Know your Neighborhood: St Charles Court, 60 - 66 N 3rd St.    

St. Charles Court Apartments, 60-66 North 3rd Street, was originally built as a hotel in 1851. The St. Charles was built by Charles Rubicam, using brick and cast-iron, a new construction material, which was painted to imitate brownstone. The design imitated Italian Renaissance palaces, with floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto a balcony that runs the length of the building.

Inside, the hotel featured eating and drinking saloons, a ladies’ parlor and 50 guest rooms.

The ground floor was altered to house stores in 1920; Second floor was rehabilitated as offices in 1975. The exterior was restored and the upper floors rehabilitated as apartments in 1980.

The building is very well preserved, from its stained glass windows on the first story, to the ornate lintels on the second level, to the beautifully restored faux stone façade.

60-66 N 3rd is currently connected with 403 Arch St as one building with apartments for rent and ground floor retail.

 

                                             1962

                                           1971

                                       Today

Know Your Neighborhood: Smythe Stores, 101 - 111 Arch St.

The Smythe Stores, 101 to 111 Arch Street, were built in 1857 for department store owner Samuel Smythe.

The Tiffany and Bottom Foundry in Trenton produced the cast-iron façade, which stretched across half the block. The design was inspired by Northern Italian Renaissance palaces, with pairs of arched windows divided by columns, and the five rows decreasing in height as they climb upward.

The original building was painted and sanded in imitation of stone. The design appeared in Samuel Sloan’s The Architectural Review and the American Builders’ Journal of March 1870, so he is assumed to be the building’s architect.

Tenants of the storefronts included the Aunt Sally Blended Tea Company, the Philadelphia Seed Company, and the Stratford Cigar Company.

In 1913, the central section of the building was demolished to allow the Arch Street trolley to loop around the building. The midsection was rebuilt by The Devoe Group using fiberglass and molds of the old section in 1984, when the Smythe Stores were converted into apartments.  Later converted to condos.

Philadelphia Register of Historic Places -- 8/5/1976

Know Your Neighborhood (& city): America's Oldest Thanksgiving Parade

Philadelphia's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States. The Gimbel's Brothers department store sponsored the first Thanksgiving Day parade held in 1920.

Ellis Gimbel, one of the founders of Gimbel's Department Stores, wanted to promote his toy land. He had 50 store employees dressed in costume and 15 automobiles, with Santa riding in the last car, in their first Thanksgiving Day parade. Over the years (esp. after rival Macy's began their parade in 1924), the parade expanded featuring floats, balloons and marchers parading down Market Street. The finale consisted of Santa Claus arriving at the eighth-floor toy department at Gimbels by climbing the ladder of a Philadelphia Fire Department truck (last 2 photos).

Gimbels sponsored the parade until 1986, when the company went out of business. The parade route changed at that time and now runs up the Parkway, ending at the Art Museum. Boscovs and 6ABC became sponsors until 2008, when Ikea took over sponsorship through 2010. Currently Dunkin Donuts and 6ABC are the parade sponsors.

Original Gimbel brothers store at 8th & Market

1925 ad

1930's

1961

1960's

1960's

1960's

1970's

1947

Know Your Neighborhood:  Shane's Candy, 110 Market St

Shane Confectionery is a candy shop and candy producer, located at 110 Market Street.  Currently owned by the Berley brothers, it is considered the longest-running confectionery business in the U.S.  
Since 1863, candy and candy-making materials have been made or sold on the premises at 110 Market Street (originally known as the High Street).  The location was part of an active candy-making industry that grew up around the sugar trade. In 1910, Philadelphia was home to as many as 1,200 confectioneries.

Samuel L. Herring opened a wholesale confectionery supply business at 112 Market in the 1850s, expanding to 110 Market Street in 1863.  After the Civil War, his son Benjamin took over the business. He eventually went into partnership with one of his father's employees, confectioner Daniel S. Dengler. The partners sold wholesale confectionery goods at 110 Market until Benjamin Herring died. Daniel S. Dengler and his son, Frank Dengler, continued to operate the business until 1899, when they sold the building to William T. Wescott.  In 1910, Wescott moved to New Jersey, selling the business to Edward R. Shane.  The Shane family operated the location as a retail business for the next 99 years.

In 2010, the business was bought by brothers Ryan and Eric Berley. They chose to retain the "Shane Confectionery" name. They have restored the building and its contents, and use restored original machinery and traditional recipes to make many of the sweets they sell.

110 Market, 1906

1915 ad

1972 view

2005

Today

Know Your Neighborhood: Callowhill St.   

Callowhill Street is named after Wm Penn’s 2nd wife, Hannah Callowhill. Laid down in 1690, it was originally called “New” St because it was the first E-W road north of Philadelphia proper. A market was originally in the middle from 4th - 7th, which accounts for it’s width.

By late 1800’s, Callowhill (the area from Callowhill St to Spring Garden St and from 2nd to 9th St) was a dense residential/industrial area with many working class residents. But, by the 1920’s it was the core of Phila’s skid row, with lots of cheap boardinghouses, rundown warehouses, seedy bars, etc.

Unemployment reached 33% in the area by 1940. Franklin Square, just to the south, had lots of people hanging around, looking for day work or often drunk.

