The national ACLU grew out of curtailments of civil liberties during and after World War I. The organization’s activity in the Philadelphia region began even before formation of the local chapter, most notably when it protested bans of the film Birth of a Nation (1915) that occurred in 1921 in Philadelphia, Newark, Jersey City, and Detroit. This, along with the ACLU’s support for the free speech rights of the Ku Klux Klan, drew criticism from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in its attempts to ban the film’s premiere and protect critics of the film.

The Greater Philadelphia chapter of the ACLU originated when the Citizens’ Council on Democratic Rights, a Philadelphia group devoted to the protection of individual civic freedoms, voted to affiliate with the national ACLU in late 1951. The Citizen’s Council on Democratic Rights had been involved with the controversial Loyalty Review Boards that were part of President Truman’s probes into the loyalty of government employees, hosting lawyers from the national ACLU for open meetings on the subject as late as 1950. Having made the transition to ACLU affiliate status, the newly minted chapter focused on advocacy, public education, and litigation to preserve and enhance civil liberties.

Under Spencer Coxe’s tenure as the first full-time director, the organization’s litigator and board president Henry Sawyer represented the family of Edward Schempp before the Supreme Court in Abington School District v. Schempp (1963). The Schempp family disputed whether the Abington School District could require their children to read and recite the Bible in a public school setting. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Schempp family and affirmed the separation of church and state in public schools, making the case the organization’s first significant victory. The decision resulted in changes in how education was carried out across the country, with reports of policy confusion among superintendents becoming common as they struggled with the implications of the decision.

As the ACLU presence in Pennsylvania grew, the Philadelphia office worked in conjunction with other offices in the state. The Philadelphia chapter, despite opposition from community groups, was vociferous in opposing mandatory minimum sentencing for repeat offenders and for individuals who committed violent crimes on public transportation. The Philadelphia chapter’s stances on issues such as these in the early 1980s were consistent with the broader goals of the ACLU, which advocated alternatives to incarceration.

The ACLU’s positions at times placed it at odds with city and state officials and governments. During the Newark riots of 1967, for example, the New Jersey chapter documented police abuses. In 1985 the Philadelphia ACLU, in conjunction with the wider state organization, sued the City of Philadelphia for the closure of its largest homeless shelter. In Committee for Dignity and Fairness for the Homeless et al v. Pernsley the City of Philadelphia entered into a settlement, agreeing to house the homeless in compliance with the Pennsylvania State Department of Welfare’s regulations regarding their care.

More recently, the New Jersey ACLU challenged the state’s abortion laws, overturning a ban on late-term abortion in 1998 and laws requiring the consent of parents for a minor’s abortion procedure in 2000. In 2012, the organization represented residents of Newark in their case against their city’s alleged nondisclosure of plans for $100 million donated by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for use in the city’s public schools.

The Pennsylvania and New Jersey chapters have continued to represent citizens in cases with potential for lasting impact on civil liberties. These cases include disputes over freedom of speech, press, expression, and religion, as well as cases involving police misconduct, racial discrimination, reproductive freedom, children, immigrant and womens’ rights. The chapters operate with both staff and volunteer legal assistance and are 501c3 nonprofit organizations.

Will Caverly is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Villanova University.

Prior to the construction of the Old Court House at 2nd and Market Streets in 1707 the Great Town Bell was attached by a bracket to a mast. From this location it rang on the occasion of Royal and Provincial proclamations, the arrival of provisions, and was rung by the town crier to mark the passage of time. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

At the intersection of Second and Market Streets, a center of early Philadelphia’s civic life, the soundscape quickly began to diverge from that of the countryside. As early as 1682 it was the site of a simple cage for the city’s criminal offenders with no sound insulation whatsoever, and a later prison built in the middle of Market Street was labeled a nuisance by the city’s Grand Jury in 1702. The area also resounded with the bleating of sheep, which were pastured on the common area by the town butcher. Plenty of human noise followed as well when Philadelphia’s market was moved from Front Street to Second Street. A bell rang out to signify the opening of the market, which quickly gave Market Street (originally called High Street) its name. Bells were a common means of sonic communication in the colonial city, present in churches, clocks, schools, and atop the Court House built at Second and Market in 1707. After 1751, the soundscape also included the State House bell, later called the Liberty Bell, which called members of the Pennsylvania Assembly to work.

The Court House steps at Second and Market served as the site of the some of the earliest sermons in the city by the Reverend George Whitefield (1714-70), whose loud voice drew crowds outdoors. Preaching in London in the 1730s, Whitefield had drawn outdoor audiences estimated at the time from 20,000 to 80,000 listeners. When Whitefield arrived in Philadelphia in 1739, a skeptical Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) decided to test the accounts by experiment: while Whitefield preached from the Court House steps, Franklin walked east on Market Street and reported that Whitefield’s voice remained intelligible until he arrived at Front Street. Using this distance, Franklin calculated that Whitefield’s voice could have been heard by more than 30,000 listeners. 

Instrumental music and singing added to the sounds of the city. Religious leaders discouraged secular or instrumental music, preferring only devotional hymns during church services, and in 1740 only three churches in the city possessed an organ. St. Mary’s Catholic Church, on South Fourth Street north of Spruce Street, owned one of these organs, and the church even employed a trained musician to lead the choir. Gradually, as the influence of Whitefield’s revivals waned, instrumental music became more popular. By 1774 every worship service in Philadelphia used an organ except the silent worship of the Society of Friends. Public houses were often centers of popular music, and David Lockwood’s tavern even had a “Musical Clock,” which played “Sonatas, Concertos, Marches, Minuets, Jiggs, and Scots Airs.”  

In contrast to the riotous atmosphere at many taverns, the upper echelons of Philadelphia society preferred the more subdued conversation at the city’s growing number of coffee houses, including the famous London Coffee House at the corner of Front and Market Street, which opened in 1754. It began as a place for civil conversations and business transactions between merchants and traders, but this led to the Coffee House’s use as an all-purpose auction house for horses, carriages, and even slaves. This louder commercial soundscape eventually gave way to the crackles of bonfires and shouts of revolutionary mobs: as the conflict with Britain worsened in the 1760s, the street in front of the Coffee House became the site of protests against the Stamp Act and later the burning in effigy of British officials.

