# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philadelphia (Pennsylvania)

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​PHILADELPHIA, the third city in population in the United States, the chief city of Pennsylvania, and a port of entry, co-extensive with Philadelphia county, extending W. from the Delaware river beyond the Schuylkill River, and from below the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers N.E. about 23 m. along the Delaware river and Poquessing Creek. Independence Hall, which is a few squares east by south of the city hall, is in 39° 56′ 57·5″ N. and 75° 8′ 54·75″ W. The port is about 102 m. from the Atlantic Ocean, and the city hall is 90 m. by rail S.S.W of New York and 135 m. N.E. of Washington. The city has an area of 132·7 sq. m. At the southern extremity are lowlands protected by dikes from the tide, the business centre between the rivers is about 40 ft. higher but level, the district west of the Schuylkill is generally rolling, and in the upper district the surface rises from the Delaware toward the north-west until in the extreme north-west is a picturesque district overlooking Wissahickon Creek from hills exceeding 400 ft. in height
Population.—When the first United States census was taken, in 1790, Philadelphia was the second largest city in the Union, and had a population of 28,522. It held this rank until 1830, when it was exceeded in size by Baltimore as well as by New York. In 1850 it was smaller also than Boston, but in 1854 the Consolidation Act extended its boundaries so as to include all Philadelphia county and in 1860 the city had risen again to second rank. This rank it held until 1890 when, although its population had grown to 1,046,964, it was 50,000 less than that of Chicago. In 1900, with a population of 1,293,679, it was still farther behind both New York and Chicago. In 1900, of the total population, 998,357, or 77·18%, were native-born, as against only 63% native-born in New York and 65·43% native-born in Chicago. Of Philadelphia’s native-born white population, however, 414,093, or 44·24%, were of foreign-born parentage. The foreign-born population included 98,427 born in Ireland, 71,319 born in Germany, 36,752 born in England, 28,951 born in Russia (largely Hebrews). 17,830 born in Italy, 8479 born in Scotland and 5154 born in Austria; and the coloured consisted of 62,613 negroes, 1165 Chinese, 234 Indians and 12 Japanese. In 1910 the population was 1,549,008.
Streets.—With the exception of a limited number of diagonal thoroughfares and of streets laid out in outlying districts in conformity with the natural contour of the ground the plan of the city is regular. Market Street—which Penn called High Street—is the principal thoroughfare east and west, Broad Street the principal thoroughfare north and south, and these streets intersect at right angles at City Hall Square in the business centre. The streets parallel with Broad are numbered from First or Front Street west from the Delaware River to Sixty-Third Street, taking the prefix “North” north of Market Street and the prefix “South” south of it; the streets parallel with Market are named mostly from trees and from the governors and counties of Pennsylvania.
The wholesale district is centred at the east end of Market Street near the Delaware river. The best retail shops are farther west on the south side of Chestnut Street and on Market and Arch streets. Most of the leading banks and trust companies are on Chestnut Street and on Third Street between Chestnut and Walnut streets. Several of the larger office buildings and the stations of the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading railways are in the vicinity of the city hall; here too, are the Baldwin Locomotive Works. The large textile mills, the great coal wharves and the Cramp Ship-Yards are to the north-east along the Delaware, and in districts west of these are the leading manufactories of iron and steel. There are large sugar refineries in the south-eastern part of the city. Rittenhouse Square, a short distance south-west of the city hall, is the centre of the old aristocratic residential district, and the south side of Walnut Street between Fourteenth and Nineteenth streets is a fashionable parade There are fine residences on North Broad Street and on some of the streets crossing it, and many beautiful villas in the picturesque suburbs of the north-west. The most congested tenements, occupied largely by Italians, Hebrews and negroes, are along the alleys between the rivers and south of Market Street, often in the rear of some of the best of the older residences.
The principal structure is the city hall (or “Public Buildings”) one of the largest buildings in the world in ground space (⁠4+1/2⁠ acres). It rises 548 ft. to the top of a colossal bronze statue (37 ft. high) of William Penn (by Alexander Calder) surmounting the tower. It accommodates the state and county courts as well as the municipal and county offices. The foundation stone was laid in August 1872. On its first floor is Joseph A. Bailly’s statue of Washington, which was erected in front of Independence Hall in 1869. About the Public Buildings are statues of Generals McClellan and Reynolds, President McKinley, and Joseph Leidy and St Gaudens’s “Pilgrim.” On all sides are great buildings: on the north the masonic temple (1868–1873); on the south the stately Betz Building; on the west the enormous Broad Street station of the Pennsylvania railway. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Oddfellows’ Temple are among other notable buildings in the vicinity. The post office, facing Ninth Street and extending from Market Street to Chestnut Street, was opened in 1884; in front is a seated statue of Benjamin Franklin, by John J. Boyle. The mint is at the corner of Sixteenth and Spring Garden streets. The custom-house, on Chestnut Street, was designed by William Strickland (1787–1854), in his day the leading American architect. It was modelled after the Parthenon of Athens, was built for the Second United States Bank, was completed in 1824, and was put to its present use in 1845. Other prominent buildings of ​which Strickland was the architect are the stock exchange, St Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church, St Stephen’s Church, the almshouse and the United States Naval Asylum. The main building of Girard College (on Girard Avenue, between North 19th and North 25th streets), of which Thomas Ustick Walter (1804–1887), a pupil of Strickland’s, was the architect, is one of the finest specimens of pure Greek architecture in America. Near the Schuylkill river, in West Philadelphia, are the buildings of the university of Pennsylvania. Its free museum of science and art, at South 23rd and Spruce, on the opposite side of the river, was built from the designs of Walter Cope, Frank Miles Day and Wilson Eyre, and its north-western part was first opened in 1899. Tall steel-frame structures, of which the Betz Building, completed in 1893, was the first, have become numerous. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, east of Logan Square, was begun in 1846 and was eighteen years in building. The Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church is one of the most handsome churches in the city. The South Memorial Church of the Advocate (1897), on North 18th and Diamond streets, is a reproduction on a smaller scale of Amiens Cathedral.
