CARPENTER’S STAIRS
William Penn conveyed a larger (204-foot-wide) bank lot to Carpenter on August 4, 1684, the day after issuing his decree that bankers could develop their riverbank property as long as they provided for public access to the Delaware River. This Carpenter plainly did. In an undated letter written that year, he informed Penn:
I am willing to make and maintain forever, 2 pair of stairs, viz., 1 pair from the water up to the wharf and the other from the wharf to the top of the bank, for the comodius passing and repassing of all persons to and from the water, free forever.
And so were built Carpenter’s Stairs, mentioned often in literature. The quote confirms that these steps began on the high river bluff and proceeded down past Carpenter’s Wharf and into the Delaware itself. Carpenter’s Stairs were on the line of Norris’ Alley, later Gothic Street, a modest lane that subsequently became part of Sansom Street.
Sailors, merchants, servants and even slaves climbed Carpenter’s Stairs for at least 125 years. Evidence suggests that they lasted until sometime between 1825 and 1847 and that the ground they occupied was incorporated into bordering property tracts. All of this ground is now covered by I-95.
MILITARY MATTERS (II OF V): TUN TAVERN AND THE U.S. MARINES
Samuel Carpenter and his brother, Joshua, opened the Tun Tavern brew house and inn at King (Water) Street and Tun Alley in 1685. (The old English word “tun” means a barrel or keg of beer.)
The first meetings of the St. John’s No. 1 Lodge of the Grand Lodge of the Masonic Temple were held there in 1732. Benjamin Franklin was its third grand master. The Masonic Temple of Philadelphia recognizes Tun Tavern as the birthplace of Masonic teachings in America. Plus, the St. Andrews Society, a charitable group devoted to assisting Scottish immigrants, was founded there fifteen years later.
Tun Tavern was also, according to tradition, where the United States Marine Corps held its first recruitment drive. On November 10, 1775, the First Continental Congress commissioned Samuel Nicholas, a Quaker innkeeper, to raise two battalions of marines in Philadelphia. The tavern’s manager, Robert Mullan, was the head recruiter. Prospective volunteers flocked to the place, enticed by cold beer and the opportunity to join the new corps. The first Continental U.S. Marine unit was composed of one hundred Rhode Islanders commanded by Captain Nicholas. Some three million U.S. Marines have been exposed to the significance of Tun Tavern. Each year on November 10, U.S. Marines worldwide toast the place.
The Tun Tavern, by Frank H. Taylor. This drawing dates from about 1922, almost 150 years after the place burned down. The Library Company of Philadelphia.
Fire destroyed the revered colonial inn in 1781. The Delaware Expressway covers the site nowadays.
CITY TAVERN
Tun Tavern may be gone, but a reasonable facsimile stands at Second and Walnut. This is the City Tavern, a reconstruction of Revolutionary America’s finest tavern.
The original City Tavern was put up in 1773 by a group of Philadelphia’s most financially and politically prominent individuals who felt that the city deserved an excellent tavern, coffee shop and inn that reflected its status as the most cosmopolitan city in British North America. Merchants’ Coffee House, as it was first called, was considered the best establishment of its kind in the colonies. Never one to over praise, John Adams called it “the most genteel” tavern in America.
City Tavern gained fame as the gathering place for members of the Continental Congresses and the Constitutional Convention and federal government officials from 1790 to 1800. The First Continental Congress initially gathered there before moving to Carpenters’ Hall. The inn became Philadelphia’s commercial center and stock exchange after the London Coffee House became too small and outdated for local businessmen.
Eclipsed as a center for business and politics, City Tavern was demolished in 1854 after a tragic fire involving a bridal party. The present structure is a faithful reconstruction by the National Park Service dating from 1975–76. It has since operated as an eighteenth-century-style tavern serving lunch and dinner daily.
WELCOME PARK AND THE SLATE ROOF HOUSE
Welcome Park is directly across Second Street from City Tavern. This urban courtyard presents a re-creation of Thomas Holme’s 1682 map of Philadelphia, with the city’s street grid laid in marble. A miniature version of the statue of William Penn that crowns Philadelphia City Hall stands on a pedestal in the center. Penn’s plans and promotions for Philadelphia are illustrated on a wall enclosing the square, as is a timeline of his life. The place was named after his ship, Welcome, which brought Penn and over one hundred passengers, mostly Quakers, to America in 1682.
