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

Know Your Neighborhood:  The Schmidt Building, 315 Arch St 

The historical records for the city of Philadelphia suggest there was always some sort of lodging at 315 Arch Street, beginning with the St Elmo Hotel in the 19th century.  In 1915, Charles E .Schmidt commissioned architects Sauer & Hahn to build a new building on the site. Mr. Schmidt wanted an apartment building with commercial space at the street level.  Schmidt was the owner of a leather business which had been founded by his father in 1856.  Sauer & Hahn, in business from 1902 to 1915, received numerous commissions in Old City and throughout Philadelphia. 

Noted for its “imposing exterior” in a 1916 promotional brochure, the Schmidt Building was planned as a fitting neighbor to the Friends Meeting House, which sits directly across the street. The entire storefront is clad with terra cotta and ornamented with bracketed door surrounds and other details.  The 7-story Georgian Revival structure was built to house Schmidt's wholesale & manufacturing enterprises as well as living space.  Numerous other businesses were located at 315 Arch over the years including Lippincott Shoe Supply, Beaumont Manufacturing Company, Gitlin-Trichon Co. & many others.

That building is what we see today at 315 Arch Street. Rehabbed in the mid 2000s, this building went condo in 2006.  There's still commercial space at street level.

315 Arch was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places in December, 1978.

                                                 From 1915 publication, "Shoe & Leather Facts"

1977

2000

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Know Your Neighborhood: Fringe Arts Building 

The Fringe Arts Building at Delaware Ave & Race St was built as the High Pressure Fire Service (HPFS) building in 1903.  This Victorian building served the city for about 100 years, providing high-pressure water for  fighting fires.   Along with the high-pressure pipeline system that distributed the water, this is a major reason why Center City Philadelphia never suffered a catastrophic fire during the 20th Century.

The site previously held a salt house; a place to store and sell salt and salt fish.  Built in 1705 with bricks and timbers imported from England, it was one of the first structures erected on this stretch of the Delaware. 

By the end of the 1800s, Philadelphia’s regular-pressure water had become ineffective in fighting fires in increasingly larger and taller buildings in the central business district. Years of prodding by insurance companies and the Philadelphia Fire Department spurred the city to install the world’s first high-pressure water service in a major city. The system delivered water via independent pipes and red fire hydrants located on every block between the Delaware River and Broad Street, from Race to Walnut, and beyond.

The HPFS building drew water right from the river via a twenty-inch main and supplied a network of twelve and sixteen-inch mains. Seven 280-horsepower pumps were powered by engines operating on city gas—an early use of internal combustion engines for such work. Full pressure was available within two minutes from the time a fire alarm was sounded.

The system had the capacity of pushing ten thousand gallons of water a minute at up to three hundred pounds of pressure, with power to throw a two-inch stream 230 feet vertically. Fireboats on the Delaware were also used for backup. They connected to the system via a manifold that still protrudes from the sidewalk in front of Race Street Pier.

Fire losses immediately dropped after the HPFS system was operational, prompting the removal of extra insurance charges imposed on structures within the congested downtown. Other pumping stations followed around the city when the system was expanded into surrounding neighborhoods. The system’s success brought about similar high-pressure water systems in other American cities. Philadelphia’s was acknowledged as the best in the world for many years.

The fifty-six-mile system lasted until about 2005, when it was decommissioned after falling into disrepair. High-pressure water service had become unnecessary anyway due to better firefighting equipment, high-rise sprinklers and fire-resistant construction materials.

Site before HPFS

Today

Know Your Neighborhood:  The Bourse   

The Philadelphia Bourse, founded in 1891 by George E. Bartol, was the first commodities exchange in the United States. The Philadelphia Bourse was unlike other exchanges in existence at the time because it served as a stock exchange, a maritime exchange (for contracting for the shipment of goods to and from overseas), and a commodities exchange all in one. Bartol was a grain and commodities exporter, who modeled the building after the Bourse in Hamburg, Germany (1st photo).

