When the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (originally named Delaware River Bridge) opened in 1926, the accompanying egress road on the New Jersey side attracted little fanfare. Yet boosters in Camden envisioned Bridge Approach Boulevard as the flagship road in an automotive-centric civic project known as “Greater Camden’s Gateway to New Jersey.” They hoped the project would elevate Camden’s position in the region and make Camden a “second Brooklyn,” the hub of southern New Jersey.

To this end, the city hired landscape architect Charles Wellford Leavitt (1871-1928) to create an intricate web of highways that would connect Camden to the suburbs all the way to the Atlantic coast. Leavitt was an advocate of the “City Beautiful Movement,” which advanced the idea that the beautification of cities through parks and monuments would have a positive effect on the morals and behavior of their residents. Leavitt believed the entryway into South Jersey should showcase Camden, and city boosters lobbied for a hotel near the foot of the bridge, as well as a civic center. The remainder of the Boulevard, which extended into the suburbs, would feature extensive landscaping and a park with a view of the western tributary of the Cooper River and Camden High School.

It was not long before business interests saw opportunities on the new Boulevard that would alter its original civic goals. When it decided to open its first store in Camden, Sears, Roebuck & Company insisted on a location along the Boulevard, rather than in downtown Camden. The company and the city struck a deal that modified the original plan for a civic center near the western end of the Boulevard, and instead a new Sears with ample parking opened there in 1927. Although the city abandoned the civic center concept, it still influenced the design of the store. Unlike other Sears retail stores it had designed in Boston and Chicago, the architecture firm Nimmons, Carr and Wright adopted the classical revival style for the Camden location, influenced by Leavitt and the City Beautiful Movement.

With the opening of Sears, other businesses envisioned opportunities to appeal to the driving consumer on the Boulevard. In 1933, Camden native Richard Hollingshead Jr. (1900-75) opened the world’s first drive-in movie theater on the north side of Admiral Wilson. Based on a design he worked out in his driveway, Hollingshead combined his blueprints and received a patent on the drive-in theater in 1932. The drive-in resonated with an automobile– and Hollywood-crazed public, and Hollingshead’s first night showing of Wives Beware, in June 1933, was a sellout. In ensuing years, drive-in movie theaters opened all over the country. Unfortunately for Hollingshead, most of the theater owners ignored his patent and he received few royalties from their success. Hollingshead’s own theater struggled to make a profit, as an independent theater owner during the studio era he had to pay upwards of $400 for each film shown, and many of the pictures had already shown at traditional theaters before he acquired them. Hollingshead sold the theater in 1935 to a Union, New Jersey, theater owner who relocated the screen and equipment to that city.

Other automotive entertainments were attempted on the Boulevard, including the “whoopee coaster,” a Depression-era attraction in which drivers could take their cars on a series of roller coaster-like tracks. Unlike Hollingshead’s drive-in, the whoopee coaster failed to gain national footing.

Changing City, Changing Boulevard

Businesses continued to grow and expand through the 1950s and 1960s. Several car dealership franchises found success on Admiral Wilson, jointly declaring it “the right route for savings” in a 1952 newspaper advertisement, and motels thrived on both sides of the Boulevard. The opening of a bar in 1949 called The Admiral prompted Henry Wilson to unsuccessfully petition the city to remove his name from the Boulevard, after which he vowed never to travel on the road again.

In the 1970s a business model that had not been seen before on the Boulevard emerged: the go-go club. A Camden City ordinance passed in 1977 restricted businesses related to “prurient interests” to Admiral Wilson Boulevard and banned such businesses from the rest of the city. By the 1980s, adult-themed clubs, hourly rate motels, and other businesses related to sex work dominated the southeastern end of Admiral Wilson. At the same time, Camden’s uptick in crime left employees and customers of these businesses vulnerable to robberies, assaults, and other crimes. In addition to the clubs and motels, many sex workers lined the Boulevard working outside the sanctioned businesses. As these new businesses thrived, the car dealerships and retail businesses that had been at the heart of the Boulevard for much of its existence closed or moved to new suburban locations, following Sears, which left Camden for Moorestown in the early 1970s.

The Gateway Project

In the 1990s, the state of New Jersey and the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) proposed a new plan for the road that would incorporate the original tree-lined design with new development. Called the Gateway Project (later expanded to the Gateway Redevelopment Plan), the proposal called for the destruction of a majority of the businesses on the southeast end of the Boulevard, to be replaced by a park along Cooper River with paths for pedestrians and cyclists.

The plan remained dormant until the national Republican Party announced it would hold its 2000 presidential nominating convention in Philadelphia. Convention planners expected many delegates would stay in hotels in the South Jersey suburbs, using the Ben Franklin Bridge and Admiral Wilson Boulevard to commute back and forth to the city. With that prospect in mind, New Jersey’s Republican governor, Christie Todd Whitman (b. 1946), seized the opportunity to accelerate the Gateway Project by pledging $45 million to “restore Admiral Wilson Boulevard to the beauty that it enjoyed long ago.” Thus beginning in 1999, demolition of the strip clubs, hourly motels, and other businesses advanced, and by the time the Republican National Convention opened in late July 2000 the south side of Admiral Wilson Boulevard once again resembled the tree-lined road imagined in the original design, with a public park to be completed at a later date. There were exceptions: A new gas station and mini-mart opened on the south side of the road along Cooper River, and the Sears Building remained on the Boulevard until it too was demolished in 2013. In 2018, Subaru of America moved thier headquarters from Cherry Hill to the southwest of the Boulevard, next to the corporate headquarters of Campbell’s.

At the other end of the Boulevard, the planned Gateway Park project had yet to be implemented as of 2025,  runoff gas and oil as well as remnants of the demolished buildings required an environmental cleanup in order for the space to be suitable for public use.

Throughout the twentieth century, Admiral Wilson Boulevard played a significant role in expanding Camden’s retail center from downtown and facilitating the exodus of that center to the suburbs. Originally designed to be a “gateway to Camden,” the Boulevard became a gateway through the city to both the inner and developing outer suburbs. In the twenty-first century, the Boulevard reflects the tree-lined road imagined by Leavitt as well as a new focus on corporate office parks influenced by twentieth century suburbia. One consistency was Admiral Wilson Boulevard’s debt to the driving public. With over one thousand parking spaces, the new office park on the old Sears site would continue the auto-centric nature of the Boulevard.

Bart Everts is a reference librarian at the Paul Robeson Library at Rutgers University-Camden and teaches history at Peirce College. (Author information current at time of publication.)

Beginning in the eighteenth century, early explorations in flight primarily followed two distinct avenues: hot-air balloons developed by brothers Joseph-Michel (1740-1810) and Jacques-Étienne (1745-99) Montgolfier in Paris and hydrogen-inflated balloons tested by the Montgolfiers’ contemporary and fellow Frenchman Jacques Alexander Caesar Charles (1746-1823). Serving as ambassador to France from 1778 to 1785, Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) witnessed and reported on such experiments to associates and friends in Philadelphia, stoking American interest in aeronautical flight.

As Philadelphia, then serving as the national capital, emerged as a focal point for ballooning in the new republic, early aeronautical endeavors in the city had mixed success. On May 10, 1784, Dr. John Foulke (1757-96) successfully recorded the first balloon flight in America, a small, unmanned paper test balloon released from the courtyard of the Dutch minister’s residence. Following Foulke’s demonstration, Maryland innkeeper and lawyer Peter Carnes’ (1749-94) ascension in a tethered hot-air balloon at the city prison yard on July 17, 1784, failed spectacularly when a gust of wind knocked Carnes from the balloon before it caught fire and fell to earth. A decade later, the exploits of European balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard (1753-1809) renewed Philadelphians’ interest in aeronautics; on January 9, 1793, citizens paid $2 to $5 per ticket to witness Blanchard’s ascent from the Walnut Street Prison yard at Sixth and Walnut Streets, a spectacle sponsored and attended by President George Washington (1732-99).

Ballooning Set the Stage

While public enthusiasm for ballooning waxed and waned throughout the nineteenth century, early aeronautics nonetheless fostered a public receptiveness to flying that increased as inventors turned their attentions to the problem of heavier-than-air flight. At the dawn of the twentieth century, interest in fixed-wing aircraft and other flying machines drew together a mix of scientists, engineers, part-time researchers, and enthusiasts to form a growing aeronautical community in the Philadelphia region. Notable among these individuals was George A. Spratt (1870-1934), a medical student from Coatesville, Chester County, Pennsylvania, who channeled his scientific training into the study of aerodynamics and participated in the Wright brothers’ gliding experiments at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in the summer of 1901. Following the Wright brothers’ success in 1903, airplanes, like balloons a century earlier, gripped the public imagination and developed initially as a form of entertainment. Between 1908 and 1915, the Point Breeze racetrack and the Philadelphia Naval Yard at League Island became popular destinations for exhibition flights and air meets sponsored by the Aero Club of Pennsylvania, which formed in December 1909 from the merger of the Aero Club of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Aviation Society. In addition to exhibition flights, races between airplanes were also a popular attraction; locally, department store chain Gimbel Bros. (Gimbels) sponsored a 1911 contest from New York to Philadelphia that concluded at Belmont Plateau in Fairmount Park.

