Then and Now: Spring Garden Street east of Broad Street, Philadelphia

1916-2010

For many decades, the 1300 block of Spring Garden Street was one of Philadelphia's grandest blocks, anchoring the civic and institutional core of lower North Philadelphia. Six years before the consolidation of Philadelphia County into a single municipality, the Spring Garden District built its Commissioner's Hall at the northwest corner of 13th and Spring Garden Streets in 1848. Three years later, the Spring Garden Institute opened its doors at the other end of the block, at the corner of Broad Street. The Commissioner's Hall was demolished in 1892 and replaced by the Philadelphia Normal School for Girls, whose tower is visible in the original photograph.

The onion-domed building adjacent to the Spring Garden Institute is the city's Lu Lu Temple, built in 1904 for the Shriners fraternal order. The Shriners, an offshoot of the Freemasons, were heavily inspired by Middle Eastern traditions, as evident in the Philadelphia temple's design by architect Frederick Webber.

The Broad and Spring Garden intersection in 1910, original atlas image from Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network

For reasons I'm not aware of, the two sections of Spring Garden Street separated by Broad Street were originally not aligned at that intersection; the portion east of Broad terminated roughly 70 feet south of the portion west of Broad. As early as the Civil War, the 1200 and 1300 blocks of Spring Garden were also doted with a spacious and pleasant-looking planted median strip. Real estate atlases seem to indicate that the median was removed sometime around 1920 (perhaps for the construction of the Broad Street Subway).

Spring Garden east of Broad in 1941, from the State Office Building side.

In 1969, the Spring Garden Institute relocated a new campus in Chestnut Hill, abandoning its original site on Broad Street. Its original buildings, along with the substantially decayed Lu Lu Temple, were demolished in 1972, paving the way for the realigned intersection that stands today.

Satellite image courtesy of Google Maps

The only building lucky enough to have survived to this day on the 1301 block of Spring Garden Street is the Philadelphia School District's Stevens Administrative Center, built in 1927.

Sources:
1. Bromley, George W. and Walter S. Atlas of the City of Philadelphia, 1910. G. W. Bromley & Co., 1910. http://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/BRM1910.Phila.001.TitlePage.
2. Calhoun, Chris. "140 Years - A history of practical education." 16 May 2009. Spring Garden College. http://springgardencollege.net/?page_id=12.
3. Khalidi, Omar. "Fantasy, Faith, And Fraternity: American Architecture of Moorish Inspiration." ArchNet. 2004. http://archnet.org/library/documents/one-document.jsp?document_id=9341
Photographs:
1. Biggard, D. Alonzo. "Public Works-37789-0."1941. Philadelphia City Archives. PhillyHistory.org. Philadelphia Department of Records. 21 Jun. 2010. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/MediaStream.ashx?mediaId=21485.
2. "Public Works-11638-0." 1916. Philadelphia City Archives. PhillyHistory.org. Philadelphia Department of Records. 21 Jun. 2010. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/MediaStream.ashx?mediaId=19747.

Then and Now: North Broad Street viewed from City Hall tower, Philadelphia

1915-2009

North Broad Street has always been home to an odd jumble of uses. By the early 20th century, the lower end near City Hall housed a small group of offices and institutional buildings, followed by concentration of large factories and warehouses between Vine and Spring Garden Streets. This general land use pattern remains hardly altered almost a century later, the largest single addition being the growth of Hahnemann University Hospital's campus.

North Broad's newest addition to come is the expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which will have 1 million square feet of saleable exhibition space upon completion, allowing the already massive building to maintain the distinction of having downtown Philadelphia's largest (and not green) roof.

It's a bit amusing to see the lines of cars parked in the median of Broad Street in the original photo, an odd Philadelphia tradition now confined to South Philadelphia.

A horizontally aligned comparison may be found here.

PCC expansion construction thread [Skyscraperpage]

Original Photo: Rolston, N.M. "Department of City Transit-950-0." 1915. Philadelphia City Archives. PhillyHistory.org. Philadelphia Department of Records. 31 Aug. 2009. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/MediaStream.ashx?mediaId=18299.

Then and Now: Broad and Spring Garden Streets looking North, Philadelphia

1913-2009

The southwest corner of Broad and Spring Garden (photo left) had become a gas station by the early 40s, before being replaced in 1958 by the State Office Building and plaza. Central High School on the center right (which will hopefully have its own post soon) was succeeded by the decidedly less inspiring Benjamin Franklin High School, also completed in 1958.

Sources:
1. Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
2. "Philadelphia Land Use Map, 1942." Library Company of Philadelphia. Philadelphia Geohistory Network. Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
Original Photo: "Public Works-7151-0." 1913. Philadelphia City Archives. PhillyHistory.org. Philadelphia Department of Records. 6 Aug. 2009. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/MediaStream.ashx?mediaId=19917

An old montage: North Broad Street north of Spring Garden, Philadelphia

1952-1953

Here's a before and after montage which I had no part in making, aside from a bit of photo-edited brightness correction. Taken on Broad Street north of Spring Garden, the two night photos show North Broad Street before and after the city replaced its existing street lights with the new type of fixture which has since become ubiquitous on America's streets, often called the Cobra-head light. Replicas of Broad Street's original electric street lights are still to be found on the Avenue of the Arts section of South Broad, and the Cobra-head lamps are of course still on most of North Broad Street.

It should be noted that night photography is tricky, and that its resulting photos can be slightly misleading. Nonetheless, this montage easily shows the essential fact that while Cobra-head lamps do a relatively good job of lighting the roadway, they are rather awful at lighting the sidewalk and surrounding buildings, which are barely visible in the bottom photo. I would definitely not be the first to discuss the importance of proper street lighting to pedestrian comfort and safety, so for that I would consult the archives of Philly Skyline for a great piece by contributor Nathaniel Popkin.

Though seen as nothing more than progress at the time, this replacement of street lights was in some respect the replacement of something distinctfully and gracefully Philadelphian with something banal, utilitarian, and placeless. More importantly, it reveals a planning culture that revered automobiles and highways at the expense of walking people and sidewalks. In fact, the reaction in recent decades against mid-century planning failures has been accompanied by the return of sidewalk-scaled lighting to many of America's downtowns, including most of Center City.

It's hard not to hold a somewhat morbid fascination with North Broad Street's violent decline from the grand promenade of North Philadelphia's nouveaux riches to the crumbling strip of vacant lots, gas stations, and drive-thru fast food outlets that we know today. Perhaps because of how tragic and swift that transition was, its breakdown into individual moments like these is somehow wondrous to see.

Original Photos: 1. Balionis, Francis, and Bender, Charles J. "Public Works-41864-3." 1952. Philadelphia City Archives. PhillyHistory.org. Philadelphia Department of Records. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/MediaStream.ashx?mediaId=87703
2. Bender, Charles J. "Public Works-42116-1." 1953. Philadelphia City Archives. PhillyHistory.org. Philadelphia Department of Records. 3 Jan. 2009. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/MediaStream.ashx?mediaId=38565