Welcome Park was dedicated exactly three hundred years later on the site of the Slate Roof House, the famed mansion that Penn used as a city residence during his second visit to America (1699–1701). It was there that Penn wrote and issued his “Charter of Privileges.” This progressive framework for Pennsylvania’s government became the model for the United States Constitution and is still the basis of free governments all over the world.
James Logan, the secretary of the Proprietary, also lived in the Slate Roof House and administered the colony of Pennsylvania from there between 1701 and 1704. The mansion became a crumbling object of interest prior to being taken down in 1867.
The Slate Roof House, today the site of Welcome Park. Author’s collection.
It was Samuel Carpenter who built the Slate Roof House about 1687. He had acquired a large lot on the west side of Front Street all the way to Second Street. It was across from his original bank lot, where Carpenter later established Philadelphia’s first coffeehouse, Ye Coffee House. He also opened the Globe Inn on this dockside lot. The tavern and the coffeehouse were separated by his bank stairwell.
THE WHARVES OF ROBERT MORRIS AND THOMAS COPE
These were just a few of Carpenter’s many landholdings and business dealings in Philadelphia. He became the city’s most successful and richest businessman—the Stephen Girard of his generation—and later entered into Pennsylvania politics.
Yet he was the first of several Philadelphia merchants who prospered on the riverfront between Chestnut and Walnut. Robert Morris (1734–1806), in his era, came to own the India Wharf along this frontage. (Morris is often called the “Financier of the American Revolution” for his financial dealings in support of the young nation during the Revolutionary War.) His ships and those of other merchant-financiers routinely left there for India and China. Goods imported from those exotic places were stored and sold at Morris’s warehouse (called the Indian Stores) in front of the India Wharf.
Quaker merchant Thomas Pym Cope (1768–1854) moved his fledgling shipping business to the Walnut Street Wharf (also called Cope’s Wharf) in 1810 and established a successful trade line between Philadelphia and Liverpool by 1822. Another early millionaire and philanthropist by the Delaware, Thomas Cope was both a tough rival and a trusted friend of Stephen Girard.
OLD ORIGINAL BOOKBINDER’S
Another Samuel (besides Carpenter) made his mark on this block. Dutch immigrant Samuel Bookbinder had opened an oyster saloon at Fifth and South Streets in 1893 and five years later moved his popular eatery to 125 Walnut Street. There, he dished up all manner of seafood, getting his menu fresh off ships docked at the Delaware River. Shad, terrapin and oysters were favorite meals, and portions were generous to satisfy a very masculine crowd ranging from storekeepers and stockbrokers to sailors, sea captains and stevedores.
John Taxin bought the place in 1945 and renamed it Old Original Bookbinder’s. During its zenith in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, waiters scurried through paneled rooms adorned with ship models, stuffed game fish and VIP photos. “Bookie’s” became a mecca for celebrities, tourists and a regular crowd of Philadelphians. Personalities as diverse as the following always visited whenever they were in town: Howard Cosell, Muhammad Ali, Elizabeth Taylor, David Bowie, Gregory Peck, Julius Erving, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra. Even Madonna dined at Bookie’s.
Anyone who was anyone came to Bookbinder’s, including presidents of the United States. One day in 1972, the presidential helicopter landed in a parking lot across Walnut Street. (The food warehouses that had been there for ages had just been brought down, and the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel was not yet built.) To the astonishment of regular patrons, President Richard Nixon and Mayor Frank Rizzo had lunch at Bookie’s that day.
The cover of a booklet issued about 1960 to promote Bookbinder’s Restaurant. Author’s collection.
The venerable Philadelphia institution closed in 2001 due to financial difficulties and a series of fires. Bookie’s reopened four years later after renovations and a new condominium complex attached in the rear, but the restaurant went bankrupt and closed for good in 2009. The set of buildings at 121–135 Walnut Street are now vacant.
