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OUR PHILADELPHIA
[Illustration: LOOKING UP BROAD STREET FROM SPRUCE STREET]
OUR PHILADELPHIA
DESCRIBED BY ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL
ILLUSTRATED WITH ONE HUNDRED & FIVE
LITHOGRAPHS BY JOSEPH PENNELL
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
MCMXIV
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1914
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.
PREFACE
To-day, when it is the American born in the Ghetto, or Syria, or some
other remote part of the earth, whose recollections are prized, it may
seem as if the following pages called for an apology. I have none to
make. They were written simply for the pleasure of gathering together my
old memories of a town that, as my native place, is dear to me and my
new impressions of it after an absence of a quarter of a century. But
now I have finished I add to this pleasure in my book the pleasant
belief that it will have its value for others, if only for two reasons.
In the first place, J.'s drawings which illustrate it are his record of
the old Philadelphia that has passed and the new Philadelphia that is
passing--a record that in a few years it will be impossible for anybody
to make, so continually is Philadelphia changing. In the second, my
story of Philadelphia, perfect or imperfect, may in as short a time be
equally impossible for anybody to repeat, since I am one of those
old-fashioned Americans, American by birth with many generations of
American fore-fathers, who are rapidly becoming rare creatures among the
hordes of new-fashioned Americans who were anything and everything else
no longer than a year or a week or an hour ago.
ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL 3 ADELPHI TERRACE HOUSE, LONDON May, 1914
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AN EXPLANATION 1
II. A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 24
III. A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA (Continued) 48
IV. AT THE CONVENT 72
V. TRANSITIONAL 104
VI. THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 130
VII. THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE: THE ASSEMBLY 154
VIII. A QUESTION OF CREED 175
IX. THE FIRST AWAKENING 205
X. THE MIRACLE OF WORK 233
XI. THE ROMANCE OF WORK 268
XII. PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE 304
XIII. PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE (Continued) 332
XIV. PHILADELPHIA AND ART 368
XV. PHILADELPHIA AND ART (Continued) 390
XVI. PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE 413
XVII. PHILADELPHIA AT TABLE (Continued) 433
XVIII. PHILADELPHIA AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY 451
XIX. PHILADELPHIA AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY (Continued) 477
XX. PHILADELPHIA AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY (Continued) 509
INDEX 543
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
LOOKING UP BROAD STREET FROM SPRUCE STREET _Frontispiece_
DELANCEY PLACE 3
"PORTICO ROW," SPRUCE STREET 7
ARCH STREET MEETING HOUSE 13
THE SCHUYLKILL SOUTH FROM CALLOWHILL STREET 17
FRIENDS' GRAVEYARD, GERMANTOWN 21
IN RITTENHOUSE SQUARE 25
THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL FROM THE GROUNDS 29
"ELEVENTH AND SPRUCE" 33
DRAWING ROOM AT CLIVEDEN 37
BACK-YARDS, ST. PETER'S SPIRE IN THE DISTANCE 45
INDEPENDENCE SQUARE AND THE STATE HOUSE 51
