Philadelphia's Lost Waterfront

by Harry Kyriakodis

  Since 2000, several new or rehabbed apartment and condominium complexes have cropped up on the west side of Front Street between Arch and Walnut. The modern high-rises near Walnut Street are out of scale and style with the older buildings of Old City and Society Hill Philadelphia, but they offer terrific views of the Delaware and exemplify the renewed allure of Front Street as a residential address.

  7

  VINE TO RACE

  A CALAMITOUS BLAZE AND A COLOSSAL BRIDGE

  To reiterate, Vine Street was originally called Valley Street since a ravine dipped toward the Delaware in this vicinity.

  WILLIAM RUSH’S STUDIO

  The studio of William Rush (1756–1833) was once on the west side of Front Street between Vine and Race Streets. The son of a ship’s carpenter, he was the first native-born sculptor in America and is acclaimed as the “Father of American Sculpture.”

  Rush began his career as a maker of figureheads for ships, which is doubtlessly why he set up shop so close to the Delaware. Usually nine feet tall, his figureheads were the first to give an idea of life and motion to that type of work. His carvings were always wood; he never worked with stone. Rush evolved from a carver of figureheads into the creator of the first monumental American sculptures, Comedy and Tragedy (1808).

  William Rush’s concern for civic improvement and his work on public buildings anticipated the direction public art would take in America. His workhouse is gone, lost in the fire described below. Even the block of Front Street on which his shop stood is gone, that locale having been taken over for I-95.

  GREAT CONFLAGRATION OF 1850

  The spectacular waterfront conflagration on July 9, 1850, was the first great fire in Philadelphia’s history and the city’s most destructive inferno during the nineteenth century. It started at a five-story warehouse on the east side of Water Street, between Vine and Race, at what is approximately 237 North Water these days.

  The fire began when pressed hay stored in an upper floor of the storehouse somehow combusted. This itself did not cause much alarm, but a number of violent explosions of saltpeter—stored in the warehouse’s basement—spread the fire. Burning hay and flaming embers from the blown-up building flew in all directions. Summer winds conveyed bits of smoldering sulfur (stored in an adjoining storehouse) all the way to Broad Street.

  Very quickly, the ensuing fire reached southward to Race Street, westward to Second and northward past Callowhill. People who lived close by packed their things and prepared for a sudden evacuation. The city was at risk of a cataclysm that night. Mass confusion prevailed. The light of the fire was seen for thirty miles around.

  An exciting print: “The Great Conflagration in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 9th, 1850.” Library of Congress.

  News of the blaze was telegraphed across the United States and was even later reported in Great Britain. More than one hundred firemen from New York City, Newark, Wilmington and Baltimore arrived by express train to relieve Philadelphia firefighters who had became exhausted by their exertions and the heat. This was probably the first American disaster in which technology—telegraphs and trains—were employed.

  The fire happened a few years before the 1854 Consolidation of Philadelphia, so the congested commercial area was partly outside the city’s original northern limit at Vine Street. Half of the zone of devastation was thus in Northern Liberties.

  The inferno was subdued sometime during the night. At least twenty-eight lives were lost (accounts vary), including some killed in the street and in adjacent buildings as a consequence of the initial explosion. Others were trampled in the chaos. Yet others drowned in the Delaware River from the shock of the explosion or from purposefully jumping into the river to flee the calamity. Several firemen died, too.

  Newspaper articles reported that 367 buildings were reduced to ashes within some eighteen acres. Roughly 300 of the burned structures were small row homes, leaving dozens of working-class families homeless. In a fairly uncommon civic action in that era, the Philadelphia City Councils appropriated $10,000 for the relief of survivors, and the Commissioners of Northern Liberties did the same. Local citizens also contributed some $31,000 to help the injured victims.

  The city block that was ground zero of the explosion and fire was rebuilt and resumed being as overcrowded as before. An empty lot now occupies the block. Plans for a condominium development there fell through, but it seems likely that this lot will one day be used for residential or recreational purposes, given its favorable location.

