Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia

Contents » Popular Culture

1776

The story of American independence comes to life in the musical 1776, which dramatizes the debates, drafting, and signing of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress. The musical, which debuted on Broadway in 1969 and became a film in 1972, highlights Philadelphia as the site of the fateful decisions made at the ⇒ Read More

American Bandstand

American Bandstand (1952-89) was a massively popular music television program with strong Philadelphia roots, storied national success, and the power to shape the music industry and society.  The show epitomized many important aspects of ever-evolving American popular culture: mass communication, popular music, youth culture, dance and fashion trends, as well as race and gender relationships.  ⇒ Read More

Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793

Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793, published in 1799 by Philadelphia native Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), became one of the most influential works of American and Philadelphia Gothic literature. The novel recalls the yellow fever epidemic (August–October 1793), which transformed Philadelphia into a place of chaos. Such late-summer epidemics were common across North ⇒ Read More

Arts of Wharton Esherick

The unconventional artistic trajectory and prolific work of prominent Philadelphia-area artist and craftsman Wharton Esherick (1877–1970) have been claimed for and by multiple movements in the history of twentieth-century American art, from early-twentieth-century Arts and Crafts to postwar studio craft. Working across a wide variety of media, including printmaking, sculpture, furniture, and theatrical design, Esherick ⇒ Read More

Atlantic City

Before Disneyland, Atlantic City was the first great middle-class resort in the nation, especially the Philadelphia region. From its founding in the 1850s through the early decades of the twenty-first century, Atlantic City succeeded and failed based on its ability to make itself in the image of the American middle class. As the cultural tastes ⇒ Read More

Automobile Racing

Motorsports developed into a popular leisure activity in the Philadelphia area during the twentieth century. Originally an activity enjoyed by wealthy car owners, the advent of the Model T Ford allowed local technophiles to build their own race cars and compete in regional races. By mid-century, drivers raced at fairground horse tracks and purpose-built speedways ⇒ Read More

Avenue of the Arts

The Avenue of the Arts is the appellation for a section of Broad Street—from Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia to Glenwood Avenue in North Philadelphia—devoted to arts and entertainment facilities. The Avenue was conceived in 1993 by a coalition of public and private entities to attract visitors to Center City. Amid a decline in manufacturing, ⇒ Read More

Ballet

Philadelphia has a rich ballet history that spans centuries. Although initially not hospitable to dance, the city developed into an attractive destination for international ballet dancers and teachers and eventually produced the first genuine ballerinas born in the United States, the first thoroughly American ballet troupe, and one of the most prominent of the regional ⇒ Read More

Baseball (Professional)

From the time the game was created to its organization into a professional league, and from the first National League game ever played to some of the earliest World Series, the city of Philadelphia has played a prominent role in professional baseball history. Variations of the game of baseball became popular some three decades prior ⇒ Read More

Baseball: Negro Leagues

More than any other city, Philadelphia epitomized the significance of Negro League baseball in urban communities. For a remarkable eight decades, local fans consistently supported a series of black ball clubs whose successes generated racial pride and represented a triumph of African American institution-building.  In Philadelphia, the first all-black baseball teams surfaced in the 1860s. ⇒ Read More

Better Philadelphia Exhibition (1947)

The Better Philadelphia Exhibition, which ran from September 8 to October 15, 1947, at Gimbels department store in Center City, showcased new ideas for revitalizing Philadelphia after decades of depression and war. Conceived by young architects and planners and funded by prominent citizens, the exhibition introduced more than 350,000 people in the metropolitan area, free ⇒ Read More

Bicentennial (1976)

Planners of Philadelphia’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976, aware of the incredible success of the 1876 Centennial as well as the flop of the 1926 Sesquicentennial, hoped to showcase the growth and ambitions of the city while also commemorating the two-hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. While the big celebrations drew crowds of Americans, the ⇒ Read More

Bicycles

Since the nineteenth century, bicycles have enamored the American public as tools of transportation, sport, exercise, and joy. The Philadelphia area has been intimately connected with the development of the two-wheeled, human-powered machine from its early appearance in North America to the adoption of bike-share programs and the blazing of interstate trail networks in the ⇒ Read More

Billiards (Pool)

Billiards,  the traditional name for games played on a table with balls and a cue stick, of which there are a number of variations, has been played in Philadelphia since at least the late 1700s. Played on a table with six pockets and either nine or fifteen balls, billiards is referred to as pocket billiards ⇒ Read More

Bookselling

Bookstores have long been an important part of the economic and cultural fabric of Philadelphia. As early as the eighteenth century, booksellers set up shop in the city, eager to serve a highly-educated population hungry for information. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the number of bookstores continued to rise. These stores sold a ⇒ Read More

Boxing and Boxers

For over one hundred years, Philadelphia neighborhoods, for better and worse, played a significant role in molding fighters. Over two dozen world boxing champions throughout various weight classes called Philadelphia home. Nearby communities such as Camden, New Jersey, and Easton, Pennsylvania, also produced world champions. Over time, Philadelphia-area boxing was supported by a wide network ⇒ Read More

