Categories
Historic Sites

The Divine Lorraine Hotel


 

Standing at the corner of Broad and Fairmount Streets in North Philadelphia is a building that is historically significant on a number of different levels. The Divine Lorraine Hotel, formerly known as both Lorraine Apartments and the Lorraine Hotel, was designed by architect Willis G. Hale and built between 1892 and 1894. The building originally functioned as apartments, housing some of Philadelphia’s wealthy residents.

Both the location of the building and the architecture itself reflect the changes that were occurring rapidly in the city of Philadelphia and in the country at the time. North Philadelphia of the 1880s attracted many of the city’s nouveau-riche, those individuals who became wealthy as a result of the industrial revolution. The Lorraine was a place of luxurious living, providing apartments with new amenities such as electricity. In addition, the building boasted its own staff, eliminating the need for residents to have private servants. There was also a central kitchen from which meals were delivered to residents.

The Lorraine Apartments were also an architectural feat. Prior to this period, the majority of Philadelphia’s buildings were low rise, generally being no more than three or four stories tall. Not only were construction materials and techniques not capable of supporting taller buildings, but also imagine the inconvenience of the many flights of stairs one would have to ascend in order to get to higher floors in the absence of an elevator. However, around the time of the industrial revolution, improvements in building materials made taller buildings possible. The Lorraine, at ten stories tall, was one of the first high rise apartment buildings in the city. An earlier high rise apartment building was also designed by Hale, which was built at 22nd and Chestnut Streets in 1889 and stood until demolished in 1945.


 

In 1948 the building was sold to Father Divine (aka George Baker or Reverend Major Jealous Divine). Father Divine was the leader of the Universal Peace Mission Movement. After purchasing the building, Father Divine renamed it the Divine Lorraine Hotel. His hotel was the first of its class in Philadelphia to be fully racially integrated. The Divine Lorraine was open to all who were willing to follow the rules of the movement. Among other things, these rules included no smoking, no drinking, no profanity, and no undue mixing of the sexes. Men and women therefore resided on different floors of the building. Also, guests and residents were expected to uphold a certain level of modesty, meaning that women were expected to wear long skirts – no pants. Believing that all people were equal in the sight of God, Father Divine was involved in many social welfare activities as well. For example, after purchasing the hotel, several parts of it were transformed for public use. The 10th floor auditorium was converted to a place of worship. The movement also opened the kitchen on the first floor as a public dining room where persons from the community were able to purchase and eat low cost meals for 25 cents each.

Divine’s followers ran the hotel after his death until its sale in 2000. The Universal Peace Mission Movement still exists in the form of a network of independent churches, businesses, and religious orders. Its followers also run another hotel, the Divine Tracy in West Philadelphia. The Divine Lorraine received a historical marker from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 1994 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 as a site significant in terms of both architectural and civil rights history. After its most recent purchase in 2006, future plans for the hotel included converting it into condominiums.

References:

  • ARCH: Pennsylvania’s Historic Architecture and Archaeology. http://www.arch.state.pa.us/. (accessed 29 March 2007).

  • Hotes, Robert J., et al. “Divine Lorraine Hotel Honored with Landmark Building Award.” Preservation News. http://www.preservationalliance.com/news_divine_2.php (accessed 26 March 2007).

  • Newall, Mike. “Left Behind: A rare look inside North Broad’s Divine Lorraine, a hotel with a heavenly past on the cusp of (commercial) resurrection.” Philadelphia City Paper. 13-19 January 2005. http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2005-01-13/cover.shtml (accessed 28 March 2007).

  • Rohrer, Willa. “Noble Savage: Selling the guts of a Philly landmark.” Philadelphia Weekly. 18 October 2006. http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=13214. (accessed 28 March 2007).

  • “The Universal Peace Mission Movement of Father Divine.”16 June 1997. http://www.americanreligion.org/cultwtch/frdivine.html. (accessed 28 March 2007).

  • Wikipedia. “North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Philadelphia,_Pennsylvania. (accessed 28 March 2007).

