{"id":9846,"date":"2016-01-07T12:13:34","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T17:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=9846"},"modified":"2016-01-07T12:13:34","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T17:13:34","slug":"a-more-balanced-history-of-rittenhouse-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2016\/01\/a-more-balanced-history-of-rittenhouse-square\/","title":{"rendered":"A More Balanced History of Rittenhouse Square"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Caption<\/a>
1724 Walnut Street, built for George W. Edwards ca. 1850. Occupied in 1864 by French consul Sir Charles Edward Keith Kortright and Lady Kortright. Subsequently home to the Italian consul to Philadelphia Count Goffredo Galli and Countess Galli (Clara Roberts) and in 1898 by the William Weightman family. Demolished in 1929. Photographed ca. 1865. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PhillyVoice called the other day with a burning PhillyHistory question: \u201cWhen did Rittenhouse Square get its ritzy rep?\u201d And always willing to help out, I explained how the place managed to become and remain “Philadelphia\u2019s most fashionable neighborhood.\u201d Brandon Baker\u2019s fine column (read it here<\/a>) focuses on the city\u2019s who\u2019s who: the wasp-y aristocratic types, their friends and allies who populated the square and nearby streets with mansions during the second half of the 19th century.<\/p>\n

Now there really are two ways to pick apart that question. One is to respond the way I did, something that\u2019s been done repeatedly, in book<\/a> after book<\/a>, naming names and ogling great fortunes, grand mansions and lavish weddings. Who can resist the temptation of drawing juicy quotes from Nathaniel Burt\u2019s The Perennial Philadelphians: The Anatomy of an American Aristocracy<\/a>?<\/i>\u00a0And there\u2019s more. We could have turned to Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class<\/a><\/i> where Digby Baltzell analysed the \u201cVictorian gentry\u201d and their \u201chandsome mansions\u201d surrounding the Square.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one<\/i> way to tell the tale. And while it\u2019s not wrong, it is<\/i> one sided. Balance, imagined as an afterthought (the French call it L’esprit de l’escalier<\/i>) was sorely missing. And it would have been supplied by Dennis Clark\u2019s essay<\/a> on Rittenhouse the nearby companion neighborhood once called \u201cRamcat,\u201d just to the southwest of the Square.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is difficult for Americans today to imagine the grandeur of the elite life-style of a Rittenhouse Square at the end of the nineteenth century,\u201d wrote Clark. \u201cThe class culture of such neighborhoods created what amounted to a fairyland of elegance and display protected by Victorian codes of civility and discrimination. These enclaves of privilege combined with architectural eclecticism with passionate embellishment, lavish furnishings, and an adoration of English upper-class family etiquette. Flamboyant architects like Frank Furness and Theophilus Chandler designed edifices for an almost hysterical display of wealth\u2014here a mansion for the sugar baron James Scott, there a Renaissance palace for Mrs. Sarah Drexel Fell. The structures on the square became wildly adorned shrines to aggressive vanity and the obsessive flaunting of riches.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d Clark continues, \u201can aristocratic way of life requires much more than money and manners if it is to remain in ascendancy. It demands presumptions of superiority, the exercise of assured authority, and the collaboration of a servant class to do the thousands of jobs necessary to guarantee an elaborate system of personal comforts and princely appointments. \u2026 The working people who served were often from such impoverished backgrounds that they had no choice but to serve, and some may even have been beguiled into servility by the mere thought of association with the elegance which they labored to support.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 1880s, Rittenhouse Square was the scene of an interdependent relationship between rich and poor.\u201d And so Clark fills in the back story: \u201cThe servants required to prepare and serve the meals, shop, clean the household, do the laundry, and care for all the details of the privileged establishments on Rittenhouse Square were drawn for the most part from the South Philadelphia Irish community. After 1850, \u2018Irish\u2019 in Philadelphia became virtually synonymous with servant. \u00a0According to the United States census of 1870, there were 24,108 domestic servants in the city of whom 10,044 were born in Ireland.\u00a0 Among the remainder a large portion were of Irish parentage.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

“The great households of Rittenhouse Square were caught in a social dilemma. It was impossible to pursue the extravagant life-style of mannered elegance and luxury without servants, but those most readily available were from a group alien in outlook, habits and background. Nevertheless, wealth had to make the best of it and be served by such poor as there were. \u2026 \u00a0For the Irish a 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 exploitative mills, factories, and railroads. \u2026 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<\/span><\/p>\n

There you have it. Upstairs and<\/i> downstairs.<\/p>\n

Clark\u2019s chapter appeared in the aptly titled book: The Divided Metropolis<\/a><\/i>.\u00a0Yes, history is always so much better<\/i> when it reflects reality\u2014complicated, conflicted and contested as it inevitably is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PhillyVoice called the other day with a burning PhillyHistory question: \u201cWhen did Rittenhouse Square get its ritzy rep?\u201d And always willing to help out, I explained how the place managed to become and remain “Philadelphia\u2019s most fashionable neighborhood.\u201d Brandon Baker\u2019s fine column (read it here) focuses on the city\u2019s who\u2019s who: the wasp-y aristocratic types, […]<\/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-9846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9846","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=9846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}