Baltimore in 1851–52. Although similar in appearance to the Reading facility at Green Street, it was larger and more elaborately decorated. Its train shed held seven tracks and three “platforms.” When built, the railroad claimed that the head house contained “every convenience known or believed to be essential to a station of such prominent importance.” It was probably the first depot in Philadelphia to contain a dining room in addition to the standard waiting room, ticket office, and baggage facilities supplied at the other stations. But the terminal also had many of the same problems as the Green Street facility. The Prime Street train shed was low and dark. Its tracks and the platforms were placed at street level, allowing passengers to enter the station through the train shed. In addition, until the 1876 renovation, freight trains shared the facility with their passenger counterparts.17
If space was not well defined in and around the mid-century Prime Street, the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore station was a masterpiece of planning when compared to the jumble of tracks and structures that made up the Pennsylvania Railroad’s first depot in West Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania had moved its main Philadelphia terminal to a small structure at Thirty-first and Market Streets from an even smaller building at Eleventh and Market in 1864. By the early 1870s, the Pennsylvania’s passenger facilities at West Philadelphia had grown to two separate stations with three sets of platforms sprawling over two city blocks, with a group of freight depots and tracks intermixed (see figure 13 for a map showing this conglomeration of tracks and platforms taken from a city atlas). The original 1864 terminal (“A” in figure 13) had two tracks under a train shed and was used by trains to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. A short distance to the west was the separate “New York” station, built in 1867, with its own two-track train shed for service to Trenton and Jersey City (“B”). Finally, still farther to the west, a wooden walkway led from the New York depot to a platform located on a low-level connecting line that was used by through Washington to Jersey City trains (“C”). With the large number of freight trains running on the tracks adjacent to these passenger facilities, this complex of buildings and platforms was neither safe nor terribly easy for the first-time passenger to navigate. Not only was their little separation between freight and passenger space, there was effectively none between the railroad and the community.18
At the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore depots in 1876 space became noticeably better defined both in and around the facilities. Perhaps the single most important change resulting from these improvements was the clear separation of passenger traffic from freight traffic at the new or renovated termini. In South Philadelphia, the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore built a new freight facility adjoining its Prime Street station. This allowed the existing structure to be used exclusively for passenger purposes. In West Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania finally built a depot at Thirty-second and Market Streets large enough to house all its passenger services in one building. Like the renovated facility at Prime Street, the new Pennsylvania terminal was for passenger trains only. Also like its counterpart in South Philadelphia, the West Philadelphia depot’s head house had a complex interior that consisted of “gentlemen’s” and “ladies’ “ waiting rooms, separate ticketing and baggage offices, a restaurant, and company offices. 19
Figure 13. Complex and confusing: the Pennsylvania Railroad’s West Philadelphia stations in 1872. Courtesy of the Map Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.
| Key: | |
| A | Original depot for the trains to Pittsburgh |
| B | Station for trains to New York originating in Philadelphia |
| C | Platform for through New York to Washington trains |
Additional evidence that these changes in interior and exterior layout were related to a new vision of space and not just reactions to increased traffic or growing size can be found at the Pennsylvania Railroad’s rather insignificant Kensington depot. Despite its location far from downtown and its infrequent use (because the railroad had transferred most of its major passenger services to the West Philadelphia station), the Pennsylvania board still authorized some “much needed improvements” there in the mid 1870s. The result was a small brick station building attached to a two-track train shed exclusively for passenger services. The track layout around the passenger facility was also revised to more clearly separate people from cargo.20
The trends apparent in these mid 1870s improvements became fully articulated in the three main depots built in the 1880s and 1890s. Broad Street Station, the Baltimore & Ohio facility, and Reading Terminal all were exclusively passenger structures with complex, well-defined interiors in which the railways clearly separated human space from train space. This unmistakable division continued outside the buildings, where the railroads spent freely to isolate their trains from road traffic.
The first of these stations to open was Broad Street Station in 1881. Qualitatively different from any previous depot in Philadelphia, its facade was unlike that of any existing railroad structure in the city; it was in the style and on the scale of a great London railway terminus, such as the recently completed St. Pancras. Its first floor was made of large blocks of gleaming granite, its upper floors fabricated of brick. The elaborate gothic style made it look more like a cathedral than a train depot (figure 14). It was a fitting temple to the power of Philadelphia’s most influential corporation: the Pennsylvania Railroad. But its grandeur was more than a simple projection of power by its owner, a proclamation that it and its industry had arrived. It was also a manifestation of the wealth and the culture of the Victorian bourgeoisie.21
The rational spatial patterns of the Victorian middle class were immediately apparent at the depot. The Pennsylvania built a block-wide brick viaduct from the Schuylkill River to Fifteenth Street, which allowed its trains to reach Broad Street Station totally separated from street traffic. Not only did this elevated approach eliminate grade crossing and allow the railroad to increase train speed and safety, but it also allowed the PRR to gain more control over passenger access to the trains within the station. Unlike at ground-level depots such as Ninth and Green, where passengers could and did enter the structure through the train shed, at Broad Street Station passengers could reach the platforms only through access points designated by the rail-road. The company used this new form of control to full advantage by separating the platforms from the station concourse by a series of train gates that were guarded by railroad employees. By keeping travelers off the tracks, accidents, like the one John Smith narrowly avoided at Ninth and Green, could be largely eliminated.
Figure 14. A temple to transportation: the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broad Street Station in 1881. Courtesy of the Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.
Smith was a frequent visitor to Broad Street Station and can serve as our guide to the new facility. He and a friend went there to catch a train for a brief visit to the suburbs not long after the depot opened. Smith met his companion at Market Street in front of the depot a little before ten on a Saturday morning. They likely stopped for a moment to admire the exterior of the new station and would soon find its interior equally striking. To enter the building, they walked north, first passing the exit for arriving passengers, then the pedestrian and carriage passages to Fifteenth Street. Near the north end of the station they went through polished wood and leaded-glass doors into a small lobby and then on to a large booking hall. They noted the separate local and through tickets windows and, while waiting to buy their tickets, also observed the Pullman Company office (for parlor and sleeping car reservations) and outgoing baggage room, all carefully classified spaces targeted
