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  | Transcriber's Notes:                                           |
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  | Words surrounded by _ are italicized.                          |
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  | A number of obvious errors have been corrected in this text.   |
  | For a complete list, please see the bottom of this document.   |
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OUR PHILADELPHIA




[Illustration: LOOKING UP BROAD STREET FROM SPRUCE STREET]




OUR PHILADELPHIA

DESCRIBED BY ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL
ILLUSTRATED WITH ONE HUNDRED & FIVE
LITHOGRAPHS BY JOSEPH PENNELL

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
MCMXIV

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1914

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.




PREFACE


To-day, when it is the American born in the Ghetto, or Syria, or some
other remote part of the earth, whose recollections are prized, it may
seem as if the following pages called for an apology. I have none to
make. They were written simply for the pleasure of gathering together my
old memories of a town that, as my native place, is dear to me and my
new impressions of it after an absence of a quarter of a century. But
now I have finished I add to this pleasure in my book the pleasant
belief that it will have its value for others, if only for two reasons.
In the first place, J.'s drawings which illustrate it are his record of
the old Philadelphia that has passed and the new Philadelphia that is
passing--a record that in a few years it will be impossible for anybody
to make, so continually is Philadelphia changing. In the second, my
story of Philadelphia, perfect or imperfect, may in as short a time be
equally impossible for anybody to repeat, since I am one of those
old-fashioned Americans, American by birth with many generations of
American fore-fathers, who are rapidly becoming rare creatures among the
hordes of new-fashioned Americans who were anything and everything else
no longer than a year or a week or an hour ago.

ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL 3 ADELPHI TERRACE HOUSE, LONDON May, 1914




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

     I. AN EXPLANATION                                               1

    II. A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA                                     24

   III. A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA (Continued)                         48

    IV. AT THE CONVENT                                              72

     V. TRANSITIONAL                                               104

    VI. THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE                                       130

   VII. THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY                         154

  VIII. A QUESTION OF CREED                                        175

    IX. THE FIRST AWAKENING                                        205

     X. THE MIRACLE OF WORK                                        233

    XI. THE ROMANCE OF WORK                                        268

   XII. PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE                                304

  XIII. PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE (Continued)                    332

   XIV. PHILADELPHIA AND ART                                       368

    XV. PHILADELPHIA AND ART (Continued)                           390

   XVI. PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE                                      413

  XVII. PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE (Continued)                          433

 XVIII. PHILADELPHIA AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY                  451

   XIX. PHILADELPHIA AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY (Continued)      477

    XX. PHILADELPHIA AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY (Continued)      509

        INDEX                                                      543




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                  PAGE

LOOKING UP BROAD STREET FROM SPRUCE STREET              _Frontispiece_

DELANCEY PLACE                                                       3

"PORTICO ROW," SPRUCE STREET                                         7

ARCH STREET MEETING HOUSE                                           13

THE SCHUYLKILL SOUTH FROM CALLOWHILL STREET                         17

FRIENDS' GRAVEYARD, GERMANTOWN                                      21

IN RITTENHOUSE SQUARE                                               25

THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL FROM THE GROUNDS                          29

"ELEVENTH AND SPRUCE"                                               33

DRAWING ROOM AT CLIVEDEN                                            37

BACK-YARDS, ST. PETER'S SPIRE IN THE DISTANCE                       45

INDEPENDENCE SQUARE AND THE STATE HOUSE                             51

CHRIST CHURCH INTERIOR                                              57

CLASSIC FAIRMOUNT                                                   65

DOWN PINE STREET                                                    69

LOUDOUN, MAIN STREET, GERMANTOWN                                    75

ENTRANCE TO FAIRMOUNT AND THE WASHINGTON STATUE                     83

MAIN STREET, GERMANTOWN                                             89

ARCH STREET MEETING                                                 95

THE TRAIN SHED, BROAD STREET STATION                                99

ST. PETER'S, INTERIOR                                              105

THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL FROM PINE STREET                         109

