Summary of Post-Industrial Center City Walking Tour

From 20th and Callowhill Streets to the Delaware River

By Harry Kyriakodis

I've always been fascinated by the post-industrial landscape of the four-block-wide swath of Center City
Philadelphia between Vine and Spring Garden Streets, from the Schuylkill to the Delaware Rivers. This
bleak corridor has a long and peculiar history, some of which accounts for the way it is today.
The shadow of William Penn (1644-1718), founder of both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, figures
prominently in the story. In 1681, King Charles II granted all of what is now the entire Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania to Penn in repayment of a debt owed to Penn's father. Penn and his fellow Quakers came
to this region in the 1680s. After establishing Philadelphia, Penn reserved for himself and his family a
large tract of land immediately north of the original northern city boundary (Vine Street) and south of the
"Liberty Lands" of northern Philadelphia County. (The Liberty Lands were areas out in the countryside
that were given to the first purchasers of property in the city proper, with the thought that these buyers
would build large estates for themselves or establish towns outside of Philadelphia.) Some accounts
have it that northern limit of this tract was just north of present-day Callowhill Street, at least in the eastern
part of this corridor, with other tracts between Callowhill and Spring Garden Streets. Whatever the case,
Penn's country estate was known as Springettsbury Manor, named after his first wife, Gulielma Springett.
Most of this corridor was therefore not part of the original city of Philadelphia, nor was it part of the overall
Liberty Lands.
When the British occupied Philadelphia from 1777 to 1778, their fortifications ran between the Delaware
and Schuylkill Rivers through this area, more or less along the north side of today's Spring Garden Street.
This region was mostly open space at that time. Then, in the 1790s, there were plans to build a canal
between the two rivers along this corridor. (Thousands of years ago, the Schuylkill did actually flow to the
Delaware via this very same path.) Part of the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal was dug before the
company went bankrupt, and the abandoned right-of-way was used in the 1830s by the Philadelphia &
Columbia Railroad. At that time, this undeveloped district was a bonanza to emerging industries, which
needed lots of open space for their operations, as well as convenient access to both rivers, plus good
land and then rail routes to the rest of Pennsylvania, and points north. The Philadelphia & Columbia
eventually became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, except for the part in Philadelphia, which went to
the Reading Railroad. Thus, much of the route of this tour parallels the old Reading Railroad's City
Branch, an open subway completed in the 1890s to eliminate traffic problems caused by tracks that
crossed most of the city's north-south streets at grade from the Schuylkill River to Broad Street. The
tracks of this abandoned line have been removed and nature has reclaimed much of the old right-of-way.
Numerous interesting structures line the route, beginning with The Granary, at 20th and Callowhill
Streets. Grain elevators were once a common sight in Philadelphia, but only this one remains. It was
built in 1925 by the Reading Railroad, using a continuous poured in place concrete process. Abandoned
in 1949, part of the structure was converted into offices in 1976. The silos were left untouched, but the
machinery towers were transformed into a penthouse apartment with terraces. The entire structure was
reconfigured into office space in 1986. Commonly called "the Granary," it was owned by the Granary
Associates, an international design firm, until 2007. That year, that firm sold the Granery and moved to
1500 Spring Garden Street. The building has been vacant since then and an investment real estate
company is offering it for lease, although its days may be numbered, given the recent popularity of this
area. Interestingly, this site is just about where the Springettsbury Manor house once stood.
Facing the Granery on the west side of 20th Street is a Whole Foods supermarket. At one time, however,
the entire city block behind us was once the site of Bement, Miles & Co., maker of machine tools, lathes,
and so on for railroads, locomotive factories, steel plants, and shipbuilders. The machine shops here
were among the best in the United States, and its products were found in almost every industrial plant in
the country. The company was founded in the mid-1800s by William Bement and lasted until 1899, when
it merged into the Miles-Bement-Pond Company. The factory was torn down and the property became an
athletic field, then a supermarket. There are now plans for a high rise condo or apartment development
on the site, and Whole Foods is slated to move to 1601 Vine Street.
Continuing eastwards on Callowhill Street: Around 1734, the Penn family gave attorney Andrew Hamilton
the land from 12th to 19th Streets, and Vine Street to Fairmount Avenue, in payment for legal services to
the Penn family. Hamilton is credited with the design of Independence Hall, and, because of his great
legal skill, was the original "Philadelphia Lawyer." In 1740, he built a large mansion in this vicinity. (In
those days, of course, this corridor was the suburbs of Philadelphia, and there were no regular streets
around here until the early-1800s.) The mansion and estate were called Bush Hill, and offered a
commanding view of the then-distant city of Philadelphia. Vice President John Adams and his wife lived
in the house in 1790 and 1791. During Philadelphia's terrible yellow fever epidemic of 1793, a quarantine
hospital was set up in the mansion, managed by Stephen Girard, Philadelphia's famous mariner-
merchant-millionaire.