Carriages and wagons traveling from the countryside to the wharves along the river, as well as the whip cracks of their drivers, continually generated noise. In the first half of the eighteenth century, streets were not often paved, and what pavement there was consisted of what archaeologists call pebblestone, similar to gravel. Dirt and gravel roads provided less rigid surfaces than a hard cobblestone pavement, reducing the noise from cartwheels and horses’ hooves while producing a slight hiss from the small particles of stone sticking to wheels (as in the audio example). But as the city developed more in the second half of the century, streets became more uniformly and solidly paved and wheels were more likely to be lined with iron, both of which increased the radiated noise throughout the city. John Fanning Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia in the Olden Time (1830) included several anecdotes of citizens hearing voices or artillery over great distances, and older residents told him that it was easier to hear distant sounds when the city had fewer carriages and unpaved streets. These sounds, along those of the herds of livestock occasionally moving through the city, ensured that the colonial city’s soundscape was not entirely divorced from the sounds of the countryside.

This image of the Friends Meeting House on the Southwest corner of 2nd Street and High Street was drawn in 1830. Built in 1696, the Meeting House was erected near the prison. The Society of Friends sold the building in 1803 and moved to the newly constructed Meeting House at 320 Arch Street, which is still in use today. (Historical Society of Philadelphia)

While the carriages heading to the wharves generated noise throughout Philadelphia, the Delaware riverfront provided another diverse soundscape on the edge of the growing city. Taverns and grog shops in riverfront caves contributed to the lower-class reputation of the waterfront through the frivolity, songs, and brawls that went along with their wares. The wharves further infused the soundscape with clanking anchors and chains, the groaning of masts and riggings, the speech of sailors and merchants, and the loading and unloading of carriages, wagons, and ships.

Nights in the city were quieter by and large, marked by the occasional “crying of the hour” by the night watchman. Occasionally, however, disturbances broke out when taverns brawls erupted into the streets. In the years leading to the American Revolution, British soldiers in the city may have affected transatlantic relations through their nighttime noisemaking: in 1769, a young Englishman named Alexander Macraby recorded that he, along with several officers and a band, routinely paraded through the streets at midnight and played under the windows of young women, “which,” he added, “they esteem a high compliment.” Occasionally their celebrations passed into the countryside, such as when Macraby wrote that they took seven sleighs with fiddlers on horseback “to a public house a few miles from town, where we danced, sung and romped and eat and drank, and kicked away care from morning till night.” 

The growing noise of the city led the citizens of Philadelphia to take action. As early as 1732, the city drew up a noise ordinance restricting gatherings and noise-making on Sundays, possibly for the peace of the Friends’ worship services. Maintaining silence within the Friends’ meeting house amid the street noise of children, dogs, and carriages at Second and Market Streets remained challenging as the city grew, leading the Friends to abandon the meeting house in 1808. Some wealthy citizens, meanwhile, chose to escape to the suburbs. As early as 1711, Robert Fairman mentioned in a letter the benefits of a plantation “out of the noise of Philadelphia, but in site of it.” In 1770, the principal of a private academy north of Philadelphia likewise advertised his college as being “free from the noise of the city.” And in a letter to his brother in Rhode Island in 1774, Doctor Solomon Drowne wrote from Philadelphia, “I almost envy you your pleasant situation on Mendon’s pleasant Hill, remote from Noise & Confusion. Here the thundering of Coaches, Chariots, Chaises, Waggons, Drays, and the whole Fraternity of Noise almost continually assails our Ears.” 

While some scholars have argued that colonial Philadelphia was even louder than a modern urban environment, the crucial difference is not the overall loudness over time but the different textures of the soundscapes. Modern city noise is characterized by relatively continuous background noise from engines, generators, and ventilation systems. In contrast, eighteenth-century Philadelphians heard many short, impulsive sounds rising over a very quiet pre-electric background. Only at the busiest times did the colonial city have enough individual sources of noise to blend into anything continuous enough to be perceived as background noise. The rest of the time these sharp sounds would ring out into the foreground of public attention, one of the many growing pains for the young city.

Braxton Boren is a PhD Candidate in the Music and Audio Research Lab and New York University. He specializes in applying physics and technology to research questions in the arts and humanities.

Chief among all mascots in the sports-crazed City of Brotherly Love is the Phillie Phanatic, a nationally recognized symbol of Philly fandom. The Phanatic first started entertaining baseball fans at Veterans Stadium in April 1978, replacing Philadelphia Phil and Phyllis, a short-lived, colonial inspired mascot duo unveiled in 1971.

The Phillie Phanatic made his debut at Veterans Stadium in 1978 and is one of the most recognizable mascots in all of sports. (Photograph by R. Kennedy for GPTMC)

Bill Giles, chairman and part-owner of the Phillies, believed entertaining the fans was as important as the game itself. Giles tasked Sesame Street puppet creators Bonnie Erickson and Wayde Harrison to create a “fat, green, indefinable, and lovable” mascot to represent the “fanatical” fans of Philadelphia. 

Famously, Giles did not think the Phanatic would catch on, and he initially refused to purchase the copyright for the new mascot. His hunch was wrong, and he later bought the copyright for $200,000. The Phanatic became wildly popular with the fans at Phillies home games and all over the world. The mascot, which is described as a rare species of bird from the Galapagos Islands, has parachuted into Veterans Stadium to kick off the baseball season and has led championship parades down Broad Street. 

First played by Dave Raymond and now by Tom Burgoyne, the Phanatic has made thousands of appearances at charity functions and parties and can be seen at minor league stadiums putting the hex on opposing pitchers and dancing atop dugouts. In 2002, he became one of three mascots enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY. 

Other pro sports teams in Philadelphia have used mascots to lead their fans in cheers as well. The NFL’s Eagles have employed Swoop, a bald eagle, since 1995. The NBA’s 76ers first had a large blue creature named Big Shot, which gave way to a basketball-dunking rabbit named Hip Hop. Neither was popular with fans. The Flyers of the NHL had a mascot named Slapshot in 1976, but it was discontinued.

Among Philadelphia’s higher education institutions, mascots have been inspired by university roots, standards, and defining characteristics.  

Temple University’s Owl has been a symbol of the school since its founding in 1884. (Photograph for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia by Kristen M. Rigaut)

Temple University’s Owl has been a symbol of the school since its founding in 1884. The nocturnal bird of prey was considered ideal for a college where most students attended classes at night. The evening scholars were encouraged by university founder Russell Conwell who told them, “The owl of the night makes the eagle of the day.” 

Another winged mascot that embodies university spirit is Saint Joseph’s Hawk, which first appeared   in 1956 during a basketball game at the famed Palestra. The Hawk represents Saint Joseph’s motto, “The Hawk Will Never Die,” by flapping its wings throughout every basketball game. One of the few mascots in the nation that travels to every game, the Hawk is distinctive because the student who wears the costume is awarded a full scholarship and serves as a manager for the men’s basketball team.

