PhillyHistory Blog

Every once in a while, art and life imitate one other, sometimes with interesting results.

Such was evident recently when the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission approved Comcast’s request to replace the GE logo atop 30 Rockefeller Center. In 2011, writers of the comedy TV series 30 Rock predicted as much. What they didn’t predict, and what Comcast isn’t proposing to change, is the permanence of the art at the entrance of the building in mid-town Manhattan. The bas-relief of Wisdom and Knowledge and the statue of Atlas have  long been popular—so much so that they are immovable.

They were the work of Lee Lawrie, a/k/a “America’s Machine Age Michelangelo,” a sculptor whose masterpieces are found from New York to Nebraska. In Philadelphia, Lawrie developed the sculptural program for Philadelphia’s Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Building, now part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. That project dates from the late 1920s, when corporate America still aped civic America, representing business in classically-inspired allegories and virtues.

To transform the former site of a demolished locomotive roundhouse at 26^th and Pennsylvania, Fidelity’s executives chose architects Zantzinger, Borie and Medary and sculptor Lawrie, who steeped the project in the language of legend and history. And in so doing, Fidelity Mutual managed to make the buying and selling of life insurance seem temple-worthy.

Up to then, this A-team of creatives hadn’t dabbled much in insurance. Institutions where civic and social purpose: museums, churches, universities, and government buildings were more their kind of thing. But this project and this company—under the spell of City Beautiful on Philadelphia’s new Parkway—was ambitiously different.

Why not consider insurance in terms of civic duty? Why not dress up the corporate headquarters as a temple to coverage? And it wasn’t enough to carve messages in stone: “IN THE NOBLER LIFE OF THE HOUSEHOLD IS THE NOBLER LIFE OF MANKIND.” And “THE FINEST WORK OF A MANS’ LIFE IS TO OPEN THE DOORS OF OPPORTUNITY TO THOSE DEPENDENT UPON HIM.” But words were only a start. Lawrie made sure his project in buff Indiana limestone repeatedly confirmed that coverage was, indeed, heroic.

As Penny Balkin Bach put it in Public Art in Philadelphia, Lawrie spoke with “gilt squirrels and pelicans, huge stone reliefs of human figures, small suns and moons, and the classical Graces… At the main portal on Fairmount Avenue, two guardian dogs, emblems of fidelity and the company itself, watch sternly. Overhead, rising out of the limestone columns, are giant male and female forms: a father figure (Fidelity) on the left, with a spade as his token; a mother (Frugality) on the right, with a child in her arms. At the figures’ bases are smaller symbols: for the father, a sheaf of grain and a horn of plenty; for the mother, a cradle and a ‘gift tree.’ Elsewhere, friezes, reliefs, and mosaic panels present the ‘twelve labors’ and the ‘seven ages’ of humankind, the cycle of time and many symbols of ‘home and protection’ and the ‘hazards of life.’ Crowning the entrance tower is an ornamental gilt crest with marvelous figures of squirrels, opossums, owls, and pelicans, which represent, respectively, the virtues of thrift, protection, wisdom and charity.”

By 1928, the messages were all in place for those who happened to pass by 26th and Pennsylvania. But the very next year, a few other Philadelphia businessmen, this time architects hired by bankers from the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, envisioned another project that would simultaneously change corporate messaging and the skylines of urban America. In 1932, four, red, 27-foot-high initials in a new font called Futura light were lit up on the rooftop of the bank’s new headquarters at 12^th and Market. Philadelphia’s PSFS sign, visible for miles, provided a streamlined, clarified, thoroughly modern message. By 1937, 30 Rock would also be topped by the initials of its owner, RCA. In time, that would change to GE. And now to Comcast. Doubtless, in the great chain of commerce, Comcast’s logo will someday be replaced as well.

Lawrie’s work, we can bet, will remain untouched.

The lesson learned? Ars longa, logo brevis.

Artist Augustus Kollner hit the ground running as soon as he arrived in Philadelphia from Germany in 1839. Thing is, the ground in Philadelphia was changing under Kollner’s feet.

In watercolors, lithographs and etchings, Kollner captured scenes of a city in transition, a grid expanding uniformly to accommodate the railroad, the factory and miles of previously unimagined rowhouses. Kollner’s wistful titles of his collections: “City Sights for Country Eyes” and “Bits of Nature and some Art Products, in Fairmount Park” speak, again and again, of his attraction for surviving surprises like the shack and tethered goat on the rocky outcropping at 27^th and Aspen Streets.

Kollner the brinksman knew this texture—the goats, the shacks and the rocky remnants they stood on—were all disappearing. What could an artist do? He documented as much as he could, and preserved his work in tidy albums and portfolios, filling the better part of his house at 616 North 7^th Street. When Kollner died in 1906, his life work was nearly lost, sold as waste paper for two dollars.