While the Aero Club of Pennsylvania, as well as aero clubs at local colleges and universities including the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford, and Swarthmore, brought a degree of organization to amateur aviation, American involvement in World War I served as a catalyst for the emergence of a true aeronautical industry in Philadelphia and the nation. As the War Department increasingly recognized the airplane’s potential for scouting, observation, and tactical support of ground troops, ambitious goals of producing 22,625 airplanes and 4,500 aircraft engines led to the construction of government-owned and operated facilities like the Naval Air Station Lakehurst (New Jersey) and the Naval Aircraft Factory at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Established in 1917, the Naval Aircraft Factory quickly became a critical hub for the manufacture of flying boats, seaplanes, motors, and other accessories; by war’s end, the facility boasted over one million square feet of floor space and employed more than 3,600 workers. The region’s contributions to the war effort also included the manufacture of component parts by Philadelphia-based firms like G.E.M. Manufacturing, which specialized in aerial cameras, and the J.G. Brill Company, which produced rough cylinder motor liners at its trolley and rail car plant at Sixty-Second Street and Woodland Avenue, as well as the training of aviators and support personnel at the Essington Aviation Station located on the former site of the Lazaretto quarantine station.

Military Influence Persists

Following the war, the symbiotic relationship between government and the nascent aviation industry remained critical, as military needs continued to influence industrial production and priorities, particularly in Philadelphia. Most significantly, the Naval Aircraft Factory scaled back its workforce to approximately twelve hundred workers and, throughout the 1920s, shifted focus from the production of aircraft to research and development of experimental designs. Initially, private industry followed suit and increasingly focused on the engineering and testing of materials and component parts until federal legislation expanding airmail service contracts for private carriers spurred demand for new and more efficient aircraft. Among others, aviation enthusiast Harold F. Pitcairn (1897-1960) capitalized on the 1925 Kelly Air Mail Act to establish a manufacturing facility for light utility aircraft at his Bryn Athyn airfield under the auspices of Pitcairn Aviation, the passenger service and flying school based in Willow Grove. Renewed demand for military and civil aircraft similarly spurred companies like the Huff-Daland Aero Corporation of Ogdensburg, New York, to establish a new headquarters and production plant along the Delaware River in Bristol, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Notably, the arrival of Huff-Daland in 1926 coincided with the opening of Philadelphia’s first municipal airport, a 111-acre facility located in the Eastwick section of the city, while public interest in the 1927 transatlantic flight by Charles Lindbergh (1902-74) and his subsequent tour, which included stops in Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, likewise spurred a boom in commercial airport construction, including the William Penn Airport on Roosevelt Boulevard and the Philadelphia Aircraft Company’s airfield on Easton Pike near Doylestown.

Throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, Philadelphia’s strategic location along primary east-west and north-south arteries significantly spurred the development and growth of aeronautical infrastructure and industry in the city and surrounding region. Nonetheless, aircraft manufacturing and airfield construction contracted sharply during the Great Depression, as companies once again redirected their focus from aircraft manufacturing to component parts. Amidst this shift, the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia distinguished itself for its innovative use of stainless-steel and a pioneering shot-welding fabrication process used to produce aircraft materials that were stronger and more resistant to corrosion. Similarly, the production of engines, rotary wings, and propellers by companies like Fleetwings Inc. of Bristol and Jacobs Aircraft Engine Company of Pottstown helped to sustain the local aviation industry until demand for new aircraft rebounded in the lead-up to World War II. As the nation mobilized for war, the Naval Aircraft Factory once again stepped up production to meet rising demand and expanded into a wealth of experimental, highly classified projects on pilotless aircraft and guided weapons systems that underscored an ever-growing emphasis on research and development. This shift solidified further in 1943, when the Naval Aircraft Factory was renamed the Naval Air Material Center and the facility’s primary duties divided into two units: the Naval Aircraft Modification Unit, which focused on the conversion of service aircraft and special weapons work, and the Naval Air Experimental Station, which conducted laboratory and materials testing. Technological research and innovation similarly dominated wartime work at the Philadelphia-based Steam Division of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which engineered and produced the first operational American turbojet for the U.S. Navy in March 1943.

Cold War and Beyond

Across the state of Pennsylvania, employment in the aircraft, engines, and parts industries peaked at approximately 45,000 workers in July 1944; from there, employment and production statistics steadily declined into the postwar period, as industries struggled with the effects of demobilization and a market over-saturated with readily available used aircraft. In response, the Naval Air Material Center doubled-down on the research and development of specialty parts and materials, including advanced catapult systems, rocket-powered ejection seats, and improved arresting gear. Similarly, in 1947, the navy’s aircraft plant in Johnsville (Warminster), Bucks County, was converted into the Naval Air Development Station and embarked upon research in aviation electronics, medicine, and unmanned aircraft. Over the next decade, the two facilities evolved further, increasingly focusing on missile and spacecraft technologies and effectively positioning themselves at the forefront of Philadelphia’s burgeoning aerospace industry.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a number of private corporations across the region  joined in these endeavors, including the Boeing Vertol facility in Ridley Park, which specialized in helicopter and rotary wing aircraft; the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) facility in Camden, New Jersey, which developed guided missile and checkout equipment; and General Electric’s Missile and Space Vehicle Department based in Philadelphia, which in 1957 received the company’s first Air Force contract to develop a reentry vehicle for intermediate-range ballistic missiles. In April 1960, General Electric broke ground on a new Space Technology Center in Valley Forge, which became the hub for the company’s Space Division and its work on a range of missile and satellite projects for the remainder of the 1960s and into the 1970s. Despite the growth of private industry in the postwar period, the aerospace industry in Philadelphia arguably reached its apex in Johnsville, which in 1959 became headquarters of the Naval Air Research and Development Activities Command. In this capacity, the facility oversaw the Naval Air Engineering Center’s work on pressure suits used by Project Mercury astronauts, as well as jet and rocket engine research and centrifuge testing to measure the effects of G-force on humans. Several Gemini and Apollo program personnel and astronauts, including John Glenn (1921-2016) and Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), trained at the facility, as well as a number of X-15 space plane pilots.

True to the aerospace industry’s increasing dependence on government contracts and projects, cuts in military spending and the consolidation of facilities toward the end of the Cold War hastened the industry’s decline in the Philadelphia region in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986, General Electric acquired the RCA Corporation and subsequently sold its entire aerospace division, including the Camden facility, to the Maryland-based Martin Marietta Corporation (later renamed Lockheed Martin) in April 1993. Similarly, the Naval Air Research and Development Activities Command in Johnsville closed in 1996 and many of its buildings were subsequently demolished in 2001, a symbolic end to the long history of the aeronautical and aerospace industry in the Philadelphia region.

Hillary S. Kativa is the Chief Curator of Audiovisual and Digital Collections at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. In addition to an MLIS from Rutgers University, she holds an M.A. in history from Villanova University and received her B.A. in history and English from Dickinson College. Her research interests include American political history and presidential campaigns, public history, and material culture. (Author information current at time of publication.)

Commercial aviation grew dramatically in the United States in the twentieth century, and a number of airports in the Philadelphia area grew to become regional centers of the industry. There was nothing assured or inevitable about this growth, however. It depended on the efforts of local political leaders, investments by the aviation companies, and state and federal aid.

Parks and racetracks served as the first landing areas for airplanes in Philadelphia, but by the late 1920s designated airfields dotted the city and surrounding region. While most were privately owned, the federal government established a flying field at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and a seaplane base on the Delaware River in Essington, Pennsylvania.  Just upstream from Essington in the Eastwick section of southwest Philadelphia, the city built its first municipal airport in 1926 to serve as a site of operations for a Pennsylvania National Guard squadron, a commercial flying service called the Ludington Exhibition Company, and the U.S. Post Office’s new airmail flights between Washington, D.C., and New York City.

While the Eastwick field was soon deemed inadequate for Philadelphia’s needs, constructing a larger city-owned and -operated airport proved difficult.  Work began in 1931 on an expanded tract, which included the Eastwick property and land on adjacent Hog Island purchased from the federal government, but this project ground to a halt the next year, a victim of the Depression and a fiscally conservative mayor, J. Hampton Moore (1864-1950), who cut the city’s public works budget. Most flying activity, including the airmail service, had already shifted across the Delaware River to the less flood-prone Central Airport on Crescent Boulevard in Pennsauken, New Jersey, and  construction languished until 1936 when a new mayor, S. Davis Wilson (1881-1939), restarted the work with funds made available under the New Deal.  Although a laborer strike and a dispute between the city and the federal government over the location of a runway delayed completion, the new Philadelphia Municipal Airport officially opened in 1940.