By the 1950’s, city planners regarded the region from Vine to Spring garden & beyond, blighted and derilect.

Yet, unlike Society Hill, the shabby but still functioning neighborhood wasn’t considered for rehab. Both areas were in equally neglected condition.

With little protest, almost all the properties in the area were condemned as part of the Callowhill East Redevelopment Project. The areas between 2nd & 9th, from Callowhill to Spring Garden were largely leveled. Many historic buildings were destroyed as well as hundreds of modest 18th & 19th century houses & workshops. Residents were displaced as were many small businesses.

The projects goal was to create tracts of open land for use as an inner city industrial park with easy access to I 95 and Vine St. This plan failed as city’s de-industrialization was too far underway.

Concurrent construction of the Vine St expressway & I 95 made things even worse. The expressway obliterated every building between Vine & Callowhill for a full 6 blocks.

4th & Callowhill, 1900

Callowhill St, west of 2nd St, looking west, 1918

NE corner 5th & Callowhill, 1931

NW corner 5th & Callowhill, 1931

501 - 505 Callowhill, 1931

508 - 514 Callowhill, 1931

Demolition between Callowhill & Spring Garden Sts.

Know Your Neighborhood: Arch Street Friends Meeting House 

Upon entering the Arch Street Friends Meeting House for the first time, a visitor finds a room with no pulpit; no stained-glass windows; no religious symbols hanging from the walls; no shrines are to be found at all. Instead, one steps into a square room filled with rows of wooden pews, from all sides facing the center. A balcony spans three sides of the room.  Windows and shutters are plain; the floor is of unvarnished wood.

Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends, have no written creed or fixed tenets and no defined program of prayer.  Music and sermonizing are absent during Worship Meetings. There is no one a person in charge. Rather, Quakers believe that God resides in each individual. Congregants enter the Meeting Room and settle down in silent waiting.  Any Friend who feels the "light" may share a message or prayer with others. 

The property the Meeting House sits on was first used for burial purposes under a deed issued by William Penn in 1701.  Many victims of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 are buried here. Burials continued until 1803.

This is the oldest Friends Meeting House still in use in Philadelphia and the largest in the world.  The building has an entrance hall and three distinct sections. 

The east wing and center of the meetinghouse was built between 1803 and 1805 according to a design by the Quaker carpenter Owen Biddle, Jr.   The West Wing, added in 1811 to accommodate the women's Monthly Meeting, is today the room used for worship as described above. The interior of the east wing was renovated and a two-story addition behind the center building was completed in 1969.  The Meeting House's middle section serves as the site of Monthly Meetings and special events. In the East Wing of the building there are dioramas depicting the main events in the life of William Penn.

The meetinghouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2011.  The latter designation was as a consequence of the building being the only surviving documented work by Owen Biddle.

Late 1800's

                                                           1910 view & 2010

                                                                       1928

 1932

                                                                     Today

Know Your Neighborhood:  The Chatterbox & The Lite Bite 

North 3rd St. used to have two luncheonette style restaurants serving the people who worked in Old City, when almost no one actually lived in the neighborhood.

The Chatterbox, 234 N 3rd St was a one story box like building built in 1946 and added to in the rear in 1965.  It was torn down and the apartment (now condo) building 246 N 3rd St was built in the mid 1980's.  Nothing remains of the restaurant.

1972 view

                                                              234 N 3rd Today

The Lite Bite (263 N 3rd at Vine) closed in the 2008 after approx. 40 years serving breakfast & lunch to a changing neighborhood.  The one story building was torn down except for cast iron columns that matched those on the block and had been covered up by the wood exterior of the restaurant.  The original building was 4 stories high (matching the rest of the block) and was built around 1840.  At some point the top stories were removed and the exterior clad in wood and stucco.

1966

                                                                       2010

                                                                          2011

                                                                   2012

                                                                    Today

In 2013 a new, modern building was built, incorporating the original cast iron columns, though the builder ended the windows and doors short of the cast iron lintels, which would have made the 1840 element fit in much better with the modern building.

Know Your Neighborhood: Corn Exchange Building, 3rd & Arch Sts    

In 1870 the Union National Bank built a building on the northeast corner of Third and Arch Streets.  

The Union National Bank Building was demolished by the turn of the twentieth century.  A grander replacement was constructed in 1902. 

The neoclassical building went up as the Union Bank of Philadelphia and was designed by local architect John T. Brugger, who was well known at the time for designing bank buildings. 

In 1907, the Union Bank became Corn Exchange National Bank.  It lasted until 1970, and the facade still bears the name. Seven years later, the Philadelphia Historical Commission listed the building on the Register of Historic Places.

In 1974, the bank became the home for the Greater Philadelphia chapter of Seamen’s Church Institute, a non-profit agency dedicated to the faith and well-being of shipmen passing through the area.

Yaron Properties bought the building in 2003 for $2.2 million and transformed it into the setting for the 15th season of MTV's reality show, The Real World.  Filming only lasted from April through August 2004.

Interior in 2004

After that, the space was primarily used for weddings and other events under the name TRUST.  The building is now headquarters of Linode, which provides cloud hosting services to companies around the world.

Interior Today