I would suggest that, at the start of the twenty-first century, greater Philadelphia stretches from Monmouth County, New Jersey, to the north and to Cecil County, Maryland, to the South. On the east, it reaches Atlantic County, New Jersey, and goes west to Berks County, Pennsylvania. Expansive regional highway and rail systems as well as daily and weekly commuting patterns support the metropolitan understanding of the city.

My recent article “Preparing for the Pandemic: City Boards of Health and the Arrival of Cholera in Montreal, New York, and Philadelphia in 1832″ (Urban History Review, Spring 2008), is based largely on research done at the College of Physicians and focuses on Philadelphia’s response to the arrival of cholera in the New World in 1832. The doctors of the College of Physicians attributed the city’s low death rate, 1/4 that of New York and 1/12 that of Montreal, to their greater attention to hygiene and medical preparedness. I demonstrated that the city’s low death rate was due to the ready availability of clean drinking water delivered to the city, (but not to areas below South Street) from the city waterworks on Fairmount.

Should you be interested, I could rewrite the paper to focus primarily on Philadelphia and expand it to include the impacts of the cholera epidemics of 1849, 1854, and 1866 on the city and its environs.

Yours truly, John B. Osborne, PhD.
Professor Emeritus of History
Millersville University

@cmires
I suppose that early on Lancaster PA might qualify, and even today Camden NJ is part of Greater Philadelphia. Phildelphia Trade — including 18th c. trade — would take you into roads and paths out of Philadelphia and war out of Philadelphia would certainly take you into the PA forts of 1753-58, as far as Lebanon and Harrisburg. (Article on Rudyard Kipling’s Philadelphia?) The Philadelphia five-county area is certainly Greater Philadelphia and then there’s Reading …

George E. Thomas has contributed this list of his publications in architectural history:

Books:
Forthcoming, Buildings of the United States: Philadelphia and Eastern
Pennsylvania, Charlottesville, UVA Press, spring 2010.

The University of Pennsylvania Campus Guide. New York, Princeton
Architectural Press, 2002.

William L. Price: From Arts and Crafts to Modern Architecture. New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.

Building America’s First University: an architectural and cultural history
and guide to the University of Pennsylvania. With David B. Brownlee.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

American Architectural Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century. With Michael
Frank Furness: The Complete Works. With Michael J. Lewis and Jeffrey A.
Cohen. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, February 1991, revised
edition, 1996.

The Book of the School 100 Years. With Ann Strong. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts, 1990.

Drawing Towards Building: Philadelphia Architectural Graphics 1732
1986. With James F. O’Gorman, Jeffrey A. Cohen, and G. Holmes Perkins.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.

Cape May: Queen of the Seaside Resorts. With Carl E. Doebley.
Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1975; revised and enlarged, 1995.

William L. Price: Builder of Men and of Buildings. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Pennsylvania, 1975.

The Architecture of Frank Furness. Principal essay by James F. O’Gorman.
Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973.

Articles and Reviews:

“From Our House to the Big House: Architectural Design as Visible Metaphor
in the School Buildings of Philadelphia,” Journal of Planning History 5:3
(August 2006) 218-240.

“Building Penn’s Brand,” Pennsylvania Gazette, 101:1 (Sept/Oct. 2002) 28-33.

“’The Happy Employment of Means to Ends:’ Frank Furness’s Library of the
University of Pennsylvania and the Industrial Culture of Philadelphia,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, (April 2002).

”From Frontier to Center City: The Evolution of the Neighborhood of the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography, 124 (January/ April 2000) 7-42.

“Frank Furness and the Poetry of the Present,” Introduction to Ted Bosley,
University of Pennsylvania Library. London: Phaidon, 1996.

“William Price’s Rose Valley,” Janet Kardon, ed. The Ideal Home, New York:
American Craft Museum, 1993.

“Drexel University An Architectural History of the Main Building, 1891
1991,” Booklet published in conjunction with the Drexel University
Centennial, 1991.

“William L. Price, Architect: Prophet Without Honor” and “Rose Valley
Architecture: Where Art Served Life.” In A Poor Sort of Heaven, A Good
Sort of Earth: The Rose Valley Arts and Crafts Experiment. William
Ayres, ed. Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania: Brandywine River Museum, 1983: 23-26.

“Social Stratification and Architectural Patronage in Philadelphia, 1840
1920.” In The Divided Metropolis. Howard Gillette and William Cutler,
eds. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980: 85 124

Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art. Darrel Sewell, ed.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1976. “The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,” “Centennial Exhibition Grounds and Buildings,” “Peter A. B. Widener Mansion,” “Art Club,” “Philadelphia and Reading Terminal,” “Rose Valley,”
“Jacob Reed’s Sons’ Store,” “Walnut Lane Bridge,” “Benjamin Franklin
Parkway,” “Philadelphia Savings Fund Society,” “Casper Wistar Morris
House,” “Market Street National Bank,” “Triangle Region Development Area,”
“Alfred Newton Richards Medical Building,” “United Fund Headquarters,”
“Franklin Court,” and various biographical notices.

“The Statue in the Garden” and “Art Deco Architecture and Sculpture.”
Sculpture of a City: Philadelphia Treasures in Bronze and Stone.
Philadelphia: Fairmount Park Art Association, 1974.

“The Goals of William L. Price.” In A History of Rose Valley. Peter
Ham, ed. Rose Valley: privately published, 1973.

“The Politics of Destruction: When We Destroy the Past, We Also Destroy
the Future.” Philadelphia Magazine LXIV, no. 4 (April, 1973): 100 ff.

Wonderful idea and project! Long overdue. Would like to be kept informed of progress. Don’t know enough of project yet to comment. Topics could include: Early Irish immigrants; Port of Phila. history; caves along Front St for early arrivals housing; Ben Franklin’s impact upon city, including paving blocks, fire marks, early fire companies, and ins. company foundings; first hospital; Literary Society; U of P; wood log water mains (still in use)useful inventions etc.
Hog Island & Phila. Shipyard; Know Nothing riots; street disturbances when Wm. Penn statute on City Hall faced NE as ” city of tommorow”.
Fishtown history along Del. River; industrial history; Stetson Hats, American Flyer sleds; steel mills; clothing manufacturers; Baldwin Locomotives; Piasecki helicopters; etc.
Old Phila. streams and creeks paved over and still there: Dock Creek, Wyomissing Creek, Walnut Creek,(in basement of bldg at Broad & Walnut, I believe); etc.
[comment received April 18; re-posted by the editors May 1]

@Jared Lobdell Jared, you raise an important question about “Greater Philadelphia.” We would be interested in hearing how you and others think about the Philadelphia region — does it have fixed geographic boundaries? Or might it be defined in some other way? Would the answers be the same now as in the past? These are question we are thinking about as we imagine what the Encyclopedia might become. — The Editors.

What is considered to be the extent of Greater Philadelphia? Is it the Five-County Area? Does it include nearby Jersey?

Topics (just at random): The “Philadelphians” (Society of the Woman in the Wilderness, Kelpius of the Wissahickon); Sarah Josepha Hale; Poe and T. S. Arthur in Philadelphia, and the Temperance Movement there; Philadelphia taverns; Philadelphia Jewish Community (esp. in XVIIIth C); and I can suggest many more, including biographies.
[comment received April 24; re-posted by the editors May 1]