It’s doubtful that Penn long pursued his plan to preserve the high ground paralleling the Delaware River for the purpose of beautifying his city. A practical man, and a shrewd real estate developer at that, he must have realized that shipping facilities had to line the edge of the river if Philadelphia was to become a prosperous commercial metropolis. This would be the only way to accommodate ships transporting merchandise and travelers to the Atlantic Coast and foreign seaports. Penn surely concluded that the riverfront would become exceedingly valuable to the Proprietary.
For all property sold in the Province of Pennsylvania, Penn used the quitrent (or ground rent) system of taxation to provide the Propriety with a steady income. Each land patent stated the annual quitrent amount for the lot. Original settlers (aka “first purchasers”) were charged to pay one shilling for each one hundred acres every year. The collection of ground rents was the cause of much ill feeling between settlers and the Proprietary.
Penn and his agents sold the waterfront lots east of Front Street—the “bank lots”—in the 1680s. Affluent buyers, dubbed “bankers,” often subdivided their lots or traded them for acreage deeper in Pennsylvania. Some had bought a thousand or more acres in the countryside and received their city lots as appurtenant to their country acquisitions, together with land in the “Liberties” (Liberty Lands) of Philadelphia County.
William Penn was soon faced with too much proposed and actual development on the Delaware riverfront. Everyone wanted to own prime real estate in the nucleus of Philadelphia, so they clustered by the river. Even more disturbing was that bankers were under the impression that they owned the waterfront abutting their holdings. The bank lot purchasers also claimed the privilege to hollow out space in the high bank next to their lots so as to create “vaults” for use as storerooms. This was the first private versus public conflict concerning the development of Philadelphia’s waterfront.
Leading merchant Samuel Carpenter was the first banker to make such a demand. Early in 1684, he asked Penn for permission to “dig cellars or vaults between the Edge of the bank and [his] land provided it be done and kept without prejudice to the Road [Front Street] above.” Penn rejected this request, but Carpenter returned with an even more alarming proposal. He wanted to construct a set of wharves and warehouses on his sizable bank lot between Walnut and Chestnut Streets. Such harbor structures would impede everyone’s access to the river for almost a city block.
Carpenter’s plan thus generated the first major controversy regarding the use of and access to Philadelphia’s Delaware front. Chapter twelve has more about Samuel Carpenter, his wharf and his stairs.
WILLIAM PENN’S SOLUTION
In response to all bankers making claims on the east side of Front Street, Penn firmly declared that the riverbank was a common area owned by the Propriety—not by any banker or other first purchaser. He then softened his stance by offering a compromise. This oft-reproduced language appears in a letter dated August 3, 1684, a few days before Penn returned to England:
The Bank is a top common, from end to end. The rest, next [to] the water, belongs to front-lot men no more than [to] back-lot men: the way [Front Street] bounds them. They may build stairs—and, [at] the top of the bank, a common exchange, or walk; and against [Front] street, common wharfs may be built freely;—but into the water, and the shore, is no purchaser’s.
Thomas Jefferson called William Penn “the greatest law-giver the world has produced.” Penn’s declaration is an example of his Solomonic wisdom, since he devised a way to balance both public and private interests. He allowed Carpenter and other riverfront developers to build on their bank lots as they desired, but only if they allowed the public to have convenient access to the Delaware.
COOL RIVER BREEZES
Another reason for the mid-block stairways was that Penn wanted to let cool, fresh air from the Delaware River into the hot, congested city. This is echoed by Abraham Ritter in Philadelphia and Her Merchants (1860):
I may advert to a row of small two and three-story brick houses, of sombre weather-beaten hue even sixty years ago, and tell of a gap here and there between, as airholes from the river to fan the more condensed atmosphere above; or show the forethought of Father Penn in facilitating ingress and egress to and from Front to Water street by an occasional flight of stone steps.
Part of a Currier-Ives print, Bird’s Eye View of Philadelphia (1875), illustrating only the central waterfront. Library of Congress.
