COMMUNITIES

The most architecturally visible populations in this expanding neighborhood were the mansion-dwelling elite and their more self-effacing contemporaries in the three-bay townhouses on Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, Pine, and the adjoining numbered streets. A fair number were physicians associated with the hospitals and medical schools located further east, but a good representation of the city's most prominent industrialists, merchants, and entrepreneurs were also to be found here before the mid-19th century. Other populations were less visible in the built streetscape except though their institutions, which reveal a perhaps unexpected diversity. Within this relatively small district there were houses of worship of Quaker, Catholic, Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Universalist and other congregations. There were three public schools in the area, along with some of the city's most exclusive private ones.

From very early in this neighborhood's history, a community of African Americans -- specifically surveyed in censuses compiled by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1838 and 1847 -- populated many of the block interiors as well as the main streets in its southern third. By the time of W. E. B. DuBois's groundbreaking book, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899), this area was a center for the city's black elite, although that community had already spread directly westward into other parts of Philadelphia's seventh ward.

 

Instructions: Click on the small image to bring up a full-screen view. This will appear in a second window.

  • B1. Old Meeting house, 12th ab. Chestnut, W. side, Friends' 12th Street Meeting House (built 1812-13).
    Gelatin silver print by George Mark Wilson, ca. 1923.
    Library Company of Philadelphia, Gift of Mrs. Margaret O. Sweeney, 1979.
Old Meeting House, 12th ab. Chestnut, West side
  • B2. Academy of Natural Sciences, southeast corner of 12th and Sansom streets (built 1816 as Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem, William Strickland, architect).
    Engraving by C. G. Childs from Childs, Views in Philadelphia and Its Environs (Philadelphia, 1827-30).
    Library Company of Philadelphia.
Academy of Natural Sciences
  • B3. St. John’s Church, Philadelphia, east side 13th above Chestnut Street (built 1831-32, William Rodrigue, architect).
    Colored lithograph by J. C. Wild, from Wild, Views of Philadelphia, and Its Vicinity (Philadelphia, 1838).
    Library Company of Philadelphia.

    This church was rebuilt along much the same lines in stone after a fire at the turn of the century.
St. John's Church, Philadelphia
  • B4. Elevation, St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church, west side 13th Street above Pine (built 1839-40, Thomas S. Stewart, architect).
    Elevation by Stewart, 14 June 1839.
    Athenaeum of Philadelphia (STW *004 *003).

    The caption indicates that the steeple was excluded from the agreed-upon design.
Elevation, St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church
  • B5a. Universalist Church of the Messiah, 1319-21 Locust Street (built 1850-51, Thomas U. Walter, architect).
    Albumen print, ca. 1885.
    Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

    For a later view showing the extant townhouses on this site, see item D15.
Universalist Church of the Messiah
  • B5b. Universalist Church of the Messiah, interior.
    Albumen print, ca. 1885.
    Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Universalist Church of the Messiah
  • B6. Map of area, 1874.
    Photocomposite from G. H. Jones & Co, Atlas of Philadelphia in Fifteen Volumes, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1874), plate 6, and Volume 2 (Philadelphia, 1875), plate 6.
    Library Company of Philadelphia.
Map of area, 1874
  • B7. Old First High School House, Central High School, east side Juniper Street, south of Market Street (built 1837-38, Thomas U. Walter, architect), view from Penn Square.
    Calotype by Frederick DeBourg Richards, 1854.
    Library Company of Philadelphia.

    For a later view of the site, showing an early incarnation of Wanamaker's store, see item C17.
Old First High School House
  • B8. Detail of "The Seventh Ward of Philadelphia, The Distribution of Negro Inhabitants Throughout the Ward, and their social condition."
    From W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia, 1899).
    Library Company of Philadelphia.
Detail of
  • B9. Fire insurance survey of St Thomas African Episcopal Church, 203-09 South 12th Street (built 1889-90, T. Frank Miller, architect), 18 December 1890.
    Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Franklin Fire Insurance Co. Records (policy 0: 70044).
Fire insurance survey of St Thomas African Methodist Episcopal Church
  • B10. St. Peter Claver's Roman Catholic Church, 1200 Lombard Street (built 1841 as Fourth Presbyterian Church, Thomas U. Walter, architect).
    Photograph, January 2000.
    Library Company of Philadelphia.

    This church was rededicated in 1892 for an African-American Catholic congregation.
St. Peter Claver's Roman Catholic Church
  • B11a. 1112-18 Lombard Street (Former church adapted to residential use as Washington Mews, Frank Weise, architect, 1960s).
    Photograph, January 2000.
    Library Company of Philadelphia.
1112-18 Lombard Street
  • B11b. Fire insurance survey of Protestant Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 1112-18 Lombard Street (built 1834-36 as All Souls' P. E. Church, Thomas U. Walter, architect), 4 October 1836, resurveyed 3 October 1891 as Shiloh Baptist Church.
    Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Franklin Fire Insurance Co. Records (policy 0: 1662).
Fire insurance survey of Protestant Episcopal Church of the Ascension Fire insurance survey of Protestant Episcopal Church of the Ascension
  • B12. "... a correct List of the White Male Taxable Inhabitants of the Seventh Ward ... for 1861," broadsheet(s) cut up and pasted into an unrelated 1861 publication.
    Library Company of Philadelphia.
a correct List of the White Male Taxable Inhabitants of the Seventh Ward
  • B13. Committee to Visit the Colored People, "Census facts Collected by Benjamin C. Bacon And Charles Gardner," ms., 4 vols., 1838, vol. 3, "Census B.C.B. no. 1."
    Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers.
Committee to Visit the Colored People
  • B14. R. R. Wright, Jr., comp., The Philadelphia Colored Directory, 1908 (Philadelphia, 1908).
    Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Wa 028V).
The Philadelphia Colored Directory
  • B15. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia, 1899).
    Library Company of Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study
  • B16. "Businesses Conducted by Colored People in Philadelphia," in Armstrong Association of Philadelphia, The Negro in Business in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1917).
    Library Company of Philadelphia.
Businesses Conducted by Colored People in Philadelphia
  • B17. Locust Street School, northeast corner 12th and Locust streets (built 1827-28).
    Franklin D. Edmunds, The Public School Buildings of the City of Philadelphia from 1745-1845 (Philadelphia, 1913).
    Library Company of Philadelphia.

    This site is also glimpsed in a coeval watercolor, item E6.
Locust Street School, northeast corner 12th and Locust streets
  • B18. Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity, Second Annual Report of the Seventh Ward Association of the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity…. (Philadelphia, 1880).
    Library Company of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity

Introduction | From Edge to Center: Movin' West | Communities | Commerce |Enclave
Persistence and Ambition in the Twentieth Century | The Cassatt House | Prospects

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