Oxford Circle

Oxford Circle
Author: Allen Meyers
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738536217

The Jewish community of Northeast Philadelphia was created by the relocation of secondgeneration eastern European Jews from the neighborhoods of Strawberry Mansion and South, North, and West Philadelphia. Serving more than one hundred thousand Jewish residents at its height, Northeast Philadelphia consisted of ten distinctive neighborhoods, including Feltonville, Oxford Circle, Tacony, and Mayfair. During the twentieth century, thousands of Jewish families were attracted to the area by the houses built along Roosevelt Boulevard for soldiers returning home from World War II. Welsh Road catered to younger families, and wealthier families resided along Bustleton Avenue and Fox Chase and Verree Roads. Today, the influx of strictly orthodox Jewish residents has given rise to a third generation of Jewish life in Northeast Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Neighborhoods

Philadelphia Neighborhoods
Author: Gus Spector
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738557441

Philadelphia Neighborhoods, a compendium of historic views of the major residential sections of Philadelphia, presents a snapshot into the past when old neighborhoods were not so old and when currently established ones were as yet new construction. Through the medium of postcards, readers are invited back to an era before automobiles dominated the streets, before many city roads were paved, and when the local grocery store was not located in a mall. Using chapters divided into subsections that detail the various regions of North, South, Southwest, and West Philadelphia, as well as the "new" Northeast Philadelphia, the author chronicles the vibrant, diverse communities that have helped shape the city's rich history.

Northern Liberties

Northern Liberties
Author: Harry Kyriakodis
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1614237484

Since the time of William Penn, the Philadelphia neighborhood of Northern Liberties has had a tradition of hard work and innovation. This former Leni-Lenape territory became one of the industrial River Wards of North Philadelphia after being annexed by the city in 1854. The district's mills and factories were powered not just by the Delaware River and its tributaries but also by immigrants from across Europe and the city's largest community of free African Americans. The Liberties' diverse narrative, however, was marred by political and social problems, such as the anti-Irish Nativist Riots of 1844. Local historian Harry Kyriakodis traces over three hundred years of the district's evolution, from its rise as a premier manufacturing precinct to the destruction of much of the original cityscape in the 1960s and its subsequent rebirth as an eclectic and vibrant urban neighborhood. In this first history of Northern Liberties, Kyriakodis unearths the story of this remarkable riverside community.

This Used to Be Philadelphia

This Used to Be Philadelphia
Author: Natalie Pompilio
Publisher: Reedy Press LLC
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1681063123

Philadelphia is thick with American firsts. Some—including the first zoo, first hospital, first public library, first university, first computer—are well known. Others are not and are here to be appreciated: Girl Scout cookies were originally baked by a commercial bakery here and “American Bandstand” was born in a West Philadelphia TV studio. This Used to Be Philadelphia goes deep inside the buildings, monuments, and familiar sights of the city to uncover its rich history, layer by layer. This book will introduce you to the city’s first residents, the Lenni Lenape, the tireless workers who made this “the Workshop of the World,” and the current residents who love all of these stories as told through the spaces they have filled. Learn how buildings from the 1876 World’s Fair, the first to be held in the U.S., are used today. Appreciate the city’s creative adaptive reuse projects, including a former technical school turned office space with a rooftop bar and the railroad headquarters that’s now artists’ studios. Take a colorful tour of the city’s bygone days with local sisters Natalie and Tricia Pompilio. You’ll never look at an old building in Philadelphia the same way again.

Northeast Philadelphia

Northeast Philadelphia
Author: Dr. Harry C. Silcox
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2009-11-27
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1625843186

Northeast Philadelphia chronicles this area's history of transformation, from scattered communities to an urban center. Before the Consolidation Act of 1854 more than tripled the former capital's population, Northeast Philadelphia was a scattered group of pastoral communities just beyond the city limits. Holmesburg, Somerton and other small villages initially struggled but ultimately triumphed in their transition from rural townships to a bustling urban center. Dr. Harry C. Silcox has collaborated with Frank W. Hollingsworth to chart this fascinating evolution, from the demise of the family farm to neighbors uniting on the homefront during World War II. With such lively characters as Mary Disston, the founding mother of Tacony, and tales of the local effort for suffrage, Silcox and Hollingsworth create a brilliant and affectionate portrait of Northeast Philadelphia.

