Well, good evening everybody. It's wonderful to see you all
here for the last time this season. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You'll be pleased
to know that we have been planning the next season. And I'm going to give you the
on-sale date there will be a test. The members on sale date will
be August the 15th. So remember that I'm going to
ask you after I'm done speaking when
the members on the sale date is. So the topic for next year, we
started talking about it in very general terms, and we
thought maybe it would be something nice to do something
about objects. And then we realize that there
was a nice opportunity to riff off of the humanities
topic for next year, which is 'Stuff'. So next year's topic is going
to be, guess what? 'Great Stuff'. Right? As though it isn't all
'Great Stuff'. Right ? And there'll be some
conventional lectures about material for my collections. We're already talking to people
about it. They'll be more topical
lectures about, you know, 'Protecting Stuff-Cultural
Heritage'. And 'How Did We Get Our Stuff?' And 'How The Museum Was a Place
to House Our Stuff'. So we'll be taking all sorts of
aspects of the 'Stuff' that we have in this building and the 'Stuff' that is this
building and putting it together in what
we hope will be a really fascinating and fun, and
enjoyable lecture series. So when is that members on sale
date again? "August 15th." Thank you very much. So if you're not already a
member, you might want to become a member because this year's series sold
out pretty quickly. So that'll be your best chance
to get in on next year. If you're not a member and you
don't become a member, the non-Members on sale date
will be September 1st. But you don't care about that
because the members on sale date is August 15th.
Good. And the first lecture will be
on October 3rd. That's not on the test. So now to the serious portion
of this evening's proceedings. It's my pleasure to introduce
Jeffrey Ray, who is the Senior Curator
Emeritus of the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater
Kent. He holds degrees from Bard
College and the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career in Museums
right here at the Penn Museum, while he was a graduate student in Ancient History and
Languages. Jeffrey majored in Greek
History and minored in Egyptian History. And learned his Middle and Late
Egyptian upstairs on the fifth floor of the academic
wing, with Lanny Bell. While studying at Penn he
excavated at the Temple of Apollo at Halieis in
the Peloponnese. And participated in the survey
of the area around the Franchthi Cave in
the joint Penn and University of Indiana excavations in 1973 to 74. In 1978, he joined the Education
Department of the Penn Museum, now the Department of Learning
Programs and was here for seven years. Then in 1984, a friend urged
him to take the oral civil service exam for
the position of Curator of the Atwater Kent Museum. now the Philadelphia History
Museum. And Jeffrey scored number one
on the test. He took up his duties at AKM in
January of 1985, and retired after 29 plus years in 2014. At the History Museum, Jeffrey
was responsible for over 20 exhibits on Philadelphia and
regional history. He served on Boards of
Historical and Preservation Organizations such as
Elfreth's Alley and the Friends of Memorial
Hall. He was also a reviewer and panelist for the Institute
of Museum and Library Services the National Endowment for
Humanities and the Philadelphia Culture Fund. In addition to his work at the
Atwater Kent Museum, he's taught Art History at the
University of the Arts for 18 years. He continues teaching at UARTS. And now teaches Museum Studies
in the online graduate program in Arts Administration at
Drexel University, as well as, a course he
developed for the Art Museum at Saint Joseph's, Art
Department. Sorry, at Saint Joseph's
University on the History of Art and Art History Museums. So given these credentials you
can see why we were very happy that Jeffrey agreed to come and
talk to us tonight on a topic perfect for him, namely Philadelphia: Colonial City to Modern Metropolis. Jeffrey. It's on. Okay. Thank you so much. It's a great pleasure and honor
for me to come back here where I was a
student and heard many lectures here, but actually didn't really
deliver very many. And so but I'll tell you may I ask how many of you are
native-born philadelphians? Okay. I'm in trouble. Okay, because I'm not. And If you've ever been to Rome,
you know that unless you were born there you can never be a
Roman. And I think the same thing is
true of Philadelphia. I came here in 1971 and have
lived in the City and loved it. But I'm not a native
Philadelphian and I have not absorbed that culture through
my feet as all of you have. And wonderful. But anyway. I will say that in the preface
book, his five volume, History of the United
States-The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams, he gave us the phrase 'the
American Dream'. wrote, "It is obviously
impossible to compress our whole story into one history, which shall tell everything
which all readers of different sections and different interests might care to know". Edwin Wolf II quoted that in
his preface to Philadelphia: Portrait of a City, that he
published for the Bicentennial in 1975. If that was true of a five
volume history, and a 280 page book, it is so true of a 50-minute
lecture. And I apologize to you, native
and non-native alike, for what I
may leave out. And I'll tell you that this is
a personal view. All right. Huh. Oh, hey. Oh, All right. Pennsylvania is as I'm sure all of you are
aware in the Middle Atlantic States middle region and here it is
outlined very well in James, in Popple's Map of North America. This is the first, clear,
printed designation, or outline, of Pennsylvania in a
European map. It was founded, as I'm sure you
also know, by William Penn. A Quaker. And this is Alexander Calder's maquette with the statue on top
of City Hall. The grandson of the President of Tacony