Broad Street Bullies

The Philadelphia Flyers, formed as a National Hockey League expansion team in 1967, became known as the Broad Street Bullies for their aggressively physical play during the 1972-73 season. As the Flyers racked up penalty minutes at a record pace, Philadelphia’s press corps tried to create a colorful nickname for the team. Jack Chevalier and ⇒ Read More

Burlesque

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Philadelphia became one of the central nodes of American burlesque, a genre with origins in the ribald Victorian “travesties”—theatrical parodies of well-known operas that relied upon risqué and absurd humor. Distinct from its English counterpart, American burlesque incorporated elements of minstrelsy and, especially by the end of ⇒ Read More

Cartoons and Cartoonists

American cartooning began in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), who introduced cartoons to North America, used images to galvanize viewers to action on the issues of their day. As the political, economic, and cultural capital of the early United States, Philadelphia became a center for producing political cartoons and humorous caricatures. Although New York eventually supplanted ⇒ Read More

Centennial Exhibition (1876)

The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine, more simply known as “the Centennial,” opened in Fairmount Park to great fanfare on May 10, 1876, and closed with equal flourish six months later. Modeled after the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition in London in 1851, and the first in a long ⇒ Read More

Children’s Television

Local children’s programming in the Philadelphia area flourished during the “Golden Age of Television,” from the rise of commercial broadcasting after World War II to the early 1970s. During its heyday the hosted children’s show was a mainstay of locally produced programming. In the Philadelphia area, original children’s shows were produced by the three local ⇒ Read More

Children’s Theater

 In Philadelphia, the theater capital of the United States until New York overtook it in the 1830s, an array of children’s theater activity has long sparked creativity and imagination, informed, and educated young people with live performances. Early staged productions for the entire family increasingly gave way to child-specific theater combining education with entertainment. In the twentieth century, the children’s theater company grew to include commercial and non–commercial professional productions, non–professional ⇒ Read More

City Merchant (The); or, The Mysterious Failure

The novel The City Merchant; or, The Mysterious Failure, written by John Beauchamp Jones (1810-66), captures the height of Philadelphia’s anti-abolitionist movement and its emotional force and toll on the city, while at the same time transcending its locale to comment on the dynamics of market capitalism in early nineteenth-century America. The City Merchant chronicles the ⇒ Read More

Classical Music

Classical music stands apart from vernacular (or “folk” music) and from “popular” music (in the form of simplified commercial entertainment) in its complexity of structure and high level of performance requirements. Philadelphia established a major position in American classical composition and performance in the early nineteenth century, and maintained that position through its premier professional ⇒ Read More

Colonial Revival

During the late nineteenth century, a time of great tension, new immigration, and accelerating industrialization, white Euro-Americans sought comfort in the past, specifically the Colonial and Revolutionary eras. In their romanticized interpretation, the founding era was defined by simplicity, domestic industry, and unity—qualities in direct contrast to the tumultuous Civil War and its aftermath. They ⇒ Read More

Columbus Day

Observed on the second Monday in October, Columbus Day in the Philadelphia region gained prominence as Italian immigrant communities grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. By commemorating the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) in the New World, Italian-Americans embraced the navigator as their countryman, celebrated Italian culture, and called attention to ⇒ Read More

Cricket

The rise, fall, and rebirth of the sport of cricket in the Philadelphia region reflected political, social, and economic change. Cricket once flourished in the city, which produced some legendary players known throughout the cricketing world. The rise of other leisure activities supplanted the game, however, until a moderate resurgence in the late twentieth and ⇒ Read More

Cycling (Sport)

The Philadelphia area’s connections to the sport of cycling have spanned nearly 200 years, reflecting its rise, decline, and resurgence in the United States. The region’s history of road, track, and all-terrain races began before the invention of the modern “bicycle” and continued into the twenty-first century with new variations of the sport and the ⇒ Read More

Dancing Assembly

Established in the winter of 1748-49, the Dancing Assembly of Philadelphia— also known as “The Assembly” or “The Assemblies”— originated as an occasion for elite men and women to gather for social dancing in carefully matched pairs. Modeled after the English “assembly,” a type of formal social gathering most famously held in Bath and London, ⇒ Read More

Department Stores

As department stores became central to retailing in American cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Philadelphia played a major role. Led by John Wanamaker, whose store was a national model, Market Street became home to the giant stores known as the “Big Six,” which were close to rail terminals and subway stations. ⇒ Read More

Diners

With its origins in late-nineteenth-century street vending and transient “quick lunch” operations such as horse-drawn food carts, the diner emerged as one of the most popular and successful restaurant genres in the United States. Although diners entered a period of protracted decline after World War II with the arrival of fast food restaurants, changing consumer ⇒ Read More

Doo Wop

Philadelphia was one of several key cities where, in the 1950s and early 1960s, singers created the small-group vocal harmony style of rhythm and blues known as doo wop. Doo wop was an urban style, sung on city street corners and in school hallways. Its name, derived from a type of sound singers made in ⇒ Read More