Categories
Public Services

Fires, Fights and Benjamin Franklin: Philadelphia’s Volunteer Firemen, Part Two


 

By 1752, there were already eight active fire companies in Philadelphia. That same year, Franklin built on his own achievement by helping to found the Philadelphia Contributionship, the oldest fire insurance company in America. Interestingly, though Franklin modeled his creations after their English counterparts, the American system was fundamentally different. In England, fire brigades were founded and administered by insurance companies, whose properties they protected exclusively. In America, the sequence was reversed. Though Franklin´s Contributionship and the companies that sprung up soon after followed the English practice of issuing their policy holders “fire marks” to display on their homes – many of which are still visible – Philadelphia´s fire companies would respond to any fire in their area, regardless of who insured the premises or if they were insured at all. Whether they responded more zealously to fires at buildings insured by their affiliated insurance companies – which were known to reward the firemen for saving as much of the property as they could – remains an open question.

Yet the atmosphere of selflessness and civic duty was charged with rivalry from the start. No sooner had Franklin´s Union established itself as a positive, respected force in the community than his rival Andrew Bradford, whose American Mercury competed with Franklin´s Gazette and whose violent dislike of his competitor was well known, founded his own fire company, Fellowship, in 1738. Rivalries between fire companies became especially destructive as Philadelphia´s unparalleled municipal water system ushered out the bucket-fed fire engine and ushered in the age of hose. The new equipment took some getting used to – one company records an unfortunate incident where a newly bought hose rotted after being stored in a barrel of dill pickles. But as pressurized fire plugs spread and fire brigades founded corresponding hose companies, things took an unfortunate turn. .


 

Once attached to a fire plug, a hose company could prevent rival companies from sharing the honor of fighting the fire. Wild races to be the first to connect to the plug – and violent fights to capture or recapture them – naturally ensued. Feuds between companies, as described in the song quoted above, were brutal and sometimes deadly, involving shootouts and, ironically, false alarms and acts of arson. By the mid-19th century, it was widely held that the volunteers were “a reproach to the city.” An entire melodramatic novel, “Jerry Pratt´s Progress or Adventures in the Hose House”, chronicled how a fresh-faced young country boy lost his morals – and, in a fight between hose companies, his life – after becoming a volunteer fireman. .

Though they remained political powerhouses, reportedly milking the city budget for unnecessary equipment and salaries to a shocking extent, the social makeup of the volunteer companies changed dramatically since the days of Franklin and Washington. Once made up of the city´s elite and professional classes, the companies came to be synonymous with the bare-knuckle politicians of Philadelphia´s infamous political machines. Despite a burst of renewed confidence in the volunteer companies during the Civil War, during which many volunteers gave their lives on the battlefield, the city finally voted to disband the volunteer companies and established a professional municipal department in 1871.

“Here´s health to Benjamin Franklin
And all who revere the name:
To the members of the Franklin Hose
I do allude the same”

(“The Franklin Hose Song,” c. 1850)

References:

  • Johnson, Harry M. &quote;The History of British and American Fire Marks.” The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Vol. 39, No. 3. (September, 1972), pp. 405-418.

  • Neilly, Andrew H. The Violent Volunteers: A History of the Volunteer Fire Department of Philadelphia, 1736-1871. University Microfilms, Inc. Ann Arbor, 1959.

  • The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Franklin & Fires: His interest therein and his effort to Protect the Citizens of Philadelphia from Devastation., J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1906.

  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. A Philadelphia Story, 1752-1952: The Philadelphia Contributionship., Wm. F. Fell Co. Philadelphia, 1952.

  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. “Philadelphia’s Eighteenth-Century Fire Insurance Companies” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.,New Ser., Vol. 43, No. 1. (1953), pp. 247-252.

Categories
Public Services

Fires, Fights and Benjamin Franklin: Philadelphia’s Volunteer Firemen, Part One


 

“The alarm of fire being given
Onward we did go
Their house we broke, and their engine took
And beat their members also.”

(From “The Franklin Hose Song,” c. 1850)

Tracing their roots back to a proud roster of founding fathers and fires fought, the volunteer fire companies that preceded the establishment of the Philadelphia Fire Department combined the best and worst traits of the city they served. Community-minded, innovative and tough, Philadelphia’s amateur firemen also earned a reputation for brawling, boozing and bitter rivalry equal to anything ever reported to have happened in the parking lot after an Eagles game.

A rapidly growing city of “about 700 dwelling houses,” Philadelphia had no fire service to speak of in the early 18th century. Though bucket brigades had existed in New England since the 1690’s, it would be decades before anyone took an organized approach to colonial emergency services. Meanwhile, Philadelphians doubtless looked nervously at the eminently combustible wooden warehouses along the Delaware waterfront, the boiling pitch-cauldrons and glowing forges of nearby shipyards and the pitiful resources the city could muster to protect its citizens.