The Philadelphia Bourse Building was built from 1893 - 1895 and was one of the first steel-framed buildings in the world (2nd). The red stone facade was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by G.W. & W.D. Hewitt, who would go on to design the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel at Broad & Walnut Streets.

It featured a three-story atrium above the main trading floor plus six more floors of offices above the atrium. In addition to the trading floor and maritime exchange, the building originally contained dining rooms, a music room, a commercial library and meeting rooms.

Trading at the Bourse continued until sometime in the 1960s. After that, it remained an office building until its sale in 1979. The Kaiserman Company acquired the building and converted its basement and lower three floors into a high end shopping mall with a food court on the top floor. Kaiserman also removed "Philadelphia" from the buildings name, rechristening it as "The Bourse", though it still says "Philadelphia Bourse" on the building (last photo).

The high end mall proved to be a failure, so the 2nd and 3rd floors were converted to additional office space and the ground floor reconfigured for a more pedestrian food court and souvenir stands.

The building was sold to MRP and the first floor reopened in 2018 with a more upscale food court. Only time will tell how that fares.

Hamburg Bourse

Under construction

1896

1900's ad

1901

1904

Today

Know Your Neighborhood: Christ Church Burial Grounds & Ben Franklin's Grave   

In 1719 the burial ground next to Christ Church was becoming full, and the neighboring lands were too marshy to be useful for burials.  So land was purchased along Fifth Street "in the suburbs" from a Mr. James Steel.  In 1719, the city of Philadelphia was only 37 years old and Fifth Street, only about three blocks from Christ Church, was considered the "suburbs" or outskirts of the city at the time.

The site had been open to the street until about 1740, when a wooden fence was added to contain grazing animals used to control overgrowth. That fence was replaced with a seven-foot brick wall in 1772.

The burial ground was a church amenity, but probably not a pleasant one.  Americans in the 18th century were widely indifferent to burial places.  “In Philadelphia until the 1820s,” wrote historian David E. Stannard in his book, Death in America, “sites for graveyards were simply temporarily vacant lots to serve the needs of the day which were soon obliterated by the expanding city as if they had never existed.”

Interred at Christ Church Burial Ground are hundreds of Colonial, Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary notables. The most famous of whom is Benjamin Franklin.   Four other signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried here, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, Joseph Hewes and George Ross. Two more signers (James Wilson and Robert Morris) are buried at Christ Church just a few blocks away.

Other notables include John Dunlap (1742-1812), printer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution., Major William Jackson (1759-1828), who served as Secretary to the Constitutional Convention, Philip Syng (1703-1789), maker of the ink stand used for the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Thomas Willing (1731-1821), Mayor of Philadelphia, delegate to the Continental Congress and President of the First Bank of the United States, Dr. William Camac: Prominent Philadelphia Physician who founded the Philadelphia Zoo, America's first Zoo, 

Dr. Philip Syng Physick: Known as the Father of Modern Surgery, Dr. Thomas Bond: Physician, founded the first hospital, Pennsylvania Hospital, and many others.

When Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, he was buried along with his wife Deborah and their two children, Francis and Sarah, in a family plot in the northwest corner of the grounds. For years, popular belief held that in 1858, Franklin’s descendants requested that an opening be placed in the brick wall surrounding the cemetery so the public could see Franklin’s grave day or night. The installation of a metal fence made it much easier for Franklin’s many admirers to toss a penny onto his family plot in honor of his famous words, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

In a 2017 article, Mark E. Dixon attributes the metal fence to Philadelphia’s leaders, not the Franklin family. Dixon’s narrative traces the project, “a 19th century public relations campaign” to the publishing community and preservationists who, among others, sought to ground Franklin’s legacy in Philadelphia. 

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• The earliest tombstone dates from 1720, the burial ground has 1,400 markers, 4000 graves on it's two acres
• Reopened to the public on April 26, 2003, after being closed for 25 years.

1859

Franklin's Grave 1876

1898

Franklin's Grave 1890

                                                                      1900

Postcard from early 1900's

                                        1968

                                                                 Today