SECOND STREET MARKET                                               115

FOURTH AND ARCH STREETS MEETING HOUSE                              121

JOHNSON HOUSE, GERMANTOWN                                          127

THE CUSTOMS HOUSE                                                  131

UNDER BROAD STREET STATION AT FIFTEENTH STREET                     135

THE PHILADELPHIA CLUB, THIRTEENTH AND WALNUT STREETS               141

THE NEW RITZ-CARLTON; THE FINISHING TOUCHES; THE WALNUT STREET
  ADDITION HAS SINCE BEEN MADE                                     149

THE HALL, STENTON                                                  155

"PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND INTO ALL THE INHABITANTS
  THEREOF"                                                         159

BED ROOM, STENTON, THE HOME OF JAMES LOGAN                         163

THE TUNNEL IN THE PARK                                             167

THE BOAT HOUSES ON THE SCHUYLKILL                                  171

THE PULPIT, ST. PETER'S                                            179

THE CATHEDRAL, LOGAN SQUARE                                        185

CHRIST CHURCH, FROM SECOND STREET                                  189

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SEVENTH STREET AND WASHINGTON SQUARE    195

OLD SWEDES' CHURCH                                                 201

INDEPENDENCE HALL: THE ORIGINAL DESK ON WHICH THE DECLARATION
  OF INDEPENDENCE WAS SIGNED AND THE CHAIR USED BY THE PRESIDENT
  OF CONGRESS, JOHN HANCOCK, IN 1776                               207

PHILADELPHIA FROM BELMONT                                          211

THE DINING ROOM, STENTON                                           217

DOWN THE AISLE AT CHRIST CHURCH                                    223

THE BRIDGE ACROSS MARKET STREET FROM BROAD STREET STATION          229

STATE HOUSE YARD                                                   235

THE PENITENTIARY                                                   247

ON THE READING, AT SIXTEENTH STREET                                251

LOCUST STREET EAST FROM BROAD STREET                               255

BROAD STREET, LOOKING SOUTH FROM ABOVE ARCH STREET                 261

CLINTON STREET, WITH THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL AT ITS END          265

THE CHERRY STREET STAIRS NEAR THE RIVER                            269

THE MORRIS HOUSE ON EIGHTH STREET                                  273

THE OLD COACHING-INN YARD                                          279

FRANKLIN'S GRAVE                                                   285

ARCH STREET MEETING                                                291

CLIVEDEN, THE CHEW HOUSE                                           295

BARTRAM'S                                                          301

CARPENTER'S HALL, INTERIOR                                         305

MAIN STREET, GERMANTOWN                                            311

ARCH STREET MEETING--INTERIOR                                      317

FRONT AND CALLOWHILL                                               321

THE ELEVATED AT MARKET STREET WHARF                                327

DR. FURNESS'S HOUSE, WEST WASHINGTON SQUARE, JUST BEFORE IT WAS
  PULLED DOWN                                                      333

THE GERMANTOWN ACADEMY                                             339

THE STATE HOUSE FROM INDEPENDENCE SQUARE                           345

"THE LITTLE STREET OF CLUBS," CAMAC STREET ABOVE SPRUCE STREET     349

DOWN SANSOM STREET FROM EIGHTH STREET. THE LOW HOUSES AT
  SEVENTH STREET HAVE SINCE BEEN TORN DOWN AND THE WESTERN
  END OF THE CURTIS BUILDING NOW OCCUPIES THEIR PLACE              353

THE DOUBLE STAIRWAY IN THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL                   359