During a fire, the victim depended on civically-minded neighbors with their own buckets, ladders, rope and hooks, the latter being used both to pull valuables from burning structures and to tear down buildings in the fire’s path to keep it from spreading An English fire engine was purchased for the city around 1718 – partly funded through fines collected from a colonial smoking ban enacted against those “presuming to smoke tobacco in the Streets of Philadelphia either by day or night” – but wasn’t much of a help; clumsy water-tanks on wheels, engines had to be hauled to the site of the fire, pumped by hand and continuously refilled by bucket chains.


 

This slow, exhausting process yielded predictably poor results. As reported by Benjamin Franklin in his Pennsylvania Gazette, one particularly destructive blaze in 1730 started on the riverfront and moved quickly into the city, consuming thousands of pounds worth of real estate and goods despite calm winds and generally favorable firefighting conditions.

After writing a series of articles on the subject, Franklin rose to the challenge. On December 7th, 1736, he and four friends founded the Union Fire Company, which survives today as Engine 8 of the Philadelphia Fire Department. One of the oldest organized fire brigades in the United States, the Union saw its ranks quickly filled to the agreed-upon maximum of 30 members. Other companies were founded by latecomers, all, according to one company’s records, “the most eminent men in Philadelphia, embracing merchants, physicians, lawyers, clergymen and citizens of wealth and refinement.” Indeed, fire company membership was a mark of honor, a sort of proxy social register of city notables from the mayor on down. This seems to have been the case throughout the colonies; George Washington, for example, was a member of his local volunteer fire company in Alexandria, Virginia.

to be continued…

References:

  • Johnson, Harry M. “The History of British and American Fire Marks.” The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Vol. 39, No. 3. (September, 1972), pp. 405-418.

  • Neilly, Andrew H. The Violent Volunteers: A History of the Volunteer Fire Department of Philadelphia, 1736-1871. University Microfilms, Inc. Ann Arbor, 1959.

  • The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Franklin & Fires: His interest therein and his effort to Protect the Citizens of Philadelphia from Devastation., J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1906.

  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. A Philadelphia Story, 1752-1952: The Philadelphia Contributionship., Wm. F. Fell Co. Philadelphia, 1952.

  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. “Philadelphia’s Eighteenth-Century Fire Insurance Companies” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.,New Ser., Vol. 43, No. 1. (1953), pp. 247-252.

Categories
Historic Sites

An Iron Baron’s West Philadelphia Castle

Nathaniel Burt wrote of Philadelphia iron-making entrepreneurs such as the Whartons, Brookes, Rutters and Potts: “Along with the New York patroon and the New England shipowner, he does provide something of a landowning equivalent to offset the more purely trading wealth of the region’s old families.” 1 Thus the Whartons became the lords of Batsto, the Brookes’ of Birdsboro, and the Potts’ of Potttown and Pottsville.

The house at 3905 Spruce Street, built by the iron baron Joseph Potts in 1876, befits the residence of businessmen who helped make Pennsylvania a center of the American industrial revolution. As landowners and founders of the iron-mill towns of Pottstown and Pottsville, they also possessed something of a feudal mystique.

When Old Philadelphia families started crossing the Schuylkill into West Philadelphia in the years following the Civil War, the social rule of thumb of living between Market and Pine continued, with families clustering around the newly-moved University of Pennsylvania. 3905 Spruce sits comfortably within these prescribed boundaries, although in the 1870s West Philadelphia was still largely rural and undeveloped.

3905 Spruce is built in a Ruskinian Gothic style that mirrors Penn’s nearby College Hall. The mansion, designed by the Wilson brothers, on one hand possesses elements of a feudal castle with its pointed windows, chiseled chimneys, and slate roof. At the same time, the house was a showcase for the products of the workshop of the world, with its cast-iron roof decorations and conservatory and polychrome exterior brick walls. The interiors were a tour-de-force of the Philadelphia woodcarvers art, boasting a massive three-level carved oak central staircase, pocket doors of birds-eye maple, and fireplaces supported by snarling griffins and bordered with tiles.