When the United States entered World War II, military operations at area airports increased.  Philadelphia Municipal Airport and the Greater Wilmington Airport in New Castle County, Delaware, served as Army Air Corps bases, and Mercer Airport near Trenton functioned as a test site for Navy planes built at a nearby plant. The government also purchased a few privately owned airfields during the war. One in Northeast Philadelphia was improved and donated to the city in 1944, while another in Montgomery County, Willow Grove Naval Air Station, would remain an active military facility for decades after the war.

Postwar Aviation Boom

With the war’s end, commercial aviation in the United States boomed, and the City of Philadelphia worked to make its municipal airport a part of the growing industry.  It renamed the facility Philadelphia International and turned to the federal government for money to help build longer runways and a larger terminal. Before 1946, the U.S. government funded municipal airport development on an ad hoc basis, via New Deal work relief programs and wartime national defense projects.  In 1946, though, Congress established a grant program to subsidize construction and renovation and thereby promote a national network of airports. Federal grants became a continuous source of funding for airport construction from the late 1940s into the twenty-first  century and helped fund a new international airport on Hog Island that opened in December 1953.

In the 1950s, Philadelphia International gained more flights to other cities in the United States and abroad.  City leaders also campaigned to terminate the leases of the National Guard and air force reserve squadrons based at the international airport, believing they impeded commercial flying operations. Military leaders offered to pay for an expansion of the Northeast Philadelphia Airport if their units could operate there, but the city rejected the idea and the units eventually relocated to Willow Grove Naval Air Station in the early 1960s. The Mercer County and New Castle County fields served less controversially as homes to National Guard squadrons in the decades after World War II  and, along with the Northeast Philadelphia Airport, supported business aviation, charter and recreational flying, and light manufacturing.

By the mid-1960s, traffic at Philadelphia International had reached record levels, and officials decided it would have to be expanded to accommodate future growth.  With financial support from the state and federal governments, the city began construction of new runways, terminals, parking lots, and a SEPTA regional rail line connecting the airport to Center City.  While the investments were welcome, their management drew heavy criticism in the 1970s because of delays, cost overruns, and revelations that city and political party officials had accepted bribes from construction firms bidding on contracts.  Some critics called on Philadelphia to cede its control of the airport to an independent authority that they said would manage it impartially and in the best interests of the whole metropolitan region, but city leaders successfully resisted the idea.

When Congress voted in 1978 to deregulate the airline industry by abolishing the Civil Aeronautics Board, the airline business and the business of airport management both changed.  For forty years, the CAB had dictated who could start an airline, what cities it could serve, and what fares it could charge. After 1978, market competition answered these questions and cities assumed more direct responsibility for attracting airlines to their airports.  Greater competition encouraged airlines to establish hubs—specific airports where they concentrated their operations— and cities competed for hub status to gain more flights, jobs, and revenues.  Deregulation also allowed low-cost carriers to proliferate. These airlines usually provided fewer amenities and routes but offered travelers lower fares and helped offset the inflationary effect a larger carrier operating a hub at the same airport tended to have on ticket prices.

Hub for US Airways and UPS

While the 1980s and 1990s were a volatile time for the industry as airlines grappled with the realities of deregulation and many new and long-established carriers went out of business, traffic at Philadelphia International generally increased. The airport became a hub for US Airways and United Parcel Service, attracted service from a number of low-cost carriers, and saw new facilities develop to handle growing airplane, passenger, and automobile traffic.  This expansion sparked conflicts with neighboring communities like Delaware County’s Tinicum Township, in which much of the airport lay, over property tax payments and plane noise.

In the early twenty-first century, discount airlines began flying from some of Greater Philadelphia’s smaller regional airports.  With reduced operating costs and less tenant demand, the fields charged airlines lower rents and landing fees, making them compatible with the budget airline business model, and the airports’ locations along limited-access freeways made them accessible to area travelers.  The Atlantic City, Mercer County (now Trenton-Mercer), and New Castle County (now Wilmington-Philadelphia) airports all gained new service from discount airlines in this period.

Global demand for private jets and civilian helicopters grew after 1980, and a number of aircraft companies established assembly and maintenance facilities at area airports during that time.  AgustaWestland, an Italian-British helicopter builder, opened a shop at Northeast Philadelphia Airport in 1982 that later expanded into a manufacturing facility; Dassault Aviation of France established a maintenance, repair, and overhaul station for its business jets at Wilmington-Philadelphia Airport in 2000; and in 2007, American firm Sikorsky began assembling helicopters in a plant at the Chester County Airport in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

State and local governments helped entice these companies with tax breaks and construction financing. The fields also offered manufacturers less air traffic and lower rents than large commercial airports; proximity to deep-water ports, interstate highways, and railroads; and an established supply chain and skilled labor pool, thanks to Boeing’s long-time presence as a helicopter builder in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania.

By the early twenty-first century, many of Greater Philadelphia’s airports were regional centers of the world’s commercial aviation industries. While globalization led to the loss of traditional industrial jobs in the area, it fostered new employment, including manufacturing and mechanical jobs, at the airports. The growth of the local aviation economy was not an inevitable consequence of globalization, however.  Intentional policies of development and investment, both public and private, made it possible.

Demian Larry is a Ph.D. candidate in American history at Temple University.  His dissertation is about the politics and economics of airport development in Philadelphia. (Author information current at time of publication.)

Automobile racing originated in Europe as automobile manufacturers worked to test their car designs and market them to consumers. Wealthy Philadelphians formed the Quaker City Motor Club, which introduced automobile racing to area residents in 1906 at Point Breeze Racetrack, a horse track in South Philadelphia. This race also marked Pennsylvania’s first automobile racing fatality when Ernest D. Keeler (ca.1879-1906) crashed during practice for the event.

The Quaker City Motor Club also sponsored automobile endurance races on area roads. From 1908-11, the club organized a 200-mile race on an eight-mile course through Fairmount Park for American-manufactured automobiles with stock chasses. The event attracted local drivers such as brewer Erwin Bergdoll (1890-1965) as well as nationally-known racers including George Robertson (1884-1955) and Louis Chevrolet (1878-1941). City leaders debated the benefits of these races, and the Fairmount Park Commission suspended all racing in 1912 after concluding that motor races endangered participants and encouraged recklessness among the city’s automobilists.

Philadelphia-based interest in auto racing expanded in 1919, when a group of local businessmen founded the National Motor Racing Association. They promoted automobile races in Byberry, Pottstown, and West Chester, Pennsylvania, as well as Harrington, Delaware. The National Motor Racing Association and other regional promoters held automobile races on horse tracks during annual agricultural expositions at area fairgrounds.

In 1926, the National Motor Racing Association constructed one of the nation’s first purpose-built dirt speedways in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Nicknamed “the big left turn,” the mile-long Langhorne Speedway featured a unique circular design, which allowed drivers to reach higher speeds. Area residents drove their family automobiles to the track located along Route 1 between Philadelphia and Trenton to see the nation’s leading drivers race against local favorites.

Drivers from Greater Philadelphia garnered national acclaim for their racing exploits during the interwar period. In 1928, Charles Raymond “Ray” Keech (1900-29) of Coatesville set a new land speed record of 207 mph at Daytona Beach, Florida. Keech recorded several wins on local dirt tracks and won the 1929 Indianapolis 500 in a car entered by Philadelphian Maude Yagle (1885-1968). The only female car owner to ever win the Indianapolis 500, Yagle continued to hire Philadelphians, including Fred Winnai (1905-77), Jimmy Gleason (1898-1931) and Frank Farmer (1892-1932), to drive her race car over the next few racing seasons.

With the advent of smaller and less powerful race cars known as “midgets” during the Great Depression, automobile racing resumed within Philadelphia city limits. Promoters hosted midget races at Yellow Jacket Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia at Frankford Avenue and Deveroux Street. Formerly home to the National Football League’s Frankford Yellow Jackets, the stadium had been converted into a paved, one-fifth-mile speedway. Yellow Jacket Stadium held night races each week prior to World War II and remained popular with local residents who could walk or take public transportation to this speedway in the city.

The Office of Defense Transportation suspended all motorsports across the United States in 1942 in an effort to conserve the nation’s limited supplies of gasoline and rubber. Racing resumed immediately following the Allied victory. Postwar interest in automobile racing remained high, and a second Yellow Jacket Speedway located at Erie Avenue and G Street hosted biweekly midget racing programs from 1945 to 1950.

Over the next four decades, drivers competed in American Automobile Association (AAA)-sanctioned events, NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Racing), and in racing motorcycles and USAC (United States Auto Club) sprint cars at area speedways. Langhorne Speedway continued to attract the nation’s top open-wheel drivers, including A.J. Foyt (b. 1935), Mario Andretti (b. 1940), Al Unser (b. 1939), as well as NASCAR stars such as Lee Petty (1914-2000), Tim Flock (1924-98), and Edward “Fireball” Roberts (1929-64). Concerns over drivers’ safety as well as development along Route 1 led to the closure of Langhorne Speedway in 1971. Dirt track racing continued at local fairgrounds, including Harrington, Delaware and Flemington, New Jersey, until the 1990s.