Perhaps the most famous historical monument in the United States is Independence Hall, on Chestnut Street between Fifth and Sixth streets, designed for the state house by Andrew Hamilton (c. 1676–1741), speaker of the assembly, and was used for that purpose until 1799. The foundations were laid in 1731 and the main building was ready for occupancy in 1735, although the entire building was not completed until 1751. The steeple was taken down in 1774 but was restored by Strickland in 1828, and further restorations of the building to its original condition were effected later. In the east room on the first floor of this building the second Continental Congress met on the 10th of May 1775, George Washington was chosen commander-in-chief of the Continental army on the 15th of June 1775, and the Declaration of Independence was adopted on the 4th of July 1776. The room contains much of the furniture of those days, and on its walls are portraits of forty-five of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration and a portrait of Washington by Peale. At the head of the stairway is the famous Liberty bell, which bears the inscription, “Proclaim liberty through all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” and is supposed (without adequate evidence) to have been the first bell to announce the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. It was cast in England in 1752, was cracked soon after it was brought to America, was recast with more copper in Philadelphia, and was cracked again in 1835 while being tolled in memory of Chief Justice John Marshall, and on the 22nd of February 1843 this crack was so increased as nearly to destroy its sound. On the second floor is the original of the charter which William Penn granted to the city in 1701 and the painting of Penn’s treaty with the Indians by Benjamin West. The building has been set apart by the city, which purchased it from the state in 1816, as a museum of historical relics. On the north-west corner of Independence Square is old Congress hall, in which Congress sat from 1790 to 1800, and in which Washington was inaugurated in 1793 and Adams in 1797. At the north-east corner is the old city-hall, on the second floor of which the Supreme Court of the United States sat from 1791 to 1900. A short distance east of Independence Square in Carpenters’ Hall, in which the first continental congress assembled on the 5th of September 1774 and in which the national convention in 1787 framed the present constitution of the United States; the building was also the headquarters of the Pennsylvania committee of correspondence, the basement was used as a magazine for ammunition during the War of Independence, and from 1791 to 1797 the whole of it was occupied by the First United States Bank. The Carpenters’ Company (established in 1724) erected the building in 1770, and since 1857 has preserved it wholly for its historic associations. On Arch Street near the Delaware is preserved as a national monument the house in which Betsy Ross, in 1777, made what has been called the first United States flag, in accordance with the resolution of Congress of the 14th of June. Not far from this house is Christ Church (Protestant Episcopal), a fine colonial edifice designed mainly by Dr John Kearsley (1684–1772). The corner stone was laid in 1727, but the steeple, in part designed by Benjamin Franklin and containing a famous chime of eight bells, was not completed until 1754. The interior was restored to its ancient character in 1882, the pews of Washington and Franklin are preserved, and a set of communion plate presented to the church by Queen Anne in 1708 is used on great occasions. In the churchyard are the graves of Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, Brigadier-General John Forbes, John Penn, Peyton Randolph, Francis Hopkinson and Benjamin Rush. St Peter’s, the second Protestant Episcopal Church in the city, has a massive tower and a simple spire; within are the original pews. In the south-east part of the city near the Delaware is the ivy-clad Old Swedes’ Church, built of brick in 1698–1700. The house which William Penn built about 1683 for his daughter Letitia was removed to Fairmount Park and rebuilt in 1883. In Germantown (q.v.), a suburb which was annexed in 1854, are several other historic buildings.
The dominant feature of the domestic architecture is the long rows, in street after street, of plain two-storey or three-storey dwellings of red (“Philadelphia”) pressed brick with white marble steps and trimmings, and with white or green shutters, each intended for one family.
Parks.—Fairmount Park extends along both banks of the Schuylkill for about 5 m. and from the confluence of the Schuylkill and Wissahickon Creek it continues up the latter stream through a romantic glen for 6 m. Its area is about 3418 acres. Five acres of an estate belonging to Robert Morris during the War of Independence and known as “Fair Mount,” or “The Hills,” were purchased by the municipality for “a city waterworks and for park purposes” in 1812, and from this beginning the park grew to its present dimensions by purchases and gifts. The principal buildings in the park are: the McPherson mansion, once the property of Benedict Arnold and in October 1780 confiscated by the committee of safety; the Peters (or Belmont) Mansion, built in 1745 and much frequented by the notables of the Revolutionary and early national period; the birth-place of David Rittenhouse, the astronomer, and a monastery of the German pietists, both on the banks of Wissahickon; and memorial hall and horticultural hall, both survivals of the centennial exhibition of 1876. On Lemon Hill, near the south end of the park, stands the Robert Morris mansion; in the vicinity is the cabin which was General U. S. Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia, during the winter of 1864–1865. Near the Columbia Avenue entrance to the park and near the East Park Reservoir are the children’s playhouse and playground, endowed by the will of Mrs Sarah A. Smith (d. 1895). At the Green Street entrance is an imposing monument to Washington, designed by Rudolph Siemering and erected by the Society of the Cincinnati in 1896–1897, with a bronze equestrian statue. The Smith Memorial entrance, white granite with bronze statues, was erected in memory of the officers of the Civil War. The park also contains a monument to Lincoln by Randolph Rogers; an equestrian statue of Grant by Daniel Chester French and Edward C. Potter; an equestrian statue of Major-General James Gordon Meade by Alexander Milne Calder; an equestrian statue of Joan of Arc by Emmanuel Fremiet; an heroic bust of James A. Garfield by Augustus St Gaudens; statues of Columbus, Humboldt, Schiller and Goethe; a Tam O’ Shanter group of four figures in red sandstone by James Thom; John J. Boyle’s “Stone Age in America”; Cyrus Edwin Dallin’s “Medicine Man”; Wilhelm Wolff’s “Wounded Lioness” (at the entrance to the Zoological Gardens); Albert Wolff’s “Lion Fighter”; Auguste Nicolas Cain’s “Lioness bringing a Wild Boar to her Cubs”; Edward Kemeys’s “Hudson Bay Wolves”; Frederick Remington’s “Cow Boy”; and several artistic fountains, and a Japanese temple-gate. In the down-town district, Franklin, Washington, Rittenhouse and Logan squares, equidistant from the city-hall, have been reserved for public parks from the founding of the city; in Rittenhouse Square is the bronze “Lion and Serpent” of A. L. Barye. In Clarence H. Clark Park, West Philadelphia, is Frank Edwin Elwell’s group “Dickens and Little Nell.” In Broad and Spring Garden streets opposite the Baldwin Locomotive Works is Herbert Adams’s statue of Matthias William Baldwin (1795–1866), founder of the works. Close to the bank of the Delaware, some distance N.N.E. of the city-hall, is the small Penn Treaty Park with a monument to mark the site of the great elm tree under which Penn, according to tradition, negotiated his treaty with the Indians in 1683. In the south-west part of the city, along the Schuylkill, is Bartram’s botanical garden (27 acres), which the city ​added to its park system in 1891; in it is the stone house, with ivy-covered walls, which the famous botanist built with his own hands.