CARPENTER'S HALL, BUILT 1771                                       365

INDEPENDENCE HALL--LENGTHWISE VIEW                                 369

GIRARD COLLEGE                                                     377

UPSALA, GERMANTOWN                                                 383

THE HALL AT CLIVEDEN, THE CHEW HOUSE                               387

THE OLD WATER-WORKS, FAIRMOUNT PARK                                391

THE STAIRWAY, STATE HOUSE                                          397

UPPER ROOM, STENTON                                                403

WYCK--THE DOORWAY FROM WITHIN                                      409

THE PHILADELPHIA DISPENSARY FROM INDEPENDENCE SQUARE               415

MORRIS HOUSE, GERMANTOWN                                           419

THE STATE HOUSE COLONNADE                                          425

THE SMITH MEMORIAL, WEST FAIRMOUNT PARK                            431

THE BASIN, OLD WATER-WORKS                                         435

GIRARD STREET                                                      441

THE UNION LEAGUE, FROM BROAD AND CHESTNUT STREETS                  415

BROAD STREET STATION                                               453

WANAMAKER'S                                                        457

ST. PETER'S CHURCHYARD                                             461

CITY HALL FROM THE SCHUYLKILL                                      465

CHESTNUT STREET BRIDGE                                             469

THE NARROW STREET                                                  475

THE MARKET STREET ELEVATED AT THE DELAWARE END                     479

THE RAILROAD BRIDGES AT FALLS OF SCHUYLKILL                        483

THE PARKWAY PERGOLAS                                               487

MARKET STREET WEST OF THE SCHUYLKILL                               491

MANHEIM CRICKET GROUND                                             497

DOCK STREET AND THE EXCHANGE                                       501

THE LOCOMOTIVE YARD, WEST PHILADELPHIA                             507

THE GIRARD TRUST COMPANY                                           511

TWELFTH STREET MEETING HOUSE                                       515

WYCK                                                               519

THE MASSED SKY-SCRAPERS ABOVE THE HOUSETOPS                        523

SUNSET. PHILADELPHIA FROM ACROSS THE DELAWARE                      527

THE UNION LEAGUE BETWEEN THE SKY-SCRAPERS                          531

UP BROAD STREET FROM LEAGUE ISLAND                                 535

FROM GRAY'S FERRY                                                  539




OUR PHILADELPHIA




CHAPTER I: AN EXPLANATION


I

I think I have a right to call myself a Philadelphian, though I am not
sure if Philadelphia is of the same opinion. I was born in Philadelphia,
as my Father was before me, but my ancestors, having had the sense to
emigrate to America in time to make me as American as an American can
be, were then so inconsiderate as to waste a couple of centuries in
Virginia and Maryland, and my Grandfather was the first of the family to
settle in a town where it is important, if you belong at all, to have
belonged from the beginning. However, J.'s ancestors, with greater
wisdom, became at the earliest available moment not only Philadelphians,
but Philadelphia Friends, and how very much more that means
Philadelphians know without my telling them. And so, as he does belong
from the beginning and as I would have belonged had I had my choice, for
I would rather be a Philadelphian than any other sort of American. I do
not see why I cannot call myself one despite the blunder of my
forefathers in so long calling themselves something else.

I might hope that my affection alone for Philadelphia would give me the
right, were I not Philadelphian enough to know that Philadelphia is, as
it always was and always will be, cheerfully indifferent to whatever
love its citizens may have to offer it. I can hardly suppose my claim
for gratitude greater than that of its Founder or the long succession of
Philadelphians between his time and mine who have loved it and been
snubbed or bullied in return. Indeed, in the face of this Philadelphia
indifference, my affection seems so superfluous that I often wonder why
it should be so strong. But wise or foolish, there it is, strengthening
with the years whether I will or no,--a deeper rooted sentiment than I
thought I was capable of for the town with which the happiest memories
of my childhood are associated, where the first irresponsible days of my
youth were spent, which never ceased to be home to me during the more
than a quarter of a century I lived away from it.

[Illustration: DELANCEY PLACE]

Besides, Philadelphia attracts me apart from what it may stand for in
memory or from the charm sentiment may lend to it. I love its
beauty--the beauty of tranquil streets, of red brick houses with white
marble steps, of pleasant green shade, of that peaceful look of the past
Philadelphians cross the ocean to rave over in the little old dead towns
of England and Holland--a beauty that is now fast disappearing. I love
its character--the calm, the dignity, the reticence with which it has
kept up through the centuries with the American pace, the airs of a
demure country village with which it has done the work and earned the
money of a big bustling town, the cloistered seclusion with which it
enjoys its luxury and hides its palaces behind its plain brick fronts--a
character that also is fast going. I love its history, though I am no
historian, for the little I know colours its beauty and accounts for its
character.


