would continue to function as a series of large and small towns rather than as a single community because there was no form of reliable, inexpensive transport available. Two transportation changes occurred following the creation of the expanded city in 1854 that allowed for its effective consolidation by 1876: increased local train service and the development of the horse-drawn streetcar. Neither was a great technological leap forward, but both helped to transform the geography of the city for those who could afford their fares: the middle class and above.7
Since the opening in 1832 of the city’s first steam passenger railway company, technological change had been evolutionary—rather than revolutionary—in the railroad industry. Steam locomotives became bigger and more powerful, passenger coaches longer and more comfortable, and track heavier and more durable, but the basic technology remained largely unchanged. The importance of the steam passenger railway to intracity transportation grew slowly (and unevenly) during the Victorian age, but by the 1880s Philadelphia had a large network of lines that both served the city and connected the metropolis with its hinterland in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.8
Far more important for the city was the introduction of horse-drawn streetcars in 1858. Entrepreneurs combined two existing technologies—the body and motive power of the omnibuses and the track of the railroads—to create a new form of transport. The rails gave a smoother ride for passengers than the rough, stone-paved streets and the combination of metal wheels on metal rails made for less friction so the horses could both haul greater loads and accelerate faster. These two advantages helped to ensure the rapid decline of omnibus usage on any route with enough patronage to justify the higher capital investment of laying the rails for the streetcars. By 1880, horse-drawn street railways served almost all populated areas within the city limits and carried 99 million passengers annually.9
By the 1880s, middle-class Philadelphians had a more than adequate system of horse-drawn streetcars and steam-hauled commuter trains to serve their transportation needs in both the booming metropolis and its expanding hinterland in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The lines of the various privately owned streetcar companies occupied every major street (and many minor ones) in Center City and extended southward, westward, and northward from the original urban core along the Delaware River into the adjoining neighborhoods. In addition to these routes centered on the business district, there were a large number of local lines operating in the other densely populated portions of the city like West Philadelphia. The steam trains served not only the city but also the larger region. The 1870s and 1880s were a period of transition for the railroads; some lines had quite intensive service whereas others still had surprisingly few trains. For example, on its Chestnut Hill branch in 1876, the Philadelphia & Reading offered thirty round trips a day between Center City and Germantown, over twice as many as the Pennsylvania Railroad provided to suburban Bryn Mawr. In addition to having the most service, the Philadelphia & Reading lines serving northwest Philadelphia also had special-fare trains in order to encourage daily commuting. Overall, however, the steam trains were not used by many middle-class Philadelphians for their daily commute in 1880 simply because all of the downtown terminals were a long walk or horse car ride from the business district. By 1893, both major rail systems serving the city had relocated their main facilities to Center City and the daily commute by steam train became more viable for members of the bourgeoisie who could afford the fares.10
The electric trolley, introduced in the mid-1890s after a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with cable cars, quickly became the typical mode of middle-class transport and eventually the symbol of the late Victorian era. The advent of the trolley caused great excitement in the city as it was a technological marvel; science, in the form of electricity, replaced brute force, in the form of horses, on the streets of the city. In just five years, from 1892 to 1897, trolleys replaced all the horse-drawn streetcars and cable cars in the city. One person caught up in this technological fervor was Mary B. Smith of West Philadelphia, then in her early twenties. She noted in her diary the opening of almost every newly electrified line in the city, including those that were miles from her home and that she probably never used, such as the Twelfth and Sixteenth Streets line in January 1894. Mary’s enthusiasm grew as the wires and poles that were the physical manifestation of this technological marvel came closer to her home. She, her parents, and her siblings would often ride the new trolleys just to sample modernity, taking for the first time routes that had existed as horse-powered lines for years. Here is her record of the day electric service arrived on the line closest to her house: “Trolley cars started on Woodland Avenue. Papa and Lathrop took a ride on them as far as Paschalville. Papa and Mamma took same ride in evening.”11
Mary’s excitement over the arrival of the trolley was typical of middle-class Philadelphians. Leo Bernheimer, then a high school student living in North Philadelphia, noted in his diary (emphasis in the original): “I rode down in the trolley car this morning for the first time.” Trolleys and the locations they served quickly became emblematic of bourgeois Victorian Philadelphia. 12
By the centennial year, Philadelphia boosters were justifiably proud of their city’s transit infrastructure. One guide boasted that the metropolis had “the best system of street [railway] transportation in the Union.…” A decade later, a similar guide enlarged the claim and Philadelphia was “the most traversed city by railways in this country, if not the world.” Middle-class women and men used these bourgeois corridors in a variety of ways and for a multitude of reasons in the late nineteenth century and, largely without realizing it, helped to radically reshape their vision of the region. We can rediscover this Victorian middle-class metropolis amongst the jumbled streets of the multi-classed city by following bourgeois Philadelphians as they traveled by train, omnibus, streetcar, and trolley. By the 1880s, such trips encompassed a series of middle-class areas in the region: residential neighborhoods, downtown, the surrounding countryside, and the New Jersey coast. In the 1890s, these journeys would add new destinations: suburban homes and amusement parks. 13
The regular travels of John L. Smith nicely illustrate the commute by streetcar of tens of thousands of middle-class Philadelphians in the two decades between the Centennial and the coming of the trolley. In 1880, he lived with his mother in North Philadelphia, and about two and one-quarter miles separated his home from his South Sixth Street shop. He could walk the distance in about an hour, and he did at times, but he usually took the streetcar. Slightly over one-third of the streetcars’ patronage consisted of regular commuters like Smith. Many white members of the “old” middle class—small business-owners and professionals—started to separate their homes from their workplaces at mid-century. Also, like Smith, the vast majority of these Victorian commuters were not suburbanites; they lived within the expansive limits of the city. The largely middle-class neighborhood of North Philadelphia was well served with routes, so Smith had a number of options. It is likely that he usually took the Philadelphia Railway Company’s Ridge Avenue route as it offered the most direct service (on one of the few diagonal streets to disturb the city’s extension of William Penn’s grid) with only short walks at both ends of the ride. On mornings that he was willing to hike the few blocks to Columbia Avenue, he could take a red car of the Philadelphia Traction Company that would leave him within a half block of his office. Philadelphia Traction also offered a number of other routes that came close to Smith’s house that connected with their main east-west lines to Center City.14
Another bourgeois neighborhood well served by the streetcars was West Philadelphia. J. Harper Smith, coal merchant and father of diarist Mary, lived with his family in an Italianate semi-detached house at 509 Woodland Terrace, which was on the fringes of development in the 1880s. He worked in rented office space downtown. The nearest line to the family home was the Darby Branch of the Philadelphia Traction Company, which ran on Woodland Avenue, one-half block away to the south. In horsecar days, Smith probably never used this line for his commute to work as he would have had to change cars to reach downtown. The Darby Branch was one of those local lines that served the neighborhoods and operated as a shuttle between Darby and Thirty-Second and Market Streets in West Philadelphia. A five block walk north would take him to Philadelphia Traction’s Chestnut Street line and cars that would leave him almost at the door
