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Slavers kidnapped a frail, 7-year-old girl in West Africa. They forced her aboard The Phillis, transported her to Boston, and sold her to John Wheatley, a tailor, and his wife, Susanna. Phillis Wheatley (named for the ship) quickly mastered English, became versed in the Bible and learned Greek and Latin. A creative genius, her first poem appeared in print in 1770. Wheatley was lauded as a new, distinctively American poet, a star of the rising anti-slavery movement and a trans-Atlantic literary celebrity. Six cities, including Philadelphia, printed her work. Wheatley’s collected poems were published in London in 1773.

A century and a half later, the name Phillis (sometimes spelled Phyllis) Wheatley would be considered an inspiring choice for African-American organizations from South Carolina to Minnesota. Equity Hall in Philadelphia’s “Black 7^th Ward” had been serving as a destination since 1894 for banquets, meetings, protests, funerals, balls, boxing matches, concerts and political rallies. In 1922, The Negro Year Book listed the building at 1024 Lombard as the Phyllis Wheatley Social Center.

When Mayor Hampton Moore confirmed his plan to renovate the hall and build a new playground on the block between 10^th, 11th, Lombard and Rodman Streets, it made perfect sense to name it for the poet. “I suggest the name of one who stands for the colored race,” declared the mayor, “a slave child brought to the country and kept here in slavery, who, despite all obstacles became an educated woman—a writer and a poet, a woman who wrote of her people and who sang their songs.” At a dedication ceremony on July 12, 1921, Mayor Moore noted before a crowd of 2,000 that a place previously known as “Hell’s Half Acre” was about to be renamed “the Phyllis Wheatley Recreation Centre.” This choice, he later noted, met the approval of several religious and civic leaders in Philadelphia’s African American community.

But Mayor Moore had earned himself a few political enemies. Immediately after his election in 1919, Moore unfurled a banner across Market Street proclaiming: “No boss shall rule this town.” He derailed the political ambitions of Vare loyalist, City Councilman Charles B. Hall, whose district included the playground. And Moore commissioned a study, conducted by sociologist Richard R. Wright Jr., that concluded the 1000 block of Lombard Street was “one of the worst pest holes in Philadelphia… due largely [to the] influence and protection” of an unnamed politician. Wright’s report claimed that city-owned buildings there were being “used for profitable, but illegal practices, including banditry, dope, prostitution, gambling and a series of other crimes too numerous to mention.”

Hall, the area’s ward leader, looked like the guilty party. He threatened to sue the Mayor for libel—and more, he proposed using what power he did have in City Council to swap out Wheatley’s name with someone who had a direct connection with the 7^th Ward, the recently deceased City Councilman (and Hall’s predecessor and mentor) Charles Seger.  A fireman turned saloon owner machine politician, Seger was the epitome of political bossism.

Moore called Hall “a “baby” and a “bluffer,” and reiterated the accusation that Hall was “largely responsible for vice conditions in the section of the city where he is in political control.”

“It’s a usurpation of power which belongs to Council,” claimed Hall of Moore’s proposal for the Wheatley name. “I want that place named Charles Seger Park and I’m going to see that it is named that.” A few members of the city’s African-American press took Hall’s side and interpreted the mayor’s proposal as crass pandering. “The most regrettable occurrence,” wrote the author of an article entitled “Phyliss Wheatley’s Name in Wrong Hands,” “has been the flippant and disgusting manner in which the mayor of Philadelphia and a few of his colored followers have dragged into the mire of the filthy politics of the city the name of that illustrious Negro woman…” Others in the city’s African-American community disagreed: “Numerous colored churches … vigorously denounced Councilman Hall for his attempt to name the new playground at 10^th and Lombard streets after the late Charles Seger.”

Mayor Moore wasn’t about to back down, even after City Council overwhelmingly voted (15-4) to name the playground for Charles Seger in late July, 1921. He vetoed the bill and presented a plaque of Phyllis Wheatley to hang in the Lombard Street building. A week later, Moore opened the Mayor’s Reception Room in City Hall to 250 citizens interested in maintaining the Wheatley name. “The masks usually worn by the colored population had been stripped off,” declared the Rev. W.H. Moses of the Zion Baptist Church, “and no matter what Council did the name of the playground to the Negroes always would be the Phillis Wheatley Center.”

City Council did override the Mayor’s veto. And soon after, Council proposed to demolish Equity Hall, aka the Phyllis Wheatley Social Center. What would take its place? Councilman Hall had at the ready an ordinance to fund “a modern community and social service house to be named after Fanny Jackson Coppin, a slave girl who rose to be a profound Greek and Latin scholar and the greatest of all Negro educators of all time.” Coppin did have strong ties to the neighborhood. Starting in 1865, she ran the Institute for Colored Youth only a few blocks away near 9th and Bainbridge Streets.

But today, the Coppin building is long gone. And, of course, Wheatley’s name is nowhere to be found. What remains is once-contested public space that goes by the name of Seger.

Sometimes, long-forgotten history forces us to pose a question. In this case, we must ask: Should Seger’s name remain?

