and foremost, special thanks are due my family: my grandparents (the people who first introduced me to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Philadelphia), my parents, my long-suffering wife, Julie, and most recently my son John (who has developed at quite a young age a love for department stores, newspapers, and trains). Without them and their interests in history, this project would have never happened.
Next, special credit is owed to my friends and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Peter Filene, William Barney, Peter Coclanis, Jacquelyn Hall, and John Kasson were all supportive, challenging, and engaged throughout the entire process. In addition, many others suffered through parts of the work and helped me think more clearly about key concepts: Stacey Braukman, Gavin Campbell, Sean Doig, Natalie Fousekis, Gary Frost, Kelly Hughes, Kathy Newfont, Steven Niven, Mike Ross, Robert Tinkler, and Michael Trotti.
A large number of archivists and librarians at a variety of institutions helped me throughout my research. There are too many to list but a few went well beyond the call of duty. Linda Stanley, formerly of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, helped me negotiate that archive’s rich collections and regularly pointed out items that I may have otherwise missed. Virtually the entire staff of the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Print and Picture Collection went out of their way to give me incredible access to their holdings. Finally, special thanks are due to Douglas B. Rauschenberger (of the Haddonfield Public Library) and Katherine Mansfield Tassini (of the Historical Society of Haddonfield), who made special arrangements for me to have greater access to the Historical Society’s collections.
More recently, the faculty at Wilkes University have been very supportive of my writing. My colleagues in History—Joel Berlatsky, Harold Cox, Dennis Hupchick, Jack Meyers, and Jim Rodechko—and English—Darin Fields and Jennifer Nesbitt—have helped me negotiate the often tortuous path of teaching four courses a semester while finishing a book.
In addition to my family, I must thank four organizations for providing funding at key points in the research and writing process. The History Department (through its research grants) and the Graduate School (via its research and writing fellowships) of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provided significant support. The New Jersey Historical Commission gave me a research grant that allowed me to follow a number of leads in New Jersey at a crucial time in my research. Finally, Wilkes University provided a needed grant to help turn my book into a reality.
My final thanks go to my editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, Robert Lockhart, the readers, and the editorial board for helping in a myriad of ways to shape the final product. It has been a fun adventure and I look forward to doing it again in the future.
Introduction: A Revised and EnlargedPhiladelphia
When this book was first issued, in 1883, it gave a faithful presentation of the Philadelphia of that day.… But we would not ignore the fact that there is a revised and enlarged Philadelphia.… Perhaps no American city, within sixteen years, has undergone a greater change.… The concentration of trade has made the high building a necessity. Where once twenty buildings stood side by side, now they are constructed one upon the other.... The railway engine no longer halts on the outskirts of the city, but is driven close to our very doors.... The old cobble-stone is fast becoming a recollection, and, with two hundred and fifty miles of asphalt, it is, perhaps, the best-paved city in the world. In addition to this, there is an electric railway system which is unexcelled by any other city. The suburbs have been beautified beyond description, and localities once inaccessible now contain some of the most attractive homes.1
Philadelphia underwent an impressive physical reconstruction in the five decades from 1876 to 1926, doubling in population, extending farther north, south, and west from the original urban core, and reaching ever farther skyward. Never again would Philadelphia go through a period of such sustained growth. Equally important, but much less obvious than these physical changes to the region during this period, was the creation of new visions of the city by Philadelphians. In his tribute to civic progress, J. Loughran Scott hints at these new images by his use of the term “revised” to describe the metropolis, as this word implies thoughts in addition to deeds. Not only did the Victorian city grow in size and its buildings in height but its residents changed how they viewed it. These new urban images—broadly shared along class lines—resulted in multiple Philadelphias occupying the same physical space. The city of the elite, who lived on Rittenhouse Square or the Main Line, summered in Maine or Europe, and lunched at the Philadelphia Club, was a far different urban vision from that of the working classes, in which life often revolved around a single neighborhood or town. Philadelphia’s aristocracy could afford to use every transportation and technological innovation to remake and to expand their world. By the turn of the century, elite Philadelphians were a part of a national upper class. Their city not only included exclusive shops, all the latest gadgets, and servant-filled homes, but was part of a national—and increasingly international—network of wealth and privilege. For working-class Philadelphians, home, work, and shopping, indeed much of everyday life, often was bounded by a few blocks. Throughout the nineteenth century, high transport fares made the streetcars and trains luxuries for most workers and their families and the traditions of the walking city remained strong well into the twentieth century in largely working-class sections like Kensington and Manayunk. Yet these different Philadelphias coexisted within one region, often overlapping in areas like Center City (the map in figure 1 identifies some of these locations).2
But the Victorian Philadelphia story was more than a tale of just two cities. Between these two Philadelphias lay the subject of this study: the metropolis of the middle class. Members of the bourgeoisie could afford to ride the trains and trolleys daily, so they had more freedom to construct their city than did their working-class counterparts (although not, of course, as much as the elite). The middle class used this latitude to make their version of Philadelphia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The bourgeois city was logical and rational and well-cataloged: everything and everyone had its place in this Philadelphia. What inspired this search for order was the application of science—as the Victorian middle class understood the term—to everyday life. Following the leads of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, the bourgeoisie carefully arranged and classified their world.3
This scientific worldview pervaded late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century middle-class society. Behind it was a faith in continued progress that drove the bourgeoisie throughout western Europe, the United States, and many European colonies worldwide to embrace change. This search for order by the middle class was more than a simple reaction to the effects of industrialization and urbanization, and it was more than a fearful drive for paternalistic control. Science allowed the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century bourgeoisie to revisualize and to remake their environment.4
What follows is a case study in the use of science to reconstruct—both mentally and physically—the urban environment by one city’s middle class. The women and men of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Philadelphia were no more rational or better educated than their counterparts in New York or Baltimore or Glasgow or Berlin or Melbourne. What happened in the Quaker City took place throughout Westernized society at about the same time. Bourgeois Philadelphia’s search for order was not unique. In many ways, the city’s true value to the scholar lay in its typicality. But the study of a large yet second-tier city like Philadelphia also has significant advantages. Unlike in a national capital, where the structures and plans often reflect national ambitions and pretensions, those of an industrial and commercial center like Philadelphia tend to mirror more local—and often middle-class—considerations. In addition, cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Glasgow underwent some of their greatest growth during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the culture of that period can be more easily seen in them, than in cities that developed earlier (like London or Rome) or later (like Detroit or Los Angeles). Finally, Philadelphia has the added advantage that topography