Potts’ son William graduated from Penn in 1876 – the year his father’s house was completed, and subsequently became a very generous financial supporter of the school. By 1917, the neighborhood had become less fashionable, and Penn was swallowing up many surrounding properties around the Potts castle. That year, William Potts donated the family mansion to Penn and decamped, like many of his social compatriots, to the Main Line suburbs.2 The building was used subsequently housed Penn’s International House and later the WXPN radio. During those years, the house suffered rough treatment and deferred maintenance.

But at least the Potts mansion was left standing. Most of the compounds of the Philadelphia aristocracy belonging to the Drexels, Clarks, Swains, and Sinnotts have been replaced by denser row house development or razed by the University of Pennsylvania. Remnants of this enclave of industrial wealth, such as St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and two Drexel mansions currently used as fraternity houses, now sit high and dry in a desert of concrete high rises and brick plazas known as the “Superblock.”

Today, the weary Potts mansion stands stripped of its ornamental features such as the domed roof on the cost iron conservatory, the glass-enclosed porch facing Spruce Street, and its port-cochere. Its brick walls and slate walls are smeared with grime, and the chimneys lean precariously. Nonetheless, it was benevolent neglect that allowed much of the house’s extraordinary interior detailing to survive intact. The house built by Joseph Potts is one of the few survivors of the Golden Age of West Philadelphia. Its association with one of the regions most distinguished industrial families, and the high quality of construction and craftsmanship makes Potts mansion at 3905 Spruce makes one of the most significant and underappreciated historical and architectural jewels of University City.

References:

1 Nathaniel, Burt The Perennial Philadelphians (University of Pennsylvania Press), 1999. 180.

2 http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/3905spruce/3905spruce1.html

    Categories
    Public Services

    Photography: A Mini-History


     

    1839 was an important year in the history of record-keeping. It was in this year that the first practical form of photography, the Daguerreotype, was invented. Without this invention almost 170 years ago, PhillyHistory.org would not have been possible. Most of the images on this website come from one of three photographic types: the negative, the print, and the digital photograph. The majority of these, however, come from the incredibly large collection of negatives in the city’s possession.

    Not all photographic negatives, however, were created the same. Over the short history of this medium, there have many different types of both negatives and photographs, especially in the first few decades after 1839 when photography was in its infancy. The first of these forms that could be used in a practical manner, the Daguerreotype, was introduced by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre.

    Although Daguerre’s was the first practical method of photography developed, there were successful earlier attempts. For example, in 1826 Nicephore Niepce invented what he called a “heliograph.” He took a photograph of his courtyard by exposing a sheet of pewter covered in light sensitive materials, using sunlight as his only light source. However, this process took over 8 hours to complete, making it much less practical to use as a method of record keeping than the much faster Daguerre method. (To read more about Niepce’s first photograph, see the Nicephore Niepce website link in the references section of this blog).

    Like Niepce’s process, the daguerreotype also consisted of an image created on a sheet of metal. In this case the medium was a copper plate coated with silver iodide. Unlike Niepce’s process, however, the photograph created was a direct positive image. These photos were the predecessors of the types of images added to PhillyHistory today.

    The first negative/positive process was patented the same year as the daguerreotype by William Talbot. This process, or the Calbotype process, created a paper negative which could then produce a positive image (or multiple positive images) by placing the negative in direct contact with light-sensitive paper and exposing the paper to daylight. Slightly less than 20 years later, in 1855, glass negatives were introduced to the United States. These glass negatives were preferable to paper negatives as the image produced was of a much better quality. It was only with the introduction of the glass negative that the negative/positive process of making photographs began to replace direct positive processes such as the daguerreotype.

    The earliest glass plate negatives were “wet plate” negatives. They were called “wet plate” because this process required the photographer to coat a plate of glass with light sensitive materials, expose, and develop the photograph all before the coating dried. There was continued experimentation using various materials for emulsions (the emulsion is the layer of light sensitive material that is coated onto a base, for example glass, in which an image is formed when it is exposed to light). Some of the types of emulsions that were tried included albumen (a combination of sodium or ammonium chloride mixed with egg whites) and gelatin.

    In the Philadelphia City Archives, the earliest forms of negative we scan for the PhillyHistory website are glass plate negatives. The above photograph, taken in 1894, is an image from one of these glass plate negatives. However, as is evidenced by the cracks visible in some of the other photographs on PhillyHistory, the glass negatives were found to be problematic, mainly because they are so incredibly fragile.

