Read Online Philadelphia's Lost Waterfront by Harry Kyriakodis - Free Book Online

increasingly larger and higher 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. Inaugurated in 1901 and completed in 1903, the system delivered water via independent pipes and special red fire hydrants located on every block between the Delaware River and Broad Street, from Race to Walnut.

    The High Pressure Fire Service building in 1904, just after completion. It looks much the same today, though a little worse for wear. Philadelphia City Archives .
    The HPFS building on Delaware Avenue 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 years and years.
    The fifty-six-mile system lasted until 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. The HPFS building, though, still heroically stands. It is scheduled to become office and performance space for the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival (Philly Fringe). A café is also part of the scheme.

    The Salt Fish Store was built in 1705 where the HPFS building is today. This undated photo shows the steepness of Race Street as it approached Delaware Avenue. Two policemen are keeping the peace. Philadelphia City Archives .
    The old pumping plant sits where a salt house was situated for roughly two hundred years. This was 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. Other enterprises used the storehouse before it was taken down about 1903.
    T HE C HERRY S TREET S TEPS
    The ten-foot-wide passageway between Race and Arch was—and still is—called Cherry Street, and the bank steps thereon were known as the Cherry Street Steps. William Penn may have directed his surveyor, Thomas Holme (1624–1695), to plan for this specific set of riverbank steps when Philadelphia was platted. (It was Holme who designed Philadelphia as a grid between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers.)
    Since the Cherry Street Steps were adjacent to property that Holme owned on Front Street, he or his heirs may have installed the stairwell. There’s evidence of this in Irma Corcoran’s book Thomas Holme, 1624–1695 (1992):
    Thomas Holme was to leave a cartway thirty feet along the bank…Moreover, he was to lay out his proportion and part so that in the center between Mulberry and Sassafras Streets a public thoroughfare ten feet wide could be made down from the east side of Delaware Front Street .
    The Cherry Street Steps are the most documented of any of the lost Penn steps, at least in terms of illustrations and photographs. The staircase was drawn many times