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.