This area was once the site of several major manufacturing facilities located along the Reading City
Branch. The Bush Hill Iron Works was once located more or less on the site of Hamilton's mansion.
Originally established in 1809 by our very own Oliver Evans, the firm achieved a high reputation for the
manufacture of sugar, saw and grist mill machinery, and millwrighting in general, as well as boilers. Here
also were Rush & Muhlenburg (makers of stationary steam engines), William Sellers Machine Tool Works
(maker of shafting, mill gearing, and machine tools known all over the world), and the Whitney & Sons
Car-Wheel Works (the largest rail car wheel factory in the nation). It was Asa Whitney's 1848 patent for
annealing cast iron wheels that made his company famous. This annealing process produced wheels
that were exceptionally strong, enabling them to be cast in one piece and then forced onto an axle at forty
tons of pressure. Such wheels could handle much higher loads and speed, thus marking a new era in
railroad history.
And of course, the granddaddy of them all: The Baldwin Locomotive Works, a sprawling factory complex
spread over several blocks between Callowhill and Spring Garden Streets west of Broad Street. Matthias
Baldwin built a substantial brick factory here in 1836. His company eventually became the largest maker
of heavy machinery in America's Gilded Age, making Philadelphia the locomotive capital of America.
Baldwin was once the largest producer of locomotives in the world, if not the world's largest manufacturer
of anything! By the early 1900s, an army of some 19,000 men, divided into day and night shifts, worked
at the Baldwin complex. The company moved to greener pastures in the 1920s, and today, there's hardly
a trace of Philly's huge Baldwin Locomotive complex.
Brick rowhomes were built all around these manufactories to house workers who walked to work. But by
the 1970s, the area was filled with abandoned buildings, coal yards, and a few hundred century-old
rowhouses. Everything was torn down to create Franklin Town, a "city within a city" that was supposed to
have over 4000 residential units, 1700 hotel rooms, restaurants, and tree-lined streets. Other than a few
residential towers and Franklin Town Park (19th and Callowhill Streets), none of that happened. There's
a lot of sentiment in the neighborhood for retiring the "Franklintown" moniker.
Proceeding east on Callowhill Street: At 100 feet in width, Philadelphia's Broad Street is, as its name
implies, the city's broadest north-south street. Broad Street is the longest straight urban boulevard in
America. This is well-accepted, even though City Hall sits squarely in the middle of the street in the
center of town, requiring traffic to circle the building. An old Philly saying (as applicable today as ever) is:
"Broad Street is the straightest street, but when you get to City Hall, it gets real crooked." The Broad
Street Subway passes under the Reading City Branch at the point where Broad Street rises in front of the
Inquirer-Daily News Building.
Originally known as the Elverson Building, this 18-story landmark is home to The Philadelphia Inquirer
and The Philadelphia Daily News. When operations began there in 1925, it was touted as the most
modern newspaper plant in the world. Engineering-wise, the building met the challenge of carrying the
immense floor load of the press room and hundreds of tons of presses and stereotyping equipment two
floors above street level while suspending the entire structure above the Reading's tracks in such a way
that vibrations from trains would not affect the building. The adjacent structure—now School District of
Philadelphia headquarters—was constructed in 1948 to house the rotogravure presses that used to print
sections of the Sunday Inquirer and publications like TV Guide. This was once the largest rotogravure
plant in the world. These printing facilities were moved to a new state-of-the-art printing plant at
Conshohocken in 1992.
Across Broad Street is the Reading Railroad's Terminal Commerce Building, touted as the largest
commercial warehouse building in the nation when completed in 1930. It offered about 13 million square
feet of floor space to the numerous firms located there. The structure even had a freight station beneath
it, which replaced the Reading's North Broad Street Freight Station that had been on the site. This was
the first freight station underneath a warehouse in the United States. The Reading Railroad sold the
hulking structure in 1955, whereupon it became known as the North American Building. It has recently
been repositioned as a "carrier hotel" housing telecommunications, computer and other high-tech
equipment.
The abandoned Reading Railroad Viaduct is a striking structure in the area of 11th and Callowhill Streets.
