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.