13
WALNUT TO DOCK
PIRATE TREASURE, A TIMELESS TREATY, TROUBLED TAVERNS AND A FLOATING CHURCH
Walnut Street was first referred to as Pool Street since it crossed a pool on a branch of Dock Creek close to Third Street. Walnut was cut off from Delaware Avenue when Highway 95 was built—a most unseemly consequence of the modern artery. However, a soaring bridge does carry pedestrians over both roadways to Penn’s Landing.
MILITARY MATTERS (III OF V): THE U.S. NAVY AND THE ALFRED
If the United States Marine Corps can say it got its start at Tun Tavern, then the United States Navy can legitimately say it began a stone’s throw away, at the foot of Walnut Street.
In November 1775, the Continental Congress purchased a four-hundred-ton vessel called Black Prince from Philadelphia’s top merchant shipping firm, Willing, Morris and Cadwalader. (The “Morris” was Robert Morris.) This state-of-the-art ship had been launched the year before in Philadelphia. Congress chose Captain (later Commodore) John Barry to helm the vessel, which became the first flagship of the new Continental navy.
Barry re-rigged the ship as a twenty-gun light frigate renamed Alfred. This was the first warship on which a United States flag was hung. The mementous event occurred in December 1775 while the vessel lay in the Delaware off the Walnut Street Wharf awaiting orders to sail. The flag was the “Grand Union flag,” precursor to the Stars and Strips and considered the nation’s first national flag. The Alfred had a brief but exciting career before it was captured by the British near Barbados in 1778.
Chapter sixteen will highlight the nation’s first naval shipyard, established on Philadelphia’s waterfront at the turn of the nineteenth century.
DOING BUSINESS ON THE CENTRAL WATERFRONT
Most business in Philadelphia was transacted all along Water and Front Streets on either side of High Street, but mostly on the south.
Robert Morris and other moneyed Philadelphians organized the Bank of Pennsylvania at City Tavern on June 17, 1780. This, the first public bank in the United States, was established on Front Street north of Walnut that July. Its purpose was to borrow money to purchase provisions for the Continental army. The Pennsylvania Bank was never a bank of general deposit, nor was it meant to be permanent. The Continental Congress reconstituted it in 1781 as the Bank of North America, the first corporate banking institution in the United States.
Customhouses, once the main generators of revenue for the United States, were located in all major seaport and river cities. Philadelphia’s first U.S. Custom House was at Second and Walnut Streets in the early 1790s. It moved to Front and Walnut in 1795. From 1845 to 1935, the former Second Bank of the United States served as the Philadelphia Custom House. The federal government collected over half a billion dollars in customs revenue through the Port of Philadelphia in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The city’s current federal customhouse is a striking edifice at Second and Chestnut constructed in the 1930s.
The American insurance industry began in this area as a consequence of all the foreign shipping and inland commerce conducted in Penn’s City. On May 25, 1721, a printer named John Copson opened America’s first marine and fire insurance company at his home on High Street near the docks. Until then, all underwriting for risks at sea and other maritime hazards originated in London. Copson was therefore the first insurance agent in America.
Furthermore, the first home of the Insurance Company of North America, now known as CIGNA and still based in Philadelphia, was at the southeast corner of Front and Walnut Streets beginning in 1795.
THE MERCHANTS’ EXCHANGE
Many marine insurance companies had offices in the Merchants’ Exchange, a neoclassic structure still standing at Third and Walnut. It opened in 1834 after a group of Philadelphia businessmen—including Stephen Girard just before he died—organized to build a proper merchants’ exchange for the city. Designed by Philadelphia architect William Strickland, this was the first real trading edifice in the United States.
Real estate and mercantile transactions of all kinds transpired in the central Exchange Room as they preciously had at the London Coffee House and the City Tavern. Not surprisingly, some space was set aside for a coffee shop.