The Penn stairs thus enabled the town and the river to stay linked both physically and ecologically.
In the end, William Penn instructed the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania to mandate that bank lot owners install stepped passageways along the Delaware River between Philadelphia’s principal east–west streets. These mid-block stairs helped form strong ties between docks at the Delaware’s edge (the city’s “lower” level) and the core (“upper”) level beginning at Front Street. Some blocks had more than one set of steps. The actual steps may have been made of wood at first and then replaced by stone as the treads rotted.
Precisely how many of these stairways were installed is unknown. The number varies from eight to twelve in the literature and gradually diminished until only the Wood Street Steps remained. Having served their original civic purpose, some stairs were closed as far back as the late eighteenth century. Others gave way to the construction of I-95 in the 1960s, but not as many as often supposed.
2
AT SPRING GARDEN STREET
BRITISH BARRACKS AND PARTY CENTRAL ON THE WATERFRONT
Spring Garden Street did not connect to Delaware Avenue until the 1920s, unlikely as this may seem today. The thoroughfare was first opened through the Northern Liberties District of Philadelphia County between only Sixth and Tenth Streets in the 1830s and 1840s. A landscaped portion was in the middle of the wide roadway even back then.
MILITARY MATTERS (I OF V): THE BRITISH BARRACKS AT CAMPINGTON
A hamlet identified as Campington (later, Camptown) was once found at present-day Spring Garden Street between Second and Third. The name was attached to that locale because British troops stationed in and around Philadelphia had encamped there beginning in 1745. Barracks were built about 1753 to lodge some five thousand of the king’s men. A parade ground was in the center of the garrison.
During the occupation of Philadelphia from 1777 to 1778, British soldiers stationed there manned a military post at nearby Front and Noble. Anyone exiting or entering the city to or from the north had to use that gate and present the proper military pass.
A Quaker woman named Lydia Darragh (1729–1789), on December 3, 1777, coolly walked out of town and through this gate to deliver information to General George Washington about British plans to attack his troops at Whitemarsh. It’s worth learning more about this Revolutionary War spy and how her daring mission aided the American cause—but not here.
PHILADELPHIA WAREHOUSING AND COLD STORAGE
The Philadelphia Warehousing and Cold Storage complex between Spring Garden and Noble Streets has been around for a long time. These bulky brick warehouses are the city’s oldest and largest cold storage houses and represent the numerous long-demolished warehouses that used to line the central Philadelphia riverfront. Beach Street, an early waterside pathway analogous to Water Street, passes between the two buildings but is closed off.
Philadelphia Warehousing was incorporated in 1873 as the Mercantile Warehouse Company to enter the business of cold storage, warehousing and ice making. Its machinery included an immense boiler-house and possibly the biggest ice machine in the nation. Today, Philadelphia Cold Storage stores all manner of food, clothing and other items for anybody who wants to keep things at temperatures below twenty degrees.
The enormous American flag mural on one of the buildings is easily seen by northbound traffic on Interstate 95. A project of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the six-thousand-square-foot mural was painted within two months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 200
1.
THE EAST CENTRAL INCINERATOR
A low point of Philadelphia waterfront’s saga was the East Central Incinerator at the foot of Spring Garden Street. This city-owned trash-burning plant was put into operation in the mid-1960s. Its construction right on the Delaware signified how disconnected the city had become from its main river by the mid-twentieth century. The massive steel and reinforced concrete structure was enclosed on two sides by the river and was supported above the water by a pier structure.
A vacant rusting eyesore for years, the incinerator was dismantled in 2002 after an environmental cleanup. Much of the site nowadays is Festival Pier, a recreational venue where music concerts and other entertainment events are held.
HOTSPOTS ON THE WATER
In the 1980s and 1990s, this part of Delaware Avenue was Philadelphia’s hottest nightspot precinct. Its popularity would have been unthinkable even as recently as the 1970s, given that this had been a run-down maritime/business corridor.
