Street ferry
By 1901, the two main railroad stations for Philadelphia were in the heart of the commercial district. The only two passenger facilities that were far from downtown were the two in Northeast Philadelphia, both of which survived as distinctly minor terminals serving largely local needs in an industrial section of the city. As one guide to the city put it: “Third and Berks and Kensington depots … are but little used, because the major part of the business has been transferred to [the new stations.] They are, moreover, remote from the center of the city, and offer few conveniences for travelers.” By the turn of the century, most train riders bound for Center City could walk from either the new Pennsylvania or Reading depot to their final destinations. The travel time to Wanamaker’s department store, for example, was reduced from twenty minutes by street car from the Reading’s Ninth and Green station to just a two-minute walk from the new Reading Terminal (or a five-minute one from Broad Street Station). In addition, passengers traveling to locations in the city outside the central business district had access to more car lines at the new locations. According to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s official history, “the superior location of [Broad Street Station] seemed to create new traffic.” By moving their terminals closer to the new offices, stores, and theaters, both the Pennsylvania and the Reading dramatically increased the potential for local passenger traffic. The Center City anchors of the middle-class metropolis were firmly in place.11
Broad Street Station and Reading Terminal were not only more convenient to downtown but were also larger and qualitatively different because of the services that they offered to the public. During the late-nineteenth century, the railroads redefined the very nature of space in and around their central terminals. The depots were transformed from simple transportation hubs to civic landmarks. To reach these new terminals the railways separated their trains from road traffic by an increasingly elaborate network of bridges, viaducts, and tunnels. Not only did space become more carefully defined between the railroad and its surrounding community, but it also became more ordered within the stations. Passenger trains were separated from freight trains. Space for trains became more clearly divided from that for people. Incoming and outgoing passengers had separate routes through the buildings. The number of amenities dramatically increased. All in all, the world of the railway traveler became more elaborate and better organized.
The Ninth and Green Streets depot was typical of the enlarged “train barn” stations built throughout the United States in the 1850s. In Philadelphia, both the Philadelphia & Reading’s Main Line depot of 1859 and the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore’s Prime Street station were similar. At its base, this style of building consisted of a head house structure, which usually contained waiting rooms and ticketing and baggage facilities on the first floor and company offices on the second, attached to an enclosed train shed (typically with a largely solid, wooden roof). The structures, though palatial compared to the original depots of the 1830s that they replaced, tended to be small; the station at Ninth and Green Streets (figure 11) took up half of a smaller than average city block and its train shed contained but three tracks.12
Like most antebellum stations, the interior layout of the Ninth and Green terminal was simple, with few divisions. In part, this was because these depots offered little to the public except those services directly related to train travel. The only people who ventured to these inconveniently placed mid-nineteenth-century railroad facilities were passengers or people accompanying or meeting train riders. The largest portion of the structure consisted of the dark wooden train shed that covered the three tracks and the “platforms” that were little more than walkways between the tracks. Four other interior spaces are shown on the plan in figure 12 as being used by the public: two waiting rooms, a package room, and a baggage room. The larger waiting room likely contained both the ticket office and the newsstand (the only non-railroad service in the building). The smaller waiting room was probably the Ladies’ Waiting Room, a feature provided at most major urban terminals by mid century. There was no restaurant; nor did the Reading provide a place within the building for its passengers to smoke, as it officially designated both waiting rooms as non-smoking. All in all, its interior was simple and its amenities spartan.13
Simplicity in interior layout, however, did not guarantee safety at stations like Ninth and Green Streets. The location of both the tracks and the platforms at street level meant there was no clear division between the areas meant for trains and those for passengers. People walked across the running lines within the station to reach their trains or the street. Railroads could do little to stop this practice, other than having their employees attempt to discourage it. For example, on a Sunday in 1881, John L. Smith left his mother’s house in North Philadelphia to spend the day with friends in Germantown. After dinner, he returned home via the Ninth and Green depot. His day came to a dramatic, and nearly fatal, conclusion when he “made a narrow escape” from a locomotive as it backed into the station while he was crossing the tracks. Smith leapt out of its way, prompted by the shouted warnings of nearly “40 train Hands.” Accidents like this were not uncommon in the United States, as a guidebook for English travelers warned: “A special word of caution may be given to the frequent necessity for crossing the tracks, as the rails are frequently flush with the floor of the station and foot-bridges or tunnels are rarely provided” as was then the practice in Europe.14
Conditions were particularly bad at this depot. In addition to the many passenger switching movements (like the one that nearly felled Smith), the Reading operated a busy freight line down the center of Ninth Street. The ground-level tracks also created numerous grade crossings of streets for trains using the station. This both slowed the trains and disrupted life in the surrounding neighborhoods. This mix of railroad and street traffic also led to many accidents.15
Figure 11. A classic mid-century depot: the Philadelphia & Reading depot at Ninth and Green Streets circa 1895. Courtesy of the Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.
Figure 12. The simple interior layout of the Ninth and Green Streets depot. Courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.
In addition to these problems, the lighting was poor both within the train shed and on Ninth Street. By the mid-188os these issues had become serious enough for Reading operating officials to express concern over passenger safety at the aging depot. One manager proposed locking most of the entrances to the station, posting additional watchmen, and petitioning the city to close Ninth Street as a public thoroughfare in order “to reduce the high number of accidents … as locomotives and cars are being constantly moved.” In other words, the railroad would begin to define more clearly the boundary between trains and people. Another supervisor was concerned with the “many narrow escapes [the railroad has had] while unloading our passengers at night.…” Although the Reading installed additional electric lights in 1883 and did close some entrances, the cramped, dark, and busy station at Ninth and Green remained a relatively unsafe place until its abandonment in 1893.16
The movement away from buildings like the one at Ninth and Green began in 1876 when the Pennsylvania Railroad built a new passenger station in West Philadelphia and the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore substantially reconstructed its facility in South Philadelphia. These two depots were important transitional structures, built largely on the scale of the mid-century terminals but with far more complex interior designs presaging the elaborate facilities of Broad Street Station and Reading Terminal. Because they were essentially the same size as the earlier stations, these Centennial depots affirm that the Victorian redefinition of space was not developed in reaction to physical expansion.
The Prime Street station had been one of Philadelphia’s most impressive railroad depots