Long before then, of course, the flattened, expanded city grid had won out, replacing all remaining picturesque bits of rural life with industrial necessities. By the turn of the century, Domenic Vitiello tells us,the Baldwin Locomotive Works employed more than 11,000 and produced more than 1,200 locomotives each and every a year. Baldwin took over the triangular block along Pennsylvania Avenue between 26^th and 27^th hard by Pennsylvania Avenue’s sunken tracks with a roundhouse to launch its locomotives.

The industrial city was going strong when Baldwin decided to move its operations to Eddystone, Pennsylvania. At the same time, an alternate and competing vision for a grand civic boulevard, in the form of the nearby Parkway, promised to transform the city industrial into the City Beautiful. Within a couple of short decades, the smoky red-brick roundhouse (seen at the upper left in this photograph) was rendered obsolete—an antique.

What would replace it?

Just across 26^th Street from the roundhouse, the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company would light the way. This Art Deco building from the late 1920s, a white-limestone temple to the gods of insurance, is seen here in an aerial view effectively separating the old, working-class, rowhouse neighborhood from the Parkway. Fidelity Mutual stood as a lodestar for the new idea for a 20^th century civic city, a place that would continue to call itself the Workshop of the World, but in reality had moved beyond that very 19^th- century identity.

The civic buildings along the Parkway would be up to the task of forging this new identity, but what could augment Fidelity Mutual’s beacon-like claim to the present?  First, the 2600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue would need to be connected to the new Parkway by covering the half-dozen depressed tracks with a new grade-level deck along Pennsylvania Avenue. Then the challenge of what the new high-rise residence dubbed “2601 Parkway” might look like could be tackled by the office of architect Paul P. Cret. In fact, the project would evolve over nine years. As David Brownlee put it in Building the City Beautiful, Cret eventually stripped his idea of a building “of all detail and produced a series of ‘moderne’ alternatives that assumed an “expressionist guise.”  No less than 161 drawings for the project are listed in the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings database, and at least one other drawing for a proposed design found its way into the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.

Why was 2601 so important?

As we’ve come to realize nearly a century later, the success of the Parkway cannot be measured by the impressive facades and ambitious missions of the institutions along its path. Rather, what defines success in the post-industrial, civic city is the value these institutions have for the communities they serve. For that reason, the transformations of 27^th and Aspen then, and now, complete the story.

Of all the places where Mother Jones might have started her famous 1903 protest known as the March of the Mill Children, which did she find the most strategic? Philadelphia’s Kensington Labor Lyceum at 2^nd and Cambria Streets.

Of all the halls where Mother Jones might have advised a thousand young seamstresses on the verge of the “the great Philadelphia shirtwaist strike of 1909” which did she visit? Philadelphia’s Labor Lyceum at Sixth and Brown Streets. (Become “independent workers who will assert their rights…get the spirit of revolt and be a woman.”)

When Eugene V. Debs came to Philadelphia in 1908 campaigning for the U.S. presidency, on what stages did he proclaim: “We are today upon the verge of the greatest organic change in all of history. … We are permeated with the spirit of the new social order and of the grander civilization…. Here in the United States we are very happily approaching the third revolution”? Debs’ advocated his “third revolution” on stages at both Labor Lyceums: Northern Liberties and Kensington.

At the Kensington Lyceum in January 1921, thousands of textile workers filled “every seat and windowsill” and “every inch of standing room” before marching up 2^nd Street to support strikers at the textile mills. “Bright-eyed girls,” burly men and “careworn women” were stirred by the “silver tongued” labor leader Abraham Plotkin and his warnings. “The fellow who hasn’t a job and is cold, and whose stomach hurts all the time from hunger is dangerous. … Out of unemployed come the tramps, out of the tramps come the criminals, and out of the criminals, the jails. We’ve learned this from hard knocks.”

The Labor Lyceums were places were free speech reigned and where all ideas were welcome.

The idea of the Lyceum was first presented at a Labor Day picnic in 1889, the brainchild of Frederick Wilhelm Fritzsche, a self-described “labor agitator” from Germany. The city’s first Labor Lyceum thrived in rented quarters at 441 North 5^th Street and served as a headquarters for unions and a home away from home for workers. Members would come for meetings, for votes, and for “mental and moral improvements” in the form of classes in typewriting, singing, drawing, cabinetmaking and English. When Lyceums had the space, they’d also offer libraries packed with books, in German and English.

In 1893, the Congregation Keneseth Israel vacated their large (126 by 96 feet), ornate 1860s building at 809-817 North 6^th Street (just north of Brown Street) for a larger synagogue on Broad Street where Temple University’s Law School stands today. The burgeoning Lyceum immediately stepped in and bought the building.