Down There

Down There, a hardboiled crime novel by Philadelphia writer David Goodis (1917-67) published in 1956, follows Eddie Lynn, a former concert pianist, who hides from his past until his estranged brother shows up and forces him to grapple with his ghosts. Although not one of Goodis’s most successful novels, Down There became his most famous ⇒ Read More

Elegy (for MOVE and Philadelphia)

In “Elegy (for MOVE and Philadelphia),” Philadelphia poet and playwright Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934) questions the paradoxical nature of a city that seemingly set itself and its people ablaze. Written in response to the 1985 police bombing of the radical group MOVE and the subsequent fire that occurred on the 6200 block of Osage Avenue, ⇒ Read More

Fashion

Fashion played an important role in Philadelphia’s development as a center for retail and manufacturing. Philadelphians imported and promoted the latest European styles while producing garments and accessories of comparable style and quality. Area retailers played a pivotal part in fostering consumer culture in the nineteenth century and set industry standards for the nation. Despite ⇒ Read More

Fever 1793 (Novel)

Published in 2000, Fever 1793 is a young adult novel that tells the story of a 14-year-old girl named Mattie Cook, who fights to survive the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia. The historical novel by Laurie Halse Anderson (b. 1961) depicts 1793 America through the eyes of Mattie, who, when the fever hits ⇒ Read More

Films (Feature)

Philadelphia’s association with movie-making dates back to the beginning of the film industry, when the city’s Lubin Manufacturing Company created and distributed many of the first generation of silent films. But after the company’s early collapse, the city never again attained a prominent role in the nation’s filmmaking. After Lubin, Philadelphia served as a setting ⇒ Read More

Football (Professional)

From the 1950s onward, pro football’s Eagles ruled the sports roost in Philadelphia, having built a dedicated fan base that filled the stadium each week and careened emotionally from each gridiron success and failure. Moreover, fierce play on the field was echoed by unbridled passion in the stands. That did not change even as the ⇒ Read More

Fox Hunting

Fox hunting, the sport of mounted riders following a pack of hounds that are hunting a fox by scent, became a popular leisure activity of the emerging gentry in the Philadelphia region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It survives as a twenty-first-century pastime, even though development has reduced the available countryside, and animal-rights activists ⇒ Read More

Freedom Train

On September 17, 1947, a seven-car train arrived in Philadelphia’s Broad Street Station carrying 130 articles of American history, including documents, prints, pictures, and flags, intended to represent this history’s most important legacy: freedom. After its launch in Philadelphia, the Freedom Train went on a 29,000-mile journey to three hundred communities throughout the United States, ⇒ Read More

Garies (The) and Their Friends

Published in London in 1857, Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends is among the earliest novels written by an African American. Although it is not strictly a historical novel, The Garies reflects the deteriorating conditions of the free black community in Philadelphia during Webb’s childhood and early adulthood, in particular, the 1838 disenfranchisement ⇒ Read More

Godey’s Lady’s Book

The first successful women’s magazine and most widely circulated magazine in the antebellum United States, Godey’s Lady’s Book offered fashion illustrations and advice, literary pieces, and articles on current events and popular culture.  Founded in Philadelphia in 1830 by Louis Antoine Godey (1804-1878) and edited for four decades by Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879), the magazine provided ⇒ Read More

Gospel Music (African American)

Long an important center of African American musical life, Philadelphia played a key role in the development of black gospel music. One of the seminal figures in developing the gospel style, Charles Albert Tindley (1851-1933), moved to Philadelphia during the Great Migration of the early twentieth century and became a well-known gospel songwriter. As the ⇒ Read More

Gothic Literature

From the early nineteenth century onward, Philadelphia spawned an abundance of mysterious tales starring shadowy strangers, fantastic happenings, and deadly conspiracies. Prominent genre writers including Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), George Lippard (1822-54), and Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) made the City of Brotherly Love the birthplace of American gothic literature. Although the gothic arguably reached its ⇒ Read More

Hail, Columbia

“Hail, Columbia,” written in Philadelphia in the closing years of the eighteenth century, became a popular patriotic song in early America and served for many years as the unofficial national anthem. Bands began to play it in honor of the vice president of the United States in the 1830s, and later it became the official ⇒ Read More

Hoagies

A hoagie is a sandwich made on a long Italian roll containing a variety of Italian meats and cheeses, lettuce, tomato, and onion, and dressed with olive oil, vinegar, and spices. Its exact origins are uncertain, but by the end of the twentieth century a mayoral proclamation declared the hoagie to be the “official sandwich” ⇒ Read More

Home Remedies

Although Philadelphia has been a premier city for medical innovation since the mid-eighteenth century, the diverse peoples of the region also have used home remedies to heal themselves. Home remedies preserve traditional domestic healthcare practices, and they have persisted into the twenty-first century as part of alternative medicine and mainstream scientific therapies. Medical recipes often ⇒ Read More