The clubs included: KatManDu, opened in 1991 at Pier 25 North as Philadelphia’s first waterfront restaurant-bar, now doing business as Cavanaugh’s; Rock Lobster at Pier 15, later operated as Octo Waterfront Grille; Bleachers Sports Club at Spring Garden and Delaware Avenue, later Oasis, then Egypt and then Solo; DECO at Front and Spring Garden; the Eighth Floor at the top floor of a hulking warehouse at Delaware and Poplar, subject of a proposed apartment complex; Kokomo Bay at 927 Delaware, now Bamboo Bar; Aztec Club at 939 Delaware, formerly Baja Beach Club and Chrome and now the Roxxy; Beach Club on Pier 42 North, which had a makeshift sandy beach at its far end and is now part of SugarHouse Casino; and Maui on Pier 53 North near Penn Treaty Park.
Then there’s Delilah’s Den at Front and Spring Garden. This trendy “gentlemen’s club” occupies the site of a Reading Railroad freight warehouse that burned in a tremendous blaze on February 15, 1975. For the ladies, the Cave at Delaware and Fairmount Avenues was billed as the East Coast’s number one male revue show. While this “Cave” and this “Den” have nothing to do with the riverside burrows in which Quaker settlers dwelled long ago, they are remarkably close to where some of those caves were located.
These bars and nightclubs became a nuisance to the communities by the water. Public intoxication and other anti-social forms of behavior became the norm for this section of town. More annoying to local dwellers was the nightly fight for street parking.
This is all an example of the conflict between changing uses of the Philadelphia waterfront. The tension between residential and recreational activity came about only once this district became appealing following the end of its use as a commercial and manufacturing zone.
There are even plans afoot to transform a large industrial warehouse at Beach and Richmond Streets into a three-thousand-seat entertainment venue to be operated by Live Nation. The project developer wants to make this the city’s premier place to see live music. The warehouse is located in a little-used industrial park in Fishtown, a former manufacturing neighborhood just north of Northern Liberties. Nearby residents are lukewarm to the proposal, as they are concerned that the venue would become yet another rowdy nightclub along the Delaware River.
Most of the nuisance clubs left Columbus Boulevard years ago. Interestingly, though, this part of Philadelphia has had a history of drunkenness and decadence going back to the time of William Penn, as will be shown shortly.
3
NOBLE TO CALLOWHILL
A ROMANTIC STREAM FLOWING BETWEEN A BLOODY LANE AND A GALLOW’S HILL
Noble Street may have been named after the early English surveyor Richard Noble. Most of Noble west of Front is gone due to Interstate 95 and urban renewal projects west of the superhighway. The street was known as Bloody Lane in the late 1700s and 1800s because a murder had been committed somewhere along its length.
That the Philadelphia City Morgue was situated on Noble Street for several years after 1870 is unrelated to this. The Reading Railroad in due time acquired and integrated the property into its adjacent rail yard.
COHOQUINOQUE CREEK/PEGG’S RUN
Pegg’s Run was a Delaware River tributary immediately north of Callowhill Street. Originally called the “Cohoquinoque” by local Native Americans, the stream flowed through the southern part of the Northern Liberties District—today the desolate Callowhill East District of Philadelphia. Accounts vary, but Pegg’s Run arose around the modern-day intersection of Fifteenth and Spring Garden and was also fed by a spring near Ninth Street.
The navigable Cohoquinoque let farmers convey farm products on flatboats to the Delaware River in order to get to Philadelphia markets. In addition, rowers could make their way far upstream. Young people had many romantic moonlit nights paddling the length of Pegg’s Run.
The creek’s later name was derived from Daniel Pegg (ca. 1665–1702), a Quaker brick maker who once possessed much of the Northern Liberties District north of the Cohoquinoque. In 1686, Pegg obtained 350 acres of marshy ground in that region from one Jurian Hartsfielder (ca. 1654–1690), a stray German or Dutchman who held a patent on the territory from the royal governor of New York, Sir Edmund Andros.
