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

many of the east–west streets on the Delaware’s edge. Arch was one of these streets—blocked off with a solid brick wall that runs along the east side of Front. There was no way to avoid this since the superhighway changes from a below-grade to an elevated structure between Race and Market. The brusque disconnect of Arch Street from the waterfront of which it was such an integral part is truly regrettable. The same goes for Vine Street.
    Other key east–west streets cut short from the river by I-95 include Market, Chestnut (excepting a motor vehicle viaduct connection to Penn’s Landing and Market Street), Walnut (excepting a pedestrian overpass to Penn’s Landing), Pine, Lombard, South (excepting a pedestrian walkway over the highway), Bainbridge, Fitzwater and Catherine. Not to mention Willow, Noble and Poplar Streets in Northern Liberties and numerous minor streets and alleys leading to the river all along the Delaware.

9
    A RCH TO M ARKET
    I NVENTORS AND M ILLIONAIRES BY THE D ELAWARE (E NTER S TEPHEN G IRARD )
    Arch Street was first called Holme Street, after Penn’s surveyor, Thomas Holme. Then it became Mulberry Street.
    Early on, this east–west lane was dug down east of Second Street to make it level with the Delaware shoreline, in order to allow for easier access to docks and ferry slips at the end of Mulberry Street. A single-span arched bridge was constructed to carry Front Street over the lowered road. Hence, Philadelphians began to refer to Mulberry as “the arch street.” The stone archway was taken away in 1721 after falling into disrepair and becoming a public nuisance, as Watson notes at length in his Annals . But the name stuck.
    T HE A RCH S TREET W HARF
    There were two sets of bank steps on this block, along with five alleys passing through various wharf facilities built atop made-earth east of Water Street. The northernmost set of steps between Front and Water connected to Old Ferry Alley, which led to the ferry landings on the river.
    One of these was the Arch Street Wharf, constructed in 1690 and prominent in colonial times. It was here that an unclaimed shipment of coffee was left to rot in the hot humid summer of 1793, leading Dr. Benjamin Rush to conclude, incorrectly, that this was the source of Philadelphia’s deadly yellow fever epidemic that year (more about this in chapter seventeen ).
    The Arch Street Landing remained at the heart of the city’s commerce on the Delaware River well into the 1800s. It was located approximately where Delaware Avenue and Highway 95 run in front of Pier 5 Condominium today.
    Watson relates an amusing incident that occurred in the 1730s or so just west of the wharf/landing at what was once 87–89 Water Street: “[O]ld Anthony Wilkinson had his cabin once in this bank, which got blown up by a drunken Indian laying his pipe on some gunpowder in it.” The place where this happened existed for over two centuries afterward, becoming part of Philadelphia’s lore first through eyewitnesses and then through John Watson’s chronicle. That spot no longer exists owing to I-95.
    J OHN F ITCH AND O LIVER E VANS
    The era of the steamship began at the Arch Street Wharf on July 20, 1786. It was from there, on that date, that Pennsylvania-based inventor John Fitch (1743–1798) navigated the first vessel ever successfully driven by steam. The test of his small skiff on the Delaware River was the earliest practical application of steam power to navigation in the world.
    The next year, Fitch made the first public demonstration of a steamboat in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention, which was then in session at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall). Simply named Steam-Boat , Fitch’s cumbersome craft was forty feet long and had six paddles on each side connected to a twelve-inch cylinder steam engine. It made three miles per hour against the current.

    Plan of John