PhillyHistory Blog

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.]

 

As mentioned last time, Bob Dylan will reopen the long-closed Metropolitan Opera House December 3rd, 55 years after his first Philadelphia appearance further down Broad Street. Where exactly did Dylan first perform in Philadelphia? Not the Academy of Music, which would be a logical guess (although Dylan did perform there in February 1966).

On October 25 1963—after the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, after his duet with Joan Baez at the Newport Folk Festival, and after singing at the March on Washington—Dylan made his Philadelphia debut at Town Hall, Broad and Race Streets. (Correction: According to Dan DeLuca, Dylan’s first “official gig” in the city, before an audience of about 45, was at the Ethical Society on Rittenhouse Square in May 1963. )

Dylan almost didn’t make it to Town Hall. “Riding here in manager Al Grossman’s Rolls,” The Daily News reported after the concert, Dylan and Grossman “suffered a flat tire and had to repair it” on the roadside with the help of the owner’s manual. The audience inside Philadelphia’s Town Hall waited patiently.

What? You never heard of Philadelphia’s Town Hall?

In a way, Town Hall’s anonymity today shouldn’t be a surprise. This “ominous, almost windowless” structure opened in 1927 as “The Temple of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Free Masonry, of the Northern Jurisdiction in the Valley of Philadelphia” and was pulled down in the early 1980s. Only from the 1940s through the 1960s did producers and presenters program its gigantic auditorium with results that were at times impressive.

Starting in the early 1940s, Town Hall became a reflection of popular culture. Some would attend the mass meeting sponsored by the Philadelphia Fundamentalists, hearing Hyman Jedidiah Appleman launch his evangelistic crusade. (“A Jew Preaches Christ!” read the newspaper advertisement.) They’d endure Carle Knisley conducting Philadelphia’s Piano Orchestra, “22 girls at 12 Baldwin Grands.” Railroad buffs lined up to see the “National Model Show.”

Folks would come to hear William Z. Foster, the National Chairman of the Communist Party share their “important statement of policy” the presidential elections of 1944. They’d return to view “Russia’s First Post-War Musical Film ‘Hello Moscow!’” and the “Rebirth of Stalingrad,” kicked up a notch with “Russian Songs and Dances.”

Increasingly, the venue was used for performances: Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Mikado;” Vivian Della Chiesa and 70 male voices with the La Scala Opera Company Orchestra; the “Trapp Family ‘Musical Mother’ Baroness Maria Augusta von Trapp and her nine sons and daughters under the conductorship of the Family’s Priest, Franz Wasner;” The Southernaires Vocal Ensemble; and Ruth Morris, the “Great Negro Soprano.”

In 1944, drummer Gene Krupa and his new 30-piece band performed. Two years later, a presumably different audience came for a “Hayloft Hoedown and Barn Dance Show,” that was broadcast “Coast to Coast” on ABC.

In January 1950, a televised auction for March of Dimes offered “a new automobile from Frank Polumbo; gas hot water heaters, sets of tires, “four dozen autographed baseballs signed by members of the Athletics and Phillies, 12 footballs signed by each member of the Eagles championship squad; a refrigerator, a console TV set” and much more. A year later, Philadelphians got a taste of African dance with  Pearl Primus, the Trinidad-born dancer and choreographer.

In the mid 1950s, regulars saw the Don Cassack Chorus and Dancers, the Kings College Choir, a “Holiday Parade of Stars” with Frank Fontaine, Roger Williams, the “peppy and pert” Eydie Gorme, and “Philadelphia’s own Al Martino.” The Sensations (also local) performed “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.” And in November, 1955, Ray Charles and his band performed sets before a backstage narcotics raid, thanks to the Philadelphia Police.

In the late 1950s, things revved up even more with the Miles Davis Quintet, John Coltrane, “Philly Joe” Jones and “Cannonball” Adderley.

A distinct folk habit took root with a regular visitors in Pete Seeger, The New Lost City Ramblers, Cynthia Gooding, John Jacob Niles and others.

In February, 1960, Hal Holbrook brought his long running one-man show, “Mark Twain Tonight” to Broad Street. Here it is from the 1967 version for television.

Audiences enjoyed the flamenco guitar of Carlos Montoya, the flamenco dance of Vicente Escudero in his “final farewell tour.” They heard the jazz piano of the Ahmad Jamal Trio.

In 1961, “America’s Most Controversial Comedian,” Lenny Bruce, brought his brand of reality-based satire. Here he is on “fake news.”