The grant for this land, which he called “Hartsfield,” dated back six years before William Penn’s arrival in America. It was one of the earliest sections of the Delaware River developed by Europeans north of New Sweden, the Swedish colony founded in 1638 along the Delaware, not far from present-day Wilmington, Delaware. In 1655, the Dutch captured the Swedish forts on the river, thus incorporating the Swedish settlements into the Dutch New Netherland colony. This status lasted until the English conquest of the Dutch in 1664 at the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The environs of what became Philadelphia were included in the Charter of Pennsylvania that King Charles II granted to William Penn in 1681.
A bridge was built over Pegg’s Run in the 1750s to carry Front Street over the stream. It was termed the “North Bridge” because “North End” was the name given to the territory north of Vine Street in the Northern Liberties District of Philadelphia County. The causeway was also called Poole’s Bridge after a man named Poole who had his home and shipyard on a hill a stone’s throw away. There were sluices under it to permit the creek to flow freely. The ground on both sides was low and swampy, and quite a few people straying from the bridge died in the mud.
Philadelphia’s first manufacturing sector was located along the banks of Pegg’s Run, especially textile makers and leather tanneries. The carpet industry in North America began in 1791 nearby along Second Street, as this is where William Peter Sprague started the first commercial carpet mill in the New World (the Philadelphia Carpet Manufactory).
CURVY WILLOW STREET
The North End’s industries discharged their offal directly into Pegg’s Run for outflow to the Delaware River. The creek thus became tremendously polluted by the late eighteenth century. Public outcry demanded that it be covered over and turned into a sewer, which happened in stages in the early 1800s. However, industries along the way merely obtained entrances into the culvert and continued discharging their waste into the underground stream.
“The Philadelphia of To-Day: The World’s Greatest Workshop” (1908), showing the entire central waterfront. Author’s collection.
The curvilinear Willow Street was built on top of the sewer by 1829. The Northern Liberties and Penn Township Railroad (aka the Delaware and Schuylkill Railroad and the Willow Street Railroad) laid tracks on the surface in 1834. These tracks ran westward from the Willow Street Wharf on the Delaware and connected to the tracks of the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad on Pennsylvania Avenue west of Broad Street.
In the 1850s, the line became part of the Reading Railroad. The Reading also incorporated the freight houses of the North Pennsylvania Railroad, then located on Front Street between Noble and Willow.
The railroad tracks on Willow Street were removed in the late 1960s as part of the East Callowhill Urban Renewal Area. Hundreds of houses and commercial establishments were torn down in thi
s misguided city planning project that sought to create open space for industrial use. By necessity, the sewer under Willow Street had to remain, which is why Willow Street itself was not eliminated when other streets in the project area were. The sewer still flows to the Delaware at Pier 25, under Cavanaugh’s River Deck. Willow Street no longer makes it to Delaware Avenue due to Highway 95.
CURVY WOMEN AND CROOKED MEN BY THE DELAWARE
This locale was also Philadelphia’s first red-light district. Prostitutes frequented its hostels and boardinghouses, and drinkers gathered at any number of seedy taverns. There were also ramshackle shops and street vendors who sold exotic goods taken to them by sailors from ships arriving from all over the world. This commotion attracted a diverse group of people—common laborers, privateers, sailors, gamblers and swindlers of all types.
The area became a center for revelers from Philadelphia and Northern Liberties looking for adventure away from the eyes of authorities. This is because the neighborhood—part of the Northern Liberties District but not Northern Liberties Township—was not fully represented by a municipal government or regularly patrolled by constables until it became part of Philadelphia in 1854. It was that year that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania combined Northern Liberties and other districts and townships in Philadelphia County into the City of Philadelphia under the Act of Consolidation (P.L. 21, No. 16).
The North End was thus Philadelphia’s first “outlaw” district and had a history of violence in the eighteenth century. For instance, Gallow’s Hill near Front and Callowhill was the site of a number of public hangings. John Fanning Watson, in his Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, reminisces: “In my youthful days Callowhill street was often called ‘Gallows-hill street.’”
Philadelphia's Lost Waterfront Page 2