The rising national popularity of stock car racing encouraged the construction of two area asphalt speedways for NASCAR racing events. The one-mile Dover International Speedway (originally called Dover Downs Speedway) located in Dover, Delaware, opened in 1969. Pocono Raceway, known as the “Tricky Triangle” because of its three sharp turns, began hosting races on its 2.5 mile speedway in 1971. Among the largest sports venues in the mid-Atlantic, Pocono Raceway and Dover International Speedway are known as “superspeedways.” Each track hosts two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races each racing season. Large crowds of race fans camp on-site in order to attend qualifying races, related events, and socialize throughout the weekend of the race.

In the first decades of the twenty-first century, racetracks throughout central Pennsylvania, such as Williams Grove, Lincoln, and Port Royal Speedways, as well as New Jersey’s Atco Dragway, New Egypt Speedway, and Bridgeport Speedway, hosted a variety of racing programs each season. NASCAR racing also continued annually at Pocono Raceway and Dover International Speedway.

Shared interests in speed, automobiles, and technological daring brought people from diverse backgrounds together at the region’s speedways, and automobile racing remained a popular leisure activity for mid-Atlantic residents. Motorsports, especially NASCAR events, continued to provide significant income to area tourism.

Alison Kreitzer is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of American Civilization at the University of Delaware. She is writing a dissertation about dirt track automobile racing in the mid-Atlantic region. (Author information current at time of publication.)

The automobile, or “horseless carriage,” originated in Europe, where in the late 1800s companies such as Daimler-Benz, Peugeot, and Bentley produced limited quantities for niche customers. The first car in Philadelphia, a French import owned by merchant Jules Junker (c.1858-?), was registered in 1899. In the early 1900s, brewer Louis J. Bergdoll Jr., a racing enthusiast, purchased franchises for Philadelphia’s first Fiat, Packard, and Benz dealers. Bergdoll and other retailers formed the Automobile Dealers Association of Greater Philadelphia in 1904, the oldest group of its kind in the nation.

By the end of World War I, Philadelphia’s “automobile row,” anchored by the Albert Kahn (1869-1942)-designed Packard Building at Spring Garden Street and stretching along North Broad Street roughly to Girard Avenue, included car makers Ford, Cadillac, Studebaker, Hupmobile, and Oldsmobile. Cars also caught on in Wilmington, Delaware, where by 1916, the city’s 110,000 residents had fourteen car dealers to choose from. With varied selection and especially following the introduction of Ford’s Model T, regional car ownership grew rapidly, prompting journalist Christopher Morley (1890-1957) in 1919 to note that Philadelphia’s Market Street was “dimmed by the summer haze that is part atmospheric and part gasoline vapor.”

For those unable or unwilling to purchase an automobile, auto shows and races allowed people to view cars in terms of style and performance. Philadelphia held its first annual auto show in 1902, the nation’s third city (after New York and Chicago) to do so. Wilmington’s first show followed in 1916, with more than 100,000 viewing cars at the Hotel du Pont. Starting in the early 1900s, auto racing competitions were held throughout the metropolitan area. The Trenton Speedway at Hamilton, one of New Jersey’s first, began hosting races in 1900 on its half-mile dirt course. Following enlargement and paving in 1957, the track held NASCAR events until 1972. On an eight-mile, oiled gravel track in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, the Quaker City Motor Club (whose members included prominent businessmen) ran races from 1908 through 1911. Though popular and drawing spectators from Canada to Paris, the races angered Philadelphia patricians who felt speeding cars disturbed the park’s tranquility. Delaware’s Wawaset Park hosted New Castle County’s first auto races in 1915. Through the 1920s, Wildwood, Cape May Court House, and Longport, New Jersey, held races on the beach during summer months. Other venues included Delaware’s Dover Downs (opened 1969) and Long Pond, Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway (opened 1971), both of which hosted NASCAR races into the twenty-first century.

Broad Street Paved, 1894

The advent of the automobile required creative responses from cities formed long before its arrival, including street paving, road building, and traffic control measures. Paving in Philadelphia commenced in 1894 (Broad Street was the first), yet automobile congestion on the city’s narrow blocks led over time to the designation of one-way streets and the installation of kerosene-lit traffic signals (requiring human operation) in the 1910s. Although landscape architect Jacques Gréber’s (1882-1962) 1917 proposal to alleviate gridlock through an ambitious series of diagonal boulevards across Philadelphia’s rectilinear grid never materialized, other built arterials served the purpose, including Northeast (later Roosevelt) Boulevard and Fairmount (later Benjamin Franklin) Parkway. While they may not have alleviated traffic, they increased outlying property values and spurred suburban growth. The 1926 opening of the Delaware River (later Benjamin Franklin) Bridge allowed drivers easy connections between Center City and South Jersey. In Delaware, Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954), impatient with poor road quality on his daily commute from Longwood, personally financed improvements of the Kennett Pike (SR 52) to connect central Wilmington with suburban Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Increased car ownership prompted safety concerns. In 1904, due to steam-powered cars’ emissions and possible explosion, Philadelphia initiated the Bureau of Boiler Inspection, a forerunner of vehicle inspection. With rising car fatalities in the 1920s, safety campaigns in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey led to mandatory vehicle inspection. Penalties for speeding and other violations were addressed in traffic courts. Though Philadelphia in the mid-1920s created one of the country’s first municipal traffic courts, smaller towns devoted specific days of the week for violations. During Prohibition, Philadelphia’s director of public safety Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) set up military checkpoints to curtail bootlegging and introduced armored squad cars for the city’s police force. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the Farmers Anti-Automobile Association, angered by speeding cars, formed in 1910 to set strict rules for drivers using their rural roads.

Greater Philadelphia’s motorists required auto-related businesses such as gas stations, repair shops, and parts suppliers. Due to environmental hazards, gas stations were located in urban industrial areas prior to 1920. Yet with roads delivering cars and trucks beyond cities, stations followed. The Lincoln Highway, the nation’s first interstate road exclusively for cars, opened in 1925 and passing through Greater Philadelphia, prompted local oil companies such as Sun and Atlantic to open stations along the route. In 1907, Max Paul, an Old City bicycle repairman, opened one of Philadelphia’s first car repair shops at 7018 Woodland Avenue; in 1968 Paul’s two sons, who inherited the business, opened the city’s first Toyota dealership. And in 1921, Pep Auto Supplies opened its first store in Philadelphia. Renamed “Pep Boys” two years later, the company operated 40 stores in the region by the mid-1930s.

World War II directly impacted Greater Philadelphians’ automobility. Following Japan’s invasion of the Dutch East Indies (where the U.S. procured ninety per cent of its rubber supply), local junkyards were scoured for used tires. Additionally, the Office of Price Administration (OPA) stipulated that all “nonessential drivers” own no more than five car tires. In 1942, the federal government halted all new car manufacturing, established speed limits of thirty-five miles per hour to reduce tire wear, and instituted gasoline rationing. During the war, Philadelphia became notorious for bootlegged fuel. Other measures, such as carpooling and using mass transit, helped conserve valuable resources. Car companies also contributed to the war effort, with Ford’s Chester, Pennsylvania, facility assembling tanks and military vehicles and General Motors’ West Trenton plant building torpedo bombers.

Car Manufacturing Arrives

Greater Philadelphia experienced dramatic automobile-related change after 1945. As suburbanization increased, car manufacturers followed. GM and Chrysler opened new factories in Elsmere, Delaware (1947), and Newark, Delaware (1952), respectively. The physical decay of cities such as Philadelphia and Trenton (and their narrow streets) prompted many in the region to move to car-dependent suburbs. At the same time, parking lots and garages were built throughout those cities’ downtowns for suburban commuters. Yet not all garage plans materialized. In 1947, the newly created Center City Residents’ Association (CCRA) defeated a proposed garage for beneath Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. In 1950, City Council created the Philadelphia Parking Authority to manage lots and garages, but the agency did not oversee on-street parking until 1983.

Driving also led to decreases in mass transit ridership. National City Lines, a shell company created by General Motors, Firestone Tires, and Standard Oil, purchased majority stakes in many U.S. trolley companies, a move intended to phase out the systems in favor of the automobile. Along with National City Lines’ acquisitions, inexpensive gas, transit strikes in the late 1940s, and bus lines that provided access to suburbs allowed the automobile to dominate the postwar landscape.

With passage of the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, the area’s towns and cities were connected by high-speed expressways, including the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76), the Delaware Expressway (I-95), the Atlantic City Expressway, and the New Jersey Turnpike. New suburbs accessible by highways, such as Levittown, Pennsylvania; Cherry Hill, New Jersey; and Sherwood Park, Delaware, contained slow-speed, curvilinear streets and driveways for homes. Graced further by shopping malls, drive-through restaurants, and drive-in movie theaters, Greater Philadelphia’s postwar suburbs reflected the region’s continual embrace of the car.