Through the efforts of the City Park Association, organized in 1888, a number of outlying parks, connecting parkways and small triangular or circular parks, have been placed on the city plan. Among these are League Island Park (300 acres), opposite the United States navy yard on League Island; Penny Pack Creek Park (about 1200 acres), extending 6⁠1/2⁠ m. along Penny Pack Creek, in the north-east; Cobb’s Creek Park, extending about 4 m. along the western border; Fairmount Parkway, 300 ft. wide on a direct line south-east from Fairmount Park to Logan Square and somewhat narrower from Logan Square to the city-hall; and Torresdale Parkway (300 ft. wide and 10⁠1/2⁠ m. long), from Hunting Park, 4⁠1/2⁠ m. north of the city-hall, along a direct line north-east to the city limits. A plaza at the intersection of Broad and Johnson streets, radiating streets therefrom, and the widening of Broad Street to 300 ft. from this plaza to League Island Park are also on the city plan. Laurel Hill cemetery, on a high bank of the Schuylkill and contiguous to Fairmount Park, is the city’s principal burying ground; in it are the tombs of Dr Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic explorer, and Major-General Meade.
Theatres.—The first Shakespearean performance in the United States was probably at Philadelphia in 1749; another company played there in 1754 and 1759; and in 1766 was built the Old Southwark theatre, in which Major John André and Captain John Peter De Lancey acted during the British occupation of the city, and which after twenty years of illegal existence was opened “by authority” in 1789. The Walnut Street theatre (1808) is said to be the oldest play-house in the United States. Other theatres are the Garrick, the large Academy of Music, the Chestnut Street opera house, the Lyric, the Adelphi, the Park and the German.
Clubs.—Among social clubs are the Union League, the University (1881), the Philadelphia, the City, the Markham, the Manufacturers (1887), the Rittenhouse, the Lawyers, the Clover, the Pen and Pencil, the Art, the Mercantile, several country clubs and athletic clubs (notably the Racket), and the foremost cricket clubs in the United States, the Belmont, the Philadelphia, the Keystone, the Merion (at Haverford), and the Germantown (at Manheim).
Museums, Learned Societies and Libraries.—In the southern part of Fairmount Park is a zoological garden with an excellent collection. Its site is the former estate of John Penn, grandson of William Penn. The collection is an outgrowth of the museum, the first in the United States, opened by Charles Willson Peale in Independence Hall in 1802. It is now owned by the Zoological Society (incorporated in 1859) and was opened in 1874. Other museums in Fairmount Park are: the botanical collection in horticultural hall; and in memorial hall the general art collections of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts and the Wilstach collection of paintings (about 500), including examples of the Italian schools from the 15th to the 17th centuries and of modern French and American painters. Bartram’s botanical garden, mentioned above as a city park, was established in 1728 by John Bartram (1699–1777) and is the oldest botanical garden in America. The Philadelphia Commercial Museums, founded in 1894, is a notable institution for promoting the foreign commerce of the United States, having a collection of raw materials and manufactured products from all countries, a laboratory and a library. The institution investigates trade conditions and the requirements of markets in all parts of the world, maintains a bureau of information, issues a weekly bulletin for American exporters and a monthly publication for foreign buyers, and has published several “foreign commercial guides” and other commercial works. The museum is maintained chiefly by municipal appropriations and by fees. Its control is vested in “The Board of Trustees of the Philadelphia Museums,” composed of fourteen citizens of Philadelphia chosen for life and eight ex officio members who are the incumbents of the leading state and municipal offices. There are home and foreign advisory boards, and the immediate management is under a director. In 1727 Franklin, then in his twenty-second year, formed most of his “ingenious acquaintance into a club,” which he called the Junto, “for mutual improvement,” and out of the Junto grew in 1731 the library of the Library Company of Philadelphia, which he spoke of as the “mother of all North American subscription libraries,” but which was not the first subscription library in North America. The Library Company of Philadelphia absorbed in 1769 the Union Library, which had been founded some years before; and in 1792 the Loganian library, a valuable collection of classical and other works provided for under the will of James Logan, a friend of Penn, was transferred to it. Subsequently it acquired by bequest the libraries of the Rev. Samuel Preston of London and of William Mackenzie of Philadelphia. Among the rarities in the latter was a copy of Caxton’s Golden Legend (1486). In 1869 the Library Company was made the beneficiary, under the will of Dr James Rush (1786–1869), of an estate valued at about a million dollars, and with this money the Ridgway branch was established in 1878. The library has owned its building since 1790; the building on the present site was opened in 1880 and was enlarged in 1889.