CHRIST CHURCH INTERIOR 57
CLASSIC FAIRMOUNT 65
DOWN PINE STREET 69
LOUDOUN, MAIN STREET, GERMANTOWN 75
ENTRANCE TO FAIRMOUNT AND THE WASHINGTON STATUE 83
MAIN STREET, GERMANTOWN 89
ARCH STREET MEETING 95
THE TRAIN SHED, BROAD STREET STATION 99
ST. PETER'S, INTERIOR 105
THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL FROM PINE STREET 109
SECOND STREET MARKET 115
FOURTH AND ARCH STREETS MEETING HOUSE 121
JOHNSON HOUSE, GERMANTOWN 127
THE CUSTOMS HOUSE 131
UNDER BROAD STREET STATION AT FIFTEENTH STREET 135
THE PHILADELPHIA CLUB, THIRTEENTH AND WALNUT STREETS 141
THE NEW RITZ-CARLTON; THE FINISHING TOUCHES; THE WALNUT STREET
ADDITION HAS SINCE BEEN MADE 149
THE HALL, STENTON 155
"PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND INTO ALL THE INHABITANTS
THEREOF" 159
BED ROOM, STENTON, THE HOME OF JAMES LOGAN 163
THE TUNNEL IN THE PARK 167
THE BOAT HOUSES ON THE SCHUYLKILL 171
THE PULPIT, ST. PETER'S 179
THE CATHEDRAL, LOGAN SQUARE 185
CHRIST CHURCH, FROM SECOND STREET 189
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SEVENTH STREET AND WASHINGTON SQUARE 195
OLD SWEDES' CHURCH 201
INDEPENDENCE HALL: THE ORIGINAL DESK ON WHICH THE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE WAS SIGNED AND THE CHAIR USED BY THE PRESIDENT
OF CONGRESS, JOHN HANCOCK, IN 1776 207
PHILADELPHIA FROM BELMONT 211
THE DINING ROOM, STENTON 217
DOWN THE AISLE AT CHRIST CHURCH 223
THE BRIDGE ACROSS MARKET STREET FROM BROAD STREET STATION 229
STATE HOUSE YARD 235
THE PENITENTIARY 247
ON THE READING, AT SIXTEENTH STREET 251
LOCUST STREET EAST FROM BROAD STREET 255
BROAD STREET, LOOKING SOUTH FROM ABOVE ARCH STREET 261
CLINTON STREET, WITH THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL AT ITS END 265
THE CHERRY STREET STAIRS NEAR THE RIVER 269
THE MORRIS HOUSE ON EIGHTH STREET 273
THE OLD COACHING-INN YARD 279
FRANKLIN'S GRAVE 285
ARCH STREET MEETING 291
CLIVEDEN, THE CHEW HOUSE 295
BARTRAM'S 301
CARPENTER'S HALL, INTERIOR 305
MAIN STREET, GERMANTOWN 311
ARCH STREET MEETING--INTERIOR 317
FRONT AND CALLOWHILL 321
THE ELEVATED AT MARKET STREET WHARF 327
DR. FURNESS'S HOUSE, WEST WASHINGTON SQUARE, JUST BEFORE IT WAS
PULLED DOWN 333
THE GERMANTOWN ACADEMY 339
THE STATE HOUSE FROM INDEPENDENCE SQUARE 345
"THE LITTLE STREET OF CLUBS," CAMAC STREET ABOVE SPRUCE STREET 349
DOWN SANSOM STREET FROM EIGHTH STREET. THE LOW HOUSES AT
SEVENTH STREET HAVE SINCE BEEN TORN DOWN AND THE WESTERN
END OF THE CURTIS BUILDING NOW OCCUPIES THEIR PLACE 353
THE DOUBLE STAIRWAY IN THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL 359
CARPENTER'S HALL, BUILT 1771 365
INDEPENDENCE HALL--LENGTHWISE VIEW 369
GIRARD COLLEGE 377
UPSALA, GERMANTOWN 383
THE HALL AT CLIVEDEN, THE CHEW HOUSE 387
THE OLD WATER-WORKS, FAIRMOUNT PARK 391
THE STAIRWAY, STATE HOUSE 397
UPPER ROOM, STENTON 403
WYCK--THE DOORWAY FROM WITHIN 409
THE PHILADELPHIA DISPENSARY FROM INDEPENDENCE SQUARE 415
MORRIS HOUSE, GERMANTOWN 419
THE STATE HOUSE COLONNADE 425
THE SMITH MEMORIAL, WEST FAIRMOUNT PARK 431
THE BASIN, OLD WATER-WORKS 435
GIRARD STREET 441
THE UNION LEAGUE, FROM BROAD AND CHESTNUT STREETS 415
BROAD STREET STATION 453
WANAMAKER'S 457
ST. PETER'S CHURCHYARD 461
CITY HALL FROM THE SCHUYLKILL 465
CHESTNUT STREET BRIDGE 469
THE NARROW STREET 475
THE MARKET STREET ELEVATED AT THE DELAWARE END 479
THE RAILROAD BRIDGES AT FALLS OF SCHUYLKILL 483
THE PARKWAY PERGOLAS 487