As Greater Philadelphia approached the digital age in the 1980s, highway agencies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania proposed electronic toll collection to reduce bottlenecks. In the early 1990s, the “E-Z Pass” system went into operation on selected highways; by 2015, all area bridges and toll plazas used the system. In the twenty-first century, automobiles, while still the region’s preferred method of travel, were challenged by car- and bike-sharing programs in central cities and suburbs, transit-village development, and increased service offered by SEPTA, PATCO, and NJ Transit. As reliance on personal digital devices increased, leading to several fatal accidents, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the 2010s began issuing penalties for “distracted driving.”

While bringing both positive and negative results, automobiles and their many related business allowed Greater Philadelphia’s residents and visitors personal freedom, faster mobility, and a romantic attachment to the open road.

Stephen Nepa received his M.A. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his Ph.D. from Temple University. He teaches history and American studies at Temple University, Moore College of Art and Design, and Rowan University. He also has appeared in the Emmy Award-winning documentary series Philadelphia: the Great Experiment. (Author information current at time of publication.) 

Prior to the assembly-line techniques perfected by Henry Ford (1863-1947), few automakers controlled all aspects of production. Instead, parts, from chassis to headlights, came mainly from individual companies. In 1906 the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company shipped its first electric car battery to Baker, a Cleveland-based carmaker; three years later, production moved from Tioga and Emerald Streets to a larger plant at Tioga and C Streets. Starting in 1919, the company stamped “Philco” onto each battery. Philco shifted production to car radios in 1926 and, after pioneering permeable tuning and high-fidelity sound, emerged as the world’s largest car radio maker. Camden, New Jersey’s RCA, producing less than half of Philco’s output in the 1930s, ranked second. Such prominence attracted the Ford Motor Company, with whom Philco signed an exclusive contract for audio components in 1934. The nearby Budd Company, founded in 1912 by Edward G. Budd (1870-1946), specialized in car bodies. With early bodies comprised of wood, Budd’s all-steel frames caused a sensation when, in 1916, John (1864-1920) and Horace (1868-1920) Dodge ordered 70,000 units for their touring sedans. From its Hunting Park factory complex containing nearly 7,000 workers, Budd supplied bodies to U.S., British, and German carmakers into the 1950s.

In addition to parts manufacturers, small carmakers and regional operations for larger companies opened in Greater Philadelphia. New Jersey hosted more than fifty car-making interests between 1900 and 1950, although most were located in the northern and central portions of the state. South Jersey enterprises included Trenton’s Walter Automobile, which collapsed in 1917, and the Mercer Automobile Company (also of Trenton), which, backed by the Roebling family, endured until 1929. Equally important in early 1900s transportation were trucks, which over time rendered horse-drawn vehicles obsolete. After purchasing a Brooklyn-based carriage builder and expanding operations to Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1905, John Mack (1864-1924) and his brothers commenced production of their eponymous trucks. By 1938, Mack’s AC model made the company internationally famous.

Ford Opens an Office, 1906

The Ford Motor Company became the first of the “Big Three” U.S. automakers to establish a presence in the region. In 1906, two years before its Model T debuted, Ford opened a sales office in Philadelphia. When World War I began, Ford’s Model T production alone outpaced all other automakers’ efforts combined, prompting the company to open additional assembly plants. In 1914, after designing the Packard Motor Company showroom at Broad and Spring Garden Streets, architect Albert Kahn (1869-1942) designed a factory for Ford at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue. At capacity, the Lehigh plant produced 150 Model T units per day. Following American entry into the war, the U.S. Ordnance Department took over the factory to manufacture helmets, body armor, and machine-gun trucks. In 1925, needing more space and hoping to ship vehicles more efficiently, Ford transferred operations to Chester, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River. Until the outbreak of World War II, workers at Chester assembled various Ford models with parts produced at River Rouge, Michigan. General Motors (GM), whose area operations expanded after 1945, arrived in 1938 with a components factory at West Trenton, New Jersey.

World War II and its aftermath greatly affected local automobile manufacturing. In 1942, the U.S. Ordnance Department again commandeered factories, using Ford’s Chester facility to prepare tanks and military vehicles and GM’s West Trenton plant to build torpedo bombers. After the war, carmakers increased regional operations to meet the demand created by the postwar baby boom, expansion of the American middle class, and suburbanization. While existing plants returned to peacetime production, GM and Chrysler opened new factories in Wilmington, Delaware (1947), and Newark, Delaware (1952), respectively. By the 1960s, automobile manufacturing emerged as the largest industry in Delaware, second only to the DuPont Corporation’s chemical plants. Parts manufacturers, including Budd, Mopar, and Lears Auto Parts of Newark, also thrived in the early 1950s. Yet Philco, which began the decade soundly, collapsed spectacularly by 1960 due to overexpansion and diversification into other industries. In 1961, the remnants of the company were acquired by Ford, which that year shuttered its Chester facility to consolidate operations in Mahwah, New Jersey.

Auto Factories Fade Away

By the late 1970s, due to labor issues, gas shortages, and the arrival of fuel-efficient foreign imports, U.S. auto manufacturing entered a protracted decline. Though Ford opened a new plant in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, in 1989, it was among the closures in the 1990s and early 2000s that also affected West Trenton, Wilmington, and Newark. Negotiations between union leaders and executives temporarily saved the factories, but foreign competition, labor outsourcing, and consumer tastes remained obstacles. In 1998, GM closed its West Trenton factory; the building was demolished in 2000. Budd’s Hunting Park complex ceased production in 2002 after its parent company consolidated its U.S. operations in Michigan. In February 2007, Chrysler announced the closure of its Newark facility and in July 2009, GM permanently idled its Wilmington plant, the last active auto factory in the eastern United States. Together, the three closings affected more than 10,000 workers. By early 2010, Greater Philadelphia’s only remaining car or truck assembly interest was Mack, which still built trucks at its one-million-square-foot plant in Macungie, Pennsylvania.

Though many former car factories stood vacant after 2010, others were repurposed. One year after its closing, California-based Fisker Automotive, a luxury marque, acquired GM’s Wilmington plant. However, Fisker declared bankruptcy in 2013 and sold the facility to Chinese auto parts maker Wanxiang, confirming the global scope of industry competition. In 2011, Chrysler’s Newark factory was partly demolished; its remaining sections were used in the construction of the University of Delaware’s College of Health Sciences.

For decades, Greater Philadelphia’s carmaking operations, from parts factories to assembly plants, in peacetime and war, played invaluable roles for workers, lifestyles, and commerce. By the early decades of the twenty-first century, the few surviving physical remnants of the industry served as a reminder of the region’s once-critical role in automobile manufacturing.

Stephen Nepa received his M.A. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his Ph.D. from Temple University and has appeared in the Emmy Award-winning documentary series Philadelphia: the Great Experiment. He wrote this essay while an associate historian at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers University-Camden in 2015. (Author information current at time of publication.)

The first two-wheeler in Pennsylvania was crafted by a blacksmith in Germantown from the parts of a threshing machine in 1819, at the request of artist and antiquarian Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Technically a French-invented “velocipede,” the machine lacked a chain-drive transmission and brakes among other accoutrements. Peale, then nearly eighty years old, encouraged his sons and daughters to ride the 55-pound iron juggernaut and noted how they were able to travel—downhill, at least—“with a swiftness that dazzles the sight.” Not everyone was as enthusiastic. The same year that Peale acquired his velocipede, Philadelphia issued the first citation for riding on the city’s sidewalks, a spoke-stopping $3 fine. Even the museum proprietor soon lost interest in the heavy, ungainly two-wheeler.

This changed, however, with Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition. Among the varied exhibits was the English-designed “ordinary,” a machine with dissimilar wheel diameters that perched the rider several feet off ground. Spectators gathered to see this mechanical oddity in action, deftly demonstrated by Philadelphian John Keen. This was the high-wheel’s first public unveiling in the United States. As “ordinaries” became more widely available by the end of the decade, well-to-do riders gathered to socialize and formed local clubs, including the Philadelphia Bicycle Club (founded in 1879), the city’s first. The club promoted “the proper use of the bicycle and similar machines [as] a benefit to good health” and fellowship among cycling enthusiasts. Members shared advice on navigating gravel, dirt, or cobblestone roads that were also thronged with horses, carriages, and pedestrians. Members donned dandyish livery consisting of navy-blue flannel shirts trimmed in linen, brown corduroy breeches, and navy-blue knee stockings— – which served to invite even more ridicule by the press and public. Undaunted, similar associations formed in neighborhoods and towns across the region, from Ardmore’s Cycle and Field Club to the Wissahickon Wheelmen.

Safety Issues

While the “ordinary” provided a much more controlled and enjoyable ride than its velocipede forebears, the machine remained extraordinarily unsafe due to the high center of gravity required of its riders. “Taking a header” by vaulting headfirst over the handlebars was a common accident befalling non-helmeted high-wheel operators.