Ironworks when the statute was cast there, called me and said that he had
a letter, from Calder to his grandfather about the statue and how it was being placed on
City Hall. And he gave it to the Museum. In it Calder asked the President of the
Taconey Ironworks to intervene if he could, to have the statue
placed facing south down Broad Street. Calder said that he had created
the statue with the intricate detail, the buttons all of this, and that it would not be seen in the north-facing direction. City Council ignored Calder's
request and the statue faces Shackamaxon, Penn Treaty Park. And yes, it is true that if you
stand at a certain place, it does look like he's peeing
on the City. It does. It does. He's holding the Charter of Privileges in
his hand. And anyway, there you go. Here, this is a more contemporary view of
Penn and his wife Hannah Callohill Penn by Francis Place. Is is a chalk painting and its
chalk drawings and they are in the collection of the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. And they were done about the
time that Penn married Hannah. This is the wampum belt. This is the great artifact and it is much debated. And it
is expressive of the relationship that William Penn
wanted with the Indians and endeavored to have. And as a Philadelphian and told
me, it wasn't until after his children became Episcopalians that they really started
messing with the Indians. But Penn really wanted a good
relationship with Native Americans. and hopefully and it didn't
happen. The name Philadelphia is
actually an ancient one. There are three Philadelphians
to my knowledge, Philadelphia's to my knowledge in the Roman
Empire in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The one that he was most
familiar with was that was the Philadelphia in the
Seven Churches to whom Saint John addressed Revelation. And he took it because Greek Translation is: "one who
loves his brother." And this was primarily a real
estate venture. All right. Charles II repaid his debt to William Penn's
father Admiral John Penn with this land in America. Penn wanted to sell it. All right, or he wanted to sell lifetime ownership of the land. And it was also the most liberal Colony in the in the, of the 13 in terms of religious
toleration. The only thing you had to do
was to agree to profess that you accepted Jesus Christ as
your Savior and that there was only one God and you were fine. This is the first image that we
have of Philadelphia. This is Penn City. It comes goes in the north from Vine Street to South Street and
it stretches from river to river, from the
Delaware to the Schuylkill. Penn originally wanted
Philadelphia to be where Chester is. But there were already too many
farmers there, and it was going to cost him
too much money to buy the land from them. And so Thomas Holme came up
the river and laid out the city here. And
this is this is Center City. and it has Center Square and
the four squares around it. And he puts in trees along
Broad Street in, along Market Street to the High
Street in the sense to realize Penn's dream of a City of
Trees as well. This is a Dutch print of the
Holme plan. And the reason I show it to you
is that his primary audience for people coming here were
religious dissenters and for Quakers living in
Amsterdam. He sold a great meant, a great
deal to them. The first colonies that came,
the first settlers that came here
actually left from Rotterdam and also in Germany. Holme laid out in these are ye
improved parts. The idea was that you got a lot. If you were a first purchaser
one of those squares in the city, And then you also got an amount
of land in the Liberties. The Northern Liberties here and
then great stretches or large sections of land in the colony itself for
agriculture, agriculture. Now Holme laid this out in sort
of a grid plan, to match what the first
purchasers had bought, but he didn't pay attention to
typography. And as a result there were
hills and things, anyway, these things cause problems
for Penn but they got worked out. Slavery and the African
American population of the City. African Americans have been
here since before Penn was here. And in in 1685, the brig,
Isabella sailed up the Delaware and 150 enslaved Africans were
sold on the dock at High Street. We know this happened because
Penn's agents said that most of the ready cash in
Philadelphia went back down the Delaware with the Isabella. We don't know very much about
the lives of the enslaved African Americans that were
here. But one of the major sources
that we have are the ads in the papers for runaway slaves. And if you look here, I mean, he's Joe, alias Joseph
Boudreaux, speaks Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish. I wish I spoke those language. Anyway, a very educated man and these
appear constantly in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia
newspapers. The Quakers were the first to
react against slavery and the first testimony against
slavery was published by the Meeting in Germantown, the
Quaker Meeting in Germantown in 1688. Benjamin Lay a Quaker used to sit outside on a bench outside the Quaker
Meeting House with his feet in the snow in the winter in
the same way that the African slaves who had no shoes would
have to walk and deal with with the cold
weather. He published broadsides against
slavery. And we'll take up the story a
little later. The first view of the city that
we have is by Peter Cooper. And it is painted on canvas
glued to board. And most people believe that's
in the collection of the Library Company. And when you go to the reading
room, you can see it there above the shelf. And most people believe that it
was probably meant to go over a fireplace and that it could
have been painted for one of Penn's children. But we simply don't know and
it's also extremely hard to identify things even though
there's an index for them. We don't really know except to
say that Market Street or the High Street is here. No. Pardon me. Oh, it's here. All right. This is the second
representation of the City. It's a watercolor done by a G.