Some mascots are not historically accurate but have become part of university identity nonetheless. A prominent example is the Penn Quaker. Despite what the nickname suggests, the University of Pennsylvania has no religious ties to Quakerism. According to university archivists, sports writers in the late 1800s referred to Penn athletic teams as Quakers because Philadelphia was known as the Quaker City. 

Drexel University teams became known as the Dragons after the name appeared in a 1928 football headline. (Photograph for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia by Jamie Castagnoli)

In another example of a nickname coming from the press, Drexel University athletic teams gradually became known as the Dragons after the name appeared in a 1928 football headline. La Salle University students’ selection of the nickname “Explorers” in 1932 may or may not have been influenced by the error of a Baltimore sports writer who mistakenly wrote that La Salle was named for the famous French explorer instead of St. John the Baptist de la Salle. 

At Villanova, a campus-wide naming contest in 1926 led the University to adopt the Wildcat, meant to convey ferocious attitude, speed, agility, and alertness. Birds are the mascots of choice for neighboring institutions like Rowan University (an owl, for the college’s emphasis on education); the University of Delaware (a blue hen, a fighting breed popular with area soldiers during the American Revolution); and Rutgers–Camden, whose teams became known as Scarlet Raptors in 2001.

For colleges and the pros, mascots have embodied team pride and good luck. In Philadelphia, where they can be seen roaming the stands at any  sporting event, they have become as synonymous with the city as its passionate fans.

Ed Moorhouse is an editorial/media specialist at Rutgers–Camden.

Map of the City of Philadelphia as consolidated in 1854. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

Until 1854, Philadelphia’s population concentrated within William Penn’s original city boundaries, between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers and from what is now South Street to Vine. By 1820, however, inhabitants in the independent boroughs, districts, and townships that made up the rest of the county already outnumbered those in the city proper. Some of these suburbs were places of significance in their own right, with Spring Garden, the Northern Liberties, and Kensington, all north of the city center, ranking as the ninth, eleventh, and twelfth biggest urban settlements in the nation in the 1850 census. These districts, in common with their neighbors, had won from the Commonwealth the right to establish their own local governments, with powers to tax, borrow, and spend, and thus remained independent of Philadelphia City’s control. While they varied in their social and political character, they tended to be poorer and more Democratic than the historic center, which they sometimes referred to as the “Whig Gibraltar.”

The first organized calls for uniting the built-up portions of the county under one municipal authority came in response to two major riots in 1844. The anti-Catholic violence, which broke out in the northern suburb of Kensington and the southern district of Southwark–both neighborhoods in which Irish immigrants and native-born Protestants lived in close proximity–exposed the inadequacy of the prevailing system of law enforcement. With no uniformed officers in the county, and every jurisdiction responsible for its own policing, there was little to prevent violence from escalating. It took state militia armed with cannon to suppress the Southwark disturbance. Soon after the riots, the Public Ledger called for annexing the built-up outlying districts, and in November, citizens gathered at the County Court House (Congress Hall) to make the case for enlarging the city boundaries.

The move for a new charter over the winter of 1844-5, however, came to very little. A bill was drawn up for consideration by the Commonwealth–which then, as now, held the power to create, alter, and destroy local government–but influential owners of property and city debt like Horace Binney (1780-1875) organized to oppose the proposal. Critics feared that consolidation would hand the keys of the Whig city to suburban Democrats, and that real estate owners in the prosperous city proper would be taxed to pay the interest on loans taken out by indebted outlying districts, which needed to borrow to maintain their rapid growth. The opponents of consolidation lobbied for legislation that would maintain the districts’ independence yet still address the issue of civil disorder by requiring that all built-up portions of Philadelphia retain one policeman for every 150 taxable inhabitants.

This measure failed to prevent another major riot in 1849, which sparked renewed calls for annexation. While this time the proposal enjoyed more support from the city’s merchants, manufacturers, and professionals, it failed once again in the state capital. Instead of consolidation, Harrisburg legislators established a police force under an elected marshal to deal with disorder across the built-up sections of the metropolis. The Marshal’s Police proved relatively successful in maintaining the peace, and despite endemic fighting among rival companies of volunteer firemen and street gangs, there were no major riots from 1850 to the eventual passage of the Consolidation Act in 1854.

Calls for metropolitan union nevertheless grew louder, despite the relative calm of the early 1850s. By then, municipal reformers hoped to do more than inoculate the city against the violence of the preceding decades. Many saw the district system as unnecessarily costly, as dozens of jurisdictions duplicated services that could have been provided more efficiently by a single government. Others feared that the city proper might become “an appendage to her own colonies,” as growth in industrial districts like Spring Garden and Kensington outpaced the historic center. Some no longer saw those suburbs as a financial burden, but rather as a potential source of tax revenue, because heavy investment in the Pennsylvania Railroad after its chartering in 1846 had left the city proper far more heavily indebted than its neighbors. Real estate owners in central Philadelphia complained that suburban property holders benefited from the trade that resulted from the rail link to Pittsburgh but had contributed little in the way of public funds to the railroad’s construction.

Perhaps most importantly, though, supporters of consolidation believed that only a united Philadelphia would have the power and status to overtake New York in the struggle for metropolitan supremacy, a race the city had languished in for at least three decades as the completion of the Erie Canal (1825) and Chestnut Street’s decline as a financial center after Andrew Jackson’s attack on the Second Bank of the United States enabled Manhattan to pull ahead. As North and South clashed over the question of slavery extension, advocates of annexation for Philadelphia readily adopted the rallying cry “In Union There Is Strength” for their own cause.

In the early 1850s both of the dominant political parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, promised to back annexation, but in Harrisburg, proposals for charter revision went nowhere.  To break the impasse supporters of the measure–prodded by their erstwhile opponent Binney–decided in 1853 to nominate their own slate of candidates for the Pennsylvania Assembly and Senate. In alliance with advocates of a professional fire department, they put forward a mixture of independents and regular Whig and Democratic party nominees. At the head of the ticket was Eli Kirk Price (1797-1884), a progressive real estate attorney, while the wealthy locomotive builder Matthias W. Baldwin (1795-1866) was among the candidates for the lower house. Most of the consolidation slate triumphed, and before Price went off to take his seat in the Senate, an Executive Consolidation Committee met in Philadelphia to draft a bill.

