Philadelphia's Lost Waterfront

by Harry Kyriakodis

  Girard was obviously well acquainted with Penn’s stairways, given that he lived among them and one abutted his home. In his will, after explaining his understanding of how the bank steps and alleys came to be public property, Girard expressed dismay that some were no longer accessible:

  [O]wing to neglect or to some other cause on the part of those who have had the care of the city property, several encroachments have been made on them by individuals, by wholly occupying, or building over them, or otherwise.

  This was a time when both rich and poor lived alongside one another, a common occurrence in Philadelphia until the end of the 1800s. So it’s not surprising that Girard was concerned about the detrimental effect this was having on the health of people who lived on the crammed riverbank: “[I]n that way, the inhabitants, more particularly those who reside in the neighbourhood, are deprived of the benefit of that wholesome air, which [the alleys’] opening and cleansing throughout would afford.”

  Some modern accounts have it that the bank steps were built under the terms of Girard’s will, but this is not the case. Later chapters will address the will further.

  OLD CITY MERCANTILE/PENN’S VIEW HOTEL/RISTORANTE PANORAMA

  Delaware Avenue in front of Pier 3 Condominium occupies the space where Stephen Girard’s docks and wharves were located long ago.

  Some of his warehouses still stand on the west side of Front Street (20–30 North Front) and have been converted into residential apartments. Called the Old City Mercantile, this development is a splendid restoration of a group of Greek Revival–style buildings that had been on the brink of collapse for years. They were originally constructed between 1828 and 1834 by Girard and his estate.

  Penn’s View Hotel is next on Front Street on the south side of Church Street. This boutique hotel is home to Ristorante Panorama, an eatery serving fine Italian cuisine. Wine lovers around the globe have heard about its cruvinet, the world’s largest wine preservation and dispensing system.

  The structure that makes up the Penn’s View Hotel was built as a shipping warehouse in 1828. It became a hardware store around the turn of the twentieth century and then a coffeehouse in the 1950s. The building sat vacant until chef Carlo C. Sena (1922–2011) bought and refurbished it as a hotel in 1989. Penn’s View is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

  Sena had previously opened La Famiglia Ristorante at 8 South Front in 1976. This was a daring undertaking since Old City Philadelphia had not yet become a dining destination. The restaurateur arrived in Philadelphia as an Italian immigrant only nine years before. Carlo Sena found success only a few doors away from where Frenchman Stephen Girard and Quaker Nathan Trotter had found theirs.

  Other dining venues along Front Street include: Swanky Bubbles at 14 South Front; Spasso Italian Grill a few doors south; Downey’s at Front and South since 1976; Catahoula Bar & Restaurant at 775 South Front; and the dozens of other places in Old City, Society Hill and Queen Village. Parking, the scourge of the modern city, took down many old commercial buildings to allow for convenient access to these establishments.

  THE DELAWARE AVENUE ELEVATED (THE FERRY BRANCH)

  Clifford’s Alley was later called Filbert Street, and the Filbert Street Steps were apparently at 37 North Water. They were removed in 1907–08 by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (PRTC) for the building of the Market Street Subway. The following is from a PRTC report issued in 1908:

  Filbert Street, an 8 foot passageway for pedestrians, was closed by authority of Councils and made the site of the abutment at the south end of the concrete viaduct. Front Street is so much higher than Water Street that the second stories of the properties facing on Water Street formed the cellars on the Front Street side.

  The “8 foot passageway” was the Penn stairwell at Filbert Street.

  The Market Street Subway turned north at Front Street and exited the ground at a transition portal—between the subway and elevated portions—just north of Market Street. The shed covering this portal was used as a freight station for the PRTC’s trolleys, which ran on both Market and Front Streets. The Front and Market Station was a lively spot in the days when freight trolleys delivered milk, newspapers, packages and other time-critical items.

  The Market Street Line continued up an incline to an elevated steel structure and then turned 180 degrees in hairpin fashion above Arch Street to reach Delaware Avenue. It then proceeded over the boulevard’s southbound lanes all the way to South Street, where the line stub-ended. This was the Delaware Avenue Elevated, also known as the “Ferry Branch” or “Ferry Line,” since its stations served the many ferries to New Jersey. There were two stops: one at Market-Chestnut and another at South Street.