Also known as the "9th Street Branch," this abandoned 4-track elevated structure was built in the early
1890s by the Reading Railroad as the main approach to Philadelphia's Reading Terminal (still standing
and part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center). The northern portion of this mile-long viaduct ends at
the 800 block of Fairmount Avenue, where it connects to SEPTA's main line tracks that now head into
Center City via the Commuter Rail Tunnel. The southern part from Vine Street to Reading Terminal was
torn down in the early 1990s. A 2003 study concluded that the cost of demolishing the viaduct was
between 35 and 51 million dollars, while the cost to redevelop it into a linear park was about 5 million
dollars. It will probably be here for another 50 years just like it is now...
A highlight of this tour is the Willow Street Steam Generation Plant at Ninth and Willow Streets. Built in
1927 by the Philadelphia Electric Company, this was part of downtown Philadelphia's underground steam
system, which still operates. The plant has been abandoned for over 25 years. The large interior spaces
that held the boilers preclude easy alteration for reuse, as there are no floors inside the building. There
have been proposals to convert it into a trash-to-steam plant and also to cover it with huge wrap-around
advertising. But nothing has happened, as the building is filled with asbestos and is very dangerous.
Philadelphia's steam network is now the third largest district steam heating system in the United States.
The Callowhill Industrial District stretches from Ninth to Second Streets. This area was once packed with
hundreds of row homes, plus light industry, and many more cross-streets than there are now. But in the
1960s, over twenty city blocks were leveled and many cross-streets were removed to create an open area
suitable for new industry. Yes, there were high hopes, but not much new industry happened. While some
of the remaining structures have been converted into condos recently, this area is mostly a strange zone
of warehouses and parking lots between Old City and Northern Liberties.
Willow Street is curvy because it occupies the bed of an old creek called Pegg's Run, which once made
its way up past Broad Street. The stream was covered over and made into a city sewer around 1811, and
Willow Street was built on top. Tracks were laid on Willow Street by the Northern Liberties and Penn
Township Railroad around 1834 and connected to the Columbia Railroad tracks. The entire line became
part of the Reading Railroad in the 1850s. When this district was cleared in the 1960s, the tracks were
removed but the sewer stayed, which is probably why Willow Street was not removed.
Callowhill Street was named after William Penn's second wife, Hannah Callowhill. It is an unusually wide
Philadelphia street as it approaches the Delaware River because several market houses and street sheds
were located in the center of and along the avenue going back to the 1700s. Basically, this was a vibrant
local shopping center well into the 20th century, but urban blight and nearby highways put an end to that.
Also, this area was once called the "town of Callow Hill," one of Philadelphia's earliest suburbs.
Philadelphia's earliest industries began here, especially goat skin and leather tanneries.
Midway on Front Street between Callowhill and Vine Streets are some ancient steps down to Water
Street. Dating from the founding of Philadelphia, these steps are historically protected and are the last of
8 such stairways built along the river during the time of William Penn. The original settlers of Philadelphia
lived in caves dug out of the mud along the steep bank of the Delaware River, pretty much along where
Water Street now runs. The parking lots around here are all on landfill, under which are the remains of
18th century wharves and ships. The area was a rail yard for the Reading Railroad until a few decades
ago.
Philadelphia's Delaware Avenue skirts along the west bank of the Delaware River for several miles in the
city. The original section of the avenue from Vine to South Streets was built the mid-19th century with
funds from a bequest by Stephen Girard, who was the wealthiest man in American when he died in 1831.
Concerned about the poor condition of the approaches to the waterfront, Girard left $500,000 to make
improvements and to maintain this road. The money led to the construction of bulkheads, the first lighting
along the river, and paved waterfront streets. More widening work occurred in 1897, when this part of
Delaware Avenue was expanded, making it the widest and longest waterfront avenue in the world. This
portion, now landscaped, is now called Columbus Boulevard.
To cap off this walking tour, take a look at the High-Pressure Fire Service building at Race Street and
Columbus Boulevard. This was the first pumping plant of Philadelphia's high-pressure fire service, once
the finest in the world. Completed in 1903, the plant drew water directly from the Delaware River via 20
inch mains and delivered it under high-pressure to large red fire hydrants throughout downtown
Philadelphia via 12 and 16-inch mains. The 56-mile system lasted until 2005, when it was
decommissioned after falling into disrepair. High-pressure water service became unnecessary anyway
due to better fire-fighting equipment, high-rise standpipes and sprinklers, and fire-resistant building
materials.