page_title: Port Richmond, Philadelphia
section_title: Early 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Port Richmond, Philadelphia / History / Early 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Port Richmond, PA - Salmon Street, a typical area side street.
context_page_description: Port Richmond is a neighborhood in the River Wards section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is notable for its extremely large Polish immigrant and Polish American community. Before the Polish settled, Port Richmond was first discovered by Jacques Lafayette, a famous pirate in the 1700s. The neighborhood is also home to a large Irish American community and sizable German and Italian communities as represented in the various churches and organizations. In more recent years, a sizable Albanian community has moved in. The Richmond Zip Code is 19134 and 19125.
  The neighborhood is bounded by the Castor Avenue to the northeast, York Street to the southwest, I-95 and the Delaware River to the southeast, and Trenton Avenue to the northwest. While some people dispute the western boundary of the neighborhood, stating either Aramingo Avenue or Frankford Avenue, general consensus among residents on either side of Trenton Avenue or the railroad is that those east of it claim Port Richmond and those west of it claim Kensington.
context_section_description: Port Richmond, at the beginning of the century, was a working-class neighborhood, and most workers simply walked to their nearby workplaces with lunch pail in hand. Cars were not common and those who had them stored them in stables.  Stables for horses and cars were located in various parts of the area. Streets—unlike now—were generally free of parked vehicles, allowing hucksters and other vendors space to easily proceed down the narrow side streets with their horse and wagon on a daily basis.
  European immigrants arrived in large numbers and lost no time in scrimping and working long hours to earn sufficient money to purchase modest row homes, such as those along Chatham Street. Usually, the only heat in such homes was provided by a coal-fired range in a tiny kitchen. Some comfort could be had in the fact that these homes contained tiny rooms, generally two downstairs and two upstairs, and were easy to keep warm from the heat of the kitchen range. Such homes were generally twelve feet wide, and the entire length of the house was about twenty four feet. Cellars consisted of plain dirt floors. The fact that the homes were row homes, which were joined together by common walls, helped them retain heat during cold winter spells. Only the fronts and backs of each home presented themselves to the coldness of winter. Why the cellars along Chatham Street, for example, contained dirt floors is not entirely clear, unless it was because the cellars were used simply for wood or coal storage or because of the fact that cement was not a widely used product at the time.
  A ton of coal sold at the time for about four or five dollars and would be sufficient for the entire winter. However, most people bought coal by the bucket from a street peddler who came by daily in his horse-drawn carriage. The outsides of these homes consisted of wooden steps and brick sidewalks. Since this type of housing was of economic construction, the bricks in the sidewalk were laid in a crosshatch pattern in sand. When bricks were used in construction of the walls of the house, the mortar mix was made from lime and sand.
  Chatham Street homes were constructed in the late 19th century. Later, row homes in Port Richmond were generally sixteen feet wide and contained a cemented cellar, a coal-fired heater, and an upstairs bath for a total of for a total of five or six rooms. Such newer homes, like those on Almond Street, for example, increased in size as prosperity improved for the residents. These homes were palatial when compared with Chatham Street homes, and contained a coal-fired furnace that provided central heat. They generally consisted of three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, and also a living room, dining room, and a kitchen downstairs. (See the Salmon Street photo for examples of this type of row home.)
  Port Richmond residents were frugal and bought produce from the many street vendors who came by daily with their horse-drawn carts, loaded with fresh vegetables from nearby farms, located not very far away. Housewives could buy cabbage, cucumbers, potatoes, apples, and other vegetables by the bushel and store or preserve them for the winter. Gas mains were installed in the neighborhood by the city of Philadelphia, and gas was metered into each home for cooking and illumination. The meter was in the basement, and required someone in the household to occasionally feed it coins to keep the gas flowing. On Port Richmond sidewalks, tall gas lamps illuminated the streets. During each evening a lamplighter would come by to light the street lamps by igniting them with a very long device he held up in his hands.
caption: Salmon Street, a typical area side street
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