It was not until the early years of the 1890s that, following innovations such as chain-drive transmissions, pneumatic tires, and reduced height, the Philadelphia area shifted into its first bike boom. Like the “ordinary,” these “safety” bicycles were publicly unveiled in the United States for the first time in Philadelphia, in 1891. With a marked decrease in the chances of cracking one’s cranium, a much shallower learning curve for operation, and a smaller price tag, these “safeties” provided a variety of riders— professionals, laborers, men, women— with a democratic means of travel, recreation, and sport.

Although many of the earliest cycling clubs were founded by and for men, the “wheel” of the 1890s became an engine of emancipation for women. “The new means of propulsion has found especial favor with the advanced and progressive femininity of the present age,” wrote Philadelphia historian Julius Friedrich Sachse (1842-1919) in 1896. “No class of persons has taken more readily to the wheel than the new or strong-minded woman.”

In the 1890s, custom confined many women to corsets, long gowns, and other voluminous garments, modes of dress wholly unsuitable for riding. For “New Woman” cyclists, this was far more than a sartorial or safety issue: this was a matter of sovereignty. If women could not determine something as personal as their own clothes, how could they demand public rights, such as getting the vote? Clad in divided skirts, knickerbockers, and bloomers, these “belles of the boulevard” stirred a national controversy. “Thoughtful people … believe that the bicycle will accomplish more for women’s sensible dress than all the reform movements that have ever been waged,” observed an 1895 issue of Demorest’s Family Magazine.

New manufacturing methods, many of which foreshadowed the assembly-line production techniques of the twentieth century, brought the price of bicycles within reach of millions of Americans. Demand sparked the rise (and fall) of several dozen bicycle manufacturers in the greater Philadelphia area alone, including Philadelphia’s Sweeting Cycle Company, Reading’s Packer Cycle Co., and the Haverford Cycle Company. Even the department store magnate John Wanamaker (1838-1922) joined the craze, with his 1897 Falcon model a particular hit. Like any new industry boom, a handful of upstarts flourished while many floundered. Founded in 1892, Philadelphia’s Common Sense Bicycle Manufacturing Company proved to be anything but, as the company folded the following year.

Mapping Routes

For a sense of the popularity of riding, consider that, beginning in 1896, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a series of bicycle routes, complete with a hand-drawn map, a narrative describing road conditions and landmarks of cultural or historical significance riders would encounter, and a coupon offering discounts on hotels and restaurants along the way. Many routes were confined to Philadelphia— such as “Philadelphia, Darby and Chester, A Pleasant 15-Mile Spin”—while others— “Harrisburg to Lewistown, En Route to Pittsburg”— crisscrossed the central and western regions of the state.

From the 1890s through the 1920s, a golden age of bicycle racing captivated millions of Americans, while men, women, and children used their two-wheelers for leisurely jaunts and exercise. Local printers and cartographers, cashing in on the craze, produced guides advising cyclists on the best way to navigate the region’s roughed and rumbled streets. In tandem with electric streetcars, the bicycle also upended business practices from mail delivery to police work. By 1894, only Chicago and New York had more bicycle-bound uniformed patrolmen than Philadelphia. So popular was the machine that, the following year, more than fifty thousand buggy and carriage horses were no longer needed in the City of Brotherly— and Bicycle— Love.

While the “safety” bicycle lived up to its name in many ways, the region’s dilapidated road network posed great challenges to cyclists, whether they were racing or commuting. To smooth out the city’s rutted roads, the Associated Cycling Clubs of Philadelphia (ACCP) published two pamphlets, “Improvement of City Streets” and “Highway Improvement,” in support of bicycle-friendly infrastructure projects, including macadamized surfaces. Petitions in favor of constructing bicycle paths in Fairmount were put to park commissioners as early as 1897. That same year, ACCP president William Tucker (1845-1930) petitioned Philadelphia’s Department of Public Safety to consider a “more careful and systematic use of water upon the highways” to reduce roads’ wheel-choking mud.

During the 1920s, public interest in cycling waned as automobiles— rendered affordable through many of the same manufacturing methods previously applied to bicycle production— emerged as the vehicle of choice for excitement, speed, and convenience. Gasoline rationing during the Second World War sparked a brief renaissance in bicycle-riding, but nothing approximating the near-hysteria of earlier decades. In the post-war period, the bicycle became primarily associated with children’s recreation, popularly conceived of as a vehicular prelude to owning an automobile.

During the environmental activism of the 1970s— marked by an increased concern over pollution produced by gas-guzzling four-wheelers— cyclists formed the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition (PBC). In an effort to make the city more bicycle-friendly, the PBC campaigned for funding of bicycle infrastructure, sponsored city-wide rides, and produced publications such as 1974’s Commuters’ Bike Map for Philadelphia. The organization scored its first major victory in 1973, working with the Delaware River Port Authority to open the Benjamin Franklin bridge walkways to pedestrians and bicyclists, overturning a prohibition that had been in effect since 1950.

The Push for Bike Lanes

By the 1990s, municipalities began to designate bike lanes on city streets. In 1993, the PBC and Mayor Ed Rendell (b. 1944) planned for a 300-mile network of bike lanes and bicycle-friendly streets. Although the plan was never formally adopted, Philadelphia’s first bike lanes were installed two years later on a half-mile stretch of Delaware Avenue. Also in the 1990s, one of the PBC’s successful programs became a separate non-profit organization, Neighborhood Bike Works, and the citywide Philly Bike Ride began in 2009 and continued annually. Also in 2009, as the use of bicycles for commuting continued to grow in popularity, the PBC— renamed the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia in 2002— worked to install buffered bike lanes on the major east-west arteries of Spruce and Pine Streets. Bicycle paths along Fairmount Avenue and along the Schuylkill Banks followed in 2013 and 2014. Central New Jersey unveiled buffered bike lanes in Cherry Hill in 2013, while Delaware–which the League of American Bicyclists named the third most bicycle-friendly state in the country in 2015–began construction of bike lanes along West and Washington Streets stretching from north Wilmington to the Riverfront in 2017.

In the region around Philadelphia, a consortium of organizations and municipalities created a trail network along the Schuylkill River from former carriage pathways, canal towpaths, and railroad corridors. Alternately called the Philadelphia to Valley Forge Bikeway and the Valley Forge Bikeway, the trail’s first stretch opened in 1979, spanning from Whitemarsh to downtown Philadelphia, following the right-of-way rail trails of the former Schuylkill Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Further extensions of the trail during the 1980s included a 4.3-mile section in Montgomery County and the completed connection between Philadelphia to Valley Forge National Historic Park. Beginning in 2012, the renamed Schuylkill River Trail became integrated into the Circuit Trail project, part of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission’s plan to create a single network of 750 miles of trails across nine counties in southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. By 2016, more than 60 miles of the Schuylkill River Trail had been completed, with a planned goal of 130 miles connecting Philadelphia to Pottsville, linking the region’s urban, suburban and rural communities.

In 2009, the Northern Delaware Greenway Trail was completed, linking Wilmington, Alapocas Run, and Bellevue state parks between the Delaware and Brandywine Rivers. The trail network, part of the larger East Coast Greenway project, spanned more than forty miles between Wilmington and the Maryland border. Upon completion, the East Coast Greenway was slated to run from Maine to Florida.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, several cities in the Philadelphia region adopted bike-share programs to promote fuel-conscious travelling. Philadelphia’s Indego, launched in 2015, generated a larger ridership in its first year than similar programs in Boston, Washington D.C., and Denver. By 2016, Camden County and Collingswood instituted bike-share programs. In a 2016 survey conducted by Bicycling, the world’s leading cycling magazine, Philadelphia ranked as the fifteenth-most bike-friendly city in the United States, the culmination of a trend stretching back to the early enthusiasm of Charles Willson Peale and his children for the velocipede in the nineteenth century. The city’s Naked Bike Ride, first staged in 2010, again displayed the machine’s power of liberation. One of the largest such outings in the country, the event promoted positive body image and bicycle advocacy with participants in considerably less rigid attire than their elaborately festooned counterparts in the region’s first cycling clubs.

Vincent Fraley is communications manager for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and writes the Philadelphia Inquirer’s weekly history column, Memory Stream. (Author information current at time of publication.)

Calls for construction of a north-south expressway through Delaware County, southwest of Philadelphia, first emerged during the late 1920s as a new organization created by municipal reformers, the Regional Planning Federation of the Philadelphia Tri State District, began to work toward a comprehensive plan for the region. Published in 1932, the plan proposed a Delaware County expressway with two route options to alleviate traffic congestion, an outer belt roadway, and a limited access parkway. However, the plans were dropped as the United States became enmeshed in the Great Depression and World War II.

