{"id":13130,"date":"2019-12-23T12:16:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T17:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=13130"},"modified":"2020-07-28T14:49:26","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T18:49:26","slug":"the-inconvenient-truths-of-rittenhouse-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2019\/12\/the-inconvenient-truths-of-rittenhouse-square\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inconvenient Truths of Rittenhouse Square"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Detail of Mansions on Rittenhouse Square between 18th and 19th Streets, November 3, 1921 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the last third of the 19th<\/sup> century, fueled by wealth from the industrial revolution, Philadelphia\u2019s Victorian aristocracy established itself on Rittenhouse Square. In rows of mansions, versions of the city’s classic rowhouses on steroids, lived the alpha families, the one percent, who controlled at least half of the city\u2019s wealth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lower 80 percent,\u201d according to Dennis Clark, might have controlled only 3 percent of the city\u2019s wealth, but they were indispensable \u201cto prepare and serve the meals, shop, clean the household[s], do the laundry, and care for all the details of the privileged establishments…\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, \u201cit was impossible to pursue the extravagant lifestyle of mannered elegance and luxury without servants,\u201d wrote Clark, even if \u201cthose most readily available were from a group alien in outlook, habits, and background.\u201d Rittenhouse Square became a \u201cscene of an interdependent relationship\u201d between rich on the square and poor from nearby immigrant communities of Schuylkill, Devil\u2019s Pocket, Ramcat and other nearby South Philadelphia neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Differences between the communities, created a \u201csocial dilemma\u201d for both \u201cthe great households of Rittenhouse Square\u201d and the overcrowded rowhouse neighborhoods where most of the Irish servants lived.<\/p>\n

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Detail of Mansions on Rittenhouse Square west of 19th Streets, November 3, 1921 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1870, noted Clark, \u201cthere were 24,108 domestic servants in the city of whom 10,044 were born in Ireland. Among the remainder a large portion or of Irish parentage.\u201d In late-19th<\/sup> century Philadelphia, \u201cIrish\u201d and \u201cservant\u201d became \u201cvirtually synonymous.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for many White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families, this presented a problem that couldn\u2019t be overcome. Diarist Sydney George Fisher wasn\u2019t alone in his bias that the Irish occupied \u201cthe position of an inferior race in the business of life, because by nature and education [they were] fitted for it.\u201d Housekeeping expert and author Eunice White Beecher warned \u201cnot one Irish woman in one hundred\u201d could \u201cbe transformed into a neat, energetic, truth-telling servant.\u201d Plus, Clark added, \u201cthese servants were seen as threats to the religious integrity of the family and the peril to the Protestant purity of its children.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the Irish, \u201ca similar ambiguity characterized their connection with Rittenhouse Square. It was demeaning for them to be forced to serve families whose wealth was founded upon notoriously exploitive mills, factories, and railroads. \u00a0… Many a railroad pick-and-shovel man looked with deeply mixed feelings upon his daughters\u2019 employment in the great houses of men whose railroads had meant for him a lifetime of miserable toil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life on Rittenhouse Square was a mutually inconvenient, if essential, compromise until the early 20th<\/sup> century, when demographic and economic changes, in addition to a new appetite for life in the railroad suburbs, undid the old order. \u201cAs those whose families had reigned resplendent on Rittenhouse Square in the 1880s declined or decamped, the square became drab and unkempt. The great houses were shuttered, demolished, or converted to apartments. The flocks of servants to tend them we\u2019re no longer affordable or fashionable. The girls from \u2018Ramcat\u2019 were becoming secretaries or nurses; some were even going to high school and college.\u201d<\/p>\n

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1830 Rittenhouse Square, southeast corner of 19th Street, November 3, 1921, detail\u00a0 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Apartment – Southwest Corner – 19th and Rittenhouse Square. October 26, 1926 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The square also took on a new look.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike tall chimneys, apartment hotels are circling around Rittenhouse Square\u201d fretted the Inquirer<\/em> in the Spring of 1924. Sale signs<\/a> \u201ctend to change completely the serenity which long dwelt in that abode of the socially elect.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 52-room mansion<\/a>\u00a0at the southeast corner of 19th Street and Rittenhouse Square where the Scott family hosted scores of soir\u00e9es, receptions and teas only a decade before, was among the first to go. \u201cTearing Down Scott\u2019s Mansion\u201d bluntly stated an advertisement for scrap building materials in February 1913. The place was reduced to so much \u201clumber, doors, windows, [and] good hard brick,\u201d all sold \u201ccheap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon after, on the same site, rose the square’s first Beaux-Arts apartment building, designed by architect Frederick Webber. The next mansion to fall was that of the Drexel family, directly across 19th Street. \u00a0And in its place rose another 18-story apartment house, this one designed by Sugarman, Hess & Berger.<\/p>\n

\u201cConstruction Boom Strikes Rittenhouse Square Section,\u201d read one headline in 1924. \u201cLandmarks are Razed for Fashionable Apartment Structures,\u201d read another. And so, demolition of mansions and construction of high rises continued until a time when even apartment dwellers protested that such buildings would \u201cshut off sunlight from the square.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, development persisted.<\/p>\n

[Sources: Dennis Clark, \u201cRamcat and Rittenhouse Square,\u201d in William W. Cutler, III and Howard Gillette, Jr.\u00a0The Divided Metropolis: Social and Spatial Dimensions of Philadelphia, 1800-1975\u00a0<\/em>(Westport: Greenwood Press); \u201cTearing Down Scott\u2019s Mansion,\u201d [advertisement] The Philadelphia Inquirer,<\/em> February 22, 1913; \u201cGirard\u2019s Talk of the Day,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, March 10, 1924; \u00a0\u201cConstruction Boom Strikes Rittenhouse Square Section,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer,<\/em> June 20, 1924; \u201cSeminary Moves to Green Hill Hotel,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer,<\/em> February 3, 1940.]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last third of the 19th century, fueled by wealth from the industrial revolution, Philadelphia\u2019s Victorian aristocracy established itself on Rittenhouse Square. In rows of mansions, versions of the city’s classic rowhouses on steroids, lived the alpha families, the one percent, who controlled at least half of the city\u2019s wealth. \u201cThe lower 80 percent,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}