In 1962, Town Hall’s audiences welcomed Joan Baez, The Greenbriar Boys, Theodore Bikel, Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, Marle Travis and the Foggy Mountain Boys, Josh White, Peter, Paul and Mary Bill Cosby “Temple University’s star fullback.”

Theodore Bikel returned the following year. So did the Weavers, The Greenbriar Boys, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. New faces, including The Johnson Boys, Clancy Brothers, Tommy Makem, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and, of course, Bob Dylan.

In the remaining years of the ‘60s, Town Hall presented Nina Simone, Marion Williams, Judy Collins, The Blues Project, Woody’s Truck Stop, Lou Rawls, the “controversial folk-rock group” known as The Fugs, The Nazz and The Doors, where Jim Morrison was said to perform in leather pants for the first time.

In 1970, Town Hall presented Yussuf Lateef and his quintet, Mose Allison’s Modern Jazz Quartet. In January of that year, Murray Weisberg, the general manager of Town Hall, died after a 20-year run. Things would never be the same again.

Later that year, the seven-story landmark was sold back to its original owners, the Scottish Rite Masons. After that, all it took was a few mishandled performances to erode audience faith. When the Buddy Miles Band took the stage in April 1971, there were more ushers in the hall than audience. The Inquirer reported “rumors that the rest rooms were locked” and quoted Buddy Miles muttering “This is weird. This is (bleep) weird.”

Eleven mostly silent years passed before a headline asked readers who remembered Town Hall to wonder: “Will Wrecker’s Ball Be Final Lot of Scottish Rite Cathedral?” In December 1982 a new owner filed a demolition permit. The plan? To put up a parking lot.

“Don’t it always seem to go,” wrote Joni Mitchell, who performed instead in the 1970s at the Academy of Music, the Second Fret, the Main Point, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

[Sources: Advertisements in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, 1930s-1970s; Jerry Gaghan, “Riding High,” Philadelphia Daily News, October 28, 1963; “Masons Again Own Long-Lost Town Hall,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 2, 1970; Jack Lloyd, “’Buddy Miles’ Band Sparkles-But the Audience is a Flop,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 24, 1971; Christopher Hepp, “Will Wrecker’s Ball Be Final Lot of Scottish Rite Cathedral?” Philadelphia Daily News, December, 14, 1982;  [Obituary] M. Weisberg, Theater Head, The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 3, 1970.]

During those long decades when Philadelphia’s many performing arts venues were disappearing, every last one of them had a friend in Irv Glazer, who “never met an old theater” he didn’t like. An accountant from Delaware County, Glazer spent much of his adult life assembling a massive research collection which he managed to distill into his book, Philadelphia Theatres, A‑Z. Glazer described in comprehensive detail no fewer than 813 theatres built over the centuries. The vast majority had come and gone and by 1991 Glazer turned over 21 file cabinets packed with “original photographs, dedication programs, playbills, news clippings, and correspondence memorabilia” to the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, he held out only a faint glimmer of hope that one of the biggest, and arguably one of the best—The Metropolitan Opera House at Broad and Poplar Streets—might survive.

Glazer’s descriptions in Philadelphia Theatres, A‑Z stand as a somber record of an all but lost world. His entry for the Met, presented below in its entirety, reads more like a lament than a call to action. But in the last several decades the city’s tune has changed. On December 3, the Met will reopen with Bob Dylan, whose Philadelphia debut was further south on Broad Street 55 years earlier, in October 1963.

Here’s Irvin Glazer on the Met, from Philadelphia Theatres, A‑Z:

METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE (Philadelphia Opera House), Broad, Poplar and Carlisle Streets; Capacity 3,482 (Parquet 726, Parquet Circle 616, Grand Tier and Boxes 486, Balcony 904, Gallery 750). The architect was William H. McElfatrick.

The 240-feet wide facade of the Metropolitan Opera House, faced with cream-colored brick, terracotta and marble, was the widest of any of the theatres constructed in Philadelphia. The elaborate cornice is 75 feet high and the tallest portion, the roof above the stage, is 120 feet. An immense cast iron, upward-slanted, marquee with an intricate scrolled decor hung above the five pairs of double doors at the entrance to the main lobby on Poplar Street. The Poplar Street facade is 160 feet wide. Porte-cocheres on Broad Street and parallel Carlisle Street protected the entrances for the Grand Tier box holders. A marquee, similar in design to the Poplar Street projection was originally suspended over the Broad Street stage entrance. There were thirteen separate entrances on Broad Street, mostly within high stone arches, and each with two or three doorways. Three levels of open balconies and arched windows relieve the monumental proportions of the structure. One of the most unusual features of the interior is the Grand Tier or Entresol suspended from the front of the balcony above and containing 28 boxes, each with a private room at the back, and all opening on to a grand curving promenade adorned with numerous marble statuary. This plush area-way overlooks the rear of the orchestra level or Dress Circle and, at eye level. looked across to the 50 feet wide and 140 feet long Grand Salle de Promenade which was built above the main lobby.