The Exchange Building’s semicircular portico was an ingenious adaptation for the odd-shaped lot created by Dock Street. Strickland based its tower on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. It’s said that this was because a local newspaper asserted in 1831 that “Philadelphia is truly the Athens of America.” The tower allowed watchmen to scan the Delaware and notify merchants of ships approaching the city, much as Stephen Girard’s servants had done from his mansion’s high windows and roof. The tower on the Exchange Building today is a replica.
This 1830s print of The Merchants’ Exchange also shows Dock Street on the right and Stephen Girard’s Bank in the background. That building, formerly the First Bank of the United States, also still stands. Library of Congress.
Originally known as the Philadelphia Exchange, this place was the country’s financial center up until and during the Civil War. (The entire Northern war effort was essentially financed at this building.) Business activity about that time began moving west to the Broad Street corridor, so the Merchants’ Exchange was refashioned as the Corn Exchange. Then, in 1875, it became home to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. The stately building devolved into a food market surrounded by rickety sheds and produce trucks by 1922. Vendors hawked vegetables from pushcarts, and a gas station was built on the Dock Street side.
The National Park Service acquired the structure in 1952 and maintains offices there. A National Historic Landmark, the Merchants’ Exchange is the oldest stock exchange building in America.
WORKING ON THE CENTRAL WATERFRONT
At least two sets of riverbank steps were south of Walnut Street. These were probably removed in the late 1800s to allow for the construction of commercial structures between Front and Water Streets. At the same time, long, wide freight depots and tall warehouses were erected—primarily by the Pennsylvania Railroad—in that zone east of Front Street.
These buildings serviced a grouping of finger piers and ferry landings owned by the railroad. Piers 10, 11 and 14 South were freight stations that handled coal, lumber and general merchandise carried across the channel to Camden in railroad cars on car floats. Over one hundred men worked at these wharves.
Between Chestnut and Walnut Streets, opposite Ton (Tun) Alley, was Pier 8 South, a covered timber structure owned by the Reading Railroad and used as a freight station for lumber, coal and general goods. Pier 8 was also the principal Philadelphia station of the Reading’s Atlantic City division. This was where ferryboats connected with eastbound trains at Kaighn’s Point in New Jersey. Next door was Pier 9 South, used by a river-transportation firm that employed barges to move gravel, lumber and general cargo.
The Merchants and Miners Transportation Company used Piers 16, 18, 20, 22 and 24 between Spruce and South Streets as private terminals in connection with passenger and freight service to ports in several states. When the Baltimore-based carrier was liquidated in 1952, roughly one hundred Philadelphia dockworke
rs lost their jobs.
DOCK CREEK—DOCK STREET
Dock Creek was a Delaware River tributary that provided a natural cove or tidal basin to early colonists. Hence its earliest name: the Dock. Called the “Coocanocon” by local Native Americans, it had three branches. The main one flowed northwestward to almost Sixth and Market. The second one went to Washington Square. The third, Little Dock, headed south to where Head House Square is today.
The creek was anticipated to have been a convenience to inland inhabitants of Philadelphia by affording easy transportation of food and goods into the interior of Penn’s City of Brotherly Love. The tides regularly flowed inward as far as Chestnut Street, and the Coocanocon was navigable for sloops and schooners as far west as Third Street.
The mouth of Dock Creek was a swampy salt marsh skirted by a low sandy beach. A drawbridge was built to connect the north and south portions of Front Street over the inlet. Wooden bridges—later replaced with stone arches—were placed at Second, Third, Chestnut and Market Streets. Small ships with masts could pass under these spans at low tide.
Some pioneers lived in dugouts along the Coocanocon. The water was clean, the soil was grassy and the view of the Delaware was pleasant. Deer roamed nearby. As merchants flourished in Philadelphia, it became fashionable for them to build mansions on either side of Dock Creek, with lawns and gardens descending toward the banks. The Slate Roof House was one of these. When William Penn came down the Delaware from Pennsbury Manor in Bucks County to stay at the mansion, his boat would be rowed up the creek.
Breweries, lumberyards, slaughterhouses and tanneries were also built along Dock Creek. These industries discharged their putrid refuse into the stream, while the general public used it as a waste receptacle for chamber pots and the like. Like Pegg’s Run, the tidal watercourse became polluted and sluggish.
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