In the immediate postwar years, a large influx of auto-reliant suburbanites further choked Delaware County’s roadways and made it increasingly difficult for manufacturers to efficiently transport goods to and from the Chester area. To remedy these problems, the planning commissions of Delaware and Montgomery Counties submitted a joint application in 1955 for a nineteen-mile expressway, which the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Planning Association (a public regional planning agency created by the planning commissions of Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware Counties) quickly approved. Regional planners viewed the project as a core component of a developing highway network that would ease transportation woes, facilitate commerce, help manage sprawl, and keep the Philadelphia region on par with the nation’s other major metropolitan areas, most of which constructed similar freeway systems during the era.

A Boost from Federal Funds

The road’s prospects seemed to increase with passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which promised federal funds for up to ninety percent of its costs. The Highway Act transferred responsibility for the expressway to the Pennsylvania Department of Highways (PDH), which then developed three possible routes, labeled Red, Blue, and Green. The Red Route, later redesignated as the Yellow Route, cut through high-population, predominately working-class communities like Springfield Township in the eastern part of Delaware County. The northern portion of the Blue Route followed the same course but included a separate southern loop that avoided populous areas by cutting westward through the undeveloped Crum Creek Valley and the western edge of Swarthmore College. The Green Route ran farther west than either the Yellow or Blue Routes through mostly undeveloped land.

With most Delaware County residents in favor of a highway but wary of its possible location, the PDH selected the Yellow Route on July 11, 1957, on the grounds that it was the most direct and least expensive course. However, following three months of protests by local residents who feared losing their homes and property tax revenues, the U.S. Department of Public Roads rejected the plan and recommended the PDH move the highway’s path farther west.

Almost three years later, in June 1960, the PDH chose an alternate Blue Route path that bypassed Swarthmore College. Again the announcement drew protests, as this location threatened newly developed parts of Nether Providence Township and appeared to accommodate Swarthmore College at the expense of nearby homeowners. Swarthmore College President Courtney C. Smith (1916-69) downplayed the accusations and refused to endorse the revised route, but many believed it the result of private negotiations between the college and state officials. Lacking public support, the PDH announced an extended delay for selecting a final expressway route.

Fighting the Blue Route

In the intervening years, businesses and residents of Delaware County’s working-class communities supported the alternate Blue Route plan, believing it would aid Chester’s flagging industrial sector. However, many of the county’s middle-class and affluent denizens living near the newly proposed path vehemently opposed it. Recalling some of the earlier criticisms leveled at the Yellow Route, anti-Blue Route protesters claimed the expressway would spur declining property values, rising taxes, increasing crime, and the ruination of the Crum Creek Valley. Angry residents formed civic organizations like the Citizens Council of Delaware County to lead the anti-Blue Route fight and loudly voiced their displeasure at community meetings. Some advocated the PDH revisit the Green Route despite Pennsylvania highway officials’ claims that it was located too far from the county’s population centers to effectively alleviate traffic congestion.

Despite growing opposition, Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton (1917-2013) approved a revised Blue Route plan in May 1963. The plan gained federal approval a month later with four contingencies: that the impact on Swarthmore College be reduced as much as possible, that Swarthmore be aided in acquiring land to offset property lost to the highway, that the highway’s design preserve the area’s natural esthetic, and that portions of the Crum Creek Valley be made available for public use.

Following final federal approval, the PDH broke ground on the Blue Route in 1966, but acquisition delays and conflicts with local municipalities hindered the project from the start. Several ongoing disputes emerged over locations of the interchanges that would control getting traffic on and off the highway. Since the expressway’s initial plans did not include the interchanges, each required separate negotiations and approvals by the state and affected municipalities. By 1970, less than ten percent of the expressway had been built, and its estimated cost had skyrocketed from $30 million in 1956 to $173 million.

Grassroots Activism Elsewhere

Anti-Blue Route activists were not alone in protesting an unwanted expressway during the 1960s and 1970s. Grassroots activists successfully prevented the construction of unwanted roadways in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, New York City, and numerous other cities across the nation. In Philadelphia, anti-highway forces successfully prevented the construction of the proposed Crosstown Expressway, a highway project slated to run parallel to the Vine Street Expressway (I-676) near Lombard Street linking I-95, I-76, and I-676, during the 1970s.

As the freeway revolts dragged on, activists increasingly utilized the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which required states to file Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) for all federally funded projects, as a tool for combating construction initiatives they opposed. Anti-Blue Route activists adopted these tactics and quickly secured several court decisions that prevented work on most of the approved expressway route during the early seventies. In 1974, Pennsylvania Transportation Secretary Jacob Kassab (1918-2004) ordered the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDot) to present an EIS for each section of the Blue Route not already under construction. The decision required additional public hearings and raised the possibility that the project could be abandoned. Delaware County’s “Blue Rooters” as well as those opposing the highway turned out en masse for the meetings and ultimately contributed more than 3,900 pages of testimony to PennDot’s final report.

PennDot submitted the revised Blue Route plan to the Federal Highway Authority (FHWA) in 1978, but a state budget crisis prompted the agency to halt its review a year later. In 1980, U.S. Representative Robert Edgar (1943-2013) established a task force to develop a plan for salvaging the project. The subsequent report called for reducing parts of the highway from six to four lanes, shrinking the size of its interchanges, and tying it to mass transit lines. PennDot adopted the task force’s suggestions, and in 1981 the FHWA approved the project. Not to be dissuaded, several local municipalities and citizens groups then filed two lawsuits on the grounds that PennDot had not adequately investigated less-disruptive routes. The court cases again halted construction and resulted in the completion of a supplemental EIS, which anti-Blue Route activists also contested. Finally, in 1986, the Blue Route’s path to completion was cleared by the Supreme Court of the United States, which upheld a Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to allow construction to proceed.

The Blue Route fully opened to traffic on December 19, 1991, thereby completing the network of highways surrounding Philadelphia. At a final cost of $750 million, the Blue Route significantly impacted the western part of the Philadelphia metro area, if not fully in the ways its planners intended. Chester’s industrial areas did not experience the economic boost the Blue Route’s supporters anticipated, and the near thirty years of unpredictable delays prevented Philadelphia-area developers from constructing the sorts of large commercial and retail centers that anchor communities and mitigate sprawl. However, the expressway alleviated traffic congestion on Delaware County’s north-south roadways and made it easier for residents to live, work, and shop in the region’s western and southwestern suburbs without entering Philadelphia. Several communities located in close proximity to the Blue Route, including Conshohocken and West Conshohocken near the highway’s intersection with the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76), experienced rapid development and dramatic economic growth during the 1990s and early twenty-first century. With more than 100,000 motorists using the Blue Route each day in the early decades of the twenty-first century, the highway continued to be critical factor in the economic and physical evolution of Philadelphia’s southwestern suburbs.

James J. Wyatt is the Director of Programs and Research at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University and President of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress. He is curator of the forthcoming traveling exhibit “Robert C. Byrd: Senator, Statesman, West Virginian” and co-curator of the collaborative digital exhibit The Great Society Congress, an ACSC project. Wyatt earned a Ph.D. in History at Temple University. He is revising his doctoral dissertation, “Covering Suburbia: Newspapers, Suburbanization, and Social Change in the Postwar Philadelphia Region, 1945-1982,” for publication. (Author information current at time of publication.)

The pace of bridge construction was initially slow compared to that in New England and the South.  This was partly because the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers were themselves useful as highways, and so the need to cross them remained limited throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  The Lenni Lenape who first lived in the area marked good crossing locations along rivers, particularly the Delaware and Schuylkill.  These later became sites of ferry crossings, which would eventually foster bridge spans.

In 1660 King Charles II (1630-85) ordered a road, referred to as the King’s Highway, to be built stretching from Boston, Massachusetts, to Charleston, South Carolina.  By 1683, however, progress in Pennsylvania had stalled.  Consequently, and at the request of William Penn, that same year the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly passed a law requiring bridges to be built by local inhabitants across all streams and rivers that intersected the highway.  Due to technological limitations, which were just starting to be overcome in New England, these first bridges were not able to span major waterways like the Delaware River.  Instead, they typically kept to tributaries and smaller rivers.  The earliest surviving bridge built along the King’s Highway in the Delaware watershed area, the Pennypack Creek Bridge, was just such a structure.  Completed in 1697, it was stone arch in construction and spanned the Pennypack Creek, located north of Philadelphia where it empties into the Delaware River. Due to the way they facilitated travel, these bridges served as early milestones in the delineation of the region.

Bridges spanning the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers in Philadelphia were first constructed in the early nineteenth century, and, almost invariably, these river crossings originated as ferry points.  Swedish colonists operated the earliest ferries in the 1660s and by the 1730s a significant number of modern-day bridge sites had ferries in operation.  On the Schuylkill River these included Gray’s Ferry, the Middle Ferry at Market Street, and the Upper Ferry at Spring Garden Street (all in Philadelphia).  On the Delaware these included ferries at Trenton, New Jersey, and upriver at New Hope-Lambertville and Easton-Phillipsburg. 