[Sources: [Dedication of Equity Hall], December 11, 1894 (Inquirer); “Colored Odd Fellows’ lodges in Philadelphia, 1896,” New York Public Library Digital Collections;  “Republicans Hold a Rousing Meeting in Equity Hall,” October 26, 1912 (Tribune); “Seger Dies at 71,” November 8, 1919 (Inquirer); “Moore Clamps Lid Tightly on Cabinet,” Nov. 8, 1919 (Inquirer); “’Hell’s Half Acre’ to get New Name,” July 13, 1921 (Tribune); “From Sproul Down, Vare Rule is Over, Notice From Moore,” Dec. 24, 1919 (Inquirer); “Mayor Answers Threats of Hall,” July 9, 1920 (Inquirer); “Mayor Should Clean Up Vice, Declares Hall,” Aug. 25, 1920 (Inquirer); “Hall Threatens Mayor, Dares Moore to Charge Him with Vice Conditions,” Aug. 28, 1920 (Tribune); “Mayor Threatened By Hall With Suit,” Nov. 27, 1920 (Inquirer); “Mayor Threatened By Hall With Suit,” Nov. 27, 1920 (Inquirer); “To Build Playground,” Oct. 23 1920 (Bulletin); “Mayor Moore Would ‘Clean-Up’ Seventh Ward Section to Establish His Own Political Headquarters,” Oct. 30, 1920 (Tribune); “Hell’s Half Acre Is Passing Away,” Jan. 4, 1921 (Inquirer); “Bill for New Playground,” June 2 1921 (Bulletin); “Hell’s Half Acre” to get New Name,” July 13, 1921 (Inquirer); “Wheatley Pa’K How Come?” July 16, 1921 (Bulletin); “Phyllis Wheatley’s Name in Wrong Hands,” July 16 1921 (Tribune); “Mayor Moore Opens New Play Ground…Phyllis Wheatley its Name,” July 16, 1921 (Tribune); “Hall Defies the Mayor to Veto ‘Seger’ Centre,” July 22, 1921 (Bulletin);  “Bold Attempt to Use Our Churches in City Politics,” July 23, 1921 (Tribune);  “Phillis Wheatley Name To ‘Stick,’” July 23, 1921 (Inquirer); “Negroes Announce Break with Hall over Playground,” Aug. 4, 1921 (Bulletin); “Colored Residents Demand Park Be Named for Poetess,” Aug. 4, 1921 (Bulletin); “The Mayor Hears Arguments on Play Ground Naming,” Aug. 6, 1921 (Tribune). Marcus Anthony Hunter, Black Citymakers: How The Philadelphia Negro Changed Urban America (Oxford University Press; 2015)].

The date, 1874, seems reasonable enough. So does the photograph’s title “Fairmount Bridge – East Approach.” But the buildings don’t seem to match the given address: “N. 25^th St and Fairmount Ave.” And so we turn to the online version of G. M. Hopkins 1875  Atlas at The Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network to figure it out. The curve of the road, the stone wall and the steep slope on the left side of the image rather suggest we’re looking at the southeastern edge of the Fairmount Reservoir, what is now the site of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Today, the scene would be looking across Eakins Oval.

A closer look at the atlas yields a solid hint as to precisely where. “Approach to the upper deck of the bridge,” it says. And just above the word “approach” we especially like that a bend in the road that matches a bend in the masonry wall visible in the photograph. Now, oriented to that spot on the map, we are certain it’s a view to the northwest, toward what was once 25^th and Spring Garden Streets.

Zooming in on the photograph, there’s a sign for the “New Bridge Hotel,” a short row of brick houses, and then a substantial domed church. And a thought occurs: we never knew of a church there. The Atlas tells us the church property is owned by James F. Wood. Hmmm. That’s not very helpful. But with the click of a box on the Interactive Map Viewer we switch to Smedley’s 1862 Philadelphia Atlas and we’re treated to some welcome information. At the northwest corner of 25^th and Biddle Streets, just south of where Spring Garden Street runs into the foot of Fairmount, the word “Church” is plainly there in a rectangle. No name, no denomination—for that we’ll have to look elsewhere. And just one more click of a box away, we find what we’re looking for: The church is “St. Francis Xavier R. Cath. Church.” A small archival victory.

Where to turn to learn more?

The Callowhill Street Bridge, as they called it, did have an upper deck, as confirmed by PhillyHistory images  here and here. In fact, it was new in 1874, which explains the construction debris in the curved road as well as the sign “New Bridge Hotel.” A double-decker bridge replaced the previous bridge, the “Wire Bridge at Fairmount” of 1842. And, if you want to go all the way back, the first bridge there “The Upper Ferry Bridge,” opened in 1812. It earned a distinctive nickname: “The Colossus” for the record-breaking size of its single wooden truss.

Biddle Street became Buttonwood in 1897 a fact that’s confirmed by G. W. Bromley’s 1910 Philadelphia Atlas. By then, however, the church is gone and a bath house stands in its place. What happened? The B. & O. Railroad’s Schuylkill River East Side Rail Road tunnel under 25^th Street underwent expansion in the mid-1880s. In the process, blasting resulted in “significant damage to both the church and the adjacent rectory.”

What more can we read into the photograph? Off to the left, partially hidden in the distance, is a multi-story mill building. In 1875, that would be Fairmount Worsted Mills (formerly J.& W. Yewdale’s Worsted Goods Manufactory) occupying much of the south side of the 2400 block of Spring Garden between Osprey and Taylor Streets.

On the northeast corner of 25^th and Biddle is a one-story mill identified as “Cotton Manufactory” by Hexamer & Locher on their 1858-60 Atlas. By 1895, that building has become part of S. B. Fleisher’s mill. Adjacent to it is Fleisher’s Star Braid Works and dye house. Within a few short blocks one would find an ice factory, several soap works, a carriage bolt works, machine tool manufacturers and factories making everything from carpets to iron roofing. All places of employment in the burgeoning neighborhood along the Schuylkill.

Is there anything to uncover about the church, which, we read on the 1895 Atlas, is “St. Francis Cath. Ch.”?

Luckily, one copy of a lithograph of the church building dating from 1880 (or so) survives at the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center. The compilers of the comprehensive Philadelphia on Stone at the Library Company included an entry for it in their catalogue. But other than informing us that “the church relocated to a new building at 24th and Green streets in 1898,” we remain in the dark as to who designed it and when its dome joined the city’s skyline.

The extant St. Francis Xavier Church a few blocks away on the 2300 block of Green Street is the work of architect Edwin Forrest Durang. But his extensive list of projects identifies only one St. Francis Xavier, not two.

We turn to a book entitled Cathlocity in Philadelphia, which happens to be word-searchable at archive.org. There, on pages 293 and 294 is an entry for St. Francis Xavier’s Church which provides some useful background. In 1839, Bishop Francis Kendrick recognized the need for new parishes in the western sections of the city proper. He noted the growth of “the coal-shipping industry, the wharves of which stretched alongside the east bank of the Schuylkill River” and new, largely Irish Catholic settlements known “The Village” and “Out Schuylkill.” Kendrick created two new parishes: St. Patrick based at 20^th and Rittenhouse and St. Francis Xavier at 25^th and Biddle. The community came together to dedicate a church at the former on June 1, 1841.  The corner-stone of St. Francis Xavier’s was laid June 1, 1839 and that church, still without a dome, was dedicated on Sunday, June 6, 1841.