MARKET STREET WEST OF THE SCHUYLKILL 491
MANHEIM CRICKET GROUND 497
DOCK STREET AND THE EXCHANGE 501
THE LOCOMOTIVE YARD, WEST PHILADELPHIA 507
THE GIRARD TRUST COMPANY 511
TWELFTH STREET MEETING HOUSE 515
WYCK 519
THE MASSED SKY-SCRAPERS ABOVE THE HOUSETOPS 523
SUNSET. PHILADELPHIA FROM ACROSS THE DELAWARE 527
THE UNION LEAGUE BETWEEN THE SKY-SCRAPERS 531
UP BROAD STREET FROM LEAGUE ISLAND 535
FROM GRAY'S FERRY 539
OUR PHILADELPHIA
CHAPTER I: AN EXPLANATION
I
I think I have a right to call myself a Philadelphian, though I am not
sure if Philadelphia is of the same opinion. I was born in Philadelphia,
as my Father was before me, but my ancestors, having had the sense to
emigrate to America in time to make me as American as an American can
be, were then so inconsiderate as to waste a couple of centuries in
Virginia and Maryland, and my Grandfather was the first of the family to
settle in a town where it is important, if you belong at all, to have
belonged from the beginning. However, J.'s ancestors, with greater
wisdom, became at the earliest available moment not only Philadelphians,
but Philadelphia Friends, and how very much more that means
Philadelphians know without my telling them. And so, as he does belong
from the beginning and as I would have belonged had I had my choice, for
I would rather be a Philadelphian than any other sort of American. I do
not see why I cannot call myself one despite the blunder of my
forefathers in so long calling themselves something else.
I might hope that my affection alone for Philadelphia would give me the
right, were I not Philadelphian enough to know that Philadelphia is, as
it always was and always will be, cheerfully indifferent to whatever
love its citizens may have to offer it. I can hardly suppose my claim
for gratitude greater than that of its Founder or the long succession of
Philadelphians between his time and mine who have loved it and been
snubbed or bullied in return. Indeed, in the face of this Philadelphia
indifference, my affection seems so superfluous that I often wonder why
it should be so strong. But wise or foolish, there it is, strengthening
with the years whether I will or no,--a deeper rooted sentiment than I
thought I was capable of for the town with which the happiest memories
of my childhood are associated, where the first irresponsible days of my
youth were spent, which never ceased to be home to me during the more
than a quarter of a century I lived away from it.
[Illustration: DELANCEY PLACE]
Besides, Philadelphia attracts me apart from what it may stand for in
memory or from the charm sentiment may lend to it. I love its
beauty--the beauty of tranquil streets, of red brick houses with white
marble steps, of pleasant green shade, of that peaceful look of the past
Philadelphians cross the ocean to rave over in the little old dead towns
of England and Holland--a beauty that is now fast disappearing. I love
its character--the calm, the dignity, the reticence with which it has
kept up through the centuries with the American pace, the airs of a
demure country village with which it has done the work and earned the
money of a big bustling town, the cloistered seclusion with which it
enjoys its luxury and hides its palaces behind its plain brick fronts--a
character that also is fast going. I love its history, though I am no
historian, for the little I know colours its beauty and accounts for its
character.