Wood, who was a naval engineer who came to this to the colonies and did these
perspective views of the City. It was purchased by Winterthur
from The Maritime Museum in Bristol. And here this is Swedes Church,
Old Swedes Church. This is the house on the top of the hill of the
Society of Traders. Why Society Hill has its name
today. And then the city is down here
with Dock Stree here, and then the
High Street. I'll get this figured out. And the second view published
is this rather fanciful view of the City published by,
drawn by Andrew Branford and published in 1740 in two
issues of a magazine, he published here. Nicholas Scull and George Heap
did wonderful representations of the City. I'll show it to you in a second. But the first is this map in
1752, that here shows the State House. All right, and then in a cut out a way you have the area here of the Delaware
and then the city laid out here. At this time, or in 10 years or
so, a Colonel Anthony said of Philadelphia that is a great
and fair City, a wonder of the world. And I think he felt that way
because of the way in the 18th century which first
saw the city. Which none of us see anymore. And that is you came around the bend in the Delaware past League and
Hog Island up here. And then all of a sudden, after
you had been for two to three months on the
ocean got to the Delaware Bay. Oh God,
we're here. And you had another hundred or
so miles to go to sail against the river flow. And suddenly you came around
this bend and there was a City with spires, red brick
buildings. And yeah, it was a wonder of
the world after all of that. I think. And here this is Andrew
Hamilton's, we think Hamilton anyway, his drawing or elevation for
the State House. And this is indicative of an
18th century when you were getting a
building built you drew it up, you know. You got the grout lines, the
builders like the carpenters came in okay, and it got built. And Hamilton and the other
people they went as it was being built and it was
appointed. But this is basically the
drawing for the State House or Independence Hall. Done in 1732. This is the Scull and Heap,
Great Prospect of the City. It is printed in four sheets, copperplate engraving with 18 by 12 inches. Five Hundred editions were
subscribed to and sent to Philadelphia. There is one that survives in
the collection of the Historical Society. They were large. They were
fragile. And we don't know what happened
to the rest of them, but it is a magnificent thing and you
can get it reproduced online, in the size. Anyway in 1778, Carrington Bowles, in London,
published a colored smaller-sized reproduction of
the Scull and Heap Prospect. And this was done when General
Howe was occupying Philadelphia during the
Revolution. And here you have Christ Church and part of Charles II's
agreement with Penn is that there be land in every
town and city for the Church of England. You have the State House here. The Academy, the future
University of Pennsylvania, the Lutheran Church, and the
Congregational Church. And in the 1860s, a new building, the
Pennsylvania Hospital, for the relief and treating of
the poor. And then our first really
internal view of Philadelphia comes in a political cartoon for the Paxton Expedition in
1764. And, cartoon, you have all
these the bubbles here, coming out of people's mouths. But this is City Hall. This is located at the foot of
Market Street, which was then called the High
Street. And stretching out behind it
are the market stalls of the County Market. And this is the Greater Meeting
House. The Quakers built three Meeting
Houses before the Arch Street Meeting was built. The first Meeting House, then
the Great Meeting House, and here the Greater Meeting House. The largest one across from
City Hall. William Penn granted a charter
to the City in 1701. He created a mayor who's
elected annually and a council of aldermen without the authority to tax. So any civic improvement, you
paid for yourself. If you wanted your street paved
you got together with your neighbors. You got the cobblestones. You got the contractor and you
paid, all right. And it resulted in some rather
difficult, I mean, Martha Washington said, because there was no public
collection of garbage, that you could smell Philadelphia
before you saw it. She was just really depressed
about coming here. Anyway, the 18th century is the period
of great glory in Philadelphia furniture Queen Anne, the Walnut Style with the parrot and the
negatives parrot outlined in the negative spaces, And this is a dressing table in
the high Philadelphia Chippendale or American Rococo
that is made by the Garvin Carver. Identified in the collection at
Yale and it is now in the collection of the Minneapolis
Institute of Art. You may recall that Renata
Holland said that, Cities in Islam were either
fiat, or organic, or I can't remember the third. Philadelphia has always been a
combination of fiat and organic. William Penn had the city laid
out, Center City for us, but it grew organically along the
Delaware. And the lots that you talk
about that the large lots for the first purchasers, if you walk through old city
today, you see all those little alley ways. Well, they cut them up. I mean this was a real estate
venture for them as well as Penn. And so the city grew like a
triangle along the Delaware, with the docks here along. It was called Water Street
before, this is called First Street. And this is the Clarkson and
Biddle map of the City. Wrong one. And here, this is my favorite
view of colonial Philadelphia. I call it Philadelphia
masquerading as St. Petersburg. This printer did this for about
30 cities and then simply named dropped the view of the
City above, in reverse. All right. When Tina first contact me
about this, she said, "Well, why is Philadelphia a great
American City?" And undoubtedly, it is a great
American City because of what happened here at the end of
the 18th century: The writing of the Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution, and being the
first Capital. This, but those events are
rabbit holes, down which I'm not going to take us tonight
because it's a short lecture. Okay. So, but this is Congress Voting
Independence by Robert Edge Pine and George Savage, Edward
Savage. It is in the collection of the
History Huseum as is the wampum belt. And in the 1830s, the City that owns, they still
own Independence Hall, decided that the assembly room was not commensurate with the
dignity of the events that happened there. And they got John Haviland to
redo it. And all this was taken out and
wonderful Neo or Classic Greek Revival stuff was put in
engaged plasters, Corinthian capitals, all of it. If you want to see that, you