I’d Rather Be in Philadelphia

The expression “I’d rather be in Philadelphia” is derived from a fictional epitaph that locally-born entertainer W.C. Fields (1880-1946) proposed for himself in Vanity Fair magazine in 1925: “Here lies W.C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia.” By implying that Philadelphia would be slightly preferable to the grave, the joke tapped a vein ⇒ Read More

Ice Hockey (Professional)

In February 1966, the National Hockey League decided that the future was now. Responding to forces transforming other professional sports leagues, such as the growth of televised coverage and the expansion of franchises to the West Coast of the United States, the NHL decided to expand its static lineup of “Original Six” franchises in Eastern ⇒ Read More

Independence Seaport Museum

The Independence Seaport Museum, originally called the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, addressed the lack of written history of the Port of Philadelphia by collecting, documenting, and exhibiting the region’s nautical legacy. Founded in 1960 by attorney, civic leader, and maritime collector Joseph Welles Henderson (1920-2007), the museum focused on the maritime history of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, ⇒ Read More

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a comedy series that premiered on the FX cable television channel in August 2005, follows a group of five friends as they engage in narcissistic and questionable schemes from their Irish bar, Paddy’s Pub, fictionally located at Dickinson and Third Street in South Philadelphia. Created by executive producer Rob McElhenney ⇒ Read More

Jawn

Jawn is a neutral, all-purpose noun used to reference any person, place, situation, or object. In casual conversation, it takes the place of the word thing. Contrary to popular belief, jawn did not entirely originate in Philadelphia, but developed locally as a variant pronunciation of joint in African American vernacular English. The meaning of jawn ⇒ Read More

Jazz

Jazz began to emerge as a distinct musical style around the turn of the twentieth century, a merging of two vernacular African American musical styles—ragtime and blues—with elements of popular music. New Orleans, the “cradle of jazz,” was the most important city in this process, with Chicago and New York playing particularly significant roles in ⇒ Read More

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts was designed as the centerpiece of the Avenue of the Arts, a rebranded stretch of Broad Street devoted to performing arts venues. Built by a partnership of public and private entities, the Kimmel Center was part of a wider plan to revitalize Center City via the construction of ⇒ Read More

Kwanzaa

Because of its large African American population and the presence and influence of prominent Black Nationalist individuals and organizations, the Philadelphia area has been especially active in celebrating Kwanzaa, an African cultural holiday that emerged out of the Black Nationalist Movement of the 1960s. Kwanzaa emphasizes remembering and reconstructing African identity, which was forcibly erased ⇒ Read More

Labor Day

Labor Day, celebrated the first Monday of September, has been observed in the Philadelphia region since the 1880s, before it became a nationwide holiday. New Jersey was one of the first states to grant Labor Day legal status in 1887, and Pennsylvania followed suit by the end of the decade. The earliest incarnations of Labor ⇒ Read More

Lafayette’s Tour

When the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), a French hero of the American Revolution, returned to the United States in 1824-25, Philadelphians joined in a wave of nationwide affection for the nobleman who had volunteered for service in the Continental Army at the age of 19. Lafayette’s return to the region stirred increasing regard for preserving ⇒ Read More

Listen to the Mocking Bird

Written in 1855 by a Philadelphia songwriter who was inspired by the whistling of a street musician, “Listen to the Mocking Bird” was one of the most popular songs of the nineteenth century. It sold millions of copies of sheet music and was sung (and whistled) throughout the United States and parts of Europe. Philadelphia ⇒ Read More

Lotteries

Lotteries have a long and controversial history in the Philadelphia region. Since the early eighteenth century, random drawings of numbers have funded charities and clubs, paid for roads and schools, settled estates, distributed land, and promoted various private and state-run initiatives. Lotteries have drawn multitudes of customers seeking cash and other prizes, but over three ⇒ Read More

LOVE (Sculpture)

The sculpture commonly known as “the LOVE statue,” first placed in Philadelphia’s John F. Kennedy Plaza for the 1976 Bicentennial, was not the only sculpture of its kind—by the twenty-first century, it was not even the only sculpture of its type in Philadelphia. Yet LOVE, by Robert Indiana (1928-2018), came to be embraced by Philadelphians ⇒ Read More

Magazines, Literary

Philadelphia-based writers and publishers produced literary magazines as early as the 1740s, and, through the nineteenth century, the city was home to a succession of influential publications that supported many local authors and contributed to the establishment of a national literary culture. However, Philadelphia’s greatest prominence in literary publishing was achieved through a series of ⇒ Read More

Maps and Mapmaking

As the country’s largest city, and for a time capital of the new nation, Philadelphia was well situated to chart the young republic’s changing geography. Using its capacity to attract all the manufacturing elements necessary for successful publishing—printers binders, colorists, engravers and others—Philadelphia became the home of the nation’s first full-time geographical publisher and soon ⇒ Read More

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Philadelphia has had a greater influence on Martin Luther King Jr. holiday traditions than any city other than King’s birthplace, Atlanta. Observed on the third Monday in January since 1986, the federal holiday commemorates King (1929-68) and his civil rights activism. Ceremonies at the Liberty Bell and a focus on community service are among Philadelphia’s ⇒ Read More