The American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin in 1743, is the oldest and the most famous academy of science in America. Its organization was the immediate consequence of a circular by Franklin entitled, A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America. In 1769 it united with (and officially took the name of) “The American Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge.” Among its early presidents were Franklin, Rittenhouse and Jefferson. It has a valuable library—about 50,000 vols.—containing the great mass of the correspondence of Franklin; here, too, are many interesting relics, among them the chair in which Jefferson sat while writing, the Declaration of Independence and an autograph copy of the Declaration. The society has published 27 quarto vols. of Transactions (1771–1908); its Proceedings have been published regularly since 1838, and in 1884 those from 1744 to 1838, compiled from the manuscript minutes, were also published. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, founded in 1812, has been noted for its collection of birds since it acquired, in 1846, the collection of the duc de Rivoli numbering more than 12,000 specimens; several smaller collections have since been added. The academy has a notable collection of shells and fossils and the “types” of Leidy, Cope, Say, Conrad and other naturalists, and a library. It is composed of the following “sections”: biological and microscopical (1868), entomological (1876), botanical (1876), mineralogical and geological (1877) and ornithological (1891). It has published a Journal since 1817 and its Proceedings since 1841, and periodicals on entomology, conchology and ornithology. To a few young men and women it gives training in scientific investigation without charge. The Pennsylvania Historical Society, organized in 1824, has a valuable collection of historical material, including the papers of the Penn family and the Charlemagne Tower collection of American colonial laws, and many early American printed handbills and books (especially of Bradford, Franklin and Christopher Saur), portraits and relics. With the proceeds of the society’s publication fund the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography has been published since 1877. The Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, organized in 1858, is the oldest numismatic organization in the United States; it has a collection of coins, and since 1865 it has published its Proceedings. The College of Physicians and Surgeons has an excellent medical library. The free library of Philadelphia (established 1891) includes a main library and several branches. Other important libraries are that of the university of Pennsylvania, the Mercantile, that of Franklin Institute, that of the Law Association of Philadelphia, the Athenæum, that of the German Society of Pennsylvania, and Apprentices'. The free museum of science and art of the university of Pennsylvania has valuable archaeological collections, notably the American and the Babylonian collections made by university expeditions.
Schools.—William Penn in his frame of government provided for a committee of manners, education and art. The assembly, in March 1683, passed an act which provided that all children should be taught to read and write by the time they were twelve years of age, that then they should be taught some useful trade, and that for every child not so taught the parent or guardian should be fined five pounds. At a meeting of the provincial council held in Philadelphia in 1683 the governor and council appointed as schoolmaster, Enoch Flower, who for twenty years had held that position in England. But schools were left almost wholly to private initiative until 1818. The first grammar school, commonly known in its early years as the Friends’ free school, was established in 1689 under the care of the celebrated George Keith; although maintained by the Friends it was open to all, and for more than sixty years was the only public place for free instruction in the province. It was chartered by Penn in 1701, 1708 and 1711, in time became known as the William Penn Charter School, and is still a secondary school on Twelfth Street. In 1740 a building was erected for a “charity school” and for a “house of worship,” but the school had not been opened when, in 1749, Franklin published his Proposals relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania. Under the influence of this publication a new educational association was formed which purchased the building and in January 1751 opened in it an institution that was chartered as an “academy and charitable school” in 1753, was rechartered as a college and academy in 1755, and became the university of Pennsylvania by act of the state legislature passed in 1791. The university occupied the site of the present post office from 1802 until 1872, but was then removed to grounds near the western bank of the Schuylkill.
The foundation of the present public school system was laid in 1818 by an act of the legislature which constituted the city and county of Philadelphia the first school district of Pennsylvania and provided for the establishment therein of free schools for indigent orphans and the children of indigent parents; the same act authorized the establishment of a model school for the training of teachers, which was the pioneer school for this purpose in America. In 1834 free elementary schools were authorized for all children of school age, and since then the system has developed until it embraces the Central High School for boys, which has a semi-collegiate course with a department of pedagogy and confers the degrees of B.A. and B.S.; a Normal High School for girls, into which the model school was converted in 1848, in which most of the teachers of the city are trained and which only graduates of the Girls’ High School are permitted to enter; the William Penn High School for girls (opened 1909) with academic, commercial, applied arts, ​household science and library economy departments; a School of industrial arts; two manual training schools; about one hundred night schools (attended mainly by adults); several special schools for habitual truants or insubordinate and disorderly children; and a number of vacation schools and playgrounds for the summer season. In 1909 district high schools were planned as a part of the public school system. The city has also many private high schools and academies.