can go to the Mellon Center between 7th and 8th on Market
Street north side of the street where you go it on the
street floor. All right walk around the pit
that takes you down to the food court and into a room at
the back. There is Haviland's Assembly
Room. I was able to work with Penny
Bachelor at the Independence Park and we got it
put their way, But, and the Constitution
happened, and Robert Peck tells a great
story. This is John Bartram from his
Garden. And Robert Peck tells a great
story that in 1788 where '87 when the Constitutional
Convention was happening. And one French visitors had the
humidity was so great that he didn't know if he's gonna be
able to catch his breath. The convention was stalemated on a bicameral or unicameral
legislative system. Franklin said, "why don't we take the day off and go visit John Bartram?" So Peck says that Bartram was in his garden Barefoot, pants up around his
knees, and looked up and the Constitutional Convention was
getting off a boat. Well, they went back the next day and
voted for the House of Representatives and the Senate. All right. So anyway. What a break can do. I will also pass along the
observation of Doris Fanelli, who is the Chief Curator of
Independence National Park, and who was here when who was
there when the Constitution was celebrated
in 1989, But the thing she said to me is,
this Congress could not have written the Constitution in
three months, meaning our contemporary
Congress. That was '89, today, I don't know. But anyway. But anyway, alright. All right, George Washington by
Gilbert Stuart. It was painted in Independence
Hall. And here Franklin. You can't talk about
Philadelphia without mentioning Franklin. But, I don't devote a lot of time to
him here because he hover's up all of the Historical Area. He does, when you start talking
about him, you get carried away. This is the lightning portrait. In 1790 the American philosophical
Society commissioned Charles Wilson Peale to paint what turned out to be his final
portrait. Franklin was ill and could only sit for 20
minutes at a time. And died in the process of the
painting. When Peale finished it based upon
his drawings and recollections APS rejected it. It was bought privately given
to the Historical Society and now it is now in the collection of the
History Museum. It was my painting. Okay anyway, but here we have
no idea, probably the greatest thing he did practically was
inventing the lightning rod. Because we have no I cannot
understand the terror in people's minds when the
thunderstorm struck and were their, was their house going
to be hit and burned down. And this extremely practical
invention is one of the best things he did. Franklin was the first
President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. It was founded in 1775. And they were instrumental. This is a later portrait photograph with Lucretia Mott front and center. And the abolition Society was
instrumental in getting Pennsylvania's
rolling Abolition Law passed. It was passed in 1780. The slaves were not freed. If you were born a slave you died a slave, but if you
were if you were born after 1780 you were free only, you had to
work 28 years for your master after attaining the age of 10. But and so, the last slave
enslaved person in Pennsylvania died in 1847. But this was the model that
virtually every Northern State used to abolish slavery before
the outbreak of the Civil War. The 19th Century! A view of Philadelphia from the
West. We're moving into the Romantic
Period and looking at cities from the outside. Except here, William Birch and
Son, Edward or Thomas, and here this is the map. And again the City is growing
organically along the Liberties which are
not included in Birch's views. And then here, this is the
famous one his son did, Thomas Birch. His view of Philadelphia on the
Delaware from Kensington. This is the Treaty Elm, under
which Best painted Penn's Signing the Treaty of
Shackamaxson. It blew down in a few years. And if I had one piece of my
collection, I had a hundred fifty of the Treaty Elm. It was cut up and all of that. And then, but my personal
triumph in terms of the Treaty Elm was collected from George
Fox just before he died. Son of Treaty Elm. Now you think anyway, but
people used to go up to the Treaty Elm and get the suckers
that were growing and George Fox's
great-grandfather grew one when it blew down he cut it up
and I have a branch of Son of
Treaty Elm. Anyway, this is the dock with the ferry
to New Jersey. Here the commercial part of the
City Birch did 32 views. I'm not going to show you all
of them. But 3rd and Market the
commercial area and then here Market Street with Christchurch and then the State House And here this is a group of
Native Americans who have come to visit Washington. And then here these are the
market stalls that ran behind City Hall and when Washington died, it was a great shock to the
country. And there were mock funerals in
every city. And Birch has drawn the mock funeral for Washington passing by the market stalls
from the City Hall down to the
Lutheran Church with the riderless horse and the bier
here. This is also, it's called the
Goal on Walnut Street. This is the two-story
blacksmith shop that Thomas Allen was able to
buy and is being towed in front of the Walnut Street Jail to become the first Church of
Saint Thomas. And here, this is Latrobe's Waterworks in Center
Square where City Hall now stands. I will
explain that more in a minute. And then this is the house
intended for President. The City built it in an effort
to get the Capital to stay here. Washington apparently arrived
and said, "I can't live there", and rented Robert Morris's
house. And that's the President's
House in the park. And the University of
Pennsylvania moved here from the Academy in 19, 1802 and the Medical School was the
first occupant. When the Capital left
Philadelphia, they left the most elegant, vibrant, and
interesting City in the country. Here. Silver by Joseph Anthony, This is a work table attributed
to Michael Bouvier. The urban myth in America
material culture, is that Bouvier is the ancestor
of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. And the urban history legend is
that Black Jack Bouvier took all of the records that have
come down from Michael Bouvier and burned them because he
didn't want people to know he came from trade. It was also the City of the
Peale family and Thomas Sully, great
portrait painter. And here this is Ann Biddle
Hopkinson. And Thomas Sully was a popular
portraitist because he made you look good. All right, long neck, aquiline
features, and always the bright glint in your eye. In 1805 Peale, Charles Wilson