    To help alleviate this problem, in 1887 George Eastman introduced cellulose nitrate film. This form of negative consisted of a nitrocellulose base and a gelatin emulsion. It was in use between 1913 and 1950. At the time, this was seen as an improvement over the glass negative, as it was much less fragile than its glass counterparts. However, today archivists have found this negative to be itself fragile as it ages. The nitrocellulose base is notoriously unstable as well as flammable, making it important to transfer the images on these to another medium (as, for example, scanning would accomplish) in order to preserve the information they contain.


     

    Between 1937 and 1956 another film created by the Kodak company, safety film, was widely used. This film was made of cellulose diacetate and was found to be much less of a fire hazard. However, this film too has been found to be somewhat unstable. Over time, the cellulose diacetate shrinks as it deteriorates, causing wrinkles in the layer of emulsion, which does not shrink at the same rate. The photograph to the left is an example of this type of deterioration. In1947, Kodak introduced another type of safety film which is still in use today, which is made of a more stable material, cellulose triacetate.

    References:

    Categories
    Urban Planning

    The Broad Street Subway


       
    Providing around 1 million rides a day, SEPTA is an important resource in the city of Philadelphia. The man pictured in one of the accompanying photos was just one of the many involved in building a part of that transportation system, the Broad Street Subway. The photograph was taken December 14, 1925 as the unidentified man worked on the subway at Broad and Master Streets.


     
    Work began on the line in 1924. In the four years it took to build the initial section of the subway, enough dirt was excavated to theoretically create, as another photo (also pictured) illustrated, a column 220 feet square and 2280 feet high. The Broad Street line eventually opened for service on September 1, 1928. On this new subway, riders could travel between City Hall and Olney Avenue. Round trip fare, at this time, was only 15 cents.


    Several years later, service on the Broad Street Subway was extended farther south. By 1930, riders could travel as far south as South Street, and by 1938 this was extended to Snyder Avenue. Expansion then continued to the north, with the Fern Rock stop being added in the 1950s. Finally, in 1973 the line was extended again to the south to run to Pattison Avenue, completing the line that exists today.

    References:

    Categories
    Public Services

    Photographic Firsts


     

    Philadelphia is famous for many things, including its inventors. Perhaps most famous of these is Ben Franklin. However, another Philadelphia inventor, Joseph Saxton, was responsible for creating one of the first photographs made in America. That photograph was taken in 1839 from the United States Mint (pictured above), where Saxton worked. In it he captured Central High School and a portion of the State Arsenal.

    In 1839, photography was in its infancy. The first practical form of photography, the Daguerreotype, had been introduced to the world on January 7 of that same year. Created by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, the Daguerreotype photograph was made when a copper plate coated with silver iodide was exposed to light. The silver iodide darkened when exposed to the light, forming an image after the photograph was developed in mercury vapors.

    Saxton made his photograph following Daguerre’s published instructions that October. He built a camera using a cigar box and a glass lens, and heated the mercury to develop the picture in an iron spoon. A Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker at Juniper and Chestnut Streets stands at the location at which the photograph was taken. The daguerreotype itself is in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

    The Daguerreotype, however was a direct positive image. The image it produced was similar to the reflection a person would see when looking into a mirror. Because photography was still in its experimental stages at the time, many other methods for producing photographic images followed the introduction of Daguerre’s process. Most notably was the invention of a negative-positive process for making photographs which was first patented by William Talbot in 1841. This invention led to other negative-positive processes which created the glass plate negatives, lantern slides, and film negatives which were used by the City of Philadelphia to make the photographs that are digitized and displayed on PhillyHistory today.

    References:

    Categories
    Entertainment

    There Used to Be a Ballpark Here


     

    It is hard to envision the corner of Broad and Lehigh in North Philadelphia as the site of the first ‘modern’ baseball stadium in America. Yet, before there was Citizens Bank Park, or the Vet, or Connie Mack Stadium, which was originally know as Shibe Park, National League Park was the destination of choice for Philadelphia’s baseball fanatics.