Real Philly History, Real Fast

Real Philly History, Real Fast
Author: Jim Murphy
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2021-06-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439919240

"An alternative, history-focused guidebook to a selection of Philadelphia's heroes and notable places"--

First City

First City
Author: Gary B. Nash
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2006-04-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812219422

Covering more than two centuries of social, economic, and political change, and offering a challenging, innovative approach to urban as well national history, First City tells the Philadelphia story through the wealth of material culture its citizens have chosen to preserve.

The Bristol Pike

The Bristol Pike
Author: Samuel Fitch Hotchkin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 482
Release: 1893
Genre: Bristol Turnpike (Pa.)
ISBN:

A volume of local history running from Frankford to Morrisville, including Tacony, Homesburg, Torresdale, Andalusia, Penn's Manor, Bristol and Cold Spring.

Philadelphia Stories

Philadelphia Stories
Author: Fredric Miller
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 1988
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780877225515

Philadelphia Stories is a kind of family album. As in their earlier volume, Still Philadelphia: A Photographic History, 1890-1940, Miller, Vogel, and Davis have collected photographs of ordinary lives and daily events from 1920 to 1960 that have shaped the collective memory of people in the Philadelphia area. Through a series of photo essays, Philadelphia Stories evokes the mood of an era that embraced the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the complacent prosperity of the 1950s. Contemporary photos document physical changes in the metropolitan area: the developing skyline, the streets of rowhouses, the expanding suburbs. Details on homelife, food prices, school activities, local politics, shopping, social mores, and neighborhood customs chronicle experiences that are in many ways distinct to Philadelphians but also indicative of dramatic social, political, and economic shifts in the United States over forty years. Using photojournalism as the dominant style of documentary photography—and consciousness making—the book also features three prototypical family albums. These collections of snapshots taken by local residents to record weddings, holidays, and other family events not only depict how people saw themselves at various times but reveal the kinds of memories they wanted to keep. While major national events create the context for this social history, the book focuses on the daily lives of Philadelphians: as they cope with the Depression, participate in New Deal programs, buy automobiles and television sets, grow Victory Gardens, hold air raid drills, visit the Freedom Train, move to the suburbs, cling to old neighborhoods, and maintain tradition amid flux.Philadelphia Stories celebrates the recent past in the words and images of those who experienced it. It is a family album for all who know and love the city. Author note: Fredric M. Miller is Curator of the Urban Archives Center, Paley Library, Temple University.Morris J. Vogel is Professor of History, Temple University.Allen F. Davis is Professor of History, Temple University.

Imagining Philadelphia

Imagining Philadelphia
Author: Scott Gabriel Knowles
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2011-07-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0812205960

When Philadelphia's iconoclastic city planner Edmund N. Bacon looked into his crystal ball in 1959, he saw a remarkable vision: "Philadelphia as an unmatched expression of the vitality of American technology and culture." In that year Bacon penned an essay for Greater Philadelphia Magazine, originally entitled "Philadelphia in the Year 2009," in which he imagined a city remade, modernized in time to host the 1976 Philadelphia World's Fair and Bicentennial celebration, an event that would be a catalyst for a golden age of urban renewal. What Bacon did not predict was the long, bitter period of economic decline, population dispersal, and racial confrontation that Philadelphia was about to enter. As such, his essay comes to us as a time capsule, a message from one of the city's most influential and controversial shapers that prompts discussions of what was, what might have been, and what could yet be in the city's future. Imagining Philadelphia brings together Bacon's original essay, reprinted here for the first time in fifty years, and a set of original essays on the past, present, and future of urban planning in Philadelphia. In addition to examining Bacon and his motivations for writing the piece, the essays assess the wider context of Philadelphia's planning, architecture, and real estate communities at the time, how city officials were reacting to economic decline, what national precedents shaped Bacon's faith in grand forms of urban renewal, and whether or not it is desirable or even possible to adopt similarly ambitious visions for contemporary urban planning and economic development. The volume closes with a vision of what Philadelphia might look like fifty years from now.