Peale and Benjamin Rush founded the Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Art, the first Art Museum in the country. And just so you know that
everything is up to date. All right, the first nude exhibited in
Philadelphia by Adolph Ulric Wertmuller. Now, it's in Stockholm anyway. The Water Works, extremely
important. After a series of yellow fever
epidemics in the 1790s the City Government decided that maybe the close proximity of
wells to privies had something to do with it. Didn't, but anyway, so they
instituted the Waterworks. The first Waterworks was done
by Latrobe and it's a pump in Center Square, a steam engine that pumped the
water out of the Schuylkill and into wooden pipes. It couldn't meet demand. And so the Watering Committee
was formed. It still exists and they commissioned
Frederick Graff to design a new Waterworks. It was located at Fairmount. The hill was dug out, where the
Art Museum is now and a reservoir was created. Then steam engines were built,
installed, and water was pumped up to the reservoir. Again, that could not meet
demand and so the Watering Committee paid Graff to do the
dam across the Schuylkill. The dam directs water into the
pump house here that works water pumps that then pump the water taken
from the intake valves here, up to the reservoir. And that met demand, the
Waterworks closed in 1902. Another important innovation
here in the early 19th century was Eastern State. Designed by John Haviland with
his revolutionary radiating arm from a central place where
people could be kept. Where guards could keep an eye
on people. The problem though is that it was solitary confinement. And you didn't speak or see to
see anyone. You're allowed out into a small
exercise yard for an hour a day. They went bonkers, people went
crazy. But the Pennsylvania System
persisted. People came to visit it, Charles Dickens,
everybody. And the other system was called
the Auburn System instituted in New York for the prison in
Auburn. And there strict silence, but you were allowed around
people, but you couldn't talk. If you did talk the punishment
could be rather brutal. Okay, the 1830s and 40s were
not a good time in Philadelphia. All right. In 1838, the Pennsylvania
Abolition Society built Pennsylvania Hall. It was attacked in the 17th of
May after Lucretia Mott had led a group of women that were
meeting on the first floor, black and white, out of the
Hall. It was then attacked and burned. And Bowen has captured the
moment here where the fire companies arrived and were directed by the Mayor
to protect the houses on either side and not to put out the fire in
the Hall. Because abolition was not
regarded as a good thing. This is a drawing done in 1842 by HR Robinson who was a caricaturist, social critic in
New York. And it is a riot that happened
in Philadelphia, when the African Americans
presumed to have a parade in celebration of the abolition
of slavery in the West Indies in 1838. A riot ensued and the court
found that the African-Americans had caused
the riot because they had presumed to parade. And then here, Philadelphians
are, they don't. This is anti-Catholic, an
anti-Catholic Riot that again happened in 1844. And here the very well-dressed
Presbyterians in their frock coats are fighting the militia sent under General John
Cadwalader. They probably didn't look like
that, you know, because this was
anti-irish going on. And then here, this is the
Church of Saint Philip Neri behind and the mob broke into that and
burned it down. But, the City reacted to these
things and in the 1850s, 1854, it was consolidated as a
measure of reform, Philadelphia City became Philadelphia County. It had three effects, expanded
the city number one, in two areas where it could
never have grown without it. It also meant that if you broke
the law in Philadelphia, you couldn't just run across South
Street or made Vine Street and get away. And it added Germans to the
police force from Germantown. And so that the police force
and the militia was much more diverse. And here this is a view,
published by Duvall, and you can see again the City
has grown. But the Schuylkill here, is the
site for brick yards, lumber yards, marble yards; here a
Gas Works, and the river was turning gray
at this point and did so up until the 20th century. The Civil War happened. On the eve of the Civil War, as
Fort Sumter was falling, 20,000 Philadelphians assembled
on Broad Street, in support of the property
rights of slaveholders. The Union League is the
organization responsible for turning those attitudes around. They publish papers, newspapers,
articles, and things like that. They were founded, and here it
opened in this building in 1865. And it was an intentional move
away from the previous Greek Revival of
Philadelphia to a new architecture. We didn't participate in the
war directly, but we were a great transit place. In Philadelphia, you couldn't
run a locomotive through the City because it would disturb
the horses. So you arrived North of Vine
Street, got off as a soldier, and marched with bands playing,
down to Washington Avenue. There you went to, here, the
Citizens Volunteer Hospital, Where you got a cup of coffee,
a last hot meal, and a letter written home to your
sweetheart or parents; on a train and off. You came back, and then you were start, if you were
wounded, you were farmed out to hospitals in the City. And here, this is Satterlee
General Hospital. It was the largest Union Army
hospital in the country, second largest in the second
largest hospital General Hospital. And you were admitted there and
sent places. Philadelphia became honeycombed
with hospitals. And the Stump Hospital, cross
my heart, that's what they called it, was around the corner from my
house at 22nd and South. This is the opening day of the
Centennial. Officially the International
Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of
the Soil, and Mine. And it is the most important
thing that happened in the City in
the 19th century. I think. It announced America's arrival
as an industrial power. And it put Philadelphia on the
world stage again. But there were problems. Remember Lincoln Steffens said
Philadelphia was the most poorly run City, poorly
governed City in the world. Dickens said we were corrupt
and contented. Congress refused to authorize
funding to the City of Philadelphia, and demanded the Centennial
Board of Finance be created. It was and Federal money and
other money raised, there. My favorite story about this
day is that someone looked around and said, "Where's the Governor of
Pennsylvania?" No one invited him. Everyone assumed someone else
had done it. He was, but he came. He was