We learn that St. Patrick’s was “built under the direction of [architect] Napoleon LeBrun.” No mention of an architect for St. Francis Xavier.

But we take away a clue that is subsequently confirmed in Roger Moss’s Historic Sacred Places in Philadelphia. The dome, which Moss suggests may date to 1866, appears to be an echo of Pietro da Cortona’s San Carlo al Corso in Rome, which has often been cited as the source for the dome of the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul on Logan Square. LeBrun also contributed designs for the Cathedral. Could this church at 25^th and Biddle be another iteration of the same idea by LeBrun? Take a look at San Carlo’s dome and consider the possibilities.

As workers cleaned debris from the old Victorian brownstone at 338 South 15^th Street, a framed set of photographs caught the eye of Marc Mostovoy, the building’s new owner. Mostovoy, a conductor of classical music with no knowledge of vintage photography, kept the curiosity from being tossed into the dumpster. That was 1970.

Sixteen years later, F. Holland Day’s The Seven Words, the Boston photographer’s depiction of Christ on the cross, portrayed by himself, sold at Sotheby’s auction in New York, setting a new record for a photographic work of art: $93,500. Day went to great lengths creating the series, which was, according to The New York Times, inspired by the religious ideas of Day’s friend, the poet William Butler Yeats. “Day imported a cross from Syria, created a crown of thorns, grew a beard and long hair and fasted to achieve an emaciated look.”

Day had sent the piece to Philadelphia for exhibition in the first photographic salon at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the Fall of 1898. After the salon, Philadelphia archaeologist, collector and photographer Clarence Bloomfield Moore, added the piece to his art collection. The fact that Day’s work had found its way to 338 South 15^th street actually made a lot of sense. The building’s previous owner, Louis Walton Sipley, an energetic writer, inventor, lantern slide and educational film maker, had established a museum of photography. Sipley operated the museum on the building’s lower floors. He and his wife occupied the upper stories.

In 1939, while working on an article about photography’s centennial year for Arts and Sciences, a magazine he edited, Sipley came to realize the quantity of important photographs lost or on the brink of oblivion. On a mission, he went from museum to museum in Philadelphia trying to convince someone, anyone, to make photography a collecting priority. No one would. Meanwhile, Sipley learned that institutions and individuals wanted to turn over valuable photographic material to him, if he would take it. So Sipley adopted photography—literally—he founded the nation’s first museum devoted exclusively to it.

The American Museum of Photography opened December 10, 1940. Through exhibitions and articles on the early history of the medium, Sipley expanded upon his magazine article telling the story of Philadelphia’s substantial contributions to its development.

The museum’s holdings grew to more than 50,000 prints representing all kinds of photographic and photo-mechanical processes. It developed a library of 5,000 books and periodicals. Hundreds of pieces of early equipment found their way to 338 South 15^th Street. Sipley began to imagine that his American Museum of Photography might someday occupy a building on the city’s cultural boulevard, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

When Sipley died in 1968, his museum was not only leaderless, it lacking any kind of an endowment to sustain operations. At the very least, Sipley had hoped to somehow keep the collection intact and in Philadelphia. But none of the Philadelphia institutions wanted the American Museum of Photography without funds to support it. One prominent curator from the Philadelphia Museum of Art reportedly visited the shuttered museum on 15^th street, stepped into a room with tables and shelves piled high with prints, books and equipment, and quickly turned on his heel.

That may have been the death knell for the American Museum of Photography.

In short order, the contents of the museum were sold to the 3M Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. Executives there were thinking about establishing their own museum of photography. But their plans faltered and the Sipley collection languished in a St. Paul warehouse for the better part of the decade.

In the 1970s, the museum world grew more accepting of photography. Dim recollections of the defunct museum finally found resolution. There would be no museum, came the announcement from St. Paul. The Sipley/3M Collection would be turned over to the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House (now the George Eastman Museum) in Rochester, New York.

Somehow, F. Holland Day’s The Seven Words failed to make it into the museum’s inventory, or into any of the crates shipped to St. Paul.

Day’s work from 1898 is considered a highlight in the history of the medium. There are only two other sets of The Seven Words known, one at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Alfred Stieglitz’s copy) and another at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. After its acquisition in 2013, curators lavished praise, calling the “monumental self portrait . . . one of the masterpieces of photographic history.” And more. “The Seven Last Words,” they swooned, is nothing short of being “one of the most significant images in the history of the photography, a work that reverberates with iconic importance and one that influenced subsequent artists significantly.”

If and when Sipley’s Day, which is now at a New York gallery, were to be sold again, it would certainly break auction records once more, records that currently stand in excess of $4 million.

Once upon a time, Philadelphia had this gem in hand. And that was the least of it. Back then, Philadelphia had an entire museum devoted to the medium of photography. What are we left with now? A tale of disappointment, the story of a cultural treasure that somehow slipped away.

[Adapted from: Kenneth Finkel, editor, Legacy in Light: Photographic Treasures from Philadelphia Area Public Collections (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1990). Additional Sources: Lita Solis-Cohen, “The Trash Yields a Record-Setting Photo Treasure,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 14,1986; [Obituary] “Dr. Louis Sipley of Photo Museum: Head of Private Institution in Philadelphia Is Dead,” The New York Times, October 19, 1968; and Rita Reif, “Auctions,” The New York Times, October 31, 1968.]

 

“How common is the spectacle . . . youth falling into decay before manhood is reached, of middle age weighed down by accumulated ills and infirmities, while slowly, and more slowly move the hesitating wheels of life.”

The pitch from a promotional pamphlet To Philadelphians on Behalf of the Natatorium & Physical Institute. The year: 1860.

“Modern civilization, with all its wonderful applications of science and art to the increase of personal comfort and the promotion of social pleasures, tends, unfortunately, to a precocious development of both mind and body.” These modern people “constantly sin against the natural laws established by the Creator” resulting in “weakened frames and puny offspring.”

What are “the primary causes which bring on premature decline and shorten life?” Inadequate, impure air “and want of regular bodily exercise.” These conditions . . . begin as early as the nursery and continue “in the school-room, the study, the store, the shop, and the factory.” The impact: a society of “round-shouldered” men and “women with . . . obliquity of the spine.”