II
It is not for nothing that I begin with this flourish of my birth
certificate and public confession of love. I want to establish my right,
first, to call myself a Philadelphian, and then, to talk about
Philadelphia as freely as we only can talk about the places and the
people and the things we belong to and care for. I would not dare to
take such a liberty with Philadelphia if my references were not in
order, for, as a Philadelphian, I appreciate the risk. Not that I have
any idea of writing the history of Philadelphia. I hope I have the
horror, said to be peculiar to all generous minds, of what are commonly
called facts, and also the intelligence not to attempt what I know I
cannot do. Another good reason is that the history has already been
written more than once. Philadelphians, almost from their cave-dwelling
period, have seemed conscious of the eye of posterity upon them. They
had hardly landed on the banks of the Delaware before they began to
write alarmingly long letters which they preserved, and elaborate
diaries which they kept with equal care. And the letter-writing,
diary-keeping fever was so in the air that strangers in the town caught
it: from Richard Castleman to John Adams, from John Adams to Charles
Dickens, from Charles Dickens to Henry James, every visitor, with
writing for profession or amusement, has had more or less to say about
it--usually more. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has gathered
the old material together; our indispensable antiquary, John Watson, has
gleaned the odds and ends left by the way; and no end of modern writers
in Philadelphia have ransacked their stores of information: Dr. Weir
Mitchell making novels out of them, Mr. Sydney Fisher and Miss Agnes
Repplier, history; Mr. Hampton Carson using them as the basis of further
research; Miss Anne Hollingsworth Wharton resurrecting Colonial life and
society and fashions from them, Mr. Eberlein and Mr. Lippincott, the
genealogy of Colonial houses; other patriotic citizens helping
themselves in one way or another; until, among them all, they have
filled a large library and prepared a sufficiently formidable task for
the historian of Philadelphia in generations to come without my adding
to his burden.
III
It is an amusing library, as Philadelphians may believe now they are
getting over the bad habit into which they had fallen of belittling
their town, much in their town's fashion of belittling them. I am
afraid it was partly their fault if the rest of America fell into the
same habit. As I recall my old feelings and attitude, it seems to me
that in my day we must have been brought up to look down upon
Philadelphia. The town surely cut a poor figure in my school books, and
the purplest patches in Colonial history must have been there reserved
for New England or New York, Virginia or the Carolinas, for any and
every colony rather than the Province of Pennsylvania, or I would not
have left school better posted in the legends of Powhatan and Pocahontas
than in the life of William Penn, and more edified by the burning of
witches and the tracking of Indians than by the struggles of Friends to
give every man the liberty to go to Heaven his own way. The amiable
contempt in which Philadelphians held William Penn revealed itself in
their free-and-easy way of speaking of him, if they spoke of him at all,
as Billy Penn, though Penn would have been the last to invite the
familiarity. Probably few outside the Society of Friends could have said
just what he had done for their town, or just what they owed to him. If
I am not mistaken, the prevailing idea was that his chief greatness
consisted in the cleverness with which he fooled the land out of the
Indians for a handful of beads.
[Illustration: "PORTICO ROW" SPRUCE STREET]
The present generation could not be so ignorant if it wanted to. The
statue of Penn, in full-skirted coat and broad-brimmed hat, dominating
Philadelphia from the ugly tower of the Public Buildings, though it may
not be a thing of beauty, at least suggests to Philadelphians that it
would not have been put up there, the most conspicuous landmark from the
streets and the surrounding country, if Penn had not been somebody, or
done something, of some consequence. As for the rest of America, I doubt
if it often comes so near to Philadelphia that it can see the statue.
The last time I went to New York from London I met on the steamer a man
from Michigan who had obviously been but a short time before a man from
Cork, and who was so keen to stop in Philadelphia on his way West that I
might have been astonished had I not heard so much of the miraculously
rapid Americanization of the modern emigrant. Most people do not want to
stop in Philadelphia unless they have business there, and he had none,
and naturally I could not imagine any other motive except the desire to
see the town which is of the greatest historic importance in the United
States and which still possesses proofs of it. But the man from Michigan
gave me to understand, and pretty quick too, that he did not know
Philadelphia had a history and old buildings to prove it, and what was
more, he did not care if it had. He guessed history wasn't in his line.
What he wanted was to take the next train to Atlantic City; folks he
knew had been there and said it was great. And I rather think this is
the way most Americans, from America or from Cork, feel about
Philadelphia.
