The great city thus founded by William Penn is built chiefly upon a
broad plain between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, about one
hundred miles from the sea, and upon the undulating surface to the
north and west. The shape of the city is much like an hour-glass,
between the rivers, although it spreads far west of the Schuylkill.
The Delaware River, in front of the built-up portion, sweeps around a
grand curve from northeast to south, and then, reversing the movement,
flows around the Horseshoe Bend below the city, from south to west, to
meet the Schuylkill. The railway and commercial facilities, the
proximity to the coal-fields, and the ample room to spread in all
directions, added to the cheapness of living, have made Philadelphia
the greatest manufacturing city in the world, and attracted to it
1,300,000 inhabitants. The alluvial character of the shores of the
two rivers surrounds the city with a region of the richest market
gardens, and the adjoining counties are a wealthy agricultural and
dairy section. Clay, underlying a large part of the surface, has
furnished the bricks to build much of the town. Most of the people own
their homes; there are over two hundred and fifty thousand dwellings
and a thousand miles of paved streets, and new houses are put up by
the thousands every year as additional territory is absorbed. When
Penn laid out his town-plan, he made two broad highways pointing
towards the cardinal points of the compass and crossing at right
angles in the centre, where he located a public square of ten acres.
The east and west street, one hundred feet wide, he placed at the
narrowest part of the hour-glass, where the rivers approached within
two miles of each other. This he called the High Street, but the
public persisted in calling it Market Street. The north and south
street, laid out in the centre of the plat, at its southern end
reached the Delaware near the confluence with the Schuylkill. This
street is one hundred and thirteen feet wide, Broad Street, a
magnificent thoroughfare stretching for miles and bordered with
handsome buildings. Upon the Centre Square was built a Quaker
meeting-house, the Friends, while yet occupying the caves on the bluff
banks of the Delaware that were their earliest dwellings, showing
anxiety to maintain their forms of religious worship. This
meeting-house has since multiplied into scores in the city and
adjacent districts; for the sect, while not increasing in numbers,
holds its own in wealth and importance, and has great influence in
modern Philadelphia. Afterwards the Centre Square was used for the
city water-works, and finally it was made the site of the City Hall.
The bronze statue of the founder, surmounting the City Hall tower at
five hundred and fifty feet elevation, clad in broad-brimmed hat and
Quaker garb, carrying the city charter, and gazing intently
northeastward towards the "neutral land of Shackamaxon," is the
prominent landmark for many miles around Philadelphia. A blaze of
electric light illuminates it at night. This City Hall, the largest
edifice in America, and almost as large as St. Peter's Church in Rome,
has fourteen acres of floor space and seven hundred and fifty rooms,
and cost $27,000,000. It is a quadrangle, built around a central court
about two hundred feet square, and measures four hundred and
eighty-six by four hundred and seventy feet. The lower portion is of
granite, and the upper white marble surmounted by Louvre domes and
Mansard roofs. This great building is the official centre of
Philadelphia, but the centre of population is now far to the
northwest, the city having spread in that direction. The City Hall,
excepting its tower, is also being dwarfed by the many enormous and
tall store and office buildings which have recently been constructed
on Broad and other streets near it. Closely adjacent are the two vast
stations of the railways leading into Philadelphia, the Broad Street
Station of the Pennsylvania system, and the Reading Terminal Station,
which serves the Reading, Baltimore and Ohio and Lehigh Valley
systems. Also adjoining, to the northward, is the Masonic Temple, the
finest Masonic edifice in existence, a pure Norman structure of
granite two hundred and fifty by one hundred and fifty feet, with a
tower two hundred and thirty feet high, and a magnificent carved and
decorated granite Norman porch, which is much admired.
The great founder not only started his City of Brotherly Love upon
principles of the strictest rectitude, but he was thoroughly
rectangular in his ideas. He laid out all the streets on his plan
parallel to the two prominent ones, so that they crossed at right
angles, and his map was like a chess-board. In the newer sections this
plan has been generally followed, although a few country roads in the
outer districts, laid upon diagonal lines, have been converted into
streets in the city's growth. Penn's original city also included four
other squares near the outer corners of his plan, each of about seven
acres, and three of them were long used as cemeteries. These are now
attractive breathing-places for the crowded city, being named after
Washington and Franklin, Logan and Rittenhouse. The east and west
streets Penn named after trees and plants, while the north and south
streets were numbered. The chief street of the city is Chestnut
Street, a narrow highway of fifty feet width, parallel to and south of
Market Street. Its western end, like Walnut Street, the next one
south, is a fashionable residential section, both being prolonged far
west of the Schuylkill River. In the neighborhood of Broad Street, and
for several blocks eastward, Chestnut Street has the chief stores. Its
eastern blocks are filled largely with financial institutions and
great business edifices, some of them elaborate structures.