there for Pennsylvania Day. Located in West Philadelphia, in Fairmont Park. Here, Memorial Hall, the main
building, and Machinery Hall. And here you can see the plan. And here, Memorial Hall and an
Annex to the Art Museum. Memorial Hall was the Art
Museum. It opened, in May, with Ulysses
S Grant, President Grant, and Dom Pedro II of Brazil, here. The great event was when Grant
and Don Pedro put their fingers to a button
and turned on the great Corliss Engine in Machinery
Hall. It is, it has the flywheel is 30 feet in
diameter, right. And slowly, and it was built in
Providence, Rhode Island. We had Big Industry here, but
it was the most efficient steam engine based with
closest patents in the country; and slowly but surely all the
machines in Machinery Hall slowly came to life. Apparently, it was quite a
sight. And here they are. This is Machinery Hall and here
this is the main exhibition. The Torch for the Statue of
Liberty was here and there were over 30,000
exhibitors in the main building. The Kindergarten was first
introduced here. And the Colonial Revival
started in the Colonial Kitchen in the Women's Pavilion. Now about the Women's Pavilion,
Kindergartner, anyway. Elizabeth Duane Gillespie,
alright, was head of the Women's Centennial Committee. They were promised space in the
Main Hall. Then, there was no room and
they had raised over $100,000., which was a lot of money. They gave Martha Washington tea
parties. All right, we have Martha
Washington cups in the collection of the Museum. So, Gillespie turned around and
they raised another $25,000 in a month. And the first of the Women's
Pavilions at International Affairs was
constructed. Here it is. And when you entered there was a great banner that
says, "She shall be known by the work
of her hands", the quote from the Psalms. African Americans wanted to be
there. They were grudgingly allowed a
statue or a monument to Thomas Allen, the founder of
Mother Bethel. It was made in Ohio. The train carrying, it was a
marble gazebo with the bust in the center, and the train carrying the bust
went over a bridge that collapsed. The Gazebo was lost but the
bust was in another car. It made it to the Centennial
and was exhibited there in the last two months. And then according to the
Pastor at Mother Bethel, they got a very snippy letter
saying it had to be removed from the grounds within 10 days. This is it. It was given by the
AME Church in Ohio, where it was made, to
Wilberforce College. It returns here in 2010, where
it was conserved, brought back together. and
exhibited at Mother Bethel. And it's now back at
Wilberforce. Here, this is the visit of the
Small Breed family. And if you think this is bad,
all right, according to the Centennial
Guide, there was a restaurant a Southern Restaurant where ,and I'm not making this up, where the visitor could see 'plantation darkies' singing
their songs and playing their banjos. Right. We'll move along, Industry. In the late 19th century,
Philadelphia became the Manchester of the Western World. She called herself the
'Workshop of the World'. But here, this is the reason,
the steam engine here seen in Charles Oakford's shop. Steam was applied to everything. And here earlier manufacturers
were in small buildings, like here, and then this in
1910. And here the photograph and I
love the windows on the second and third floors where the
floors are in the middle here. All right, and then people,
windows. An element of manufacturer was
homework. Here, a shoemaker make shoes in
a small area of his apartment. And then here clothing is made
in basically a small sweatshop. An event that people don't
really know much about is that sizes for men's clothes came
from Philadelphia in the Civil War, when the
Government realized that they were going to have to make all
these uniforms. They sent women out from the
Schuylkill Arsenal who simply stopped men on the street in
South Philadelphia and measured them. And they came up with a series
of standard sizes. And then those sizes were cut
out at the Schuylkill Arsenal. The pieces were delivered at
the door to women and children who took them home and sewed
the uniforms together and brought them back. And so anyway, standard sizes. But factories came to
predominate and this is carpet row at Second and American
Streets. And here this is Hardwick and
McGee. The largest of the carpet shops,
factories. In 1910. Philadelphia carpet
manufacturers produced enough carpets to go around the Earth
at the equator three times. In 1880, the Philadelphia
textile industry employed 50,000 people, by 1910
over a 100,000. And half of those people were,
half of those employees were women and children, often the children under the
age of 16. In the textile strike in, in
1910, Mother Jones marched children from Philadelphia up to
Theodore Roosevelt's lawn at Oyster Bay. The strike failed, but they got
attention, and actually children were banned soon after that in the work week was
reduced to eight hours, you know. Anyway here, this is the looms, and here this is in the design
room. I had the great privilege and
it came to me from Bridget Krol who was a fellow
student Egyptian history here. Her family was a Quaker Lace. and when they closed I was
invited to go into the factory on American Street. The weaving shed where the lace
was made, two stories. There were 20 Nottingham looms
per floor. Those looms weighed eight tons
empty, or start new you'd need an 11
tons when they were, when they were threaded. And I was able to see that
before they were sold. They were broken down many of
them were sold. The looms went back to Europe. But many of them were also
scrapped. We collected great stuff including the
photographic archives of Quaker Lace Patterns Museum. Other names that gave
Philadelphia industrial prominence Cramp Ship. I
cheated this is Midvale Steel, but it was going into a Cramp
ship. Disston File and Saw Works. The family story according to
the present Henry Disston is that Henry Disston, from
Scotland, came made his saws and went down Market Street
walking into hardware stores. And walked in, picked up a saw
off the shelf, and bent it in half. They usually broke but
Disston's didn't. And he replaced the saw for
free to the hardware store. Eventually, they became a large
foundry and they made plate for Graham Ship, the sides of ships. This is Midvale Steel in
Nicetown and Baldwin Locomotive. Baldwin locomotive, there's a
great story. They were going out of business
and Matthew Baird went to London. He had bought Baldwin from
Baldwin from Matthew Baldwin before he died. Anyway, Matthew Baird went to
London to see if he could get a contract or two. There, he was advised to go to
Russia because they were building locomotive.