The cure?  Establish a natatorium “following the examples set in European capitals — Paris, Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, Breslau and Copenhagen.” After all, “swimming is not only a healthful exercise and recreation, but it is likewise an accomplishment by which life is often saved.” Consider how a “bold swimmer” converts “moments of agonizing suspense . . . into a time of rejoicing and gratitude at the escape, through his exertions, of a fellow being from a watery grave.”

An authentic natatorium would recreate the thermal springs found in ancient Greece “dedicated to Hercules.” Its time-tested “renovating powers” enabled the original athletes “restoration of their strength after it was exhausted in the exhibitions of the palestrae or the circus.” This modern day “Natatorium and Institute for Scientific Instruction in the Improvement of the Physical Powers” was conveniently located on Broad Street, between Walnut and Locust; it opened in 1862 and remained a popular feature through the 19^th century and into the 20^th.

 

A glimpse of an opening reception at the Natatorium after its first decade of operation: Renovations and decorated rooms greeted visitors, as did music and dancing. “On the surface of the bath reposed a small single-scull bateau, gaily painted. The galleries were festooned with evergreens, a moss basket being suspended under every loop, alternating with small American flags projecting from the balustrade, which was nearly concealed with the national colors on a larger scale. Five flags were also draped beneath the arches of the ceiling, being looped at the center of the arch with a pendant falling from that points. McClurg’s Band was in attendance and enhanced with good music the brilliance of the scene.”

“At half-past seven o’clock the bath was in readiness for the young lady pupils of [swimming master] Mr. [J. A.] Payne, the evening of the reception being the only one of the season in which the feminine eyes behold the swimming-school and gymnasium by gaslight.” An hour later, “the doors were thrown open to all the invited guests, and the throng of visitors drifted upstairs to the gymnasium, whither the band speedily followed them, and the dance music proving too strong a temptation to be resisted a number of couples were soon moving over the floor in a series of waltzes, redowas and polkas that gave the crowded room very much the appearance of an impromptu ball” for the four hundred guests.

At the fortieth anniversary in 1902, then known as Asher’s Natatorium, the institution celebrated the coming summer season with “a large number of athletic society folk, both men and women . . . who witnessed a program of many unique features in the aquatic line and later indulged in an enjoyable dance.” Twenty-seven young women pupils opened the program with “a highly interesting exhibition of swimming and diving. Professor George Kistler, of the University of Pennsylvania, followed with a fin demonstration of fancy strokes and high-class trick swimming. He was assisted in this demonstration by J. C. Myers. One of the most interesting features was that of swimming gracefully with both hands and feet tied.”

What did such a demonstration prove? That the art of swimming, as the founding argument put it, was not only natural, it was essential. “Man, the lord of all, and so proud of his knowledge, may be lost in a brook, if he has not learned to swim.” Why forfeit “half of his sovereignty by his not becoming amphibious?”

Why, indeed.

Fitness, and swimming in particular, was the answer. And the place to begin: Philadelphia’s venerable Natatorium: “the first and only systematic swimming school in the United States” where the “temperature always remains the same—summer heat” and where even “the most timid person” could learn to swim in “six to ten lessons.”

[Sources: To Philadelphians on Behalf of the Natatorium & Physical Institute. President, Paul B. Goddard, etc. (Philadelphia: J. B. Chandler, Printer, 1860); from The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Philadelphia Natatorium and Physical Institute,” May 1, 1868; “The Natatorium,” May 1, 1871; “Philadelphia Natatorium and Physical Institute,” April 26 1884; “Established 1858 – Natatorium,” April 24, 1895; “Natatorium Opens,” April 27, 1902]

Ricky Jay is gone. He left this earth two days ago. Those who knew him, who witnessed his performances, who read his books are the poorer, suspended in disbelief.

This time there’s no resolution. There’s no final illusion like the one that captivated audiences when “Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants” hit Broadway. There’s nothing like those up-close, unbelievable sleights of hand. Ricky will not be conjuring his way back to us. YouTube will have to suffice.

Ricky revived and breathed life into rare illusions. He also collected posters, diaries, rare books and artifacts having to do with the history of unusual performances. He deeply larded his acts with the past and, convincingly claimed he could travel through time. His commitment to the history of his art and craft led to books (including Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women), lectures (“Splendors of Decaying Celluloid”), documentaries (“Deceptive Practice”) and keynotes (“Illusion as Truth”). He founded the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts.

I was lucky to meet Ricky in the 1980s during his book buying trips to Philadelphia. At Bookbinder’s (on 15th Street in Center City), Ricky, whose hands were never idle, would make oyster crackers, one after the other, disappear from the large carafe. Conversation at the table entirely stopped, not that he meant it to draw attention to himself. We’d ask for more (illusions, not oyster crackers) and he’d pause, then conjure up the precise content of Clarence Wolf’s jacket pocket, somehow “reading” the type on 3-by-5 cards through the tweed. Always practicing, always learning, yet (somehow) never showing off, Ricky would share a newly-acquired illusion. He’d say: “This was a favorite one of the king of Persia in the 8th century.” Of course, you believed him. Why wouldn’t you? And more than that. You believed in him. Ricky commanded attention in ways that required you to suspend mere logic. You always wanted more from Ricky. Because you knew it was the real thing. And that you’d be more surprised than you ever thought possible. When ”Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants” returned to Broadway, the venerable New York Times welcomed him back with an editorial: “Ricky Jay Is Back in Town” praising his show. “The impossible is made to happen repeatedly” and yet “the viewer’s sense of impossibility” was somehow still protected.

Expecting a polite decline, I asked Ricky if he would consider contributing to the Philadelphia Almanac and Citizens’ Manual, published by The Library Company of Philadelphia in late 1993. Much to my delight, he agreed and turned in a scholarly, entertaining, and, of course, esoteric essay. Here is “The Turkish Automaton’s Final Act” by Ricky Jay:

To please the Empress Maria Theresa, the Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen, a Hungarian inventor, constructed a chess-playing pseudo-automaton in 1769. It appeared as a lifelike, elaborately costumed Turkish mannequin holding a long pipe seated behind a cabinet whose doors were opened to reveal an impressive display of wheels and gears. In performance, the apparatus was wound up, and the Turk commenced to play chess against all comers. He compiled an impressive record of victory, defeating many of the best players in Europe, and clearly articulating the word “échec” as his opponent’s doom seemed inevitable. Attempted explanations and exposes of the mechanism (in truth: a secret, hidden chess expert/operator) did little to deflate its popularity, which was enhanced by matches against such worthies as Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin.

