Then and Now: East bank of Schuylkill River at Market Street, Philadelphia

1915-2010

The building on Market Street by the Schuylkill banks that today houses the Marketplace Design Center was initially built as an automobile factory, circa 1920. Like many industrial buildings of its age, it had a loading dock on the ground level connected to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad tracks by a short rail siding. Also visible in the top right of the original photograph is the B&O's passenger terminal at Chestnut Street.

Before the auto factory, this site was occupied a portion of the city's oldest municipal gas works complex, which straddled both sides of Market Street on the Schuylkill River's east bank for most of the 19th century. The facilities between Market and Chestnut Street were demolished around the turn of the century, at which point something very different may have taken its place.

In the 1910s, the empty plot was one of several locations under consideration by the City of Philadelphia for the construction of a much-desired convention hall. The primary advantage of the site was surely not its waterfront locale, but rather its easy accessibility to the growing business district west of Broad Street. Nonetheless, the proposal was discarded by the city in favor of a site on the Parkway, and the riverbank plot was turned to private ownership. As an aside, the Parkway project never got off the ground, and it was not until 1931 that the arduous convention hall saga came to an end with the completion of the Municipal Auditorium in University City.

(For a detailed account of the perenially sidetracked convention hall project, I highly recommend Sarah Zurier's thesis at the link below)

Source: Zurier, Sarah Elisabeth. "Commerce, Ceremony, Community: Philadelphia's Convention Hall in Context." MS Thesis University of Pennsylvania, 1997. Internet Archive. 8 Jun. 2010. http://www.archive.org/details/commerceceremony00zuri.
Original photographs:
1. "Public Works-10371-0." 1915. Philadelphia City Archives. PhillyHistory.org. Philadelphia Department of Records. 8 Jun. 2010. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/MediaStream.ashx?mediaId=33593.
2. "Public Works-10703-0." 1915. Philadelphia City Archives. PhillyHistory.org. Philadelphia Department of Records. 8 Jun. 2010. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/MediaStream.ashx?mediaId=33703.

Then and Now: Baltimore & Ohio Railroad station, 24th and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia

Date unknown - 2010

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad entered Philadelphia's rapidly-growing passenger rail market in the late-19th century, opening its own passenger terminal in 1888 at 24th and Chestnut Streets, at the foot of the Chestnut Street Bridge. The station was designed by none other than the prolific Furness, Evans, & Co., who went on the build the much grander expansion to Broad Street Station just a few years later. Perhaps owing to the station's less than ideal location and relatively minuscule size, it never quite achieved the landmark status attained by the city's other two Center City terminals, Broad Street Station and Reading Terminal.

Date unknown - 2010

Passenger service ended along the Baltimore & Ohio line in the late 1950s, and the Philadelphia station was demolished in 1963. The building's former site stood vacant for over a decade before the completion of a 34-story apartment tower, 2400 Chestnut, in 1979. Through a number of acquisitions and mergers, the remnants of the B&O are now part of CSX Transportation, a freight company which continues to operate the railroad's tracks along the Schuylkill.

Some more tidbits on 2400 Chestnut [Philly Skyline]

Sources:
1. "2400 Chestnut Apartments, Philadelphia, U.S.A." Emporis.com. 8 May 2010. http://www.emporis.com/application/?nav=building&lng=3&id=2400chestnutapartments-philadelphia-pa-usa.
2. Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
Original photos:
1. "PA-1220-7 - Photocopy of photograph: Perspective view of north and east elevations." Historic American Buildings Survey. American Memory. Library of Congress. 8 May 2010. http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/pa/pa1000/pa1097/photos/138632pv.jpg.
2. "PA-1220-9 - View from north west, closeup of station." Historic American Buildings Survey. American Memory. Library of Congress. 8 May 2010. http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/pa/pa1000/pa1097/photos/138634pv.jpg.

Then and Now: East bank of Schuylkill River from Chestnut Street Bridge, Philadelphia

1928-2010

In 1928, the lower end of the Schuylkill River running through Center City Philadelphia was not exactly an inviting place to linger. Between Spring Garden Street and Spruce Street, the river's east bank was lined with freight depots, warehouses, and factories, while the west bank was home to an enormous stockyard and abbattoir. To top it off, much of the city's untreated sewage was dumped directly into the river via over twenty mains placed by the Fairmount Dam, turning the Schuylkill into an enormous cesspool.

As the 20th century progressed, the lower Schuylkill slowly shed its grimy, industrial character. The current Market Street Bridge replaced its iron predecessor in 1932. Shortly afterward, the west bank was wholly transformed after the stockyards were replaced by 30th Street Station and the adjacent U.S. Post Office. In the 1950s and 1960s, the city made great strides toward completing its sewage treatment network, vastly improving the river's water quality. One by one, the freight yards and warehouses along the east bank closed under the forces of deindustrialization. The Hudson Essex automobile factory (pictured above) shut its doors, reopening as the Marketplace Design Center, a design showroom, in 1975.

Forward-looking Philadelphians had in fact dreamed of a riverfront park on the lower Schuylkill's east bank as early as the 1920s. Concrete development plans emerged for the first time in the late 1960s, but came to a grinding halt before being revived nearly 30 years later. In 1995, the City of Philadelphia began finally began construction of a segment of the Schuylkill River Trail between Kelly Drive and Locust Street. Originally scheduled for completion in 1997, spectacular delays and legal battles postponed the park's official opening to 2004.

Sources:
1. Demick, Barbara. "The Marketplace: its doors open by invitation only." Philadelphia Inquirer. 11 Jul. 1988: D01.
2. Heavens, Alan J. "Schuylkill Park ready to bloom." Philadelphia Inquirer. 4 Jun. 1995: R01.
3. Lewis, John Frederick. The Redemption of the Lower Schuylkill. Philadelphia: The City Park Association, 1924.
4. Saffron, Inga. "A fine park now, and even better later - the Schuylkill parks' present, promise." Philadelphia Inquirer. 25 Jun. 2004: E01.
Original photo: "CPA1146 - East bank of the Schuylkill from Chestnut Street Bridge." 1928. City Parks Association Photographs. Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives. 1 May 2010. http://digital.library.temple.edu/u?/p15037coll5,208.