The Post-industrial Corridor Of Philadelphia: A Tour

Summary of Post-Industrial Center City Walking Tour From 20th and Callowhill Streets to the Delaware River By Harry Kyriakodis I've always been fascinated by the post-industrial landscape of the four-block-wide swath of Center City Philadelphia between Vine and Spring Garden Streets, from the Schuylkill to the Delaware Rivers. This bleak corridor has a long and peculiar history, some of which accounts for the way it is today. The shadow of William Penn (1644-1718), founder of both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, figures prominently in the story. In 1681, King Charles II granted all of what is now the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to Penn in repayment of a debt owed to Penn's father. Penn and his fellow Quakers came to this region in the 1680s. After establishing Philadelphia, Penn reserved for himself and his family a large tract of land immediately north of the original northern city boundary (Vine Street) and south of the "Liberty Lands" of northern Philadelphia County. (The Liberty Lands were areas out in the countryside that were given to the first purchasers of property in the city proper, with the thought that these buyers would build large estates for themselves or establish towns outside of Philadelphia.) Some accounts have it that northern limit of this tract was just north of present-day Callowhill Street, at least in the eastern part of this corridor, with other tracts between Callowhill and Spring Garden Streets. Whatever the case, Penn's country estate was known as Springettsbury Manor, named after his first wife, Gulielma Springett. Most of this corridor was therefore not part of the original city of Philadelphia, nor was it part of the overall Liberty Lands. When the British occupied Philadelphia from 1777 to 1778, their fortifications ran between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers through this area, more or less along the north side of today's Spring Garden Street. This region was mostly open space at that time. Then, in the 1790s, there were plans to build a canal between the two rivers along this corridor. (Thousands of years ago, the Schuylkill did actually flow to the Delaware via this very same path.) Part of the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal was dug before the company went bankrupt, and the abandoned right-of-way was used in the 1830s by the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad. At that time, this undeveloped district was a bonanza to emerging industries, which needed lots of open space for their operations, as well as convenient access to both rivers, plus good land and then rail routes to the rest of Pennsylvania, and points north. The Philadelphia & Columbia eventually became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, except for the part in Philadelphia, which went to the Reading Railroad. Thus, much of the route of this tour parallels the old Reading Railroad's City Branch, an open subway completed in the 1890s to eliminate traffic problems caused by tracks that crossed most of the city's north-south streets at grade from the Schuylkill River to Broad Street. The tracks of this abandoned line have been removed and nature has reclaimed much of the old right-of-way. Numerous interesting structures line the route, beginning with The Granary, at 20th and Callowhill Streets. Grain elevators were once a common sight in Philadelphia, but only this one remains. It was built in 1925 by the Reading Railroad, using a continuous poured in place concrete process. Abandoned in 1949, part of the structure was converted into offices in 1976. The silos were left untouched, but the machinery towers were transformed into a penthouse apartment with terraces. The entire structure was reconfigured into office space in 1986. Commonly called "the Granary," it was owned by the Granary Associates, an international design firm, until 2007. That year, that firm sold the Granery and moved to 1500 Spring Garden Street. The building has been vacant since then and an investment real estate company is offering it for lease, although its days may be numbered, given the recent popularity of this area. Interestingly, this site is just about where the Springettsbury Manor house once stood. Facing the Granery on the west side of 20th Street is a Whole Foods supermarket. At one time, however, the entire city block behind us was once the site of Bement, Miles & Co., maker of machine tools, lathes, and so on for railroads, locomotive factories, steel plants, and shipbuilders. The machine shops here were among the best in the United States, and its products were found in almost every industrial plant in the country. The company was founded in the mid-1800s by William Bement and lasted until 1899, when it merged into the Miles-Bement-Pond Company. The factory was torn down and the property became an athletic field, then a supermarket. There are now plans for a high rise condo or apartment development on the site, and Whole Foods is slated to move to 1601 Vine Street.