Von Kempelen occasionally exhibited the machine, always slightly embarrassed at the attention it garnered. Although his system of concealment was exceedingly clever, he felt the hidden human agent belittled his achievements as a serious inventor. After the Baron’s death, musician, inventor, and itinerant showman Johann Nepomuk Maelzel purchased the machine. In 1826, Maelzel brought his automaton to America, exhibiting in New York and Boston before making Philadelphia his base of operations.

Although the Turk was a resounding success in its initial Philadelphia appearances, over the years its popularity waned due to a combination of factors. Too often the machine concealed inferior players. Too frequently its secret was revealed (once by a young Edgar Allan Poe). Knock-off versions and over-exposure of the original diminished its novelty.

After Maelzel’s death in 1838, the Turk was stored in a warehouse at the Lombard Street wharf. Two years later, with the machine in a horrible state of disrepair, a group of Philadelphia investors headed by the well-known physician John Kearsley Mitchell (Poe’s personal physician) came forward to purchase it. Mitchell restored the automaton and exhibited it privately. One of the Turk’s hidden directors was Lloyd P. Smith, a young businessman who later became librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia.

In 1840, the Turk was exhibited at the Franklin Institute (now the building of the Philadelphia History Museum) and thereafter at the Chinese Museum at Ninth near Sansom Streets. Its active career may have been only a few days, but it remained in the museum until July 5, 1854, when a fire that started at the nearby National Theater claimed several adjacent buildings, including the museum that housed the 85-year-old Turk. John Kearsley Mitchell’s son, the dapper novelist and physician S. Weir Mitchell, entered the building before the conflagration made access completely impossible, possibly to rescue a few essential parts of the device, and witnessed a scene that he later delivered as the Turk’s epitaph:

Already the fire was about him. Death found him tranquil. He who had seen Moscow perish knew no fear of fire. We listened with painful anxiety. It might have been a sound from the crackling woodwork or the breaking window-panes, but, certain it is, that we thought we heard, through the struggling flames, and above the din of outside thousands, the last words of our dear departed friend, the sternly whispered, oft repeated syllables, ”Échec! Échec!”

[Sources: Mark Singer, “Secrets of the Magus,” The New Yorker, April 5, 1993; Bradley Ewart, Chess: Man versus Machine (A.S. Barnes and Tantivy Press, 1980); George Allen, Proceedings of the First Annual Chess Conference (Philadelphia, 1859); Philadelphia Almanac and Citizens’ Manual for 1994, edited by Kenneth Finkel (Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1993)]

Barreling northward through William Penn’s original city grid, I-95 barely skirts a massive abutment for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Pulling slightly to the west before it reaches Callowhill Street, the highway spares a short block between Front and Water Streets. Somewhat forgotten, this survivor speaks of a dynamic that once defined the city’s waterfront. And it’s not the buildings that are doing the talking as much as the narrow space in between 323 and 325 North Front Street. A growing collection of fans know this grey granite feature as the Wood Street Steps.

They are more than mere steps. Harris Steinberg, the former head of Penn Praxis, the group that led the way to a new vision for the waterfront, thinks of them as an “epiphany,” and a “guiding touchstone.” Others agree. What here we have here is “the message in the bottle.”

What’s the message?

It goes back to the genesis of the city and the founding promise to balance private ownership and public access of the riverfront. In the 1680s, William Penn first battled a band of the city’s cave dwellers, settlers who refused to leave their perches dug into the steep bluffs overlooking the river. He worried about scenes of “clandestine looseness” where “evil disorders” might go unchecked. But as soon as the caves were gone, Penn faced the prospect of development preventing public access. It seemed his planning principles, based on a careful balance of public and private interests, were at risk.

In Imagining Philadelphia, Steinberg writes of the wealthy and powerful Samuel Carpenter, who “sought to build a commercial wharf along the river” blocking access for everyone else. Penn needed to find a way to assure public access while still enabling Carpenter to conduct his business. The solution? Public passageways, “sets of municipal stairs.” Before long, there were as many as eleven sets of stairways between Water and Front Streets providing Philadelphians access to their waterfront. Wood Street, the final survivor, was the northernmost. Going south from Vine there were steps at Summer Street, Cherry Street, Filbert Street and Blackhorse Alley. Each one connected the city, the riverfront and the river that reached around the world.

For the longest time,  the remaining sets of steps were considered picturesque vestiges of the quaint past, reminiscent features of faraway places. Joseph Pennell etched “Water Street Stairs, Looking Up,” a copy of which is at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He and his wife Elisabeth Robins Pennell included a second etching “The Cherry Street Stairs Near the River” in their book Our Philadelphia of 1914. A few years later, Christopher Morley ambled down the Cherry Street Stairs one September afternoon for his Travels in Philadelphia.

“Watching myself with caution, I dodged down the steep stairs by which Cherry street descends from Front to Delaware avenue. In the vista of this narrow passage appeared the sharp gray bow of the United States transport Santa Teresa. The wide space along the docks was a rumble of traffic, as usual: wagons of golden bananas, sacks of peanuts on the pavement.”

On Valentine’s Day in 1918 a city photographer captured a romantic side-eye view of the Cherry Street Stairs.

And in the early 1920s, G. Mark Wilson penciled a note on the back of his photograph now at the Library Company of Philadelphia. “Not in Florence, Genoa, or Naples. An outside stairway between Water and Front Sts., No. of Market St. Phila. The characters are not Italians. The man is a Jew and the young woman is Irish.”

Only recently have we recognized these stairs as something more than picturesque vestiges with Old World echoes. In 1986 the Wood Street Steps was approved for the city’s Register of Historic Places. It survives, as Steinberg tells it, as “testimony to the enduring, if not frayed, power of values-based planning”—a reminder and an illustration in granite of “Penn’s promise.”

[Sources: Scott Knowles, Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2009); Christopher Morley, Travels in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1920).]