Besides the university of Pennsylvania and the Central High School for boys the collegiate institutions are La Salle College (Roman Catholic; opened in 1867) and the Temple University (non-sectarian; chartered in 1888 as Temple College after four years of teaching; in 1891 received the power to confer degrees); which is designed especially for self-supporting men and women and was founded by Russell Hermann Conwell (b. 1842), a lawyer and journalist, who entered the Baptist ministry in 1879, was pastor of the Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia in 1881–1891, became pastor of the Grace Baptist Temple in 1891, and was a public lecturer. He was the first president of the Temple College, which was begun in connexion with the work of his church. Temple University offers instruction both day and evening, has classes from the kindergarten to the highest university grades, and courses in business, civil engineering, domestic art and domestic science, physical training, pedagogy and music; it has a theological school (1893), a law school (1894), a medical school (1901) and a school of pharmacy (1902); and in 1907 the Philadelphia Dental College, one of the best known dental schools in the country, joined the university. In 1893 a trust fund left by Hyman Gratz was used to found the Gratz College for the education of teachers in Jewish schools and for the study of the Hebrew language, and Jewish history, literature and religion; the college is under the control of the Kaal Kidosh Mikoe Israel of Philadelphia. Bryn Mawr College (q.v.), one of the leading institutions in America for the higher education of women, is a few miles beyond the city limits. Schools of medicine, for which Philadelphia has long been noted, include the department of medicine of the university of Pennsylvania (opened in 1765); Jefferson Medical College (1825); the Woman’s Medical College (1850), the first chartered school of medicine for women to confer the degree of M.D.; the Medico-Chirurgical College (1881); Hahnemann (homoeopathic) Medical College (1888); and the department of medicine of Temple University (1901). Among other professional schools are the department of law of the university of Pennsylvania (1790), the law school of Temple University (1894); the divinity school of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1862); the Lutheran theological Seminary (1864); Saint Vincent’s (Theological) Seminary (R.C., 1868); the theological school of Temple University (non-sectarian, 1893); Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery (1856); Philadelphia Dental College (1863; since 1907 a part of Temple University); the department of dentistry of the university of Pennsylvania (1878); the department of dentistry of the Medico-Chirurgical College (1897); the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (1821); the department of pharmacy of the Medico-Chirurgical College (1898); and the school of pharmacy of Temple University (1902). Girard College (see Girard, Stephen) is a noted institution for the education of poor white orphan boys. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, founded in 1805 in Independence Hall, was the first art school in America; it occupies a fine building on Broad and Cherry streets, with a gallery of about 500 paintings, including examples of early American masters (especially Gilbert Stuart, of whom it has the largest collection), of modern American artists (especially in the Temple collection), and, in the collection of Henry C. Gibson, of French landscapes. The Drexel Institute of Arts and Sciences, founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel and endowed by him with $2,000,000, occupies a beautiful building (Chestnut Street and 32nd; opened in 1891) and embraces the following departments: architecture, science and technology, commerce and finance, domestic science, domestic arts, library school, English language and literature, history, civil government and economics, physical training, evening classes, department of free public lectures and concerts, library and reading room, and museum and picture gallery. The institution bestows free scholarships on a considerable number of students and charges the others very moderate fees. Its building houses a library, a collection of rare prints and autographs, and a museum with a picture gallery and exhibits of embroidery, textiles, ceramics, wood and metal work, &c. The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art founded in 1876 and opened in 1877, has schools at Broad and Pine streets—the museum is housed in Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park. The school is a pioneer in America; it was originally a school of applied art, but in 1884 the Philadelphia textile school was established as another department. The Wagner Free Institute of Science, founded by William Wagner in 1855, has a library and a natural history museum, provides free lectures on scientific subjects, and publishes Transactions, containing scientific memoirs. The Franklin Institute for the promotion of mechanic arts (1824) has a technical library (with full patent records of several nations); since 1824 it has held exhibitions of manufactures; it has published since 1826 the Journal of the Franklin Institute; the institute provides lecture courses and has night schools of drawing, machine design and naval architecture. The Spring Garden Institute (1851), with day classes in mechanical drawing, handiwork, and applied electricity, and night classes in those subjects and in freehand and architectural drawing; the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (1836), of which Emily Sartain, a daughter of John Sartain, became principal in 1886; and a school of horology (1894) are other manual and industrial training schools within the city, and not far beyond the city limits is the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades (1888), endowed by Isaiah Vansant Williamson (1803–1889) with more than $5,000,000 for the free training of bricklayers, machinists, carpenters, pattern makers, stationary engineers and other mechanics. The Lincoln Institution and Educational Home until 1907 was devoted mainly to the education of Indians.
Newspapers and Periodicals.—The American Weekly Mercury was the first newspaper published in Philadelphia and the third in the colonies. It was first issued on the 22nd of December 1719 by Andrew Sowle Bradford, a son of William Bradford, the first printer in the Middle Colonies, and was the first newspaper in these colonies. The second newspaper in the city and in the province was the Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. It was established in 1728 by Samuel Keimer, but less than a year afterwards it became the property of Benjamin Franklin and Hugh Meredith, who shortened its title to the Pennsylvania Gazette. The only one of the newspapers established during the colonial era which survived the 19th century was the Pennsylvania Packet or General Advertiser, which was started in 1771 by John Dunlap, and during the War of Independence was published semi-weekly, with occasional “postscripts” of important news; in 1839 it was absorbed by the North American (1829), with which the United States Gazette (1789) was united in 1847 and which is still published as the North American. The Aurora and General Advertiser, established in 1790 by Benjamin Franklin Bache (1769–1798), a grandson of Franklin, was a notorious anti-Federalist organ in its early years. A pioneer among newspapers at modern prices is the Public Ledger, founded in 1836, and in 1864 purchased by George William Childs. Other prominent daily papers now published are the Inquirer (Republican; 1829), the Press (Republican; 1857), the Record (Independent Democrat; 1870), the Demokrat (German; 1838), the Evening Bulletin (Republican; established in 1815 as the American Sentinel), the Evening Item (1847), the Evening Telegraph (Independent Republican; 1864), and the Tageblatt (Labour; German; 1877). Many of the earlier literary periodicals of America were published in Philadelphia; among them were the American Magazine (1757–1758 and 1769), Thomas Paine’s Pennsylvania Magazine (1775–1776), the Columbian Magazine (1786–1790; called the Universal Asylum in 1790) which was edited by Matthew Carey and by A. J. Dallas, the excellent American Museum (1787–1792 and 1798), with which Carey was connected, the Port Folio (1801–1827; edited until 1812 by Joseph Dennie) and the Analectic (1802–1812) which succeeded Select Reviews and Spirit of the Foreign Magazines (1809), of which Washington Irving was editor in 1813–1814, and to which Paulding and Verplanck contributed, and the American Quarterly Review (1827–1837). Among others were: Godey’s Lady’s Book (1830–1877), for which Poe, Irving, Longfellow, Willis and others wrote; and Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine (1840–1859), with the contributors just named and Cooper, John G. Saxe, E. P. Whipple and others. Lippincott’s Magazine (1868) is a monthly, best known for its fiction. The Saturday Evening Post, which has the largest circulation of the weekly publications, and the Ladies’ Home Journal (1883), the semi-monthly with the largest circulation, are owned by the same company. The Farm Journal (1877) is a well-known agricultural monthly.