Morton McMichael, newspaper publisher and later mayor, chaired the Executive Consolidation Committee. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

The Executive Consolidation Committee that convened in the Board of Trade rooms at the Merchants’ Exchange over the winter of 1853-54 represented a cross-section of Philadelphia’s economic elite. Many owned substantial real estate beyond the historic corporate boundaries, and by proposing to annex the entire county rather than just the much smaller built-up environs of the city proper, they went much further than their predecessors. Despite murmurs of protest from rural districts, the charter passed both houses and was signed into law in February. The new metropolis, encompassing industrial suburbs, romantic rural retreats, and vast stretches of farmland, came into being four months later.

Architects of the 1854 charter saw it as a victory over the self-interested politicians of the district system and the triumph of a rational, modern government over an antiquated predecessor. Executive power was invested in a mayor elected at-large for a two-year term, and voters chose the nativist playwright Robert T. Conrad as the first to hold the office. In place of the old boundaries on the county map, meanwhile, twenty-four wards sent representatives to the Common and Select Councils. Ward representation preserved an element of localism in the councils–something party politicians quickly learned to exploit–but the financial muscle and territorial reach of the enlarged city enabled urban planning on a far greater scale than previously had been possible.

The Consolidation Act resulted in other important changes for newly expanded Philadelphia. Among them, the legislation gave municipal authorities the duty to preserve open spaces, and before and after the Civil War steps were taken towards creating Fairmount Park, which lay entirely beyond the boundaries of the old city proper. Standardized street names and numbers (1857), a professionalized the fire department (1871), and a new city hall at Broad and Market Streets (1871-1901) demonstrated civic authorities’ readiness to raise the city’s metropolitan status, as did the suburban expansion fueled by horse-drawn streetcar lines and other infrastructure improvements that opened up cheap land in the consolidated city for builders. When Philadelphians in the second half of the nineteenth century contrasted their city of row homes with the tenements of New York, they credited the city’s expansion with eliminating the need for “vertical slums.”

Perhaps most importantly, though, consolidation gave the municipal government the power to maintain the peace. While violence did occasionally break out–in 1871, for instance, the African American civil rights campaigner Octavius Catto was shot dead on a turbulent election day–the mayor, with his control of a large, uniformed police force, always had the resources at his disposal to prevent the kind of conflagrations that threatened to engulf the city in 1844. Under Republican stewardship, Philadelphia avoided the draft riots that occurred in New York in 1863 and the worst of the conflict between railroads and workers in the Great Strike of 1877. Citizens credited the Consolidation Act for the relative peace in a city once notorious for disorder.     

Some of these developments, however, owed more to legislation in Harrisburg than they did to actions by the city government, and by the late 1860s, the habit of state officials overriding the municipal authorities in matters pertaining to the metropolis caused frequent complaints. So too did the tendency of councilmen to claim executive power for themselves, thus weakening the powers of the mayor’s office, which consolidators had sought to strengthen. As party bosses–usually Democratic in the immigrant enclaves of South Philadelphia, but Republican in the growing suburbs–established ward strongholds, centralized city- and state-wide Republican machines distributed jobs and contracts to supporters. After the Civil War a generation of affluent reformers began to see the 1854 act more as a giant source of patronage than a measure designed to bring peace, prosperity, and economic government. They hoped another new charter, eventually passed in 1887, would improve matters, but under Republican leadership, Philadelphians remained, in Lincoln Steffens‘ memorable phrase, “the most corrupt and the most contented.” This was consolidation’s unanticipated legacy, but the act’s limitations should not mask its real achievements in laying the foundations of modern Philadelphia.

This map depicts the districts, boroughs, and townships consolidated into the City of Philadelphia in 1854. (City of Philadelphia)

Andrew Heath is a Lecturer in American History at the University of Sheffield, U.K. He is currently writing a book on the Consolidation of 1854.

When I first returned to the area after a long absence to write a book on Camden in the late 1990s, I was surprised at the way DRPA operated, not as an agent for regional development but as a cash cow that directed funds in equal portions to Pennsylvania and New Jersey without an overall strategic plan. Some projects made immediate sense, such as refitting the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the aftermath of the government’s departure from the site. Other investments were harder to sell. Spokesmen for the agency often talked about building tourism, for instance, by making investments on both sides of the Delaware River, and some good results came from that vision as well, not the least funds that helped make the President’s House memorial in Philadelphia a reality.  But building tourism—which might conceivably generate returns by increasing tolls over bridges connecting the two states—was never central to DRPA’s goal. Supporting allies and garnering political credits appears to have topped the list of priorities, to say nothing of the financial benefits that might be gained through related contracts and political donations, among other things.

As Brown indicates, the creation of the DRPA was part of a movement to remove from politics certain public investments operating as non-partisan authorities. As Louise Dyble’s devastating critique of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, Paying the Toll: Local Power, Regional Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge, demonstrates, reigning in such authorities can be difficult indeed, and holding them accountable nearly impossible. DRPA may not reach that standard, but accountability remains a concern to the many people who continue to pay tolls into this organization’s coffers.

Whether an indictment will follow the grand jury’s investigation, DRPA deserves close scrutiny. We hope that our fellow citizens in the greater Philadelphia region will be aided in their assessment of the DRPA by Brown’s essay. Certainly, none of us have heard the last about controversies surrounding this important player in our region.

Shown in 1929, the Delaware River Bridge — later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge — forged a new connection between the cities of Philadelphia and Camden and led to the creation of a new bi-state governing commission. (PhillyHistory.org)

Regional leaders in the Delaware Valley began discussing the idea of building a bridge that would span the Delaware River and connect Philadelphia and Camden as far back as the early 1800s. Their vision took nearly a century to realize, but finally, in 1912 and 1917, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania legislatures created a pair of commissions for the purpose of jointly building, operating, and owning a single toll bridge. Construction on what would briefly become the world’s longest suspension bridge started in 1922, and in 1926 the Delaware River Bridge–renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in 1956–was opened to traffic.

The 1931 creation of the Delaware River Joint Commission formalized the agreement between the two states while expanding the scope of operations of their new agency.  The commission would now be responsible for planning and providing future bridges and passenger rail service across the river and for promoting passenger and freight commerce on the Delaware River, as “a highway of commerce between Philadelphia and Camden and the sea.” With this last duty, legislators intended to give their new bi-state agency the responsibility for unifying the region’s fragmented system of ports.