Meschianza

On May 18, 1778, four hundred British officers and elite Philadelphians embarked on a regatta down the Delaware River. This aquatic procession kicked off the Meschianza, an extravagant fete to honor General William Howe (1729-1814) and his brother, Admiral Richard Howe (1726-99), on their departure from North America. General Howe’s army took control of Philadelphia ⇒ Read More

Mighty Macs

The Immaculata College women’s basketball teams of the early 1970s, known as the Mighty Macs, won the first three national tournaments of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) in 1972, 1973, and 1974. Basketball brought the Immaculata community together, and Immaculata’s success showcased the high quality of basketball played by Philadelphia’s Catholic schools. ⇒ Read More

Monopoly

Although an unemployed Philadelphia salesman, Charles Darrow (1889-1967), was long credited as the creator of the world’s most popular board game, the origins of Monopoly stretch several decades before Parker Brothers purchased the rights from Darrow in 1935 and beyond the iconic streets of Atlantic City featured in the game. The proper history of Monopoly ⇒ Read More

Mother’s Day

First rising to popularity in Philadelphia, Mother’s Day has been formally observed on the second Sunday in May since 1914 and celebrated in the United States for even longer. Serving various purposes since the late nineteenth century, Mother’s Day has deep connections to religion, war, feminism, and consumerism. For over a century, the meaning and ⇒ Read More

Mummers

The Mummers Parade, an institution in Philadelphia since 1901, brought together many of the loosely organized groups of folk performers who roamed the streets each year between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. Known variously as mummers, shooters, belsnickles, fantasticals, and callithumpians, these masqueraders traced their roots to immigrants from England, Sweden, and Germany who ⇒ Read More

Mummies

Philadelphia’s fascination with Egyptian mummies began modestly, but by the end of the nineteenth century the city held some of the largest collections of mummies in the United States. Although some mummies had only a transient stay in Philadelphia or were lost to the ravages of time, many remained in museums to teach later generations ⇒ Read More

Murals

Murals in the Greater Philadelphia region, like those in the United States at large, belong to an extraordinarily diverse set of histories and genealogies, from indigenous rock carving to decorations for private houses to paintings in public buildings and community initiatives. Philadelphia-area murals have spanned this diverse heritage, including three particularly important mural movements: Beaux-Arts ⇒ Read More

Musical Fund Society

The Musical Fund Society, an important predecessor to the Philadelphia Orchestra, formed in 1820 to promote professional and amateur musical talent in Philadelphia and to aid indigent musicians and their families. Its active role in advancing the careers of exceptional performing musicians and composers continued into the twenty-first century, making the Musical Fund Society the ⇒ Read More

My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free

“My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free,” written in Philadelphia in 1759 by Francis Hopkinson (1737–91), is generally considered the first secular song written by a native-born American. Hopkinson, then a young graduate of the College of Philadelphia, later became a leading figure in Philadelphia music as well as a prominent patriot, signer of the ⇒ Read More

New Year’s Traditions

New Year’s celebrations in the Philadelphia region have often included parties, formal wear, fireworks, and parades as part of a two-day, secular celebration from December 31 to January 1. The changing of a calendar year from one to the next has long been cause for commemoration and reflection, and the city’s diverse communities have shaped ⇒ Read More

ODUNDE Festival

The ODUNDE Festival, held in South Philadelphia each year on the second Sunday in June, celebrates the history and heritage of African people around the globe and serves to instill and encourage cultural pride. Taking its name from the word meaning “Happy New Year” in the Yoruba language (placed in all capital letters by the ⇒ Read More

Oh, Dem Golden Slippers

“Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” the unofficial theme song of the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, is both an enduringly popular song and a revealing example of the complex, multilayered interplay between black and white music in America. Written by African American songwriter James Bland (1854–1911) as a parody of a Negro spiritual, “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” published ⇒ Read More

Opera and Opera Houses

Opera has played an important role in Philadelphia arts and entertainment since the mid-eighteenth century. The city has long been a key center for opera and holds several important distinctions in opera history, including being the site of the first serious opera performances in America, birthplace of the first major American opera composer, and home ⇒ Read More

Pennsylvania Impressionism

Pennsylvania Impressionist painting flourished in eastern Pennsylvania in the first half of the twentieth century. Often referred to as the “New Hope School” because artists in Bucks County produced the best-known works, the style was also practiced vigorously in Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, and Lehigh Counties, and key artists of the movement taught at the Pennsylvania ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia (Film)

As a form of cinematic activism, Philadelphia (1993) attempted to reform the public understanding of AIDS in a time when ignorance and fear of the disease fueled prejudice and hate. The film is not merely set in the city of its title, but in a large part, the people of Philadelphia performed it. Extras who ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Folk Festival

Seeking to contribute to the folk revival that reached its peak in the United States during the mid-1960s, folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein (1927-95) and radio DJ Gene Shay (b. 1935) organized the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1962. During a hiatus of the similar Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, Goldstein and Shay sought to demonstrate ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent

