Know Your Neighborhood: Old City Origins of  Penn & Villanova  


The University of Pennsylvania, one of the oldest & most prestigious schools in the nation, was
established in Old City. The university was founded at N. 4th and Arch Streets as the
Charity School in 1740.  In 1751, the school was reorganized as the Publik Academy of Philadelphia, which was based upon the ideals espoused in Benjamin Franklin's 1749 pamphlet entitled
"Proposals Related to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania." 

Not long afterward, in 1755, the school was again reorganized and renamed the College of Philadelphia. The College resided in Old City until 1802, when it moved to larger quarters at S. 9th and Chestnut Streets. 

Initially the school was housed in the unused house that had been built for U.S. Presidents when Philadelphia was the temporary capital.  This building was torn down in 1829 & replaced with twin buildings, College Hall and Medical Hall, which formed the core of the school at 9th and Chestnut Sts until the move to West Philadelphia.

                                   (stereoscopic photo of College Hall and Medical Hall)

In 1872, it relocated to its current site in West Philadelphia.


The University of Pennsylvania is not the only major university that traces its roots to Old
City. Founded in 1811, St. Augustine’s Academy, affiliated with St. Augustine's Church,
provided a parochial education (for men) in Old City. The building at 427 Vine Street still bears the
name of the academy above its door. 

Clergy affiliated with the Academy founded the Augustinian College of Villanova, now Villanova University, the oldest Catholic college in Pennsylvania, in 1842.  The man credited with purchasing the land which eventually became Villanova University was Father Thomas Kyle.   Kyle did so without any authorization or funds from the Augustinians.  He borrowed the down payment for the land from Mrs. Lennon, a parishioner of the Old St. Augustine's Church in Philadelphia (whom he never paid back).  The college closed from 1845 - 1846 after the burning of St Augustine's in the Nativist Riots of 1844.  It reopened & graduated it's first class in 1847.

1849 view

Know Your Neighborhood:  "Lagerhouse"  214 - 218 New St.

The building at 214 - 218 New St. is a condominium called Lagerhouse.  Many realtor websites claim it's the site of America's first lager brewery and is in the National Historic Register, which it's not.  The site may have housed George Manger Brewery, which was one of America's earliest lager breweries but appears to have only been in business for one year.

Though the Lagerhouse condo signage says 1849, the current building was built in 1885 in the Queen Anne style.  The earliest tenant was Energy Elevators which made dumbwaiters and freight elevators.  It was here from at least 1891 to 1920.  Technic Electrical Works also was located at this address, at least from 1900 - 1909.  They made switchboards and electrical switches.

1912 ad

Know Your Neighborhood: The Tilge Building, 306 New St.   

306 New St was built around 1875 for Henry Tilge & Co., a manufacturer and importer of hatter's goods. The company moved from smaller quarters at 127 N 3rd. St to this building, built in the Italianate style. Founder, Henry Tilge died in 1895. His company, Henry Tilge & Co. lasted until 1914, though the building remained in the family until 1945.

Other businesses that were housed in the building included T.H Hart Co, a cigar company from approx. 1900- 1920, Adolph Wimpfheimer & Co, a hat company, A. Dornbusch, an importer of port wine, and (presumably) numerous others.

The Tilge family sold 306 New St. in 1945 to a company called Pennsylvania Standard Sale Cementing Process Inc.

The building now houses apartments.

1960, (buildings next door are gone, now a parking lot)

Today

Know Your Neighborhood: Franklin Square (part 2: The rise & fall (& rise again))   

During the 1820s, William Rush and Thomas Birch redesigned the park to depict nature by designing the park to be symmetrical to walkway and plant locations.

In 1825 the name was changed to Franklin Square. The city government passed a resolution calling for a fountain of "grand dimensions" to be placed within it. It was to spray 40 jets of water into a marble basin, surrounded by an iron fence. The new park opened in 1837 and the fountain was installed the following year. It remains the centerpiece of Franklin Square and is one of the oldest surviving fountains in the country.

In the 19th century, Franklin Square became the center of a fashionable residential neighborhood. But in the early 20th century, Philadelphia's wealthy began moving westward, first toward Rittenhouse Square, and later to the Main Line.

As the upper class fled the neighborhood, they're place was taken by working class people, who took advantage of cheap rent, growing amusements and proximity to the city's factories and workshops.

The construction of the Ben Franklin Bridge, from 1922–26, leveled blocks of row homes, shops, and other structures; the Bridge begins at the Square's eastern boundary, 6th Street. The steady flow of cars over the bridge made Franklin Square's northern boundary, Vine Street, into one of the city's busiest thoroughfares, effectively cutting off pedestrian access on two of the Square's sides. Franklin Square declined significantly in pedestrian use.

With the depression, the neighborhood continued it's decline with many residents leaving the area.  In its place emerged Skid Row, a series of dingy rooming houses, cheap restaurants, missions and businesses that catered to poor city residents and the homeless.

On any given day, hundreds of homeless people congregated in Franklin Square, passing the time by watching the cars traverse the Ben Franklin bridge.

Note people on benches around the fountain

However, homelessness was different 100 years ago. You couldn't sleep in the park; doing so would result in arrest on vagrancy charges. Most homeless took advantage of rooming houses, which offered residents a small, dirty space for the night. Others took shelter in seedy hotels, which offered nightly rooms for as low as 40 cents, or in Christian mission houses that lined Vine Street.

Alcohol abuse ran rampant.  In Franklin Square, any man deemed too drunk to care for himself was taken to a tool yard surrounded by an eight-foot tall, chain link fence. When it reached capacity, park rangers would call police. Anyone who could climb over the fence was allowed to leave.

The Skid Row population soared in the 1930s, in part due to the Great Recession. Urban renewal projects that followed closed many of the businesses that catered to the people on Skid Row.

Traffic coming off bridge - Sunday Breakfast Mission on the left could provide beds for 800

The Skid Row population dropped to around 3000 in the early 1950s, and by 1975 it had dwindled to a mere 300 people.

By the millennium Franklin Square was a little-used, dangerous park isolated by heavy traffic, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and the Vine Street Expressway.

However, starting in 2003, Historic Philadelphia, Inc.— a non-profit company responsible for the Betsy Ross House and several other historical sites — refurbished the long neglected park & fountain. It was reopened and rededicated on July 31, 2006, in Franklin's tercentenary year. Today Franklin Square is one of Philadelphia's most visited sites.

A bit of trivia: The first introductions of free-living squirrels to urban centers in the U.S. took place in Philadelphia at Franklin Square in 1847. Three squirrels were released and provided with food and nesting materials. Additional squirrels were released in other city parks in the years that followed.