Continuing eastwards on Callowhill Street: Around 1734, the Penn family gave attorney Andrew Hamilton the land from 12th to 19th Streets, and Vine Street to Fairmount Avenue, in payment for legal services to the Penn family. Hamilton is credited with the design of Independence Hall, and, because of his great legal skill, was the original "Philadelphia Lawyer." In 1740, he built a large mansion in this vicinity. (In those days, of course, this corridor was the suburbs of Philadelphia, and there were no regular streets around here until the early-1800s.) The mansion and estate were called Bush Hill, and offered a commanding view of the then-distant city of Philadelphia. Vice President John Adams and his wife lived in the house in 1790 and 1791. During Philadelphia's terrible yellow fever epidemic of 1793, a quarantine hospital was set up in the mansion, managed by Stephen Girard, Philadelphia's famous marinermerchant-millionaire. This area was once the site of several major manufacturing facilities located along the Reading City Branch. The Bush Hill Iron Works was once located more or less on the site of Hamilton's mansion. Originally established in 1809 by our very own Oliver Evans, the firm achieved a high reputation for the manufacture of sugar, saw and grist mill machinery, and millwrighting in general, as well as boilers. Here also were Rush & Muhlenburg (makers of stationary steam engines), William Sellers Machine Tool Works (maker of shafting, mill gearing, and machine tools known all over the world), and the Whitney & Sons Car-Wheel Works (the largest rail car wheel factory in the nation). It was Asa Whitney's 1848 patent for annealing cast iron wheels that made his company famous. This annealing process produced wheels that were exceptionally strong, enabling them to be cast in one piece and then forced onto an axle at forty tons of pressure. Such wheels could handle much higher loads and speed, thus marking a new era in railroad history. And of course, the granddaddy of them all: The Baldwin Locomotive Works, a sprawling factory complex spread over several blocks between Callowhill and Spring Garden Streets west of Broad Street. Matthias Baldwin built a substantial brick factory here in 1836. His company eventually became the largest maker of heavy machinery in America's Gilded Age, making Philadelphia the locomotive capital of America. Baldwin was once the largest producer of locomotives in the world, if not the world's largest manufacturer of anything! By the early 1900s, an army of some 19,000 men, divided into day and night shifts, worked at the Baldwin complex. The company moved to greener pastures in the 1920s, and today, there's hardly a trace of Philly's huge Baldwin Locomotive complex. Brick rowhomes were built all around these manufactories to house workers who walked to work. But by the 1970s, the area was filled with abandoned buildings, coal yards, and a few hundred century-old rowhouses. Everything was torn down to create Franklin Town, a "city within a city" that was supposed to have over 4000 residential units, 1700 hotel rooms, restaurants, and tree-lined streets. Other than a few residential towers and Franklin Town Park (19th and Callowhill Streets), none of that happened. There's a lot of sentiment in the neighborhood for retiring the "Franklintown" moniker. Proceeding east on Callowhill Street: At 100 feet in width, Philadelphia's Broad Street is, as its name implies, the city's broadest north-south street. Broad Street is the longest straight urban boulevard in America. This is well-accepted, even though City Hall sits squarely in the middle of the street in the center of town, requiring traffic to circle the building. An old Philly saying (as applicable today as ever) is: "Broad Street is the straightest street, but when you get to City Hall, it gets real crooked." The Broad Street Subway passes under the Reading City Branch at the point where Broad Street rises in front of the Inquirer-Daily News Building. Originally known as the Elverson Building, this 18-story landmark is home to The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News. When operations began there in 1925, it was touted as the most modern newspaper plant in the world. Engineering-wise, the building met the challenge of carrying the immense floor load of the press room and hundreds of tons of presses and stereotyping equipment two floors above street level while suspending the entire structure above the Reading's tracks in such a way that vibrations from trains would not affect the building. The adjacent structure—now School District of Philadelphia headquarters—was constructed in 1948 to house the rotogravure presses that used to print sections of the Sunday Inquirer and publications like TV Guide. This was once the largest rotogravure plant in the world. These printing facilities were moved to a new state-of-the-art printing plant at Conshohocken in 1992.