The walls of the theatre were of deep Tuscan red, relieved by handsome white fresco work. The proscenium arch was in gold leaf and red and topped by two figures holding the Commonwealth coat of arms in their outstretched hands. The ceiling was splendidly decorated, also in red and gold, and featured a great canvas by Chmeilewski in the center of the sounding board. Atop the fourth level of the proscenium boxes are free-standing, heroic size, statues in a group twenty feet in width. A total of 84 recesses, each with an individual crystal light fixture, rose in an arc from the top of the proscenium boxes to form a frame for the sounding board. The facings on the balcony and the six levels of box seats are heavily ornamented in the Louis XIV style of the interior. There were, originally, eighty box seat sections. These together with the wall arches and framed sections in the ceiling were lined with clear bulbs . The orchestra seats had individual arm-rests and featured royal crests atop their backs.

The proscenium is 52 feet wide and 40 feet high with a backstage width of 116 feet. The stage is 5 feet deep from the footlights to the curtain line and 66 feet from that point to the back wall. There were eight sets of permanent border lights. The orchestra pit on several recorded occasions accommodated the combined orchestras of the Philadelphia and Manhattan Opera companies, a total of 160 musicians.

The Metropolitan Opera House opened as the Philadelphia Opera House on November 17, 1908, seven months and twenty days after the ground breaking. This house was the second of the envisioned chain of opera houses planned by Oscar Hammerstein as competition to the New York Metropolitan Opera Company. The acoustically excellent house was a financial success in its first season. During the second season, five operas per week were being presented in competition with the New York Metropolitan’s two a week at the Academy. There was, also, another large opera house building on Broad Street, (Grand Opera House, Broad Street and Montgomery Avenue). A twenty percent loss during the second season made Hammerstein’s venture insolvent and the house was sold for $1,200,000 dollars to the newly formed Chicago-Philadelphia grand Opera Company and re-named the Metropolitan Opera House. The New York Metropolitan, the La Scala Of Milan, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the local ballet utilized the facilities until 1920 when the Academy of Music again became the premier concert hall. Vaudeville, musical comedy, legitimate stage drama and moving pictures were the varied policies until 1926 when the auditorium was transformed to resemble the interior of a church for the presentation of Max Reinhardt’s “The Miracle.”

In September, 1928, the Stanley Company took over the theatre with a vaudeville and film policy. A projection room was installed on the Grand Tier, and the fourth levels of the stage proscenium boxes were torn out for organ chambers to accommodate the four manual, 39 rank Moeller organ, the city’s largest theatre organ installation. The organ console was placed on a lift in the center of the orchestra pit with the provision that it would be covered when dropped into the basement affording a flooring for that section of the orchestra. This was the fourth and last organ installation. The Stanley policy lasted five months and sustained a loss of $170,000 dollars. The theatre was again used as a concert hall called the “Met”. The “Great Waltz” in 1935 occupied the stage featuring gliding marble columns, dropped crystal chandeliers and a symphony orchestra on a floating platform.

In 1939, a basketball court was formed by extending the stage height into the orchestra seating area. In 1943, the interior was transformed into a ballroom. On March 6, 1948, a fire destroyed part of the interior. The Salle de Promenade became a school for auto mechanics and was double decked. Stores replaced all of the Broad Street access lobbies. The exterior decorative frieze work and pediment decorations were removed. The interior, now with hammered aluminum wainscoting, became a “gospel” church. Because of its accessibility, spaciousness and excellent acoustics, the stage and extended apron were used for rehearsal and recording by the Philadelphia Orchestra. The interior which was designed from plans submitted by Oscar Hammerstein is a tribute to his innate sense and understanding of the inexact science of acoustics. In 1984, the Met is a church only.

[Sources: Andy Wallace, “Irvin Glazer, 74, restorationist’ [Obituary] The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 22, 1996; Irvin R. Glazer, Philadelphia Theatres, A‑Z: A Comprehensive, Descriptive Record of 813 Theatres Constructed Since 1724 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986); Rob McClung, “The Rise, Fall, & Revival Of North Broad’s Opera Palace,” Hidden City Daily, June 14, 2018.]