In 1938, the City of Philadelphia amended its charter to create a museum that would collect the city’s material culture and display it for the public. The institution, long known as the Atwater Kent Museum, took its name from radio manufacturer A. Atwater Kent (1873-1949), who purchased and donated the former Franklin Institute building on ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Lawyer

The term Philadelphia lawyer originated in the eighteenth century as a description of members of the Philadelphia bar, then widely considered the best trained in the American colonies and exceptionally skilled in the law and rhetoric. By the twentieth century the term had taken on a less flattering secondary meaning, to denote a clever attorney ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Story (The)

The Philadelphia Story (1939) is a comedy of manners presented as a three-act play set in the late 1930s in a magnificent mansion in Philadelphia’s western Main Line suburbs, a location of wealth and exclusivity. Written by Philip Barry (1896-1949), a prolific dramatic and comic playwright, The Philadelphia Story centers on the lives of an ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Ten

When an exhibition of 247 paintings opened on February 17, 1917, at the Art Club of Philadelphia, 220 S. Broad Street, it heralded the birth of the Philadelphia Ten (also known as The Ten), an evolving all-women’s group of painters and sculptors that exhibited together for nearly thirty years. Soon their exhibitions became an annual ⇒ Read More

Plays and Playwrights

Upon first glance, it may seem odd that in Philadelphia, the intellectual heartland of the American Enlightenment, the first drama did not play until April 1754, over seventy years after the city’s founding. That play, The Fair Penitent by Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718), was licensed for twenty-four performances, with the warning that the license would be ⇒ Read More

Poetry and Poets

Philadelphia boasts a rich history of poetry—poetry that describes intimate life experiences as well as an evolving history of immigration and colonization, urban growth and decline. Indeed, from the colonial era to the twenty-first century, poetry often stood at the center of civic life, fully engaged with the public sphere. The poetry of Philadelphia, reflecting ⇒ Read More

Quaker City (The); Or, the Monks of Monk Hall

George Lippard (1822-54) published The Quaker City; Or, the Monks of Monk Hall in 1844-45 in serial installments, which were then collated as a novel. A gothic tale, set in Philadelphia and inspired by a linked pair of real-life urban crimes, the novel juxtaposes a plot centered on greed, amorality, and debauchery against the then-popular ⇒ Read More

Radio (Commercial)

From radio’s inception to contemporary times, Philadelphia-area innovators, performers, and manufacturers contributed to shaping the industry. Like its technological forerunner, the telegraph, radio made possible the direct, real-time transmission of information. The immediacy and intimacy of radio waves arriving directly into listeners’ homes made radio revolutionary. The medium quickly became not only a technology for ⇒ Read More

Radio (High School and College)

From radio’s earliest days, college and high school students in the Greater Philadelphia area have tested its boundaries. Student radio has been democratizing and distinct. Unrestrained by advertising sponsors, though sometimes constrained by school administrators’ concerns over content and control over budgets, students have freely experimented with format, content, and technology, and each class of ⇒ Read More

Radio DJs

Disc jockeys—“DJs” who play music on the radio—have had a key role in shaping Philadelphia musical tastes since the 1950s. They reflected national and local musical trends, exposed audiences to new music, and in some cases produced records and managed artists. Many Philadelphia DJs became celebrities, actively engaged and influential in the local music scene. ⇒ Read More

Recording Industry

The birthplace of the American “record” industry, the Philadelphia region for more than a century has been home to a thriving industry of recording studios and record companies. In Camden, New Jersey, the Victor Company in the early 1900s was the nation’s largest manufacturer of musical recordings. Since then, Philadelphia’s unique concentration of diversified industries, ⇒ Read More

Red City (The)

Written by Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) and published in 1908, The Red City: A Historical Novel of the Second Administration of President Washington is a historical romance, a genre whose plot typically consists of a quest, followed by trials, and ending in marriage. Mitchell presents a view of Philadelphia in the 1790s as politically divided ⇒ Read More

Restaurants

From colonial-era taverns to the celebrity chef establishments of the early twenty-first century, Greater Philadelphia’s restaurants illuminated the region’s socioeconomic, cultural, and culinary trends while also providing sustenance for millions, employing thousands, and in some cases emerging as historic and nostalgic treasures. Taverns and public houses (“pubs”) represented the area’s earliest food-serving establishments; many operated ⇒ Read More

Rhythm and Blues

With its large and diverse African American population and long tradition of black popular and religious music, Philadelphia became a hotbed of the new rhythm and blues style that emerged from jazz, blues, and gospel music in the 1940s and 1950s. The term “rhythm and blues” came into general use in the late 1940s to ⇒ Read More

Rock and Roll (Early Years)

For most Americans in the mid-1950s, rock and roll seemed to come out of nowhere, a raucous new musical style that suddenly burst on the scene. In reality, rock and roll had been taking shape for decades, as uniquely American vernacular musical styles such as jazz, blues, gospel, and country music cross-pollinated. The process unfolded ⇒ Read More

Rock Music and Culture (Late 1960s to Present)