Five times between 1931 and 1952, legislators amended the commission’s enabling act in efforts to expand its duties to include port operations. The draft legislation for each amendment granted the commission the power to acquire, build, own, and operate maritime cargo facilities, but every time powerful private interests successfully lobbied to curtail these powers and weaken the final legislation. In 1935 the United States government, through an act of congress, recognized the agreement between the states as a federal “compact,” and the 1952 compact amendment optimistically re-christened the organization the “Delaware River Port Authority.”  As with previous amendments, however, the power to acquire port facilities was stripped from the final legislation.

PATCO trains created an additional link between South Jersey and Philadelphia beginning in 1969. (Photograph for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia by Kristen M. Rigaut)

Following the 1952 compact amendment, planning for bridges and commuter rail continued, and in 1955 the Walt Whitman Bridge opened to the south of the Ben Franklin Bridge. The Port Authority Transit Corporation or “PATCO Speedline” trains began to operate in 1969, providing a commuter rail line running from the southern New Jersey suburbs across the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and into Center City Philadelphia. The Commodore Barry Bridge opened in 1974, south of the Walt Whitman Bridge, and a final bridge, the Betsy Ross, opened in 1976, to the north of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. 

In 1992, the compact was amended one more time, finally making port unification a true mandate of the DRPA by granting it the power to acquire the two state-chartered port agencies on the Delaware River–the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority and the South Jersey Port Corporation. But over the next several years, entrenched interests at the two public port authorities succeeded in blocking the DRPA’s acquisition plans, and by 1998 port reunification was dead. The 1992 amendment, however, also granted the DRPA the power to engage in “economic development,” broadly defined.  After the failure of port reunification, this power–which was added as an afterthought–became central to the DRPA’s mission.

By 2013, nearly a century after its creation, the DRPA was still a port authority in name only. Maritime operations include a seasonal cruise terminal, a small multimodal cargo yard, and a ferry service, but otherwise the DRPA remained almost entirely a bridge and commuter rail operation. Together, the four toll bridges and the PATCO Speedline served as an integrated transportation system that carried workers from the New Jersey suburbs to their jobs in Philadelphia in the morning and back to their homes at night. 

Cars and trucks heading toward Philadelphia on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge provide a dependable source of revenue for the DRPA. (Photograph for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia by Jamie Castagnoli)

In 2010, the DRPA earned $275 million in operating income and incurred expenses of $202 million for a net operating income of $73 million.  More important, a full ninety percent of operating income came from bridge tolls. An additional nine percent came from PATCO fares, while maritime operations accounted for a scant one-tenth of one percent of operating income.   

Like most governments, the DRPA effectively operates as a monopoly, so its bridge tolls are both a large and dependable revenue source and its bonds are a low-risk investment, together giving the agency enormous borrowing power.  In 2010 the DRPA had about $1.4 billion in outstanding debt, backed primarily by future toll revenues. More important, periodic toll increases had a big effect on the agency’s borrowing capacity and the unique institutional character of the DRPA as a bi-state public authority influenced the allocation of funds that flowed from these increases.

Unlike a municipality that provides a wide variety of tax-funded services and facilities, the DRPA has operated as a “public authority,” a specific type of government created by legislators to provide a single service or facility, such as a highway, airport, maritime cargo port, or bridge.  Authorities typically pay for these facilities with proceeds from the sale of “revenue bonds” that are backed by future rents, tolls, or other charges that will be paid by the people who use the facility.  Because authorities typically do not rely on tax revenues, they can skirt public review of their projects, unlike municipalities that must seek voter approval of bonding bills to avoid claims of taxation without representation.  Authorities are governed by appointed boards or commissions rather than by elected officials so their leadership typically is less sensitive to political pressures.  Together, appointed leadership and the lack of a need to seek voter approval for projects makes authorities more politically insulated than other units of government.

But the DRPA is not just any authority; rather, in 2013 it was one of only three in the United States that enjoyed a “bi-state” jurisdiction, with a service area of 5,840 square miles that included five counties in southeastern Pennsylvania and eight counties in southern New Jersey.  A commission of sixteen leads the DRPA, eight commissioners from each state, all but two appointed by the two governors.  This division of the commission into two equal delegations ensures an unusual level of internal stability but it also virtually guarantees ongoing stress between the two delegations that stems from their different views of the DRPA’s purpose and duties. These differences of opinion reflect the contrasting geographies and constituencies that the two delegations represent: suburban New Jersey bedroom communities filled with workers interested in a cheap commute to the city, and densely developed Philadelphia, whose politicians have long thought that low tolls and fares promote the flight of businesses and residents to the suburbs.

Prior to commission meetings, the two delegations meet separately, in closed “executive” session, where they conduct most of their business out of the public’s eye. Thus the public meetings of the full commission usually lack controversy or meaningful debate and serve instead as perfunctory events where agreements hashed out in private are merely finalized in public. The same process has typically been used to make spending decisions.

Because the governors of the two states are term-limited and gubernatorial politics are central to raising tolls and fares, the DRPA usually does so only every eight years. But this puts stress on the agency’s operating budget because revenues remain flat year over year while annual operating costs continue to increase because of inflation. More important, new debt cannot be issued until there is a new source of future revenues to back it. When tolls do go up, however, the impact on borrowing can be huge.  As a rule of thumb, each of the four times between 1992 and 2012 that the DRPA raised tolls on its four bridges by one dollar, the agency’s bonding capacity–the amount it could borrow–rose by about a half billion dollars. 

That meant that the commission’s next job was to decide how and where to spend about $500 million dollars on economic development projects. The method was simple. The two delegations agreed to split the funds equally, half going to either side of the river.  Then each delegation proposed a list of projects and values that added up to half the total amount of funds and the commission voted and approved all of the projects.

The DRPA’s economic development projects on the New Jersey waterfront have included the Campbell’s Field ball park, pictured here, aquarium expansion, and a new DRPA headquarters building. (R. Kennedy for GPTMC)

Between 1992 and 2001 alone the DRPA’s debt grew by five times, from $250 million to $1.4 billion.  During this period approximately $443 million in toll-backed proceeds from the sale of “Port Project Development Bonds” (PPDBs) were invested in economic development projects worth a total of $4.4 billion. Some of these funds were spent on job creation projects, including location subsidies to lure private shipbuilder Kvaerner to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard after it closed in 1995, patents for “FastShip” technology, and a charter school and expansion projects for several private manufacturing companies in Camden. Other funds were spent on waterfront redevelopment projects on both sides of the river including a ballpark, aquarium expansion, and a new DRPA headquarters building on the New Jersey riverfront; a new performing arts center, a new museum to the U.S. Constitution, improvements to a science museum, and an aborted riverfront entertainment center on the Philadelphia side; and an aerial tram connecting the two cities across the river that remained uncompleted over a decade after its foundations were poured in 2000 at a cost of $10 million.