  THE DELAWARE RIVER (BENJAMIN FRANKLIN) BRIDGE

  Leaders from Pennsylvania and New Jersey had talked for years about constructing a bridge or tunnel between Philadelphia and Camden. In 1919, legislation was passed in both states to build a bridge across the Delaware River. The study of right of ways proposed for the span entailed one of the first traffic surveys in America. Potential Philadelphia endpoints included Washington Square, Sixth and Spring Garden and even Third and Market.

  The Benjamin Franklin Bridge, looking toward Philadelphia. This large undated postcard was produced for the Sesquicentennial International Exposition of 1926. Author’s collection.

  Construction of the Delaware River Bridge began on January 6, 1922, and it opened on July 1, 1926, just in time for the nation’s Sesquicentennial Exposition celebration in Philadelphia. The bridge cost $37 million and has been characterized as the “first distinctly modern suspension bridge built on a grand scale.” It was an instant success, attracting thirty-five thousand vehicles a day to cross the Delaware at twenty-five cents a passage.

  The bridge is 128 feet wide and 8,291 feet from portal to portal—9,620 feet when the plazas are included. The structure’s 1,750 foot-long center span was the world’s longest single suspension span for a while. Its towers rise nearly 400 feet above the river. Over twenty-five thousand miles of cable were used in two main cables, each thirty inches in diameter.

  Its name was changed to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in 1956 to mark the 250th anniversary of Franklin’s birth and to distinguish it from the newly constructed Walt Whitman Bridge. The Delaware River Port Authority manages these and other spans over the Delaware, in addition to the PATCO High-Speed commuter rail line, which uses the Ben Franklin Bridge to provide service into Center City (downtown) Philadelphia.

  At the water’s edge was Pier 12 North, operated by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad for general freight purposes and where the railroad docked its floating barges. Pier 12 today is home to the Philadelphia Marine Center. This is Philadelphia’s leading boating facility, offering 338 deep-water slips.

  The Pennsylvania Railroad used Piers 13 and 15 North as a city freight station, shipping 1,800,000 tons annually of general merchandise carried in railroad cars on car floats. About four hundred men worked at these wharves, which are no longer around. Octo Waterfront Grille is at Pier 15 today.

  THE SUMMER STREET STEPS

  The bank stairway between Vine and Race was at Summer Street, an intermittent lane that once crossed the city. This tiny street was also one of the alleys that cut through the made-earth between Water Street and Delaware Avenue. It’s still there today, providing access to both North Water Street and I-95 North from Delaware Avenue.

  The Summer Street Steps lasted until 1925, when the Delaware River Bridge’s Philadelphia Anchorage was completed. The stairwell was removed as part of grading and paving around the gargantuan structure. A work contract drawing showing existing conditions labels a set of “Stone Steps Down” on the line of Summer Street between Front and Water. Another drawing shows that the steps were replaced with a concrete sidewalk. That sidewalk must have lasted until the 1970s, when Interstate 95 came through.

  The Philadelphia Anchorage extends from Columbus Boulevard to Front Street. Its foundations required twenty-eight thousand cubic yards of concrete and go down sixty-three feet to bedrock. The excavation yielded some surprises. The following is from the final engineering report for the bridge, issued in 1927:

  It w
as known that old bulkhead walls existed between Delaware Avenue and Water Street at the site of the Philadelphia anchorage. Test pits excavated before the buildings were demolished disclosed considerable timber cribbing of this nature. Some of it had evidently served as foundations for earlier buildings, but most of it was probably wharf construction along the water front of Colonial days. Since buried timbers of any considerable size would offer a serious obstacle to dredging operations, the specifications provided that the site should be prepared by stripping so much of the overlying fill as found necessary to remove all old foundations and buried timbers. During these operations, hewn oak timbers 24 inches square and parts of a barge or boat framed with wooden pins were removed.

  Many commercial buildings were cleared to build the Philadelphia Anchorage in the early 1920s, and half of Water Street was eliminated between Race and Vine. What’s more, the imposing structure’s sudden appearance surely hastened the waterfront’s decline. Besides interrupting Water Street, the Delaware River Bridge visibly transported people and vehicles high above and away from that part of town. The obvious psychological effect was that the riverside commercial district was unworthy.