Although Philadelphia was a national trendsetter in rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it lost its preeminence in the mid-1960s as tastes changed and the music moved in new directions. While a new home-grown style of African American soul music emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s that once again ⇒ Read More

Rocky

More than just a popular series of Hollywood films or the fictional prizefighter whose life and career they chronicle, Rocky is a late-twentieth-century cultural phenomenon that reframed Philadelphia for local, national, and international audiences. Rocky premiered in 1976. Written by and starring Sylvester Stallone (b. 1946), the film introduced audiences to Rocky Balboa: a down-and-out ⇒ Read More

Root Beer

Root beer, a popular beverage in the United States since the late eighteenth century, began as a medicinal beverage produced at home. In the nineteenth century, carbonated root beer grew in popularity, particularly after Philadelphia pharmacist Charles Elmer Hires (1851-1937) presented his version of root beer at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition. Although the popularity of ⇒ Read More

Saint Patrick’s Day

In March, Philadelphians of many backgrounds join together to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, the city’s Irish citizens, and their heritage. Celebrated in Philadelphia since 1771, the holiday began as a Catholic holy day and evolved into a rambunctious affair marked throughout the region by parades, music, dancing, drinking, and wearing kelly-green clothing to symbolize the ⇒ Read More

Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post, one of the oldest magazines in the United States, originated in Philadelphia in 1821 as a four-page weekly newspaper printed on the same equipment as Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. After switching to a magazine format in 1870, the Post grew in the twentieth century to reach more than a million readers ⇒ Read More

Scrapple

Scrapple, which came to the Philadelphia region from Germany, is a loaf of cooked pig parts thickened with cornmeal or buckwheat usually spiced with sage and pepper. Once cooled, the loaf is sliced, fried, and served as a breakfast side dish, often with syrup. Not just a culinary transplant, scrapple exists because of the interplay ⇒ Read More

Sesquicentennial International Exposition (1926)

In 1926, Philadelphia hosted the Sesquicentennial International Exposition, a world’s fair, to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Although it opened to great fanfare, the exposition failed to attract enough visitors to cover its costs.  The fair organization went into receivership in 1927 and its assets ⇒ Read More

Sheppard Lee

Sheppard Lee, a novel published in 1836 by Philadelphian author, playwright, and physician Robert Montgomery Bird (1806-54), is a narrative of the wandering soul of an indolent, down-on-his-luck farmer. Although fairly successful in its time and even receiving a rave review from the master of the American Gothic, Edgar Allan Poe, the book largely disappeared ⇒ Read More

Silver Linings Playbook

The 2012 film Silver Linings Playbook, directed by David O. Russell (b. 1958) and based on the novel by Collingswood, New Jersey, native Matthew Quick (b. 1973), experienced overnight success when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and earned the highly sought-after Audience Award. Filmed in and around Philadelphia, the movie showcases the ⇒ Read More

Skate Parks and Skateboarders

During the 1980s, Philadelphia and its surrounding communities emerged as a mecca for the sport of skateboarding. The region developed more than twenty skate parks, and local professional skateboarders achieved international fame over the next four decades. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, approximately 105,000 of Philadelphia’s 1.5 million residents skateboarded. Despite occasional opposition ⇒ Read More

Slinky

Invented by accident in a Philadelphia shipyard, the Slinky is a stack of coiled metal that becomes a bit of oscillating magic, a moving, traveling toy perfect for flipping head-over-heels to “walk” down stairs. Always made in Pennsylvania, the Slinky became standard-issue equipment for generations of American children and a familiar, fun plaything for grown-ups ⇒ Read More

Social Dancing

Dancing has been popular in Philadelphia since the city was founded, in spite of religious opposition, especially from Quakers. Far from succumbing to religious criticism, social dancing gained in importance as a way for socially ambitious Philadelphians to demonstrate their gentility.  For most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, well-to-do families gathered for formal balls ⇒ Read More

Soul Music

A term with varied meanings in popular music, “soul” broadly describes African American music characterized by emotional urgency and racial consciousness. More specifically, a soul style of black music emerged from rhythm and blues and gospel in the late 1950s and became popular with both black and white audiences through the 1970s. Different cities had ⇒ Read More

SPHAS

In 1917, a group of Jewish high school graduates in Philadelphia formed a basketball team that competed against other local teams. Affiliated with the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) at first, the team soon became known as the SPHAS (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association) after the YMHA withdrew its sponsorship because it considered the sport too ⇒ Read More

Sports Cards

Sports card collecting, a classic American hobby, has strong ties to Philadelphia. Its history can be traced through Philadelphia firms such as the American Caramel Company, Fleer Corporation, and Bowman Gum Company. Those three, all pioneers and innovators in the sports card industry, helped to build collecting as a popular hobby. Sports cards developed from ⇒ Read More

Sports Mascots

The origins of the word “mascot” can be traced to France, where it was once used to describe anything that brought luck. But in the sports world, mascots are much more than good-luck charms. They are larger-than-life cheerleaders who encourage fans to root for the home team, laugh, and even have some fun at the ⇒ Read More