Another example is the DRPA’s $50 million contribution–and one of its largest grants–to the nearly half billion dollars in government subsidies to Kvaerner.  Despite being politically popular with democrats and labor unions in Philadelphia, Kvaerner was used as an example in a 1998 Time Magazine cover story about corporate welfare, in which the authors calculated that each new job at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard cost $323,000 in subsidies to create. In a 2000 performance audit, democratic State Auditor General Robert Casey found that the location subsidies provided to Kvaerner by the state and other agencies grossly over-subsidized Kvaerner, which made only a relatively modest investment in the facility and bore very little risk.  

The DRPA’s challenges with economic development projects stem from a simple but important disconnect: Because the bridges generate substantial surpluses, the DRPA has been able to provide financial support in the form of loans, forgivable loans, and grants to projects that did not need to perform economically because their debt was backed by bridge tolls rather than by project income.  This presented a two-edge sword, because while it allowed for subsidizing worthy projects and initiatives, it also made it easier for commissioners to allocate money to questionable projects such as the tram and Kvaerner because the funds would be repaid whether or not the project was economically successful.  At the policy level, the DRPA’s spending decisions raised a recurring equity question, as the commuters who were required to pay higher and higher tolls and fares saw their money spent on facilities and programs that they might never use or benefit from and that were completely unrelated to the bridges. The lack of adequate due diligence and controls to assure sound economic performance left the door open for poorly vetted pet projects that could and sometimes did embarrass the agency, cause needless distraction, and waste money that could have been spent on more worthwhile endeavors. 

Infusions of huge amounts of cash every four or eight years, the lack of a connection between project funding and economic performance, and the perception of increased political insulation on the part of commissioners have also led to instances of inside dealing, cronyism, graft, and corruption. A remarkable case was that of DRPA Commissioner and Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Fumo, who created a $40 million economic development fund fueled by toll revenues and directed at initiatives on the Pennsylvania side of the River. The supposed purpose of the fund was to offset disparities in spending between the two states resulting from cheap fares and tolls that benefited New Jersey.  Instead, Fumo and a handful of close associates quietly spent all of the funds in 1999 with little oversight and on projects of direct personal interest to the senator.  In 2009, Fumo was convicted in federal court of 137 charges of corruption and sentenced to 55 months in prison for the illicit spending of public funds, including those of the DRPA.

By 2013, the DRPA had become a large and mature regional transportation agency successfully serving a densely populated region but the divisions between its constituencies, governance structure, and bi-state jurisdiction promoted conflicting ideas about its purposes.  With its future as a port authority out of the question, the DRPA’s dependable stream of toll revenues continued to support the new economic development powers that it was still learning to wield.  Together, these unique tensions, powers, and limits continued to influence the operations, investment decisions, and evolution of DRPA nearly one hundred years after its creation.

Peter Hendee Brown is an architect, planner, and urban development consultant based in the Twin Cities. He teaches private sector real estate development at the University of Minnesota and is the author of America’s Waterfront Revival: Port Authorities and Urban Redevelopment.  Before moving to Minneapolis in 2003, he lived for seventeen years in Philadelphia, where he practiced architecture and worked in Philadelphia city government, serving in the administration of Mayor Edward G. Rendell.

However, partisan rancor in Philadelphia was not caused by the creation and presence of the federal government. Political factions and rivalries that had existed at the local level for many years were exacerbated by the fighting that emerged at the national level. Federalists who fostered an image of rule by the elites took the reins of government in a city and commonwealth where the disaffected “have-nots” had waged political war with the “haves” since the 1750s and 1760s, when Benjamin Franklin allied with many Quakers against the proprietorship of the Penn family–a family who (they believed) exploited the province for revenue.

In the first decade of political parties in the United States, a 1798 cartoon depicts fighting in Philadelphia’s Congress Hall between Congressman Matthew Lyon, a Jeffersonian Republican, and Roger Griswold, a Federalist. An insulting reference to Lyon by Griswold triggered the spat. (Library of Congress)

On the national level, the signing of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787 and the subsequent ratification battles in the states created two distinct factions–“Federalists” who supported the document and “Anti-Federalists” who opposed it. The First Congress, which initially convened in New York in 1789 before moving to Philadelphia in 1790, consisted of men from both factions and reached agreement on a Bill of Rights and the establishment of Cabinet departments.  But the proposals set forth by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton created schisms that only widened during Washington’s administration. One such proposal involved the assumption of state war debts by the federal government. This plan angered those from states who had already paid off a large portion of their debts. Virginia Congressman James Madison (1751-1836), who had written many of the “Federalist Papers” along with Hamilton to promote the ratification of the Constitution, was one of those who sternly opposed Hamilton’s measures.  Pennsylvania denounced the “funding scheme” as well, especially when speculators who became aware of the plan galloped across the countryside and bought up debt certificates from unsuspecting Pennsylvania veterans.

When Hamilton later proposed the creation of a national bank, Madison was joined in his battle by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who was alarmed at the growth and encroachment of the new central government and the bank’s questionable constitutionality. “A distinctive Anti-Federalist agenda emerged,” wrote Saul Cornell in The Other Founders. “The goal of Anti-Federalists was to limit the powers of the new government and bolster the states so that they would continue to be in a position to protect the liberty of their citizens.”  By 1792, those opposed to Hamilton’s programs had coalesced into the Democratic-Republican Party (also styled as “Jeffersonians”).  The elections in that year saw many gains by the nascent party and a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The fissure between Jefferson’s party and Hamilton’s was caused by more than banks and debts. The Washington administration’s foreign policy made the gap even wider, as Hamilton’s Federalists favored closer ties with the British while the Jeffersonians favored France and the French Revolution. When war between the two European superpowers began in 1793, the Jeffersonians advocated honoring the alliance with France that was made during the American Revolution. Washington, hoping to avoid a war that the country could ill afford, sided with Hamilton and implemented a policy of neutrality, which many Jeffersonians interpreted as favoring Britain.  Republicans had also criticized Washington and Vice President John Adams (1735-1826) of having monarchical tendencies, so the link to England was easily made.