IV
It is not my affair to enlighten them or anybody else. I have a more
personal object in view. Philadelphia may mean to other people nothing
at all--that is their loss; I am concerned entirely with what it means
to me. In those wonderful Eighteen-Nineties, now written about with awe
by the younger generation as if no less prehistoric than the period of
the Renaissance, until it makes me feel a new Methusaleh to own that I
lived and worked through them, we were always being told that art should
be the artist's record of nature seen through a temperament, criticism
the critic's story of his adventures among the world's masterpieces, and
though I am neither artist nor critic, though I am not sure what a
temperament is, much less if I have one, still I fancy this expresses in
a way the end I have set myself in writing about Philadelphia. For I
should like, if I can, to record my personal impressions of the town I
love and to give my adventures among the beautiful things, the humorous
things, the tragic things it contains in more than ample measure. My
interest is in my personal experiences, but these have been coloured by
the history of Philadelphia since I have dabbled in it, and have become
richer and more amusing. I have learned, with age and reading and
travelling, that Philadelphia as it is cannot really be known without
some knowledge of Philadelphia as it was: also that Philadelphia, both
as it is and as it was, is worth knowing. Americans will wander to the
ends of the earth to study the psychology--as they call it of people
they never could understand however hard they tried; they will shut
themselves up in a remote town of Italy or Spain to master the secrets
of its prehistoric past; they will squander months in the Bibliotheque
Nationale or the British Museum to get at the true atmosphere of Paris
or London; when, had they only stopped their journey at Broad Street
Station in Philadelphia or, if they were Philadelphians, never taken the
train out of it, they could have had all the psychology and secrets and
atmosphere they could ask for, with much less trouble and expense.
I have never been to any town anywhere, and I have been to many in my
time, that has more decided character than Philadelphia, or to any where
this character is more difficult to understand if the clue is not got
from the past. For instance, people talk about Philadelphia as if its
one talent was for sleep, while the truth is, taking the sum of its
achievements, no other American town has done so much hard work, no
other has accomplished so much for the country. Impressed as we are by
the fact, it would be impossible to account for the reputation if it
were not known that the people who made Philadelphia presented the same
puzzling contradiction in their own lives--the only people who ever
understood how to be in the world and not of it.
[Illustration: ARCH STREET MEETING HOUSE]
The usual alternative to not being of the world is to be in a cloister
or to live like a hermit, to accept a role in common or to renounce
social intercourse. But the Friends did not have to shut themselves up
to conquer worldliness, they did not have to renounce the world's work
and its rewards. For "affluence of the world's goods," Isaac Norris,
writing from Philadelphia, could felicitate Jonathan Dickinson, "knowing
both thyself and dear wife have hearts and souls fit to use them." That
was better than shirking temptation in a monk's cell or a philosopher's
tub. If George Fox wore a leather suit, it was because he found it
convenient, but William Penn, for whom it would have been highly
inconvenient, had no scruple in dressing like other men of his position
and wearing the blue ribbon of office. Nor because religion was freed
from all unessential ornament, was the house stripped of comfort and
luxury. I write about Friends with hesitation. I have been married to
one now for many years and can realize the better therefore that none
save Friends can write of themselves with authority. But I hope I am
right in thinking, as I always have thought since I read Thomas Elwood's
_Memoirs_, that their attitude is excellently explained in his account
of his first visit to the Penningtons "after they were become Quakers"
when, though he was astonished at the new gravity of their look and
behaviour, he found Guli Springett amusing herself in the garden and the
dinner "handsome." For the world's goods never being the end they were
to the World's People, Friends were as undisturbed by their possession
as by their absence and, as a consequence, could meet and accept life,
whether its gifts were wealth and power or poverty and obscurity, with
the serenity few other men have found outside the cloister. Moreover,
they could speak the truth, calling a spade a spade, or their enemy the
scabbed sheep, or smooth silly man, or vile fellow, or inhuman monster,
or villain infecting the air with a hellish stench, he no doubt was, and
never for a moment lose their tempers. This serenity--this "still
strength"--is as the poles apart from the phlegmatic, constitutional
slowness of the Dutch in New York or, on the other hand, from the
tranquillity Henry James traces in progressive descent from taste,
tradition, and history, even from the philosopher's calm of achieved
indifference, and Friends, having carried it to perfection in their own
conduct, left it as a legacy to their town.