  The Ferry Line lost passengers as ferry traffic diminished after the Delaware River Bridge opened in 1926. Most ferries had ceased operating by 1938, and the Ferry Branch stopped running the following year. The elevated structure atop Delaware Avenue was then dismantled. Not a single trace remains.

  The Delaware Avenue El alternated service to Sixty-ninth Street with the Frankford Elevated Line, which connected to the Market Street Subway at Arch Street. Built by the city between 1915 and 1922, the Frankford Line ran north atop Front Street toward Philadelphia’s Frankford section—and still does so.

  A view of the waterfront looking north about 1930, showing the Delaware Avenue Elevated atop Delaware Avenue, the El’s terminus at South Street, the density of finger piers along the river and the Ben Franklin Bridge. Philadelphia City Archives.

  The Delaware Avenue Elevated, looking south from Chestnut Street. Philadelphia City Archives.

  Construction of Interstate 95 forced the removal of the transition portal on Water Street. The portal’s site—once the location of the Filbert Street Steps—was then covered by the freeway. Furthermore, the Frankford El’s overhead structure on Front Street was removed for over a mile north of Arch Street in the mid-1970s. (This stretch of Front had not seen the light of day in half a century.) The route of the Market–Frankford line was relocated to within the median of I-95 during the highway’s construction.

  PIER 3 NORTH AND PIER 5 NORTH (THE NEW GIRARD GROUP PIERS)

  The Department of Wharves, Docks and Ferries built Piers 3 and 5 North in 1922 and 1923 as the last element of a fifteen-year phase of improvements to the Port of Philadelphia. These warehouse piers were specifically designed to: 1) handle ships with much greater draw, 2) enable the loading and unloading of more than one ship simultaneously and 3) facilitate the rapid transfer of cargo to railroads, wagons and trucks. The city spent $4.5 million to construct these sister piers.

  Piers 3 and 5 were raised on the site of several obsolete wooden wharves that were put up in the late nineteenth century with money left to the city by Stephen Girard. These old piers were dubbed the “Girard Group” (or “Girard Piers”), so the replacement structures were officially called the New Girard Group Piers. Completed first, Pier 3 was officially dedicated by Mayor J. Hampton Moore on June 29, 1922.

  The Clyde Steamship Company, which provided passenger and freight service between New York and southern ports, operated both the old and the new piers. Philadelphia was a port of call for the Clyde Lines for years and years.

  The New Girard Piers were made of steel and concrete with brick and limestone facing and stand on timbers driven into the riverbed; some eight thousand poles support Pier 3 alone. Both structures extend about 550 feet into the Delaware River channel, which is as far as federal law allows to ensure safe navigation. (Being a navigable interstate river, the Delaware falls under federal jurisdiction.)

  This is how cargo was transferred between ships and docks in the old days. Philadelphia City Archives.

  Municipal Piers 3 and 5 came about right at the zenith of the central Delaware River corridor’s role in Philadelphia’s maritime activity, a period when the slogan “Ship Via Philadelphia” was a city mantra. The Great Depression diminished port operations considerably, although things picked up during World War II.
But that was the last hurrah for this portion of the Delaware as a shipping center.

  After decades of faithful service, Piers 3 and 5 North succumbed to more modern methods of port operations and cargo handling. They lingered on into the 1970s, after which they stood forsaken and neglected—and rat infested—squarely in the area that was then being transformed into Penn’s Landing.

  In a stroke of genius and a leap of faith, a group of developers began converting the two outmoded warehouse piers into residences beginning in 1985. While plans were drawn, the now old New Girard Group piers were added to the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of their early Art Deco architecture. A component of the adaptive reuse project was removing the roof of both buildings to create a tree-filled atrium in each complex. The ground floor of each structure, where rail cars used to enter, is now parking.

  A postcard of the Piers at Penn’s Landing. Author’s collection.