During this time in 1793, Democratic Societies began to form across the country.  One of the most prominent of these groups was the Pennsylvania Democratic Society, founded in Philadelphia by such prominent citizens as Alexander Dallas (1759-1817), who later served in James Madison’s cabinet. The societies extolled the virtues of the French Revolution and were inspired by Citizen Edmond Genêt, an ambassador from the new French republic to the United States.

Domestic issues also fostered growth among the societies. The Pennsylvania Democratic Society in Philadelphia vehemently opposed Hamilton’s excise tax on whiskey in 1794, which impacted many farmers in western Pennsylvania, and sought to elect officials who would repeal the excise law.

Three events soon damaged the credibility of the societies. The French Revolution became more violent, culminating in the beheading of King Louis XVI. Citizen Genêt alienated President Washington by belligerently outfitting American privateers to engage in combat with British ships.  And farmers in western Pennsylvania resorted to violence to oppose the excise tax (referred to as the “Whiskey Rebellion”).  When Washington denounced the societies as disruptive and unrepublican, they experienced a rapid decline. Yet they served as a framework for the opposition party that emerged by the end of the decade.

An organized opposition party was not new to Pennsylvania. A quasi-party system had been developed in the aftermath of the ratification of its 1776 state constitution. While the constitution fostered greater democracy by granting voting rights to all men regardless of property ownership, it was inadequate due to the lack of effective checks on the legislature, which soon overreached in its authority to confiscate property and overrule the judiciary. This last element was in direct contrast to the democratic spirit which prevailed in Pennsylvania when the document was drafted, and two parties – a “Constitutionalist” formation and a “Republican” faction which opposed the constitution – emerged. In 1790, Pennsylvanians adopted a new constitution that provided for greater parity among the branches, along with a bicameral legislature and a governor with veto power.

Nationally, the increasing partisanship of the 1790s was mirrored in the press, as Federalists and Republicans waged political war – which often included personal invective – in the pages of the country’s newspapers. In Philadelphia, the nation’s capital, Hamilton and Jefferson not only waged war but hired editors to create and manage partisan newspapers. John Fenno (1751-98) did the Federalists’ bidding in the Gazette of the United States, which originated in New York in 1789 and moved with the government to Philadelphia one year later.  The Jeffersonians countered with the National Gazette of Philip Freneau (1752-1832) and the Aurora, which was edited by Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache (1769-98).

The Jay Treaty, signed between the United States and Britain in 1794 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1795, further widened the gap between the parties. While the treaty prevented war with Britain, Jeffersonians severely criticized it as a capitulation to England. The treaty did not address certain grievances, particularly the British practice of seizing American ships and the impressment of American seamen. But as a result of the treaty, along with the seeds planted by the Democratic Societies shortly beforehand, Jeffersonian Republicans observed major gains in Pennsylvania in 1796 due primarily to the aftermath of the Jay Treaty, and the Republican movement had, by this time, crystallized into a genuine opposition party.

Pennsylvania’s political evolution in the 1790s was a microcosm of the nation, as opposition to the Federalists steadily grew throughout the decade.  The “have-nots” on the Western frontier and among Philadelphia’s urban poor were disillusioned with Hamiltonian policies that foreclosed their farms, taxed their whiskey, and favored the British monarchy over the French republic. By the middle of the decade, moderate Jeffersonians led by Thomas McKean (1734-1817), a signer of the Declaration of Independence and former Federalist, had taken control of the reins of Pennsylvania’s government.

Brian Hendricks is a Ph.D. candidate in early American history at Southern Illinois University. His research focuses on the election of 1796 and the growth of political parties in New York and Pennsylvania.

The many canals and channels that once acted as a vibrant lifeline for northwestern Philadelphia neighborhoods are no longer visible. The remaining canals however, have been converted to recreational use as shown here on the banks of Manayunk. (B. Krist for Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Company)

Northwest Philadelphia, bound loosely by the Roosevelt Expressway to the south, Broad Street to the east, and the suburbs of Montgomery County to the north and west, has origins as old as the city itself.  Developing around the Schuylkill and Wissahickon Creek waterways, and later Fairmount Park, the Northwest expanded and changed with the advent of new technologies and the larger legal, political, and cultural trends of Philadelphia.

In the late seventeenth century, as William Penn (1644-1718) worked to establish his “green country town,” the German Township along the Wissahickon came together as a small community of Dutch Mennonite and German Pietist immigrants, bound at first by religious and cultural identity.  On August 12, 1689, Penn granted the group its own charter, creating a distinct Germantown borough with a mayor, council, court, and marketplace.  

The community prospered in the cloth trade, as townspeople worked as linen weavers, and also gained a reputation as a seedbed of antislavery agitation.  In 1688, German Quakers published a resolution condemning the “traffick of men-Body.”  In 1775, the French-born Anthony Benezet (1713-84), a longtime resident of Germantown, founded the first abolitionist society in the United States, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, later the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and by 1800, 60 free blacks (and seven slaves) were recorded as living in Germantown.

This legacy of activism persisted in parts of the region, even as it maintained an identity as a largely white and wealthy enclave.  For many of Philadelphia’s elite, Germantown – with its relatively high elevation at 336 feet, offering scenic views and lazy breezes – became a popular respite from the frenzy of the city.  In 1750, loyalist William Allen (1704-80), later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, built a country estate at what is now Germantown Avenue and Allens Lane, and called the home Mount Airy, bestowing the name for the neighborhood that two centuries later earned a national reputation for racial tolerance.

In the early nineteenth century, as Philadelphia entered the age of industrialization, the Northwest region grew precipitously.  In 1815, the city granted a charter to the Schuylkill Navigation Company, charged with improving the navigational system of the Schuylkill River.  Less than a decade later, the 108-mile waterway reached completion, linking Philadelphia with the coalfields of Port Carbon and Pottsville.  These advancements brought new life to the communities along the river.  

Across the Wissahickon Gorge from Germantown, the borough of Manayunk, part of the larger Roxborough Township and ideally positioned in the river valley, experienced massive development, largely due to local textile manufacturing.  From 1817 to 1824, the population expanded from 60 to nearly 800 people, and by the late 1820s the community, which just a few years earlier contained little more than a toll house, had become known alternately as the “Lowell of Pennsylvania” and the “Manchester of America.” In 1840, the town was incorporated as its own separate borough.  The owners of the Manayunk mills resided above the town on the ridge between the river and the Wissahickon, which along with Germantown became one of the wealthiest communities in Philadelphia County.