    The park was erected in 1887. After a fire destroyed most of the stadium in 1894, team ownership rebuilt the stadium using steel, brick and concrete. The choice of building materials was intended to prevent future fires, but they also allowed architects to push the boundaries of stadium construction. Then, as today, sports stadiums were places where cities could show progress and modernity. The rebuilt park cost more than $80,000, seated 18,000 people and became the first to include an upper deck supported by cantilevers. The cantilevers made headlines because they removed the need for the unsightly support columns that obstructed the views of fans sitting in the stadium’s lower level. Small field dimensions also distinguished the stadium and garnered it the nicknames “The Cigar Box” and “The Band Box”. In right field a 40 foot wall stretched skyward and helped turn sure home runs into singles or doubles. The wall eventually climbed to 60 feet and became prime advertising space. A hump in center field covering a partially submerged railroad tunnel led many to give the stadium another nickname, “The Hump”. After William F. Baker purchased the Phillies, the stadium acquired its most endearing moniker, “The Baker Bowl”.


     

    Unfortunately for Phillies fans, the new ownership did not help the perennially poor performance of the team. In the 51 years that the team called the Baker Bowl home (1887-1938) it won only one pennant (1915) and consistently finished at or near the bottom of the league standings. Even the presence of future baseball hall-of-famers Chuck Klein and Grover Cleveland Alexander could not raise the team above mediocrity. Putting a poor product on the field resulted in poor attendance and diminished profits. To compensate, ownership began using the stadium for purposes other than baseball. A cycling ring was installed in an attempt to capitalize on the cycling craze of the early twentieth century. During the 1910s and 1920s local police and fireman’s organizations rented the ballpark for large events. They held rodeos and parades there. The accompanying photos depict a few of the Philadelphia Police Department’s annual reviews, which featured marching bands and military-style processions.

    Despite the performance of the hometown team, the Baker Bowl left Philadelphians with many lasting memories. In 1915 Woodrow Wilson sat in the stands of the park, becoming the first president to attend a World Series game. In 1935 Babe Ruth made his last professional appearance there when he withdrew from a game at the stadium. And, Negro League World Series games were played at the park from 1924-1926. Even the fledgling Philadelphia Eagles franchise played there for time during the 1930s.


     

    The Phillies left the Baker Bowl for nearby Shibe Park in the middle of the 1938 season. Years of low attendance and flagging profits had taken their toll on the park and left it in disrepair. Between 1938 and 1950 the stadium, for the most part, remained vacant. Long gone were the days when reporters from across the nation marveled at stadium’s grand design elements and fans jammed the grandstands. During the 1940s a fire gutted much of the park and ensured that it would never be renovated. In 1950, a wrecking bowl tore down the last remnants of the Baker Bowl. Today, a historical sign is the only marker that a ballpark once stood at Broad and Vine.

    References:

    Categories
    Entertainment

    The Snow Piled Six Feet High


     

    This year, local meteorologists are predicting a very snowy winter for Philadelphia. With such a forecast looming in the future, snow is probably the last thing that residents of this city want to think about. It is likely that Philadelphians did not want to think about the prospect of snow in 1914 either, especially as spring was nearing.

    However, March 2 and into the early morning of March 3, 1914, the snow was practically all people were talking about. On that night, a storm blew in from the Atlantic Coast, causing great troubles in New York and Camden. It did not spare Philadelphia from the problems of frozen precipitation either.

    In New York, winds of up to 72 miles per hour were reported to accompany the storm as it made its way through the region. By the end, it dropped only 7 inches of snow in the Philadelphia area, however combined with the wind and the snow remaining from a snowstorm the previous week, drifts of 6 to 10 feet in some areas occurred. These conditions shut down the city, cutting off communications with neighboring areas as well as the influx of food from nearby farms. The blizzard was particularly destructive across the river in Camden, where it was reported that:

    ‘fierce winds from the northwest whipped through the street, tearing off roofs, blowing down chimneys, sending signs clattering away into the darkness, and punishing pedestrians with cutting, stinging, particles of ice-laden snow. Electric lights were torn from their fastenings in all sections of the city. Poles gave way under the best of the winds and collapsed, falling into the street or upon the roofs and sides of houses. Twisted masses of live wires emitted sparks which set the poles blazing and the snake-like shattering imperiled the people struggling through the blinding storm.’ (“Winds Tear Off Roofs”, p. 1).