They need locomotives. He went. He got a contract with
the Russian Government. He came back and on the day
before he returned, Baldwin had laid off 300
workers. Because they didn't have work,
This was in 1842. They came in and so the workers
got together and commissioned Robert Dean, who was a great
model maker, to make a model of an eight
wheel Baldwin locomotive. No one above the rank of
foreman could participate, could contribute because he'd
saved the jobs. That model is now on loan to
the History Museum. But ownership descends through
the Baird family, to Matthew Baird in each
generation. Hog Island, all right. During World War I the idea that was that they
were going to apply assembly line technique to
shipbuilding; but you can't move a ship down
in an assembly line. But what you can do is you can
move a crew. There were 18 ship ways. They laid a keel, once a week. They'd lay a keel, and the
next crew came in and they built the ships. In 1919, they had the big day
where all 18 shipways launched a ship. Here., this is the Edith Boling Wilson launching
the Quistconck. And unfortunately, the ships
didn't come off the line until the war was over. They worked for another five
years and then it was disassembled. The airport is built on Hog
Island. That's where you are. I can't close get out of this
without talking about Atwater Kent, my guy. Okay, When I became Curator with the
Atwater Kent Museum, John Kotter whom I hope many of
you knew, great friend; came up to me and said, "the Atwater Kent is the only
good thing that bastard did". Okay. So, why? When I went to the Germantown
Historical Society for the first time, when I saw there a panelist
said that Atwater Kent had put 4,000 people out of
work in the depression in 1933. Because they wanted to form a
union or they had formed a union. Not true. Atwater Kent, here's
his hat. He had, he was flamboyant. All
right. He collected houses and Packards. He had 16 Packards and they
were all had license plates. AK 1 through 16. He liked to drive down Market
Street wearing his Fedora and he liked the attention, all
right. And his niche was the top of
the market. I caution people who called me
about Atwater Kent Radios that they're not a good investment
because you could pay $125 per 1 in 2000, in 1920. And in 2000, you could buy it
for the same radio for $125. You know, I mean They were big,
they were heavy, anyway. But he created the Atwater Kent
Music Hour, that established Sunday nights
at 8 o'clock as Culture. All right, and remember Ed Sullivan. All right. And here's the
Factory, on Wissahickon Avenue, and then this is Midvale Steel,
opposite. Atwater Kent, my favorite
stories about him is, he closed the factory in 1936,
because there was just no business. He went to Florida or went to
California because he and Maude Kent, his wife, didn't
get along. He bought a large property in
Los Angeles. And during the Second World War,
he happened to be down downtown, and a group of soldiers from Philadelphia were
there and he invited them back to his house for a party. Mr. Kent started giving parties. All right, he became the party
guy in Los Angeles. To the extent that his obituary
in the New York and the Los Angeles Times said that the
most appropriate monument would be a perpetual champagne
fountain on Sunset Boulevard. But he gets criticized, but he
was also the most generous
philanthropist in the country in the 1940s. Giving away over $3 Million
Dollars a year. He made a fortune. All right, but he didn't like
unions. Okay. This is my favorite
photograph from the history collection and it
is the Tacony Ironworks where all the statues on
William, on City Hall were forged. And then here, a company that
made Philadelphia's name. People or something they'd say,
"I thought they were I thought that he was living in Denver". Stetson Hats. All right. Fourth and Montgomery, They
grew from a single row house to cover 25 acres with these
buildings. That and what Stephen did was
he put all of hat making 'Under One Roof' as it were. All right, they've all been
farmed out. You got the blanks in one place,
then anyway, and brought them all together. The difficulty with Stetson was
that he really preferred to hire only White Anglos. And if you were Italian, you
started out in the stripping room, for the skins for the
hats, where you stood in water all
day. But then here this is the "Boss
of the Plains", this first hat. During the Civil War, he went
out there and realize they needed something wide-brimmed, and came back and started
making it. And this is the telescopic
crown and then here this is the "Tom Mix" hat. Stetson was a genius at
combining popular celebrities with his products. And so, Tom Mix always wore a
Stetson. And then this is his most famous pieces of
advertising. This is the "last drop of
water" from his Stetson, to his horse. Because he said the Stetsons,
the hat, could also be used as a bucket. Philadelphia was home to the
largest corporation in the world. in the late 19th century, the
Pennsylvania Railroad. And here it stretched from
Philadelphia to St. Louis, North and South. It's great accomplishment in my
opinion was Pennsylvania Station in New York. New York Central built Grand
