences.

“History: Overbrook Farms Club,” accessed April 29, 2015. http://www.overbrookfarmsclub.org/?page_id=213

Edith Willoughby, “Overbrook Farms,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory Form, 1985, p.7.  https://www.dot7.state.pa.us/ce_imagery/phmc_scans/H082616_01H.pdf

Frank DeSimone is seventy years old, and is a successful trial Philadelphia attorney who at one time served as assistant district attorney. He is short of stature and slight of build, with a soft, gravely voice and warm, open smile. Born in 1945, Frank is the grandson of immigrants from Naples.  His grandfather came to Philadelphia in the early 1900s and got a job at a paint factory, where like many other workers, contracted leukemia from the noxious fumes.  Frank’s parents ran a restaurant a few blocks from the family row house at 18th and Ritner.  

As a child, he was quite pudgy, and was known by the other kids in the neighborhood as “Beanzie.”  An elderly Jewish lady in the neighborhood who sometimes kept an eye on him after school gave him the Yiddish nickname “Frankele.”

“When I was older, they called me Beans McKinley,” he said, “because I would talk a lot and almost get into that lawyer stage even then!”

After school, a group of forty kids from the neighborhood congregated on Ritner Street, the main commercial artery of “New Italy.” “Everyone down here had a nickname,” Frank recalled, “which usually had to do with something you did, or you didn’t do. Bear, Bird, etc.” They played half-ball, stoop ball, and other games in the streets, which in the 1950s were still largely clear of cars. But Frank insists that few got into mischief either on the street or at school in St. Monica’s.   There were, as urbanist Jane Jacobs noted in her book contemporary book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, too many eyes on the street. “In those days, we didn’t lock our doors,” he said. “And nobody had fences in back of their houses.”  Plus, the last thing a student wanted was a note home from one of the nuns. Among the kids he grew up with was Ronald Donatucci, who also became a lawyer and is now Register of Wills.  Perhaps the most famous resident was Tommy Loughran, world heavy lightweight boxing champion from 1927 to 1929. The “Philly Phantom” was considered a gentleman both in and out of the arena, and a devoted parishioner at St. Monica’s Roman Catholic Church. 

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James Braddock vs. Tommy Loughran, July 18, 1929..

During high school, he took to heart the words of his surrogate Jewish grandmother: “lick the honey off the book pages.” Pushed to succeed in school by his own parents, Frank attended St. Joe’s Prep in North Philadelphia and then went on to Villanova University for college and law school, commuting from his parents’ home to save money.

Frank now lives on the Main Line and works in Center City. Yet he still frequently visits the old neighborhood to attend Mass at St. Monica’s, buy pastries from Cacia’s for Christmas and St. Joseph’s Day, and pick up a sandwich for his wife Lorrie from Nick’s Old Roast Beef.  He occasionally brings his 28 year old son Frank Jr., a third year law student, along with him.  “Like me, he’s a traditionalist,” Frank said about his son over a cup of coffee at the Melrose Diner.  “I want him to know where his family comes from, and to be proud of it. And it means a lot to him.”

“When my son got into Harvard,” Frank added, “I went to my parents’ graves and thanked them. We did it.”

I met Frank Sr. for a tour of his old neighborhood on Sunday, March 22.  Unfortunately,  I missed the St. Joe’s cakes (also known as zeppole) at Cacia’s Bakery on Ritner Street by a few days.  Termini’s was out of them, as well, so I had a cannoli instead, filled with ricotta cheese. Frank told me that these treasured custard-filled fritters, an Italian American favorite on the annual Festa di San Giuseppe on March 19, do not keep for more than a day, anyway.  I’ll have to wait till next year.

For him, St. Monica’s Church is still the heart and soul of his Philadelphia, a city not of neighborhoods, but of parishes.  St. Monica’s is a craggy Romanesque revival edifice dated from 1901.  It was gutted by a catastrophic fire on January 8, 1971, but thanks to the generous donations of the nearby parishioners, it was restored to its full glory a few years later, albeit with modern pews and stained glass windows. Each pew bears the name of a sponsoring family, almost all of them Italian.  While a bit forbidding on the outside, St. Monica’s is brightly lit and immaculate on the inside, with yellow walls, white plasterwork, and pastel murals on the ceiling and above the marble altar. The cross above the altar was covered by a Lenten shroud.  The mass schedule is full, just as it was half a century ago. A stained glass window commemorates the fire and Father Aloysius Xavier Farrell, who spearheaded the rebuilding effort.

“When people ask where are you from?” Frank told me. “They say I’m from St. Monica’s Parish.  When that was said to you, you not only knew the area of the city where they lived, but you knew something about their ethnicity, their education, their beliefs.  Secondarily to the parish, you’d give them a street corner, not your address. That also would identify where you lived.”

He learned that early on in his legal career. While being interviewed at the public defenders office, the first question Vincent Siccardi asked him was “Frank DeSimone. Where are you from, Frank?”

“18th and Ritner!”  Frank blurted out.

“You’re hired,” Siccardi responded immediately. “I hire guys from corners. They make good trial lawyers. I want you to work here.”

When I  asked about Siccardi’s logic, Frank responded, “If you grew up on a street corner, you got to know people, you interacted with people, and were part of the fabric of the city. You have to make quick judgements when dealing with people, or you’re going to get teased or get made fun of, so you have to survive in that environment. When you’re in a courtroom, it’s the same thing.”

He took the job, missing out on a follow up interview from the District Attorney’s office.  He would get there eventually, serving in the homicide department, before going into private practice.  When picking a  jury, Frank believes that knowing a person’s parish and corner is still the next best thing to a psychological profile.

 Sources:

Interview with Frank DeSimone, March 22, 2015.

“St. Monica,” Philadelphia Church Project, http://www.phillychurchproject.com/st-monica/