  Pier 3 was meant to be a condominium when the rehabilitation was planned, but the housing market collapsed and the building became an apartment house in 1986. Seven years later, a Miami developer bought the place from a foreclosing bank for $8 million. The 172 units at Pier 3 were turned into condos priced from $49,000 to $139,900. They sold out within three weeks in 1994. Meanwhile, after a similar story at Pier 5, 40 of 96 units ranging from $139,900 to $289,900 sold on a single weekend.

  The notion of living by the Delaware River in Philadelphia had evidently become appealing by the 1990s. Nowadays, the Piers at Penn’s Landing are successful condominium complexes. A few hardy souls even live year-round on boats at the marina between the two piers.

  10

  AT MARKET (HIGH) STREET

  BEN FRANKLIN, KING TAMANEND AND CHRIST CHURCH IN OLD CITY PHILADELPHIA

  Market Street is the east–west counterpart to Philadelphia’s north–south Broad Street. The one-hundred-foot-wide avenue was originally named High Street, a term derived from one or both of the following: 1) “High” was the familiar name of the main street in most English towns, a custom dating back to Roman times; and 2) the street began at the highest point of the bluff that ran alongside the Delaware River when Philadelphia was founded. Writer Joseph Jackson confirms this in Market Street, Philadelphia: The Most Historic Highway in America (1918).

  High/Market Street divided the Delaware waterfront into north and south. Piers and wharves were designated North and South depending on what side of the street they were on. Plus, for the longest time, the riverfront was characterized as being either the “North Wharves” or the “South Wharves.”

  THE LONDON COFFEE HOUSE

  Front and High was Philadelphia’s first town center. The legendary London Coffee House, built in 1702, used to be on the southwest corner. Its position on Front Street (the Kingshighway) made the tavern a convenient stop for stagecoaches arriving from points north and south. The same goes for its proximity to the Delaware River. The London Coffee House became the most popular place in the city for both local and visiting members of the business and maritime communities to conduct business and discuss politics.

  The London Coffee House at the southwest corner of Front and Market. Library of Congress.

  The “Widow Roberts” ran the tavern for years, serving coffee, alcoholic beverages and simple meals. When she retired in 1754, printer/publisher William Bradford took over and turned it into the first stock exchange in America.

  Over pots of piping hot coffee, owners of recently arrived schooners advertised their goods, investors bought and sold real estate, fishermen boasted about their latest catch, printers gathered the news, and public auctioneers sold a variety of merchandise—as well as slaves. Revolutionary War pamphleteer Thomas Paine, boarding next door, was offended by the view of slave auctions from his window.

  Philadelphia’s businessmen informally established the Philadelphia Stock Exchange at the London Coffee House in 1790—preceding the New York Stock Exchange by two years. Seeing the need for more substantial accommodations, they soon moved to City Tavern (aka Merchants’ Coffee House) a few blocks away.

  The London Coffee House became a general store in 1791 and then a tobacco shop and cigar manufactory. It gave way in 1883 to the five-story edifice that still stands at 100 Market Street. This building was later home to the Franklin Trust Company. As of 2011, it has been vacant for some thirty years, having last been a bar and grill, but it will soon open as a restaurant.

  THE HIGH STREET WHARF AND BEN FRANKLIN

  The High Street Wharf was a bustling place early in the eighteenth century. This was where boats from Burlington came to the city, offering eighteenth-century travelers from upper New Jersey and points north the last part of their journey to Philadelphia.

  One such traveler was Benjamin Franklin, who entered the city for the first time on October 6, 1723, as a dirty, tired and hungry runaway. He had come to Philadelphia, together with others, via a rowboat he helped paddle from Burlington. After leaving the wharf, he went straight to a bakery on High Street and purchased three cents’ worth of bread, which turned out to be three large loaves, as the story goes.

  THE HIGH STREET MARKET SHEDS

  The High Street Wharf was also the main landing for boats that delivered produce grown in New Jersey. This went on for some two hundred years.

  High Street began to be called Market Street about 1800 because this was where Philadelphia’s first food market was based. Covered stalls were situated in the middle of the road starting at Front Street and gradually extended westward beyond Eighth Street. A crowded fish market occupied the middle of the street from Front Street to the Delaware River for decades.

