# Travels in Philadelphia/Chestnut Street from a Fire Escape

CHESTNUT STREET FROM A FIRE ESCAPE
Just outside our office window is a fire-escape with a little iron balcony. On warm days, when the tall windows are wide open, that rather slender platform is our favorite vantage ground for watching Chestnut street. We have often thought how pleasant it would be to have a pallet spread out there, so that we could do our work in that reclining posture that is so inspiring.
But we can tell a good deal of what is going on along Chestnut street without leaving our desk. Chestnut street sings a music of its own. Its genial human symphony could never be mistaken for that of any other highway. The various strands of sound that compose its harmony gradually sink into our mind without our paying conscious heed to them. For instance, there is the light sliding swish of the trolley poles along the wire, accompanied by the deep rocking rumble of the car, and the crash as it pounds over the cross-tracks at Sixth street. There is the clear mellow clang of the trolley gongs, the musical trill of fast wagon wheels running along the trolley rails, and the rattle of hoofs on the cobbled strip between the metals. Particularly easy to identify is the ​sound every citizen knows, the rasping, sliding clatter of a wagon turning off the car track so that a trolley can pass it. The front wheels have left the track, but the back pair are scraping along against the setts before mounting over the rim.
Every street has its own distinctive noises and the attentive ear accustoms itself to them until they become almost a part of the day's enjoyment. The deep-toned bell of Independence Hall bronzing the hours is part of our harmony here, and no less familiar is the vigorous tap-tap of Blind Al's stick. Al is the well-known news-dealer at the corner of Chestnut and Fifth. Several times a day he passes along under our windows, and the tinkle of his staff is a well-known and pleasant note in our ears. We like to imagine, too, that we can recognize the peculiarly soft and easy-going rumble of a wagon of watermelons.
But what we started to talk about was the balcony, from which we can get a long view of Chestnut street all the way from Broad street almost to the river. It is a pleasant prospect. There is something very individual about Chestnut street. It could not possibly be in New York. The solid, placid dignity of most of the buildings, the absence of skyscrapers, the plain stone fronts with the arched windows of the sixties, all these bespeak a city where it is still a little bit bad form for a building to be too garishly new. I may be wrong, but I do not remember in New York any such criss-cross of wires above the streets. Along ​Chestnut street they run at will from roof to roof over the way.
Gazing from our little balcony the eye travels down along the uneven profile of the northern flank of Chestnut street. From the Wanamaker wireless past the pale, graceful minaret of the Federal Reserve Bank, the skyline drops down to the Federal Building which, standing back from the street, leaves a gap in the view. Then the slant of roofs draws the eye upward again, over the cluster of little conical spires on Green's Hotel (like a French château) to the sharp ridges and heavy pyramid roof of the Merchants' Union Trust Company. This, with its two attendant banks on either side, is undoubtedly the most extraordinary architectural curiosity Chestnut street can boast. The façade, with its appalling quirks and twists of stone and iron grillwork, its sculptured Huns and Medusa faces, is something to contemplate with alarm.
After reaching Seventh street, Chestnut becomes less adventurous. Perhaps awed by the simple and stately beauty of Independence Hall and its neighbors, it restrains itself from any further originality until Fourth street, where the ornate Gothic of the Provident claims the eye. From our balcony we can see only a part of Independence Hall, but we look down on the faded elms along the pavement in front and the long line of iron posts beloved of small boys for leapfrog. Then the eye climbs to the tall and graceful staff above ​the Drexel Building, where the flag ripples cleanly against the blue. And our view is bounded, far away to the east, by the massive tower of the Victor factory in Camden.
It is great fun to watch Chestnut street from the little balcony. On hot days, when the white sunlight fills the street with a dazzle of brightness and bands of dark shadow, it is amusing to see how all pedestrians keep to the shady southern pavements. When a driving shower comes up and the slants and rods of rain lash against the dingy brownstone fronts, one may look out and see passers-by huddled under the awnings and the mounted policemen's horses sleek as satin in the wet. The pavement under our balcony is notable for its slipperiness: it has been chipped into ribs by stonemasons to make it less so. In the rain it shines like a mirror. And our corner has its excitements, too. Once every few months the gas mains take it into their pipes to explode and toss manholes and paving sixty feet in air.
The part of Chestnut street that is surveyed by our balcony is a delightful highway: friendly, pleasantly dignified, with just a touch of old-fashioned manners and homeliness. It is rather akin to a London street. And best of all, almost underneath our balcony is a little lunch room where you can get custard ice cream with honey poured over it, and we think it is the best thing in the world.