Stadiums and Arenas

The stadiums and arenas of the Greater Philadelphia region provide a physical venue not only for athletic contests, but also for Philadelphians’ passionate connection to their sports teams. Deeply embedded in regional identity and personal memories, the history of the area’s stadiums and arenas reflects broad patterns of regional development and change. During the 1860s ⇒ Read More

Staircase Group (The)

After Charles Willson Peale’s The Staircase Group emerged from a private collection in the mid-twentieth century, the Philadelphia Museum of Art placed the compelling trompe l’oeil (deceive the eye) double portrait on display and it became widely reproduced in American popular and art historical literature. Its contemporary popularity echoed the popularity it enjoyed at Peale’s ⇒ Read More

Taverns

From small operations in the colonial era to elaborate social spaces in the twenty-first century, taverns in and around Philadelphia have been vital institutions, offering respite, nourishment, and camaraderie to travelers and patrons. Over time, attitudes and laws regarding the consumption of alcohol altered the character of the tavern and gave rise to modern hotels, ⇒ Read More

Television

SThe Philadelphia region had a key role in the ascent of television in American popular culture. From the manufacturing of television sets to the production of innovative programming, researchers, technicians, and creative talents in the region produced many of the “firsts” that propelled television to success as a new mass medium in the twentieth century. ⇒ Read More

Television Shows (About Philadelphia)

The Philadelphia region has provided a backdrop for numerous television programs, including shows by creators from the region. Although the programs often were shot in other places, like New York or Los Angeles, the Philadelphia setting provided important references and details. In some cases, stories called for posh suburbs, such as those on the Main ⇒ Read More

Tenderloin

In the final decades of the 1800s, a vice district emerged just north of Philadelphia’s city center. Bound by Sixth Street on the east, Thirteenth Street on the west, Race Street to the south, and Callowhill Street to the north, this neighborhood was called the Tenderloin, like similar districts in many other cities of the ⇒ Read More

Thanksgiving

Although inspired by a 1621 feast shared by Pilgrims and Native Americans in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Thanksgiving traditions emerged from more than two centuries of celebrations influenced by social classes, ethnic groups, and the rise of consumer culture. Some of the most popular practices of Thanksgiving by the twenty-first century originated in Philadelphia. In colonial America, ⇒ Read More

Tomato Pie

Served by Italian bakeries in South Philadelphia since the early twentieth century, the tomato pie became known by many names: church pie, square pizza, red pizza, granny pizza, and red pie. Although made in a rectangular or square shape similar to Sicilian-style pizza, tomato pie within the city and surrounding region remained distinct from contemporary ⇒ Read More

Toy Manufacturing

Philadelphia helped define the toy industry in the United States with simple yet engaging toys that became beloved by generations. Although social, cultural, and economic changes produced challenges for the industry, a few iconic toys stood the test of time and continued to promote imagination, creativity, and discovery for people of all ages. Philadelphia’s first ⇒ Read More

Trails (Recreational)

An expanding network of recreational paths for walkers, hikers, cyclists, joggers, and commuters serves the Greater Philadelphia region.  The first recreational paths date to the mid-nineteenth century, when upper-class residents sought idyllic walking grounds in rural cemeteries and urban parks. In the twentieth century, grassroots hiking clubs built additional footpaths, but by the early twenty-first ⇒ Read More

TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)

In spring 1974, “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)” became a hit song for Philadelphia International Records, the local record label renowned for its “Philly Soul” sound of the 1970s. Written by Philadelphia International’s owners and chief songwriter/producers, Kenny Gamble (b. 1943) and Leon Huff (b. 1942), and recorded in late 1973 by MFSB with the ⇒ Read More

Twist (The)

“The Twist,” an early 1960s dance hit by Philadelphia singer Chubby Checker (real name Ernest Evans, b. 1941), ushered in a new way of dancing and solidified Philadelphia’s role as a major trendsetter in popular music in this period. Released in the summer of 1960 by Philadelphia-based Cameo Parkway Records, “The Twist” reached number one ⇒ Read More

Wanamaker Organ

Originally designed for the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904, the organ purchased by John Wanamaker (1838-1922) for his unprecedented Philadelphia department store at Thirteenth and Market Streets expanded over time to produce the sound power of three symphony orchestras. Regarded as the largest playable instrument in the world, the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ remained ⇒ Read More

Whiz Kids

The 1950 Philadelphia Phillies baseball team, which surprisingly won the National League pennant but lost to the New York Yankees in the World Series, gained the nickname the “Whiz Kids” from Newspaper Enterprise Association sports editor Harry Grayson (1894-1968)  during spring training in Clearwater, Florida. The team had a roster dominated by young players, including ⇒ Read More

Wieland; or, the Transformation: An American Tale

Wieland; or, the Transformation: An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown is considered to be one of the first examples of a distinctly American Gothic novel, characterized by its use of sensational violence and intensity. Published in 1798, it was the first of four novels Brown wrote over a span of only eighteen months. Only ⇒ Read More

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