“Labor’s New Home,” read the Inquirer headline describing the move to the new quarters. “Over three thousand men were in line with banners and brass bands…entered the new building…” The Fresco Painters’ Union led the procession “with their blood-red flag and badges;” followed by the Typographers, with their banners with Guttenberg and Franklin. There were the Metal Workers, the Carpenters, Cigar Makers’, Cigar Packers, Dyers, Leathers Workers, Blacksmiths Wheelwrights, Harness Makers, Barkeepers, Waiters and the Socialist Labor Union.  They arrived at the new building and “crowded into the big hall… decked with greens and flags.”

The idea of the Lyceum was so successful that, less than two years later, the city’s textile unions hired architect A. C. Wagner to design and build the Kensington Labor Lyceum in the heart of the city’s s textile district, on Second Street just north of Cambria.

When Fritzsche died in 1905, the Lyceum on 6^th Street became his memorial. “Thousands Mourn Dead Socialist,” read the headline. Fritzsche’s body laid “in state in the hall” as “five thousand men and women trudged through the rain and icy streets” to pay last respects. “The auditorium was decorated with long streamers of red bunting, the symbol of socialism, kept in place by black rosettes. Over the catafalque hung the inscription: ‘Arbeiter Aller Lander Vereinigt Euch.’” Workers of the World Unite.

What’s left today? No buildings. Only faded memories, a handful of archived images and newspaper articles.

And a whole lot of history.

[Consulted newspaper articles include: “The Labor Lyceum,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 4, 1891; “Labor’s New Home,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 23, 1893; “World of Labor,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 15, 1899; “Thousands Mourn Dead Socialist,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 13, 1905.]

The gathered mourners were done sharing memories. The moving eulogy was over and the choir’s hymn reached its final “amen,” echoing a dozen times through the streets of Mantua. Now, the waiting excavator reared back, its giant claw raised against the blue sky hovering over the two-story rowhouse at 3711 Melon Street. The Funeral for a Home had reached the moment where ceremony was about to give way to reality. The claw gently picked up the blanket of flowers placed above the cornice and brought it down to the street. The next bite would be a chunk of the 142-year old cornice.

Most of the hundreds in attendance considered this ceremony as something unusual and new. And it was unusual. But the event wasn’t entirely without precedent. Another Philadelphia rowhouse was celebrated before its demolition in February 1907, although the speeches then didn’t deal with memory or community.

In the Fall of 1907, inspired by a grandiose vision of civic progress, the city served notice to more than 700 property owners whose homes stood in the way of The City Beautiful.  The idea of a grand boulevard connecting City Hall and Fairmount Park had been talked about for more than thirty years. Now the Parkway was a project with a timeline. In January, contractor Howard E. Ruch signed a contract with the city to demolish everything between Callowhill to Hamilton Streets that stood in the way. He had 95 days to complete the job, even though the majority of the residents were still in place.

Director of Public Works John R. Hathaway decided if eggs were going to break, he might as well make an omelet. Hathaway cast displacement and demolition as historic “improvement” and commandeered George Washington’s birthday to choreograph a ceremony around the start of demolition.

The first house to come down would be one of the few emptied rowhouses. On February 22^nd, officials dressed for the occasion gathered at Ruch’s nearby office and then, just before noon, held a procession to 422 North 22^nd Street, the first residence “marked for demolition.”

“The party… entered the house and one by one [climbed] up a rickety ladder…onto the roof. There, just as the clock struck 12, the Director raised his silver pick and began loosening a brick on the chimney. … Several hundred persons on the street below gave a cheer as the first brick was pecked out and held aloft.”

At a luncheon following the ceremony, City Councilman John W. Ford, presented Hathaway with the silver pick in its custom-made, satin-lined case. Accepting it, Hathaway proclaimed: “I regard this as an era in Philadelphia’s history, and I shall cherish this souvenir to my dying day.”

A contrasting scenario was playing out around the corner at 2223 Hamilton Street. John Kelley and his wife were attempting to keep their bricks, their home, in place. While Hathaway and his “Parkway Group” conducted ceremonial street theater, Kelley, who had previously believed “there was a chance of his home escaping demolition,” realized all hope was lost. Already ill and now grieving “over the fact that the house which he and his family occupied was to be dismantled,” he soon received a final notice to vacate. Within days, Kelley died. Grieved to Death over Loss of Home, read the newspaper headline.

Walking from the Melon Street ceremony, I overheard a conversation between two Mantua  neighbors.

“What’s this all about?” asked one resident.

“They’ve come to bury the neighborhood,” was the response.

This time, there wasn’t a silver pick to take home. But there were lots of questions about the history, meaning, and future of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods.