  The High Street Market Sheds came to rival the marketplaces of London and Paris. Farmers from the hinterlands of Philadelphia County would come into town on Wednesdays and Saturdays with their wagons of crops and meat. There, they joined farmers from the Garden State at what was sometimes called the “Jersey Market.” Monetary face-offs would occur at noon on market days when rivals tried to outbid one another during horse auctions.

  What is often left out of history books is that the sheds of High/Market Street served as hunting grounds for the city’s many prostitutes, who would prey on the naïve rural farmers who regularly came into Philadelphia to sell their harvests.

  Indeed, the busiest precinct for streetwalkers was the city’s waterfront in the eighteenth century and afterward. Dozens of ships docked at Philadelphia’s wharves every day, filled with seafarers who had not seen a woman in weeks. The ladies—often the wives or widows of sailors—took their johns back to rented rooms at sordid inns along the alleys or courtyards near the docks.

  Market Street’s name was made official by an ordinance of 1858—ironically, just a year before the archaic food stalls were ordered removed. All the market sheds were taken down about 1860. The bus shelter now at Front and Market was designed to look like a market stall.

  THE LENNI-LENAPE AND WILLIAM PENN (I OF II): CHIEF TAMANEND AND HIS STATUE

  Across from the bus shelter stands an arresting statue of Chief Tamanend (ca. 1628–ca. 1698), the principal Lenni-Lenape leader who welcomed William Penn upon his arrival to this region in 1682.

  Tamanend (“the Affable One”) partnered with Penn (“Mikwon”) to bring about the bold accord in which Quaker settlers and local Native Americans would live together in peace. The chief consequently became a folk hero identified throughout the colonies as the “patron saint of America.” Beginning in Philadelphia, his memory was observed with festivals, and social groups known as the Sons of Saint Tammany sprang up during the War for Independence in opposition to the British-oriented societies of Saints George, Andrew and David. Tamanend was even nicknamed “King Tammany” as an insult to King George.

  Crafted by artist Raymond Sandoval and dedicated in 1995, the Tamanend Statue was one of the first sculptures of a Native American in the United States. The chief stands on a turtle (representing Mother Earth) with an eagle (a messenger of the Great Spirit) on his
shoulder. The eagle is grasping a wampum belt symbolizing the world-renowned “Treaty of Amity and Friendship” (discussed in chapter thirteen) between William Penn and Tamanend and his Indian colleagues.

  The belt reads what Chief Tamanend reportedly announced during the 1683 treaty summit: that the Lenni-Lenape and the English colonists would “live in peace as long as the waters run in the rivers and creeks and as long as the stars and moon endure.”

  There’s talk of moving the statue to Penn Treaty Park, where the memorable convention took place. The park is covered in a later chapter.

  RIDGWAY HOUSE HOTEL AND OTHER DELAWARE AVENUE HOSTELRIES

  The Ridgway House Hotel was once located at 1 Market Street, on the street’s north side at Delaware Avenue. This lodge catered to visiting mariners, produce sellers and others who needed or wanted to be close to the commercial activity by the Delaware. The cheapest accommodations, for twenty-five cents a night, offered a common room with twelve beds.

  The six-story building opened in 1838, about the time that Delaware Avenue was first laid out along the river. The owner was Jacob Ridgway, who also owned the Arch Street House at the foot of Arch Street.

  An October 1897 newspaper article reported the suicide of a respected lawyer from West Chester, Pennsylvania, at the Ridgway House. R. Jones Monaghan was found in his room with the end of a rubber hose in his mouth and the room’s gas “flowing full head.” No other details were given other than that his “occasional attacks of insanity have of late years made him the object of much publicity.” The attorney’s eccentric behavior had been reported over the years as widely as in the New York Times.

  The Ridgway was demolished in the 1930s, soon after the discontinuation of most ferry service between Philadelphia and Camden. A highway now passes where Mr. Monaghan took his life. The true ignominy of this situation, though, is that Market Street—the “most historic highway in America”—no longer reaches Delaware Avenue or the Delaware River as it did for some 290 years.