Trusts, Charities, &c.—Girard College and thirty-eight other charities are maintained out of the proceeds of as many trusts, which are administered by a board of directors composed of twelve members, appointed by the courts of common pleas, and the mayor, president of the select council, and president of the common council as ex-officio members. In 1907 the invested capital of the Girard Trust alone amounted to $24,467,770 and the income from it was $1,988,054. The total capital of all the minor trusts in the same year was $1,583,026 and the income from this was $56,730. Among the minor trust funds are: Wills Hospital (established in 1825); Benjamin Franklin Fund (1790) for aiding young married artificers; Thomas D. Grover Fund (1849) for providing the poor with fuel and food; Mary Shields Almshouse Fund (1880); and the John Scott Medal Fund (1816) for bestowing medals upon young inventors. To Franklin Philadelphia is largely indebted for the Pennsylvania hospital, the first hospital in the United States, which was projected in 1751 and is one of the foremost of nearly one hundred such institutions in the city. The municipal hospital for contagious diseases and hospitals for the indigent and the insane are maintained by the municipality, but most of the other institutions for the sick are maintained by medical schools and religious sects. Municipal charities are under the supervision of the department of public health and charities. Philadelphia is the seat of the state penitentiary for the eastern district, in which, in 1829, was inaugurated the “individual” system, i.e. the separate imprisonment and discriminating treatment of criminals with a view to effecting their reform.
Transportation and Commerce.—Nearly every street in the business centre and about one-third of the streets throughout the ​built-up portion of the city have a single track of electric railway (overhead trolley), and most of the wider ones, except Broad Street, which has none, have a double track. A subway line has been opened for a short distance under Market Street, and other subway lines, as well as elevated lines, have been projected. The entire system, embracing in 1909 a total of 624·21 m., is operated by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company. Several inter-urban electric lines afford cheap service to neighbouring towns and cities. The extensive railway system under the control of the Pennsylvania railway together with the Baltimore & Ohio railway affords transportation facilities north to New York, south to Baltimore, Washington and the south, west to the bituminous coalfields of Pennsylvania, the grain fields of the Middle West, and to Pittsburg, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Chicago. The Philadelphia & Reading railway connects the city with the great anthracite coal region, and both the Philadelphia & Reading and the Pennsylvania control a line to Atlantic City. The Schuylkill is navigable for small craft to the “Fall line,” about 7⁠3/4⁠ m. above its mouth and for vessels drawing 26 ft. to the oil refineries at Point Breeze, 3 m. from the mouth; from Point Breeze to the head of navigation the channel depth varies from 14 to 22 ft. The Delaware river is navigable to Trenton, New Jersey, about 30 m. above the upper end of the port of Philadelphia, and although in its natural condition this river was only 17 ft. deep at low water in its shallowest part below the port this depth was increased between 1836 and 1899 to 26 ft. (except in three shoal stretches), and a project of the Federal government was adopted in 1899 for increasing the depth to 30 ft. and the width to 600 ft. In 1905 the city of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania appropriated $750,000 for the improvement of the river between the city and the southern boundary of the state. Steamships ply regularly between Philadelphia and several European ports, ports in the West Indies, and ports of the United States.
The port extends from the Pennsylvania railway terminal at Greenwich Point up the Delaware River to the Philadelphia & Reading terminal at Port Richmond, a distance of about 8 m., and there are minor harbour facilities on the Schuylkill. The natural facilities, together with the improvements that have been made, were long offset by an inefficient port administration under an antiquated law of 1803 which permitted the wharves to pass largely under private control; but in 1907 the old board of port wardens was abolished and in its place was created a municipal department of wharves, docks and ferries.
Until the opening of the Erie Canal, in 1825, Philadelphia was the emporium of the United States; it was then displaced by New York. Some years later Philadelphia lost its lucrative China trade, and its decline in commercial importance continued until 1883, when the value of its imports amounted to only $32,811,045, the value of its exports to only $38,662,434, and the city was out-ranked in foreign trade by New York, Boston, San Francisco and New Orleans. By 1900, however, the value of its imports had risen to $49,191,236 and the value of its exports to $81,327,704; in 1909 the value of the imports was $78,003,464, an amount less than one-eleventh that of New York, but exceeded only by New York and Boston, and the value of the exports was $80,650,274, an amount less than one-eighth that of New York, but exceeded only by New York, Galveston and New Orleans. The principal imports are sugar, drugs and chemicals, goatskins, wool, tobacco, jute and burlap, and cotton goods, iron ore, manufactured iron, hides and bananas; the principal exports are iron (manufactured), steel, petroleum, wheat, flour, lard, cattle and meat products. The proximity of the city to New York, whence many of its products are shipped, makes the statistics of its direct imports and exports no true index of its commercial importance.
Manufactures.—Philadelphia has always been one of the foremost manufacturing centres in the United States, and in 1905 it was outranked only by New York and Chicago. The total value of its factory product was $519,981,812 in 1900, and $591,388,078 in 1905. Measured by the value of the products, Philadelphia ranked first among the cities of the country in 1905 in refining sugar and molasses ($37,182,504; 13·4% of the total of the country) and in the manufacture of carpets and rugs ($25,232,510; 41% of the total of the country), leather ($23,903,239; 9·5% of the total of the country), hosiery and knit goods ($15,770,873; 11·5% of the total of the country), woollen goods ($12,239,881; 8·6% of the total of the country), and felt hats ($5,847,771; 16% of the total of the country); second in the manufacture of worsted goods ($26,964,533; 16% of the total of the country) and in dyeing and finishing textiles ($4,371,006; 8·6% of the total of the country); and third in the manufacture of clothing ($31,031,882; 5·1% of the total of the country) and silk goods ($5,079,193; 3·8% of the total of the country). Other large industries are the manufacture of foundry and machine-shop products, cotton goods, malt liquors, iron and steel, chemicals, cigars and cigarettes, soap, confectionery, furniture, paints, boots and shoes, electrical apparatus, and cordage and twine, and among notable individual establishments are the Baldwin Locomotive Works, the Cramp Ship-Yards and the Disston or Keystone Saw Works. There are petroleum refineries at Point Breeze near the mouth of the Schuylkill; petroleum is piped to them from the north-west part of the state.