There’s been a lot of big talk and conflicting claims over the years, as to who invented the hoagie, and when. Was it conjured up for workers going to the shipyards at Hog Island in World War I? Was it first introduced by South Philadelphia sandwich purveyors Antoinette Iannelli, Al DePalma or the Scarsi Brothers? Or someone else?

“I made the first hoagie back in 1935,” declared Antoinette Iannelli in 1983. Why call it a hoagie?” asked food writer Jim Quinn. “’I didn’t,’” responded Iannelli, “I called them submarines….”

Hmmm.

It may be we cannot actually know when Philadelphia’s official sandwich was invented and named. What we do know is that the hoagie originated in South Philadelphia at some point during the first half of the 20^th century. Hard evidence is sparse, and there’s conflicting verbal accounts shared decades later. Opinion and hearsay . . . lore yearning to be legend.

Fact is, there’s no recorded oral history pegging the hoagie to Hog Island at the end of WWI. Looking for evidence in print, we find there’s no mention of “hoagie” in the 1910s, or the 1920s, or even in the 1930s.

The word “Hoagie” does not appear in print until the 1940s.

Sandwich scholars Edwin Eames and Howard Robboy explored the entire genre—the Bomber, Cuban Sandwich, Garabaldi, Grinder; Hero, Hoagie, Italian Sandwich, Musalatta, Poor Boy, Rocket, Submarine, Torpedo and Zepplin—and found that the first use of the terms “hoggy,” “hoggie” or “hoagie” simply do not appear before the 1940s. The earliest mention of “hoagie” Eames and Robboy located was in the Philadelphia Telephone Directory from 1943.

We delved into the database at Philly.newspapers.com and found corroborating evidence. The word “Hoggie” appears twice in the Inquirer classified ads in 1943. From April 4: “HOGGIE SHOP. Doing gd. Bus. Must sell account sickness. 6305 Greenway ave.” Then, on September 12: “Woman, active 25 to 45, to work part time in sandwich shop. 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. no Sun. 40c an hr. to start. Tony’s Hoggie Shop, 6709 Woodland ave.”

The word “hoagie” doesn’t appear for another three years.

That classified advertisement published February 4, 1946 reads: “HOAGIE & Luncheonette shop. Doing gd bus. Gd. Reason for selling. Apply 5501 Chester ave.” Four days later, the ad is edited: “HOGGIE SHOP & luncheonette. Doing a swell business. Good reason for selling. 5501 Chester ave.”

Digging deeper, we find between 1946 and 1950, the words “hoggie” and “hoagie” appear with equal frequency.  The former appears 127 times and the latter 124 times. But at the end of this period, there’s a shift where “hoggie” gives way to “hoagie.” In 1950, the “hoagie” pulls ahead for the first time, appearing 73 times compared with only 45 times for “hoggie.” In the next five years, from 1951-1955, “hoggie” appears 44 times while “hoagie” appears a robust 565 times.

What can we infer from this instability of usage? Perhaps the word “hoagie” was still so new that one spelling, one pronunciation, wasn’t yet widely and uniformly accepted? Was the hoagie still searching for its footing in the Philadelphia lexicon? Only in the final years of the 1950s does “hoggie” fade away, making an appearance only six times compared with 352 imprints for “hoagie.” By the 1960s, it’s all “hoagie,” all the time, with nearly 1,000 impressions.

Meanwhile, in the mid-1950s, hoagie hustlers start staking out extravagant claims as to the origin stories. But without hard evidence, they appear to be based on memory. Competing boasts. Opinion and hearsay; lore yearning to be legend.

Based on evidence in print, we have no reason to believe the words “hoggie” and its successor, the “hoagie,” date back to the World War I era. Rather, both appear to be the product of a rising, post-World War II hoagie hype. Entrepreneurial competition larded with nostalgia and spiced with boosterism.

Searching for a turning point, we see 1972 as a watershed year in hoagie history, Ben DiAngelis, head chef at the Bellevue Stratford, adds hoagies to the hotel’s menu. The Philadelphia-based, nationally broadcast Mike Douglas Show airs a hoagie demonstration. The Shackamaxon Society sponsors the first annual hoagie competition. The Daily News names it’s first “Hoagie Editor.” “Home Sweet Hoagie,” read the headline below a double truck, poster-size illustration of a hoagie in the Inquirer’s Today Magazine. Writer Stephen Friend describes how badly he missed the hoagie after moving to the mid-west, and how frustrated he felt trying to describe “the joys of a hoagie” to friends in Detroit. “It’s like describing the Mona Lisa in Braille.”

Another two decades pass and City Hall declares the hoagie the “Official Sandwich of Philadelphia.” A well-deserved status given twenty years after the fact.

Revelers in hoagie history have a proud legacy to share, but that legacy only goes back to the 1940s. Unless, of course, someone can turn up hard evidence proving the hoagie is ancient as well as venerable.

[Sources: Jim Quinn, “The Story of the First Hoagie, Inquirer, Today Magazine, January 16, 1972; Food Timeline Library; Mary Rizzo, “Hoagies,” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, Rutgers University, 2014; Edwin Eames and Howard Robboy, “The Submarine Sandwich: Lexical Variations in a Cultural Context,” American Speech, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Dec., 1967), pp. 279-288; Dave Wilton, “A Hoagie by any other name,” Verbatim–The Language Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3 Autumn 2003; Gloria Campisi, “A Hoagie a la Bellevue? Really!” Daily News, April 12, 1972; Kathy Begley, “6-foot Hoagie Adjudged Winner Over New York Hero, “Inquirer, April 20, 1972; Stephen F. Friend, “Home Sweet Hoagie, Inquirer, Today Magazine, April 9, 1972; Joe Clark, “‘Now’ Hoagie Big, Wet,” Daily News, April 20, 1972.]

Also see: A Fresh Take on the Hoagie Origin Story.

 

“Far across the low-lying meadows the great fringe of derricks rises against the sky,” wrote Christopher Morley in his love note to Hog Island.

“Past the crumpled ramparts of old Fort Mifflin, motors and trolley cars now go flashing down to the huge new shipyard.” Morley stood in awe of “the marvelous stretch of fifty shipways, each carrying a vessel in course of construction.”