[Consulted newspaper articles, all from the archives of the The Philadelphia Inquirer, include: “Working on Parkway Property Owners Are Notified to Vacate,” October 23, 1906; “Contract Awarded for Parkway Work,” January 1, 1907; “Parkway Started by Razing of First Building,” February 23, 1907; “Parkway Progress Opposed by Tenants, “March 1, 1907; “Grieved to Death over Loss of Home,” March 3, 1907.]

By 1900, Peter Arrell Brown Widener was worth over $100 million, making him the richest man in Philadelphia and putting him in the same class of plutocrats as New York’s Astors and Vanderbilts. His son George Dunton Widener, who had married Eleanor Elkins (daughter of William Lukens Elkins) shifted the family’s real estate focus to the heart of downtown Philadelphia.  His three grandest commissions were all the work of architect Horace Trumbauer: the Widener Building at 12th and Chestnut, the Racquet Club at 16th and Locust, and finally the Ritz-Carlton Hotel at Walnut and South Broad Streets.

In the spring of 1912, as the Ritz was in under construction, George, Eleanor, and their book collecting son Harry (a close friend and protege of Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach) left town for a European vacation.  They booked their return passage on the RMS Titanic.  Only Eleanor returned to Philadelphia. She promptly commissioned the family’s favorite architect Horace Trumbauer to build a new library at Harvard, dedicated to her son’s memory.  Peter Widener, who had been an investor in the White Star Line’s parent company, died rich but heartbroken three years later in his cavernous Elkins Park mansion.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSGeskFzE0s&w=560&h=315]

The city’s growth proved unsustainable, indeed. In the years that followed Widener’s death, the city’s population contracted and its economy de-industrialized. The trolleys could not compete with buses and automobiles.  Many of the comfortable neighborhoods surrounding the old trolley routes succumbed to decay and abandonment, in part because they were ill-suited to the demands of the automobile.  Today, much of the former Widener trolley empire has been absorbed by SEPTA.  The former Ritz-Carlton Hotel serves as classroom space for the University of the Arts.  Further to the west, the one surviving West Philadelphia trolley shed is the studio of artist Jordan Griska, creator of the “Grumman Greenhouse” sculpture on Lenfest Plaza at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

This is the final article in the series “Echoes from the Mask and Wig.” Click to read Part I and Part II.  

Doctor, Dear Doctor! premiered at Philadelphia’s Shubert Theater in November 1951. Grandpa and his fellow scriptwriters apparently left Moliere’s original plot alone, as the gags about the dimwitted, dissolute woodchopper Sganarelle turned doctor proved just as funny then as they were during the “Grand Siecle.”  The show received a glowing review from Henry T. Murdock in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 21: “This reviewer wasn’t around in 1889 when Lurline launched the Wiggers’ history,” he wrote, “nor for a few years after that, but taking the standard of the last 25 years, few shows have been so attractively staged, so colorfully staged, or so swiftly danced as the current enterprise at the Shubert.”

Glancing through the program book, I found a big surprise: among those in the show’s cast are a senior named Sydney T. Fisher and a sophomore named Barry E. Knerr, both of whom I would one day sing with in the Orpheus Club of Philadelphia.

That was the last year Grandpa contributed songs and his time as a rehearsal pianist to the Mask and Wig Club.   Perhaps, by then, he had realized that, despite his prodigious musical talent, making it big in show business was not in the cards for him.  By then, his career as an insurance executive was taking up more and more of his time. Despite the fine reviews, Doctor, Dear Doctor! was his last hurrah, and he knew it.  Within a few years, he had moved to New York, was widowed, married his second wife — my grandmother — and adopted her two small children — my uncle and mother.  He enthusiastically supported my mother’s studies as a classical violinist — the two of them spent many hours playing piano and violin sonatas in their Manhattan living room.

Yet my guess is that despite the local success of Doctor, Dear Doctor?, Grandpa then realized that American musical theater was destined to be his pastime rather than his livelihood.  He continued to attend shows and remain active in the Graduate Club — my  New York-born grandmother said that back then, there was no where to eat in Philadelphia except Bookbinders (of course) — but it seems that he cut back on his musical contributions.

Grandpa Joe died in 1989, aged 81. I was ten at the time.I now live in West Philadelphia, not far from where he grew up and only a few blocks from the University.  It is only now that I am asking questions that I wish my ten-year-old self could as he gleefully played the theme from “Peter and the Wolf” for my brother and me.  But for now, I must be content with these old images and what others remember of him, as well as the whoosh-clang of the Lancaster Avenue trolley that runs along the line that probably once took Granda Joe to college and a better life.

It’s not just “Peter and the Wolf” that I associate with Grandpa, but a wistful Mask and Wig tune from the 1937 show Fifty/Fifty that for so long sat unplayed in my family’s record collection: “I Live the Life I Love.”