Water Supply.—The first municipal waterworks, installed in 1799–1801, pumped water by steam power from the Schuylkill into an elevated tank in Centre Square, where the city-hall now stands; this was one of the earliest applications of steam to municipal water pumping. In 1812–1815 new steam works were installed on Quarry Hill, or Fairmount; in 1819–1822 pumping works operated by water power were substituted for those operated by steam; and it was in great part for the preservation of the purity of the water supply that Fairmount Park was created. The park, however, did not serve its purpose in this respect. The water was impure and inadequate: additional works were installed from time to time, mostly on the Schuylkill, whence water was pumped by steam to reservoirs from which distribution was made by gravity; and to meet the increasing demands new filtration works and accessories were installed in 1901–1908. These take the water mainly from the Delaware river.
Government and Finances.—Inasmuch as it has been proved that in 1683 there was in use in Philadelphia a seal bearing the inscription “Philadelphia .83. William. Penn. Proprietor. and. Governor” and in all respects different from the provincial seal or the county seal, it seems that there was then a distinct government for the city. In July 1684 the provincial council, presided over by William Penn, appointed a committee to draft a borough charter, but there is no record of the work of this committee, and it is uncertain what the government of Philadelphia was for the next seventeen years. In 1701 Penn himself issued a charter creating a close corporation modelled after the English borough and under this the city was governed until the War of Independence. Upon the annulment of the Penn charter by the Declaration of Independence, government by commissions was established, but in 1789 a new charter was granted and, although the government has since undergone many and great changes, it is by virtue of this charter that the city remains a corporation to-day. The Consolidation Act of 1854 extended the boundaries to the county lines without destroying the county government, changed the corporate name from “Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of Philadelphia” to “the City of Philadelphia,” created the offices of controller and receiver of taxes, and considerably modified the powers and duties of the corporation and its officers. The Bullitt Act, passed in 1885 to go into effect in 1887, and since 1885 amended and supplemented, is a new charter except in name; particularly notable is its transfer of the balance of power from the councils and various self-perpetuating commissions to the mayor.
The mayor is elected for a term of four years and is not eligible to the office for the next succeeding term. With the advice and consent of the select council he appoints the directors of the departments of public safety, public works, health and charities, supplies and (since 1907) wharves, docks and ferries, and the three members of the civil service commission. He may appoint three persons to examine any department and for reasons given in writing may remove any officer whom he has appointed. His veto power extends to items in appropriation bills, but any item or ordinance may be passed over his veto within five days of such veto by an affirmative vote of three-fifths of the members elected to each council. The select council is composed of one member from each of the 47 wards, and in the common council each ward has one member for every four thousand names on the last completed assessment list (including names of those paying poll taxes as well as those paying taxes on real or personal property); in 1909 there were 80 members of the common council. The several administrative departments ​are: public safety, public works, receiver of taxes, city treasurer, city controller, law, education, charities and corrections, supplies, wharves, docks and ferries, civil service commission and sinking fund commission (composed of the mayor, the city controller and a commissioner elected by a majority vote of the city councils). Members of the select council are elected for three years—one-third each year; members of the common council for two years—one half each year; and the receiver of taxes, the city treasurer, the city controller, and the city solicitor, who is the head of the department of law, for a term of three years. The police constitute a bureau of the department of public safety, and at their head is a superintendent appointed by the director of the department with the approval of the select council. The department of education is administered by a central board appointed (at large) by the judges of the courts of common pleas.
The assessed value of taxable property in the city increased from $153,369,048 in 1856 to $536,667,834 in 1880, to $880,935,265 in 1900, and to $1,358,675,057 in 1910. The city’s yearly expenditure increased from $5,170,680 in 1856 to $14,640,479 in 1880, to $30,628,246 in 1900, and to $48,012,630 in 1909. The principal items of expenditure in 1909 were: for public schools $8,242,218; for the bureau of water, $2,827,200; for streets and highways, $4,219,260; for police, $3,810,535; and for protection against fire, $1,873,720. The receipts for the same year were $44,372,927, of which $18,851,442 were from the property tax (municipal and state), and $4,396,124 were from the water tax. The city’s indebtedness increased rapidly for a period of twenty-five years following consolidation. At the beginning of 1856 the funded debt was $16,781,470, by the beginning of 1870 it had grown to $42,401,933, and by the beginning of 1880 to $70,970,041. By the new state constitution adopted in 1873 no municipality is permitted to create a debt exceeding 7% of the assessed value of its taxable property, in 1879 the state legislature passed an act to prevent the city from living beyond its income, and as a consequence of these restrictions the funded debt, less loans held by the sinking fund, was reduced by the beginning of 1895 to $33,139,695. The great expense of installing the new filter plant, developing the park system, and making other improvements has, however, caused it to grow again; at the beginning of 1910 the total funded debt was $95,483,820 and the net funded debt was $84,901,620.