II

It is not for nothing that I begin with this flourish of my birth
certificate and public confession of love. I want to establish my right,
first, to call myself a Philadelphian, and then, to talk about
Philadelphia as freely as we only can talk about the places and the
people and the things we belong to and care for. I would not dare to
take such a liberty with Philadelphia if my references were not in
order, for, as a Philadelphian, I appreciate the risk. Not that I have
any idea of writing the history of Philadelphia. I hope I have the
horror, said to be peculiar to all generous minds, of what are commonly
called facts, and also the intelligence not to attempt what I know I
cannot do. Another good reason is that the history has already been
written more than once. Philadelphians, almost from their cave-dwelling
period, have seemed conscious of the eye of posterity upon them. They
had hardly landed on the banks of the Delaware before they began to
write alarmingly long letters which they preserved, and elaborate
diaries which they kept with equal care. And the letter-writing,
diary-keeping fever was so in the air that strangers in the town caught
it: from Richard Castleman to John Adams, from John Adams to Charles
Dickens, from Charles Dickens to Henry James, every visitor, with
writing for profession or amusement, has had more or less to say about
it--usually more. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has gathered
the old material together; our indispensable antiquary, John Watson, has
gleaned the odds and ends left by the way; and no end of modern writers
in Philadelphia have ransacked their stores of information: Dr. Weir
Mitchell making novels out of them, Mr. Sydney Fisher and Miss Agnes
Repplier, history; Mr. Hampton Carson using them as the basis of further
research; Miss Anne Hollingsworth Wharton resurrecting Colonial life and
society and fashions from them, Mr. Eberlein and Mr. Lippincott, the
genealogy of Colonial houses; other patriotic citizens helping
themselves in one way or another; until, among them all, they have
filled a large library and prepared a sufficiently formidable task for
the historian of Philadelphia in generations to come without my adding
to his burden.


III

It is an amusing library, as Philadelphians may believe now they are
getting over the bad habit into which they had fallen of belittling
their town, much in their town's fashion of belittling them. I am
afraid it was partly their fault if the rest of America fell into the
same habit. As I recall my old feelings and attitude, it seems to me
that in my day we must have been brought up to look down upon
Philadelphia. The town surely cut a poor figure in my school books, and
the purplest patches in Colonial history must have been there reserved
for New England or New York, Virginia or the Carolinas, for any and
every colony rather than the Province of Pennsylvania, or I would not
have left school better posted in the legends of Powhatan and Pocahontas
than in the life of William Penn, and more edified by the burning of
witches and the tracking of Indians than by the struggles of Friends to
give every man the liberty to go to Heaven his own way. The amiable
contempt in which Philadelphians held William Penn revealed itself in
their free-and-easy way of speaking of him, if they spoke of him at all,
as Billy Penn, though Penn would have been the last to invite the
familiarity. Probably few outside the Society of Friends could have said
just what he had done for their town, or just what they owed to him. If
I am not mistaken, the prevailing idea was that his chief greatness
consisted in the cleverness with which he fooled the land out of the
Indians for a handful of beads.

[Illustration: "PORTICO ROW" SPRUCE STREET]

The present generation could not be so ignorant if it wanted to. The
statue of Penn, in full-skirted coat and broad-brimmed hat, dominating
Philadelphia from the ugly tower of the Public Buildings, though it may
not be a thing of beauty, at least suggests to Philadelphians that it
would not have been put up there, the most conspicuous landmark from the
streets and the surrounding country, if Penn had not been somebody, or
done something, of some consequence. As for the rest of America, I doubt
if it often comes so near to Philadelphia that it can see the statue.
The last time I went to New York from London I met on the steamer a man
from Michigan who had obviously been but a short time before a man from
Cork, and who was so keen to stop in Philadelphia on his way West that I
might have been astonished had I not heard so much of the miraculously
rapid Americanization of the modern emigrant. Most people do not want to
stop in Philadelphia unless they have business there, and he had none,
and naturally I could not imagine any other motive except the desire to
see the town which is of the greatest historic importance in the United
States and which still possesses proofs of it. But the man from Michigan
gave me to understand, and pretty quick too, that he did not know
Philadelphia had a history and old buildings to prove