“Hog Island is a poem, a vast bracing chant of manly achievement in every respect,” he wrote. “Nothing less than a “marvelous epic of human achievement.”

[Clarification: women were among the 35,000 employed at Hog Island.]

“Perhaps some day, there will come some poet great enough to tell the drama of Hog Island as it ought to be told,” added Morley. “The men who gritted their teeth and put it through will never tell. They are of the old stalwart breed that works with its hands. As they talk you can divine something of what they endured.”

“I don’t believe there is a more triumphant place on earth than Hog Island these days,” wrote Morley. “Ships are the most expressive creatures of men’s hands . . . it was hard to resist the thought that each of them has a soul of her own and was partaking in the general exultation.”

On August 5, 1918 they christened the first Hog Islander, the Quistconck. The tenth was launched in April 1919, five months after the war ended. Not a single one of the 122 Hog Islanders served in World War I, though many did serve in World War II. Fifty eight of those ships would be lost, many to German submarines.

Even before Hitler declared war on the United States, Germans seized The City of Flint while transporting cargo of tractors, grain and fruit to Britain. After its release, the ship returned to service until January 1943 when it was sunk by the Germans. The vessel’s “amazing career came to an end. . . in the mid-Atlantic,” reported the Inquirer, “when an enemy torpedo ripped into her rusting sides.”

Before dawn on May 21, 1941, midway between Brazil and Africa, another German submarine stopped the Robin Moor. Chief Officer Melvin Mundy of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania insisted the transport ship only had “ordinary merchandise for South African Ports.” But, according to Mundy, German commander Jost Metzler kept saying: ‘You have supplies for my country’s enemy and I must therefore sink you.’”

Metzler gave the Robin Moor twenty minutes. Mundy pleaded for more time to evacuate the passengers, which including a young child and an elderly couple.

“’Well, maybe I’ll give you 30 minutes,” said Metzler.

At 6:32 a.m., the German submarine “fired 33 shells into the Robin Moor from her deck gun. The ship went down in 18 minutes. Then the submarine fired volley after volley from her anti-aircraft guns at floating cargo until it all sank.”

The Germans provided the life boats with three days’ worth of food and water. Then, according to Mundy, “the submarine pulled away . . . and disappeared beneath the surface. The sea churned violently, and the boats bobbed in the smoldering wreckage.” Adrift for 13 days until discovered, the 35 passengers and crew were “drenched by torrential rains, scorched by a broiling sun and in constant fear of death.”

So, one can well imagine Philadelphia’s hesitant reaction to The Saturday Evening Post’s article about the submarine as “The Noblest Sandwich of Them All,” published a decade after the war’s end. Celebrating the “submarine” as “a noble edifice” as “the king of all sandwiches?” No thank you.

Sure, submarine sandwiches were available from as many as “4000 places in the East and Midwest.” Some called them heroes, grinders, poor boys, garibaldis, wedges, bombers, zeppelins and rockets, but Americans in no less than 68 out of 100 cities knew them as “submarines.”

Not in Philadelphia.

For good reason, Philadelphians, most especially the 35,000 who had worked at Hog Island, as well as their friends, families and colleagues, harbored no interest in celebrating the submarine. They had their own unique name for America’s sandwich of choice: the hoggie, or as everyone would eventually spell it—and say it—the hoagie.

Sometimes victory comes in unexpected packages.

[Sources: Christopher Morley, Travels in Philadelphia (David McKay, 1920); “City of Flint Sunk by Sub; 17 Are Lost,” Inquirer, March 21, 1943; “All Robin Moor Victims Saved; Tell of Sinking,” Inquirer, June 17, 1941; “Robin Moor Survivors Tell Story of Suffering,” Inquirer, June 14, 1941; Amanda Schaffer, “Lost at Sea on the Brink of the Second World War,” The New Yorker, May 28, 1916; Food Timeline: sandwiches; Edwin Eames and Howard Robboy, The Submarine Sandwich: Lexical Variations in a Cultural Context, American Speech, Vol. 42, no. 4 (Dec., 1967)].

Also see: The Hoagie is Venerable (but not as historic as we’ve been led to believe.

People aren’t caught like insects, poked through with pins and mounted behind glass, although photographer W. Curtis Taylor did something akin to that at America’s centennial celebration in 1876. With his camera (instead of a net) Taylor collected 87 “noteworthy citizens”and titled the collection Representative Men of Philadelphia. Among the assembled all-white cohort were lawyers, judges, engineers, architects, artists, clerics, government officials, scientists, educators, manufacturers, publishers, a librarian a poet and more.

(Sets found their way to the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Free Library of Philadelphia, which shares them here at PhillyHistory.org.)

The practice of collecting, classifying and presenting men as specimens of achievement caught on. The North American Press presented an expanded collection of manufacturers, merchants, realtors, engravers, photographers, brewers, distillers, ship builders, railroaders, physicians, journalists in 1891. You can peruse Philadelphia and Popular Philadelphians online. Likewise, we scroll through the 1,552 portraits assembled by Moses King in 1902 (nearly 18 times the number Curtis assembled) in Philadelphia and Notable Philadelphians. (Again and again, 100% were men and—you guessed it—all were white.)

Maybe one of the most ironic specimens Taylor collected was William Wagner, himself a collector, who made a name for himself acquiring, displaying and lecturing about all kinds of natural history specimens. Below is something about Wagner’s legacy, an intact “rare survival” of a 19th-century institution at 17th Street and Montgomery Avenue in North Philadelphia.

“Formally incorporated in 1855, the Institute had its inception in a public lecture series begun in the early 1850s by founder William Wagner (1796-1885), a noted Philadelphia merchant, philanthropist, gentleman scientist, and lifelong collector of natural history specimens. Believing strongly that education in the sciences should be available to everyone, Wagner began offering free lectures on science at his home, Elm Grove, a colonial farm estate then on the outskirts of the city. To illustrate the lectures, he drew on the vast collection of specimens he had gathered since his childhood, including many he had acquired during the years he spent traveling around the world as an agent for the well-known Philadelphia financier Stephen Girard. These lectures became so popular that by 1855 he moved them to a public hall to accommodate the rapidly growing audience, and appointed a faculty to teach six evenings a week on subjects ranging from paleontology and chemistry to botany and architecture. All the classes were offered free of charge with an open admission policy that allowed women as well as men to attend. Based on the success of earlier lectures, in 1859 Wagner began construction on a building that would become the permanent home for his collections and his educational program.