History.—The patent granted to William Penn for the territory embraced within the present commonwealth of Pennsylvania was signed by Charles II. on the 4th of March 1681 and Penn agreed that “a quantity of land or ground plat should be laid out for a large town or city in the most convenient place upon the river for health and navigation,” and that every purchaser of 500 acres in the country shall be allowed a lot of 10 acres in the town or city, “if the place will allow it.” In September Penn appointed William Crispin, Nathaniel Allen and John Bezan a commission to proceed to the new province and lay out the city, directing them to select a site on the Delaware where “it is most navigable, high, dry and healthy; that is where most ships can best ride, of deepest draught of water, if possible to load or unload at the bank or key side without boating or lightering of it.” Crispin, a kinsman of the proprietor, died on the voyage out, but William Heage had been named a fourth commissioner some time after the appointment of the others and the three survivors arrived in the province toward the close of the year. They had been preceded by Penn’s cousin, Captain William Markham, as deputy-governor, and were soon followed by the surveyor-general, Thomas Holme. Although the Swedes had established a settlement at the mouth of the Schuylkill not later than 1643 and the site now selected by the commissioners was held by three brothers of the Swaenson family, these brothers agreed to take in exchange land in what is now known as Northern Liberties, and as early as July 1682 Holme, according to modified instructions from Penn for making the lots smaller than originally intended, laid out the city extending from the Delaware river on the east to the Schuylkill river on the west, a distance of about 2 m., and from Vine Street on the north to Cedar (now South) Street on the south, a distance of about 1 m. Penn landed at New Castle on the Delaware on the 27th of October 1682 and two days later came up as far as Upland, now Chester, 13 m. south of Philadelphia, but when he came to his newly founded city is not known. He is known, however, to have presided at a meeting of the provincial council held here on the 10th of March 1683, and from that time Philadelphia was the capital of Pennsylvania until 1799, when Lancaster became the capital. During nearly the whole of this period it was also the most important city commercially, politically and socially in the colonies. Quaker influence remained strong in the city, especially up to the beginning of the 19th century; and it was predominant in Philadelphia long after it had given way before the Scotch-Irish in the rest of Pennsylvania. But even in Philadelphia the academy (later the university of Pennsylvania) soon came under the control of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The first Continental Congress met in Carpenters’ Hall on the 5th of September 1774; the second in the old state house (Independence Hall) on the 10th of May 1775; and throughout the War of Independence, except from the 26th of September 1777 to the 18th of June 1778, when it was in possession of the British, Philadelphia was the virtual capital of the colonies; it was a brilliant social city, especially during the British possession. The national convention which framed the present constitution of the United States sat in Philadelphia in 1787, and from 1790 to 1800 the city was the national capital. Here Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse made their great contributions to science, and here Washington delivered his farewell address to the people of the United States. Here, in July and August 1789, the clerical and lay delegates from the Protestant Episcopal Churches in the United States met and formally organized the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. Here the first bank in the colonies—the Bank of North America—was opened in 1781, and here the first mint for the coinage of the money of the United States was established in 1792. The city was visited with an epidemic of yellow fever in 1793 and again in 1798; and in 1832 nearly 1000 inhabitants died of Asiatic cholera.
The original boundaries remained unchanged for 172 years, but the adjoining territory as it became populated was erected into corporated districts in the following order: Southwark (1762), Northern Liberties (1771), Moyamensing (1812), Spring Garden (1813), Kensington (1820), Penn (1844), Richmond (1847), West Philadelphia (1851) and Belmont (1853). In 1854 all these districts, together with the boroughs of Germantown, Frankford, Manayunk, White Hall, Bridesburg and Aramingo, and the townships of Passyunk, Blockley, Kingsessing, Roxborough, Germantown, Bristol, Oxford, Lower Dublin, Moreland, Byberry, Delaware and Penn was abolished and the boundaries of Philadelphia were extended to the county lines by a single act of the state legislature. The consolidation was in part the outcome of a demand for efficiency in preserving order. There had been occasional outbreaks of disorder: on the 17th of May 1838 an anti-abolition mob had burned Pennsylvania Hall, which had been dedicated three days before to the discussion of abolition, temperance and equality; in May 1844 anti-Catholic rioters had burned St Michael’s and St Augustine’s churches, and minor riots had occured in 1835, 1842 and 1843. Philadelphia was from the first strongly anti-slavery in sentiment, and it was here in December 1833 that the American Anti-Slavery Society was organized, and in 1856, on the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, that the first national convention of the Republican party met. During the Civil War the arsenal and the Southwark navy yard were busy manufacturing material for the Federal armies, the city was crowded with wounded soldiers, and here in 1864 was held the great sanitary fair for the benefit of the United States sanitary commission, an organization for the relief and care of wounded and sick soldiers. In 1876, the centennial year of American independence, a great exhibition of the industries of all nations was held in Fairmount Park from the 10th of May to the 10th of November, and about fifty buildings were erected for the purpose. In October 1882 the city celebrated the bi-centennial of the landing of William Penn, and in October 1908 the 225th anniversary of its foundation.
Bibliography.—J. T. Scharf and T. Westcott, History of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1884), the standard history; J. F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, revised by W. P. Hazard (Philadelphia, 1898), often the record of tradition; E. P. Allinson and B. Penrose, Philadelphia 1681–1887; a History of Municipal Development (Philadelphia, 1887); J. H. Young (ed.), Memorial History of the City of Philadelphia (New York, 1895), Lillian I. Rhoades, The Story of Philadelphia (New York, 1900); T. Williams, “Philadelphia,” in L. P. Powell’s Historic Towns of the Middle States (New York, 1899); F. M. Etting, An Historical Account of the Old State House (Philadelphia, 1891); E. K. Price, History of the Consolidation of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1873); and Agnes Repplier, Philadelphia, the Place and People (New York, 1898).
* ↑ Many of the statues and other works of art in Fairmount and other parks are the gift of the Fairmount Park Art Association (1871; reorganized in 1888 and 1906).
* ↑ The city had previously expended $1,555,000 on the improvement of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.
* ↑ The Philadelphia Museums claim that excluding slaughter-house and sweat-shop products the value of Philadelphia’s manufactured products is greater than that of any other city in the country.
* ↑ A document purporting to be a charter, bearing the date of the 20th of May 1691, and signed by Thomas Lloyd, deputy-governor, was discovered in 1887, but the great seal is missing and there is no evidence that the charter was even in operation. The minutes of “a meeting of the Council held at Philadelphia on the third day of Sixth Month 1691” mention “Humphrey Morrey the present Mayor of the city of Philadelphia”; and this would seem to show that there was a regular municipal government in 1691. See Philadelphia: Its Founding and Seals: Report of the Committee ... to determine the Year of the Physical and Legal Founding of the City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1908).
* ↑ In 1905 the state legislature took the appointment of these officers from the mayor and vested it in the councils, but this legislation was repealed in 1906.
* ↑ If the debt of a city already exceeded the 7% limit it could be increased only by permission of the legislature.
* ↑ Lord Howe, who had been in command of the British, embarked for England on the 24th of May, and on the 18th of this month was held for his farewell entertainment the famous Mischianza, a feast of gaiety with a tournament somewhat like those common in the age of chivalry, which was in large part planned by Captain John André.