  Construction of Interstate 95 had an even more devastating physical and psychological effect five decades later.

  8

  RACE TO ARCH

  FIGHTING FIRES AND RATS NEAR AMERICA’S OLDEST URBAN STREET

  Race Street was originally called Songhurst Street after John Songhurst, a friend of William Penn and an original Quaker settler of Philadelphia. Its name then became Sassafras Street.

  The street’s current name came about because this was the main roadway heading to horse races that occurred at or around Center Square (where Philadelphia City Hall is today) and because of occasional horse races on the street dating back to the 1720s. The designation continued long after the racing ended.

  RACE STREET CONNECTOR AND CIVIC PLANS FOR PHILADELPHIA’S WATERFRONT

  Race Street east of Second Street was shifted roughly thirty feet north during Interstate 95’s construction. The altered street winds its way under the highway overpass—an unappealing tunnel for pedestrians to use in accessing the Delaware River from Center City.

  To meet the long-standing need to enhance this streetscape, the Race Street Connector project of 2011 added wider sidewalks and landscaping. Plus, an LED light screen attached to the viaduct’s underside displays abstract images of the river in real time, to remind pedestrians that a river lies ahead. In announcing funding from the William Penn Foundation for these improvements, Mayor Michael Nutter declared in early 2011: “We will have one of the best waterfronts in America.”

  The Race Street Connector is a project of the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (DRWC). A successor to the Penn’s Landing Corporation, this nonprofit corporation acts as the steward of the riverfront so as to provide a benefit to inhabitants and visitors of Philadelphia. DRWC intends to transform the seven-mile sweep of the city’s river frontage between Allegheny and Oregon Avenues into a destination location for recreational, cultural and commercial activities. Race Street is the first of about a dozen streets slated to be improved with easier access to the Delaware.

  RACE STREET PIER AND PIER 9 NORTH

  The Race Street Connector will definitely provide and promote access to Race Street Pier. This once-abandoned municipal pier was turned into a verdant riverside park in early 2011. Its upper level provides a sky promenade and almost forty white swamp oak trees, while a lower terrace offers seating for social activity and passive recreation. This new park on the water was the first significant public space designed and built by the DRWC. On May 12, 2011, Mayor Nutter presided over the official ceremony that placed the pier, once again, into public service. Project cost: at least $7 million.

  Race Street Pier was looking shabby by 1931, just before it was rebuilt and lost its recreational pavilion. Philadelphia City Archives.

  The city constructed the pier about 1900 at a cost of $409,532. The north side was used as berths for fireboats and harbor police craft while the south side was leased for freight service, mostly tropical fruits of the United Fruit Company. At 540 feet long, Race Street Pier could accommodate most cargo ships and passenger liners of that day. It was first labeled Pier 10 and was renamed Pier 11 after being rebuilt in 1931.

  The modern use of this renovated pier relates back to when it had a pavilion (with four turrets) on its upper level, covered but open at the sides. There, people would enjoy themselves by strolling and breathing fresh river air over the Delaware. Firemen would dry their fire hoses inside the turret towers. The pavilion was dismantled during the 1931 rebuild. The warehouse structure was subsequently taken off the substructure, and the pier sat flat and forlorn for decades.

  South of Race Street Pier is Pier 9 North, a concrete and steel structure (with a monitor roof) that was completed in 1919 for $867,000. Banana boats used to unload their cargoes at this city-owned pier. It was common to see long lines of wagons on Delaware Avenue waiting their turn to drive into this warehouse to load bananas destined for market stalls throughout Philadelphia. Despite looking old and tired, Pier 9 is sound and is used for storage. It may ultimately become a performance or exhibition venue.

  CONTAGION BY THE DELAWARE (I OF II): THE PHILADELPHIA RAT RECEIVING STATION

  The front of Race Street Pier was a place to be avoided a century ago, for the Rat Receiving Station of the Philadelphia Bureau of Health was located there. Rats were a big problem all along the Delaware, and city officials sought ways to get rid of them and the diseases they carried (bubonic plague in particular).