“The Wagner Institute’s natural history museum contains more than 100,000 specimens illustrating the various branches of the natural world. The Museum includes founder William Wagner’s mineral collection – one of the oldest in the country – and his fossil collection, representing many important European and American localities and collecting sites of the nineteenth century. Mounted animal skeletons, skulls, and skins; birds; an extensive regional entomological collection; and shells from around the world are on display, along with fossils collected on Institute sponsored expeditions to the American South, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic regions, as well as the Caribbean. Specimens collected on Institute expeditions include many “type specimens,” the first identification of a new species. Perhaps the best-known of these specimens is the North American saber-toothed cat, Smilodon floridanus, discovered in 1886 on an Institute expedition to Florida. These fossils are on display in the exhibition hall near dinosaur bones collected by noted paleontologist and Wagner lecturer, Edward Drinker Cope. All specimens are displayed in the cherry wood cases constructed for them in the 1880s, and many retain the original handwritten curator’s labels. The specimens are arranged especially for study. The exhibit is one of the largest systematically-arranged collections on display in the country. It also serves as a resource for scholarly research.”

You haven’t been there yet? You should add it to your collection of Philly history experiences. It’s one of the all-time most authentic. And the Wagner is open, free, Tuesday through Friday, 9 AM to 4 PM.

Philadlephians gathered at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, also known as Town Hall, for all kinds of events between the 1940s (when the Christian evangelist Hyman Jedidiah Appleman launched his crusade) and the 1970s (when Dr. Timothy Leary presented “An Evening of Standup Philosophy”). Most were musical. Just about everyone stopped by, from Miles Davis to Peter Paul and Mary; The Irish Rovers to The Doors; Pete Seeger to the Ahmad Jamal Trio. Bob Dylan started his set in October 1964 with The Times They Are A-Changin’.

Indeed, they were.

All that praying, philosophizing and singing made no difference when it came to the survival of Town Hall, a building whose developers, the Scottish Rite Masons, committed a cardinal sin in 1927 of locating the 1,900-seat, Art Deco structure north of Market Street. No amount of design savvy or best intentions by architect Horace W. Castor could overcome the sheer audacity of being at Broad and Race Streets. More than anything else, that dictated the difference between success and failure, appreciation and indifference, and, ultimately, the difference between preservation and demolition.

No matter that the Philadelphia Historical Commission designated this palace of performance as “worthy of preservation” in December 1973. Less than ten years later it would be sold to a parking lot mogul and, soon after, demolished and replaced by—you guessed it—a parking lot. Sure, the city needed more performance venues. The Pennsylvania Ballet needed studio and rehearsal space. John de Lancie, Director of the Curtis Institute of Music expressed distress at the prospect of a loss. He called it “one more blow to the organizations that try, against overwhelming financial odds, to achieve stability and provide cultural activities that a city of this size deserves.”

On the eve of destruction in March 1983 (so far as we know, Barry Maguire didn’t get to perform his song of the same name there) architect, planner and preservationist Maxwell Levinson described the imminent demolition “shocking. … With the present desperate need for a first-class Performing Arts Center in Philadelphia, the destruction of the Temple and its fine facilities is an outrage.”

All hope evaporated as the Historical Commission chose not to come to the building’s defense by implementing a six-month delay of demolition. The building “has gone beyond its usefulness,” explained one architectural history technician with the Commission. Demolition, the Inquirer reported, was “expected within the next ten days.”

The Inquirer’s architecture critic, Thomas Hine, stood out as one of the few voices in favor of preservation. “The choice between landmarks and parking seems simple on the face of it,” he observed. “There is no point in having plenty of parking if there is no place for you to go.”

But Hine, too, wavered. In an article offering a backhanded compliment in its headline: “A historic building, even this one, deserves a reprieve,” Hine conceded that although the Scottish Rite Temple “does have some attractive decoration near its cornice line…few would mourn the loss of the building.”

He noted that the Historical Commission fell down on two fronts. Not only did the Commission abstain from delaying the demolition permit “as allowed by the city’s historic preservation law” he pointed out that “city preservation and planning leaders did a walk through and agreed the interior of the building was in ‘terrible condition,’ that there were cracks in the wall that appeared “ominous.'”

“The decision may well have been correct,” wrote Hine, “but it does raise questions about the value of historic certification. If a quick look by a few city officials, none of whom were really qualified to judge the building structural integrity, is enough to undo certification, what is its value? … By voting a delay, the Historical Commission could have given an opportunity for anyone who might have an interest in the building to take a look, along with competent structural engineers and architects who could make an informed judgment on whether the building had a future.”

Stripped of all stewardship, with advocacy abandoned, the building had no future. A few months later, standing at the empty intersection, columnist Clark DeLeon reminisced about losing yet “another landmark.”

“They chipped away at it, foot by foot, filling the night sky with the glow of metal cutting torches, undoing the craftsmanship of the men who built the windowless fortress more than 55 years ago. And now on the same site where the stately structure once loomed, there is a sign that says, ‘Warning: Do not reverse over treadles. Tire damage.’”

Right. You can’t drive in reverse once you cross those spiky treadles. Nor can you undo a hasty, ill-informed demolition.

[Sources:Christopher Hepp, “Will Wrecker’s Ball Be Final Lot of Scottish Rite Cathedral?” Daily News, December 14, 1982; Gregory Byrnes “Town Hall to be sold; to be demolished,” Inquirer, December 14, 1982; Thomas Hine, “Town Hall set for demolition,” Inquirer March 5, 1983; Thomas Hine, “A historic building, even this one, deserves a reprieve.” Inquirer, March 13, 1983; John de Lancie, Director, Curtis Institute of Music – Letter to the Editor, Inquirer, April 9, 1983; Joe Clark, “Last Rites for Town Hall – Wreckers Come Knocking,” Daily News, June 8, 1983; Clark DeLeon, The Scene: another landmark gone,” Inquirer, September 23, 1983; Philadelphia Historical Commission file on the Scottish Rite Cathedral.]