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

by Philadelphia artist Joseph Pennel. And a charming photograph taken by G. Mark Wilson shows a man and a woman in the stairwell. According to Still Philadelphia (1983):
    Wilson’s quest for picturesque Philadelphia led him to quaint scenes, some superficially evocative of Europe. He captioned this early 1920s photograph “not in Florence, Genoa or Naples,” but the facts he supplied with the image make it clear that the scene was uniquely American. The couple seemed to be courting. The man, Wilson noted, was Jewish, the woman Irish, a circumstance almost unimaginable where Old-World customs and proscriptions still held sway .

    The Cherry Street Steps about 1920. Notice the Frankford El structure atop Front Street in the background. The Library Company of Philadelphia .
    Undeniably, this was an immigrant community in the 1920s.
    These bank steps were obliterated for sure when I-95 barreled through Philadelphia in the late 1960s.
    E LFRETH ’ S A LLEY
    John Watson, in his Annals , refers to the Cherry Street Steps as the Elfreth’s Alley Steps. This is because they were a bit south of Elfreth’s Alley, now a popular tourist attraction between Front and Second Streets. This National Historic Landmark District is the oldest continuously occupied residential street in the United States.
    Elfreth’s Alley was opened in 1702 by John Gilbert and Arthur Wells, two property owners who combined their land to create a subdivision through the city block they owned. The alleyway’s namesake was Jeremiah Elfreth, a blacksmith who rented several houses on the block to sea captains, stevedores, shipwrights and craftsmen, some who worked in the same buildings where they resided. It has been the home to all sorts of people in its more than three hundred years, from wealthy friends of Benjamin Franklin to immigrant families.

    Looking east on Elfreth’s Alley in 1972. Most Philadelphia alleys by the Delaware resembled this scene long ago. Many are still around. Elfreth’s Alley is the best known and looks even better today. Library of Congress (HABS) .
    During the Industrial Revolution, the alley became an enclave for European immigrants seeking new lives in North America. As such, they were not all that different than the Quaker settlers who lived in caves by the Delaware River. The tiny row homes on Elfreth’s Alley are excellent examples of Philadelphia’s Colonial, Georgian and Federal housing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most are private dwellings to this day.
    The alley had become an impoverished neighborhood by World War I and faced possible demolition. In 1934, a group of individuals formed the Elfreth’s Alley Association to save several houses from being torn down by absentee landlords. They later helped rescue the alley from other threats, including construction of I-95.
    Fireman’s Hall Museum is on Second Street next to the alley, housed in a 1902 firehouse. This is one of the nation’s premier museums on firefighting, many advances of which were developed in Philadelphia.
    The Bank Meeting House was once on the riverbank south of Elfreth’s Alley. Built in 1685, this early Quaker house of worship was used for 104 years before it was pulled down. The relocated Front Street between Race and Arch runs through ground on which this brick structure stood.
    S LEDDING T OWARD THE R IVER —N O M ORE
    Watson wrote that “[t]hirty to forty boys and sleds could be seen running down each of the streets descending from Front street to the river” in his youth. The streets had been graded by his time to better join the “upper” and “lower” planes of Penn’s City. Watson’s sledding comment illustrates how the embankment’s natural grade between Arch and Market Streets was where the change in height was the most pronounced.
    There’s definitely no sledding on these streets nowadays, chiefly because Interstate 95 truncated