  At least six special agents maintained scores of rat traps along the river from Girard Avenue to Reed Street. They also rat-proofed buildings on the riverfront and inspected ships docking along the Delaware. Horse-drawn wagons marked RAT PATROL aided their efforts and emphasized their authority. More than anything, the agents enforced a rule mandating that all vessels from rat-infested ports had to have rat guards on their mooring lines.

  The Philadelphia Rat Receiving Station in front of Race Street Pier, along with a RAT PATROL wagon, 1914. Philadelphia City Archives.

  Moreover, citizens were encouraged to bring rats to the station for a bounty: five cents for live ones and two cents for dead ones. The station was established in 1914 and collected over five thousand rats by year’s end.

  THE HIGH PRESSURE FIRE SERVICE BUILDING

  The High Pressure Fire Service (HPFS) building directly across Race Street Pier is one of the most important yet unappreciated edifices in Philadelphia. This red brick Victorian structure served the city for one hundred years, providing high-pressure water, at a moment’s notice, for use in fighting fires. Along with the high-pressure pipeline system that distributed the water, this building is the main reason why Center City Philadelphia never suffered a catastrophic fire during the 1900s.

  Philadelphia’s regular-pressure water had become ineffective in fighting fires in increasingly larger and higher buildings in the central business district. Years of prodding by insurance companies and the Philadelphia Fire Department spurred the city to install the world’s first high-pressure water service in a major city. Inaugurated in 1901 and completed in 1903, the system delivered water via independent pipes and special red fire hydrants located on every block between the Delaware River and Broad Street, from Race to Walnut.

  The High Pressure Fire Service building in 1904, just after completion. It looks much the same today, though a little worse for wear. Philadelphia City Archives.

  The HPFS building on Delaware Avenue drew water right from the river via a twenty-inch main and supplied a network of twelve- and sixteen-inch mains. Seven 280-horsepower pumps were powered by engines operating on city gas—an early use of internal combustion engines for such work. Full pressure was available within two minutes from the time a fire alarm was sounded.

  The system had the capacity of pushing ten thousand gallons of water a minute at up to three hundr
ed pounds of pressure, with power to throw a two-inch stream 230 feet vertically. Fireboats on the Delaware were also used for backup. They connected to the system via a manifold that still protrudes from the sidewalk in front of Race Street Pier.

  Fire losses immediately dropped after the HPFS system was operational, prompting the removal of extra insurance charges imposed on structures within the congested downtown. Other pumping stations followed around the city when the system was expanded into surrounding neighborhoods. The system’s success brought about similar high-pressure water systems in other American cities. Philadelphia’s was acknowledged as the best in the world for years and years.

  The fifty-six-mile system lasted until 2005, when it was decommissioned after falling into disrepair. High-pressure water service had become unnecessary anyway due to better firefighting equipment, high-rise sprinklers and fire-resistant construction materials. The HPFS building, though, still heroically stands. It is scheduled to become office and performance space for the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival (Philly Fringe). A café is also part of the scheme.

  The Salt Fish Store was built in 1705 where the HPFS building is today. This undated photo shows the steepness of Race Street as it approached Delaware Avenue. Two policemen are keeping the peace. Philadelphia City Archives.

  The old pumping plant sits where a salt house was situated for roughly two hundred years. This was a place to store and sell salt and salt fish. Built in 1705 with bricks and timbers imported from England, it was one of the first structures erected on this stretch of the Delaware. Other enterprises used the storehouse before it was taken down about 1903.

  THE CHERRY STREET STEPS

  The ten-foot-wide passageway between Race and Arch was—and still is—called Cherry Street, and the bank steps thereon were known as the Cherry Street Steps. William Penn may have directed his surveyor, Thomas Holme (1624–1695), to plan for this specific set of riverbank steps when Philadelphia was platted. (It was Holme who designed Philadelphia as a grid between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers.)