North Broad a street of dreams during short-lived golden age
November 20, 2012By Shai Ben-Yaacov "I'm told this street is
respectable," says one character in Edith Wharton's novel The
Age of Innocence. "It's not fashionable," comes the reply.
That's pretty much how it was on North Broad Street in the late
19th century. The industrial revolution had begun, and
Philadelphia was known as the "Workshop of the World," making
textiles, locomotives and beer. On WHYY-FM, NewsWorks Tonight's
Nov. 20 show is devoted to North Broad Street "After the Civil
War, Philadelphia was really going full blast," said Robert
Morris Skaler, forensic architect and author of Philadelphia's
Broad Street South and North. "They were making all kinds of
things. North Broad Street was a great place for people to live,
because it hadn't been developed yet." Skaler's book is filled
with images from this golden age of North Broad, an age capped
by the construction of the grand Lorraine Apartments, which are
now the abandoned Divine Lorraine