Across Broad Street is the Reading Railroad's Terminal Commerce Building, touted as the largest commercial warehouse building in the nation when completed in 1930. It offered about 13 million square feet of floor space to the numerous firms located there. The structure even had a freight station beneath it, which replaced the Reading's North Broad Street Freight Station that had been on the site. This was the first freight station underneath a warehouse in the United States. The Reading Railroad sold the hulking structure in 1955, whereupon it became known as the North American Building. It has recently been repositioned as a "carrier hotel" housing telecommunications, computer and other high-tech equipment. The abandoned Reading Railroad Viaduct is a striking structure in the area of 11th and Callowhill Streets. Also known as the "9th Street Branch," this abandoned 4-track elevated structure was built in the early 1890s by the Reading Railroad as the main approach to Philadelphia's Reading Terminal (still standing and part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center). The northern portion of this mile-long viaduct ends at the 800 block of Fairmount Avenue, where it connects to SEPTA's main line tracks that now head into Center City via the Commuter Rail Tunnel. The southern part from Vine Street to Reading Terminal was torn down in the early 1990s. A 2003 study concluded that the cost of demolishing the viaduct was between 35 and 51 million dollars, while the cost to redevelop it into a linear park was about 5 million dollars. It will probably be here for another 50 years just like it is now... A highlight of this tour is the Willow Street Steam Generation Plant at Ninth and Willow Streets. Built in 1927 by the Philadelphia Electric Company, this was part of downtown Philadelphia's underground steam system, which still operates. The plant has been abandoned for over 25 years. The large interior spaces that held the boilers preclude easy alteration for reuse, as there are no floors inside the building. There have been proposals to convert it into a trash-to-steam plant and also to cover it with huge wrap-around advertising. But nothing has happened, as the building is filled with asbestos and is very dangerous. Philadelphia's steam network is now the third largest district steam heating system in the United States. The Callowhill Industrial District stretches from Ninth to Second Streets. This area was once packed with hundreds of row homes, plus light industry, and many more cross-streets than there are now. But in the 1960s, over twenty city blocks were leveled and many cross-streets were removed to create an open area suitable for new industry. Yes, there were high hopes, but not much new industry happened. While some of the remaining structures have been converted into condos recently, this area is mostly a strange zone of warehouses and parking lots between Old City and Northern Liberties. Willow Street is curvy because it occupies the bed of an old creek called Pegg's Run, which once made its way up past Broad Street. The stream was covered over and made into a city sewer around 1811, and Willow Street was built on top. Tracks were laid on Willow Street by the Northern Liberties and Penn Township Railroad around 1834 and connected to the Columbia Railroad tracks. The entire line became part of the Reading Railroad in the 1850s. When this district was cleared in the 1960s, the tracks were removed but the sewer stayed, which is probably why Willow Street was not removed. Callowhill Street was named after William Penn's second wife, Hannah Callowhill. It is an unusually wide Philadelphia street as it approaches the Delaware River because several market houses and street sheds were located in the center of and along the avenue going back to the 1700s. Basically, this was a vibrant local shopping center well into the 20th century, but urban blight and nearby highways put an end to that. Also, this area was once called the "town of Callow Hill," one of Philadelphia's earliest suburbs. Philadelphia's earliest industries began here, especially goat skin and leather tanneries. Midway on Front Street between Callowhill and Vine Streets are some ancient steps down to Water Street. Dating from the founding of Philadelphia, these steps are historically protected and are the last of 8 such stairways built along the river during the time of William Penn. The original settlers of Philadelphia lived in caves dug out of the mud along the steep bank of the Delaware River, pretty much along where Water Street now runs. The parking lots around here are all on landfill, under which are the remains of 18th century wharves and ships. The area was a rail yard for the Reading Railroad until a few decades ago. Philadelphia's Delaware Avenue skirts along the west bank of the Delaware River for several miles in the city. The original section of the avenue from Vine to South Streets was built the mid-19th century with funds from a bequest by Stephen Girard, who was the wealthiest man in American when he died in 1831.

Concerned about the poor condition of the approaches to the waterfront, Girard left $500,000 to make improvements and to maintain this road. The money led to the construction of bulkheads, the first lighting along the river, and paved waterfront streets. More widening work occurred in 1897, when this part of Delaware Avenue was expanded, making it the widest and longest waterfront avenue in the world. This portion, now landscaped, is now called Columbus Boulevard. To cap off this walking tour, take a look at the High-Pressure Fire Service building at Race Street and Columbus Boulevard. This was the first pumping plant of Philadelphia's high-pressure fire service, once the finest in the world. Completed in 1903, the plant drew water directly from the Delaware River via 20 inch mains and delivered it under high-pressure to large red fire hydrants throughout downtown Philadelphia via 12 and 16-inch mains. The 56-mile system lasted until 2005, when it was decommissioned after falling into disrepair. High-pressure water service became unnecessary anyway due to better fire-fighting equipment, high-rise standpipes and sprinklers, and fire-resistant building materials.