Until 1854, these northwest communities retained their independent charters and systems of governance.  On February 2 of that year, though, the General Assembly of Pennsylvania and Governor William Bigler (1790-1879) approved the Act of Consolidation, dissolving the townships, boroughs, and districts that surrounded the city and incorporating the entirety of Philadelphia County under the authority of the Philadelphia municipal government.  

In the early 1830s a group of Germantown entrepreneurs set out to create the Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad. The first trains arrived in Germantown in 1832, and the neighborhood soon developed into the first railroad suburb of Philadelphia, and one of the first in the nation. (Library Company of Philadelphia)

As this legislative action brought the region under the auspices of city institutions and services, the expansion of the railways opened up the city and made the area more accessible.  In the early 1830s, a group of Germantown entrepreneurs set out to create the Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad.  The earliest trains arrived in Germantown in 1832, and the community soon developed into the first Railroad Suburb in Philadelphia, and one of the first in the nation.  Within a year, the wealthy residents of Chestnut Hill, occupying the northernmost section of Germantown, clamored for a regular stagecoach service to connect their large pastoral plots on the Hill to the Germantown Depot at Germantown Avenue and Price Street.  Two decades later, more reliable horse car and steam rail service came to Germantown, carrying multi-passenger vehicles along the iron rails.  In Chestnut Hill, local commuters raised funds for a permanent railroad connecting the southern and northern ends of Germantown.  The new terminal at Chestnut Hill Avenue and Bethlehem Pike opened on July 3, 1854.

With these political and technological changes, the region rapidly expanded.  The influx of city residents prompted new housing development throughout Northwest Philadelphia, but even as population surged, residents held strong to each community’s independent roots.

It was, in part, the green space around these northwest neighborhoods that allowed homeowners to maintain their autonomy from the rest of the city. Fairmount Park (officially incorporated in 1855) and its forested Wissahickon Gorge acted as a buffer between Germantown and Roxborough and the rest of Philadelphia County.  But even the Wissahickon, which had served as the stage for the Battle of Germantown in 1777, felt the effects of the city’s industrial growth.  At the turn of the eighteenth century, the region had become home to the first two paper mills in North America – the first built by William Rittenhouse at the south end of the gorge in 1690, the second by William Dewees at the northern end in 1708. By 1850, the dense woods and deep valley were home to more than 50 water-powered mills. Mining and blasting broke through the steep cliffs along the southern end of the creek, giving way to the development of the Rittenhousetown mills, and by 1856, the Wissahickon Turnpike, a private toll road, ran through the valley south to north.  In the latter half of the 1800s, efforts to protect and preserve the water source prompted the Fairmount Park Commission to take over the land, demolishing the mills and in their place erecting several inns and lodges, where visitors could enjoy the natural splendor that remained.

By the turn of the century, the population of Northwest Philadelphia was beginning to change.  From 1910 to 1930, more than 140,000 African Americans arrived in the city in the first wave of the Great Migration from the South to northern cities. As they settled in South, West, and North Philadelphia, long-established residents began to move outward, creating greater ethnic diversification in the Northwest.  Many Italian-Americans left South Philadelphia for the Roxborough area.  German, Scots-Irish, and Irish families moved to Germantown. 

As the population shifted, the economy also prompted vast changes. First, road construction along the Schuylkill River connected Northwest Philadelphia to the city center, making automobile travel a reality for the first time. Then, the Great Depression of the 1930s brought the closing of most of the mills along the Schuylkill River corridor, and such neighborhoods as Manayunk and East Falls saw their industrial prowess begin to wane.  Many of the large mansions of Chestnut Hill – by the late nineteenth century one of the most elite neighborhoods in the United States – were demolished as the most affluent residents lost fortunes in the stock market. This also led to job losses for the large service economy that existed in the area. 

With the Second World War, the city once again experienced new growth with a second mass migration of African Americans. Philadelphia’s black population increased from nearly 251,000 in 1940 to 376,000 in 1950.  At first, most upwardly mobile black newcomers concentrated in North Philadelphia.  After World War II, though, as these increasingly all-black neighborhoods experienced an acute housing shortage, middle-class African Americans also began to move outward to the Northwest.

When the war ended, communities on the outer edges of the city saw their under-developed green space quickly fill with new housing.  Although Northwest Philadelphia saw less physical development than other areas of the city, the region still underwent widespread growth. Upper Roxborough experienced development much like the surrounding Montgomery County suburbs, with new houses, green front lawns, and strip malls spreading along Henry and Ridge Avenues.  New neighborhoods sprung up along the northwest city borders, including the westernmost pocket of Andorra and West Oak Lane to the east. 

East Mount Airy, located just across Germantown Avenue from West Mount Airy – struggled with early volatility and dislocation. The East Mount Airy Neighbors (EMAN) worked to inform authorities of illegal real estate practices, promote equality in schools, and create a new racial understanding. (Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Library)

In southern Germantown, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority allocated $10.6 million for public housing, to contend with the growing numbers of black families moving into the area.  West Mount Airy, the community in the central section of historic German Township named for Justice Allen’s 1750 home, began to develop its own identity as an economically viable, racially integrated community.  Unlike other areas of the region and city, where white residents responded to the arrival of black families with “fight or flight,” community leaders in the upper-middle class neighborhood created a proactive plan toward interracial living.  By the early 1960s, the community was touted across the nation as a site of racial progress. Its counterpart across Germantown Avenue, East Mount Airy, experienced a brief period of integration before transitioning to a predominantly black middle-class population. Throughout the next decade, similar patterns of white flight and African American settlement took hold in West Oak Lane and Germantown. Across Northwest Philadelphia, churches, schools, and neighborhood organizations offered critical institutional support during these postwar years, helping residents navigate these periods of transition and preserve a sense of community identity.

By the last decades of the twentieth century, as the Northwest section became more enmeshed in the Philadelphia economy and as individual communities responded to the larger political, economic, and cultural forces of the city, the regional identity of the area began to wane. Even as efforts toward local preservation, restoration, and oral history collection highlighted the living history of the region, Northwest Philadelphia became less a cohesive entity than a loosely connected group of neighborhoods, still bound by the common heritage of the natural woodlands of the Wissahickon, the industrial might of the Schuylkill canal, and the desire for independence as well as strong community ties.  Perhaps more than any other section of the city, Northwest Philadelphia retained William Penn’s historic mission to create a green country town in an urban center.

Abigail Perkiss is an Assistant Professor of History at Kean University in Union, N.J. Her first book, Civil Rights’ Stepchild: The Making, Maintenance, and Meaning of Neighborhood Integration in Post-WWII Philadelphia, is forthcoming from Cornell University Press.