    The snow also caused problems for travelers. Several trains stalled on the way to Philadelphia from New York, not being able to plow through the snow drifts. The Philadelphia Inquirer told stories of people who had become stranded on the trains overnight, some not making it to Broad Street Station until 20 hours after they were expected. Travelers told of being hungry, cold, and tired while imprisoned on the train by snow and ice. One traveler in particular spoke of sending out an expedition to ask for food at a nearby farmhouse he and fellow train riders spotted through the windows of their car. He was quoted in the Inquirer:

    ‘We fought our way to it [the farmhouse], at times through drifts above our waist. I obtained the name of the kindly lady who opened the door for us, when we had finally swept her deeply-covered porch free.She had little enough in the house, but what she had she gave freely. She supplied us with bread, butter, bacon and a great steaming pot of tea. We carried these things back to the train, and mighty welcome they were. Many of the day coach passengers had not had a thing to eat since noon of the day before and they were half starved.’ (“Passengers Tell Stories of Snow-Bound Trains,” p.2)

    Philadelphia spent the next few days digging out from the storm. A 600 man team worked to clear the streets in the central business district by the morning of March 3. Life in the city was beginning to get back to normal at that point, with many of the trolley lines clear and running on schedule and churches and schools reopening.

    References:

    • “600 Men and 300 Teams Clearing City Streets.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 3 March 1914. 3.

    • “Deserting City Storm Travels Off Into Ocean.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 3 March 1914. 1.

    • “New York Isolated by New and Severe Blizzard.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 2 March 1914. 1.

    • “Passengers Tell Stories of Snow-Bound Trains.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 3 March 1914. 2.

    • “Traffic Tied Up Under Seven Inches of Snow-Houses Unroofed by Forty-three-Mile Gale-Worst Storm Since 1909.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 3 March 1914. 1.

    • “Trains Arrive After 24-Hour Fight With Snow.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 3 March 1914. 1.

    • “Winds Tear Off Roofs, Sections in Darkness, Trains Tied Up.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 2 March 1914. 1.

    Categories
    Public Services

    Learning for the Real World


     

    Late in the 19th century and early in the 20th, child labor reformers were busy trying to devise a plan for keeping the nations children out of the factories and in the schools for as long as possible. However, the things they were doing to extend the amount of time a child spent in the school system failed to keep all children in school. They wondered why, until the idea was presented that perhaps the children continually left school early because they did not understand the value an education in traditional academic disciplines (writing, math, or foreign language, for example) would have in their everyday lives after they graduated. What good did learning French do for the child who, after all, would be spending his days constructing buildings? From this idea, school administrators devised a plan. Perhaps the way to keep children in school until their teenage years was to offer vocational education, or more classes that prepared students to be successful in the work they would actually face after finishing school.


     

    The idea of vocational, or industrial, education was introduced to Philadelphia by Murrel Dobbins, a member of the Board of Public Education. Soon after his introduction, an investigation was conducted in the city to discover what the most popular trades in the city were and to find a location for a new school. The Philadelphia Trades School then opened in 1906 in an abandoned elementary school at the corner of 12th and Locust Streets. The goal of the school was to create intelligent, skilled young men who were well prepared to enter the workforce upon their graduation.

    Originally the school offered 13 trades, ranging from sign painting to sheet metal working. However, due to a lack of enrollment, only seven were offered in the day school. The trades offered to students during the day included: carpentry, architectural drawing, mechanical drawing, electrical construction, pattern making, and printing. Students spent half of their time studying these trades in the shop. The other half was spent studying academic subjects such as English and Mathematics, however these too were taught with the trades in mind. In these courses, teachers attempted to relate the skills being learned to their application in the work of the various trades. In the third year, the students participated in an internship program, working at various locations throughout the city.


     

    Night classes were also offered by the school, and these became more popular than the daytime classes. The demand for the evening classes was so great that the city opened another school, the Northeast Manual Training School, to handle some of the overflow. Many other prospective students remained on a waiting list. In the evening school only the trades were taught. There were no classes for the academic subjects. However, the evening school did offer more trades than were taught during the day

    Eventually, the Trades School was abandoned as the workforce continued to change. The courses offered by the Philadelphia Trades School were replaced by mechanical arts courses in Central High School and others.

    References:

    • Ash, William C. “The Philadelphia Trade School.” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science 33(1), Industrial Education. (January, 1909) 85-88.

    • Cohen, Sol. “The Industrial Education Movement, 1906-1917.” American Quarterly. 20(1). (Spring, 1968) 95-110.

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