[Illustration: THE SCHUYLKILL SOUTH FROM CALLOWHILL STREET]
The usual American town, when it hustles, lets nobody overlook the fact
that it is hustling. But Philadelphia has done its work as calmly as the
Friends have done theirs, never boasting of its prosperity, never
shouting its success and riches from the house-top, and its dignified
serenity has been mistaken for sleep. Whistler used to say that if the
General does not tell the world he has won the battle, the world will
never hear of it. The trouble with Philadelphia is that it has kept its
triumph to itself. But we have got so far from the old Friends that no
harm can be done if Philadelphians begin to interpret their town's
serenity to a world capable of confusing it with drowsiness. If America
is ready to forget, if for long Philadelphians were as ready, it is high
time we should remember ourselves and remind America of the services
Philadelphia has rendered to the country, and its good taste in
rendering them with so little fuss that all the country has done in
return is to laugh at Philadelphia as a back number.
V
Philadelphians have grown accustomed to the laugh. We have heard it
since we were in our cradles. We are used to have other Americans come
to our town and,--in the face of our factory chimneys smoking along the
Schuylkill and our ship-building yards in full swing on the Delaware,
and our locomotives pouring out over the world by I do not know how many
thousands from the works in Broad Street, and our mills going at full
pressure in the "Little England" of Kensington, in Frankford and
Germantown,--in the face of our busy schools and hospitals and
academies,--in the face of our stores and banks and charities,--that is,
in the face of our industry, our learning, and our philanthropy that
have given tips to the whole country,--see only our sleep-laden eyes and
hear only our sluggish snores. We know the foolish stories they tell. We
have heard many more times than we can count of the Bostonian who
retires to Philadelphia for complete intellectual rest, and the New
Yorker who when he has a day off comes to spend a week in Philadelphia,
and the Philadelphian who goes to New York to eat the snails he cannot
catch in his own back-yard. We have heard until we have it by heart
that Philadelphia is a cemetery, and the road to it, the Road to
Yesterday. We are so familiar with the venerable _cliche_ that we can
but wonder at its gift of eternal youth. Never was there a jest that
wore so well with those who make it. The comic column is rarely complete
without it, and it is forever cropping up where least expected. In the
last American novel I opened Philadelphia was described as hanging on to
the last strap of the last car to the sound of Gabriel's horn on
Judgment Day; in the last American magazine story I read the
Philadelphia heroine by her Philadelphia calm conquered the cowboys of
the west, as Friends of old disarmed their judges in court. In the
general Americanization of London, even the London papers have seized
upon the slowness of Philadelphia as a joke for Londoners to roar at. Li
Hung Chang couldn't visit Philadelphia without dozing through the
ceremonies in his honour and noting the appropriateness of it in his
diary. And so it goes on, the witticism to-day apparently as fresh as it
was in the Stone Age from which it has come down to us.
[Illustration: FRIENDS' GRAVEYARD, GERMANTOWN]
If Philadelphians laugh, that is another matter--every man has the right
to laugh at himself. But we have outlived our old affectation of
indifference to our town, I am not sure that we are not pushing our
profession of pride in it too far to the other extreme. I remember the
last time I was home I went to a public meeting called to talk about the
world's waterways, and no Philadelphian present, from the Mayor down,
could talk of anything but Philadelphia and its greatness. But whatever
may be our pose now, or next year, or the year after, there is always
beneath it a substantial layer of affection, for we cannot help knowing,
if nobody else does, what Philadelphia is and what Philadelphia has
done. Certainly, it is because I know that I, for one, would so much
rather be the Philadelphian I am, and my ancestors were not, than any
other sort of American, that, as I have grown older, my love for my town
has surprised me by its depth, and makes my confession of it now seem
half pleasure, half duty.