Central, Pennsylvania built Pennsylvania Station, it was based on the Baths of
Caracalla. And when I was in graduate
school here Keith DeVries showed us magic lantern slides like this, to give us an idea of what
Caracalla, Baths of Caracalla looked like. It was a remarkable place. The destruction of the loss of
Pennsylvania Station, it started coming down in 1962,
actually spurred the Preservation Movement in this
country, and we're indebted to it for that. This is Broad Street Station in
Philadelphia. Frank Furness designed it. And here this is the Station and the long railroad tracks
from 30th Street into town, right across from City Hall, created what's called the
'Chinese Wall'. Great Wall that with arches running
through it north and south and that is why ladies and
gentlemen, there are no subway stops from 30th Street to 15th
Street. There was nothing to stop for,
right? Tearing it down big fire in,
2000, in 1923, but it came down in 1952. All right. This is the first aerial view
of Philadelphia. That taken by William Jennings
in a balloon. The only thing you see here is
City Hall Tower being built. It was supposed to be open for
the Centennial. It finally opened in 1901 for
the change, turn of the Millennium. The Tower is the law was the
tallest load-bearing building or bearing structure in the
world and remains virtually so. In 1940, we're getting the
modern Metropolis In 1940, this is what the city
had done. It had filled in and the
Depression had stopped the development in
the Northeast, but that continued, that
happened. All right. And here, Turn it off? Okay. We're good. This is the city in
1940. Philadelphia. Ciy Hall in the center. These are the Penn's railroad
tracks down to the Pennsylvania
Station at Broad, the Broad Street Station. And then the PSFS Building and the skyscrapers are large
buildings that were built in the 1930s, 20s, and into the 1930s. Whatever you may think of SEPTA. We had a unified transportation
system that combined trolley, train, and boats. All right, And we had a vibrant and
important downtown. Right. The world, Second World War was
going to give Philadelphia a boost. Because the Depression, the
Depression had been really bad for us, and then we entered into a
period a little bit of decline. But anyway, it did become and still remains a great Metropolis. I'll also pass on an observation to you when I
left here and went to the Atwater Kent, Morris Vogel, a professor at
Temple, was writing a book called Cultural Connections. You remember it was published
by the Will, financed by the William Penn Society,
published by Temple. And we were sitting down,
getting to know one another, and Morris said, "where'd you
come from?" And I said rather sheepishly,
"the Penn Museum". And he looked at me like what
the hell you doing here, but didn't say that. Anyway, but he said, "after
working on cultural connections for three years.
Visiting every cultural institution in the City and
region", He said to me, "you know, the Penn Museum is
the one Museum in this region that has International
importance because of it's collections". Now I think that Anne d'Harnoncourt has given this Museum, or gave
the Art Museum has given this Museum a bit of a run for the
money, especially with the remarkable
exhibition program, but wait until the renovations are done
here. All right, and I think that
I'll say to you that this is one of the places that
makes Philadelphia a great City. Applause. I do. We'll answer a couple of
questions if people have them. Yes. Question. Inaudible. Hmmm. The slaves came with the Dutch when they settled in the
Delaware Valley and also the Finns brought, brought slaves with
them. And then there were there were random trips by slave merchants up the
Delaware this to, sold to them. They were primarily
agricultural workers and they help clear land and
plant crops. Franklin did own slaves. But by the end of the
Revolution, and by the action of the Quakers, he had decided
that this was not something he
wanted to do. When he freed that one slave
that he owned. Question? Inaudible. Yes wonderful book. It really is. The, if I could say anything about
E. D. Baltzell's book, Boston something, and Quaker.
Inaudible. Thank you. Anyway. Inaudible. Pardon. Puritan Boston and Philadelphia. Yes. And it draws a distinction
between the culture of the city that was picked up by Sam Bass Warner and the
'Private City'. And it says that Boston and
Philadelphia were examples of two different types of culture in the country. And urban, and that, that even though the Quakers
withdrew from politics in 1758, when the French and
Indian War, 1756, when the French and Indian War started. It was still extremely
influential here. And so he says that those are the two that Philadelphia Quakers were an
extremely important thing in establishing the
culture of the City. For instance, I mean those
things, the silver that I showed you, I mean, and Joseph Richardson and all,
they were owned by Quakers. And if you were a wealthy
Quaker you were expected to show your wealth. Because it was evidence of
God's favor. But you didn't want to be
flamboyant like New York. Um. Okay. Rococo shell work, Okay, but not covering the
whole thing up. Well, thank you. Applause.