Drawbacks of Ferries

Several factors drove the conversion of ferries to bridges.  As early as 1764 timber rafters using the Delaware for transport proved dangerous to ferry passengers.  As late as 1914 there was a collision between a raft and a ferry that caused the deaths of four passengers.  Also, ferries had to stop operation during flooding and freezing.  The greatest impetus, though, was when a ferry could no longer handle the amount of traffic queuing up to cross.  At this point a corporation, typically local residents of the towns on either side of the river, would petition the states for a charter to build a bridge.  They would then finance construction by selling stock in the company, and dividends (and repairs) would be paid from collected tolls.  Thus, privately owned ferries were converted into privately owned toll bridges.

The most heavily trafficked ferries on the Delaware were at Trenton and Easton, which consequently led to the first bridge construction over the river.  The Delaware River Bridge Company commissioned the Easton-Phillipsburg Bridge in 1795.  However, the Lower Trenton Bridge, though commissioned later, was completed nine months before the Easton bridge in January 1806.  New England had achieved greater technical feats in bridge building at the time, and as a result both of these bridges were designed by men whose earlier works were constructed in New York and Massachusetts: the Trenton bridge by Theodore Burr (1771-1822), designer of the first bridge to span the Hudson River, and the Easton bridge by Timothy Palmer (1751-1821), who designed and built the first timber-truss bridge in the United States over the Merrimack River in Massachusetts.  Trenton was an ascending manufacturing center and its bridge helped solidify its importance along the route between New York and Philadelphia.  Easton-Phillipsburg was initially a small agricultural area, but, through influences such as its bridge, it would become a transportation hub for the steel industry and funnel large quantities of anthracite coal to Philadelphia.

At the same time that these Delaware River bridges were enhancing the route between Philadelphia and New York, bridge construction across the Schuylkill was laying the potential for the expansion of Philadelphia’s suburbs, particularly West Philadelphia.  The Schuylkill bridges also generally started as ferry crossings.  Technically, the first span across the river was a floating bridge at Gray’s Ferry, built shortly after the Revolutionary War.  However, the first significant bridge (that did not need to be pulled aside for passing ships) was finished in 1805 and designed by Timothy Palmer (who would then go on to build the Trenton crossing).  It was known as Palmer’s Permanent Bridge at Market Street.  A bridge at Spring Street was completed in 1812 in anticipation of traffic from the growing neighborhood of Mantua.  At its completion, this Wernwag Bridge was the longest single-span bridge in the world at 343 feet.  The ease of access that these bridges provided to neighborhoods that were initially outside the city would be a justification for their inclusion within the city limits set with the 1854 Act of Consolidation.

Railways Played a Role

The need for railway bridges spurred further bridge construction across the Schuylkill River, both in Philadelphia and further upriver.  In 1838 Gray’s Ferry finally got a proper bridge.  Called the Newkirk Viaduct, this was a railway bridge that provided the first direct rail access from Philadelphia to Baltimore.  The Philadelphia and Reading Railway opened in 1842 and its multiple crossings as it stretched from Philadelphia to Reading and into northwest Pennsylvania’s coal region (including a major crossing at Norristown) allowed it to compete with the Schuylkill Navigation Company.  Its terminus was at Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad on the west side of the Schuylkill River from which point cargo would be transported to Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal via the Columbia Railway Bridge in Fairmount Park.

The bridges over these two major waterways would become more technologically advanced with time.  The Pennypack Bridge was a stone arch bridge suitable for modest length bridges over rivers that did not have much down-river traffic.  Bridges built in the area, starting with the Permanent and Lower Trenton Bridges, were wooden covered bridges, the Permanent Bridge being the first completely covered bridge in the United States.  For wide points in a river these bridges could require many spans (the Lower Trenton Bridge had five), which was a hazard during floods and freshets (spring ice thaws), and for timber rafts.  An 1841 flood damaged or destroyed many Delaware River bridges.  By some accounts only the Easton and Trenton bridges remained.

Beginning in the 1870s covered bridges were abandoned for steel bridges.  These were typically suspension bridges but sometimes truss or cantilever bridges.  The last wooden bridge built on the river was the Columbia-Portland bridge (upriver at Knowlton township New Jersey) completed in 1869.  After a particularly bad Delaware River flood in 1903, most of the covered bridges were damaged or destroyed and their respective companies repaired or replaced them with steel constructions.  Steel was typically required for a bridge to be able to handle railroad traffic for any length of time and was consequently used at Trenton (after an initial attempt at modifying the wooden bridge with track).  Other bridges farther upriver on the Delaware were also modified to permit rail traffic, which enhanced access to markets in the northeast, including New York City.

Camden Commuters

Just as development in West Philadelphia required bridges in order to handle the increase in traffic, higher levels of commuter traffic across the Delaware drove plans to connect the city directly to Camden.  To this end, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania legislatures created commissions that coalesced as the Delaware River Joint Commission in 1919 (later renamed the Delaware River Port Authority in 1931).  Its purpose was the building and maintaining of links between the two states.  This initially included a single bridge, which was completed in 1926 and named the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge).  This would expand to include three more bridges: the Walt Whitman Bridge in 1955, the Commodore Barry Bridge in 1974, and the Betsy Ross Bridge in 1976; the PATCO Speedline in 1969, a mass transit rail line running between Philadelphia and Camden over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge; and a ferry.  The Benjamin Franklin and Walt Whitman Bridges are steel suspension bridges, the Commodore Barry Bridge a steel cantilever bridge, and the Betsy Ross a steel truss bridge.

The initial reports conducted by the Delaware River Joint Commission in preparation for the Delaware River Bridge showed that most trans-Delaware traffic crossed using the ferry that ran between Market Street, Camden, and Market Street, Philadelphia.  Furthermore, they stressed that nearly two-thirds of this traffic originated locally in Camden, numbering 24.6 million passengers per year.  Also, a summary of these reports in 1920 showed that the trend was towards an increasing percentage of traffic across the river that was not local.  Therefore, a central conclusion was that, at the time of the construction of the first bridge, it was not economical for the commission to construct an elevated rapid transit system, but that it would be a plan with “attractive features” as traffic patterns shifted in the following decades to higher numbers of long-distance commuters.  The bridge itself would act as a catalyst for these trends.

After the completion of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, demand grew for a connection across the Delaware River between New Jersey and Delaware.  A ferry service started in 1926 to meet this demand almost immediately generated a traffic bottleneck with reported automobile lines of up to four miles long on both sides of the river.  Despite this, it was not until 1940 that the Delaware General Assembly studied the possibility of a bridge.  The project lagged due to World War II, but in 1947 the Delaware River Crossing Division formed and began construction of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.  It was completed in 1951, making it the second bridge across the Delaware in the Philadelphia area.

Washington-New York Corridor

From the Delaware Memorial Bridge’s inception, actual usage far exceeded the estimated projections of traffic (in 1960 it was calculated that traffic was increasing at a 5.7 percent compound growth rate). This was due in part to its strategic location on the north-south route between New York and Washington, as well as its connection to major highways running west.  While the Benjamin Franklin Bridge had made it possible for automobile travelers to reach New York without having to use a ferry, now it was possible to avoid traveling through Philadelphia altogether.  In 1962 the Delaware River and Bay Authority was created to enhance the first span and build a second, making it a twin suspension bridge, which was completed in 1968.

Further development south of Philadelphia was spurred with the opening of the Walt Whitman Bridge in 1957.  It was initially conceived by the Delaware River Port Authority as a way to reduce traffic on the Ben Franklin Bridge and provide an alternative route to South Jersey shore communities.  However, at the thirtieth anniversary ceremony of the bridge’s opening commenters noted that while originally many viewed the bridge as just another route to the shore, its larger consequence was to stimulate growth in southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.  Migrant workers had easier transport between South Philadelphia and southern New Jersey farms, and many ultimately relocated outside of the Philadelphia area.  Furthermore, after its construction, the bridge was connected to the Schuylkill Expressway, opening a major route west of the Delaware.  The bridge also helped spur the establishment of the Food Distribution Center, the South Philadelphia sports complex, and the expanded use of Philadelphia International Airport.

The Delaware River Port Authority and the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission (DRJTBC) assumed responsibility for the majority of bridges crossing the Delaware between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  Launched as the Commission for Elimination of Toll Bridges, the DRJTBC was created for two reasons.  It would purchase toll bridges along the Delaware River and convert them to free bridge crossings and use equal annual subsidies from both states to maintain the bridges.  From 1920 to 1934 the commission purchased, repaired, and consolidated many bridge crossings on the river.  In 1934 it was replaced with the DRJTBC, with responsibility to maintain a total of twelve toll-free bridges out of joint tax subsidies and maintain eight toll bridges including the Easton-Phillipsburg (U.S. Route 22) Bridge and Trenton-Morrisville (U.S. Route 1) Bridge (Lower Trenton Bridge).  Although many of these and the Schuylkill’s bridges were prompted by need, once completed they had a profound impact in altering patterns of travel and commerce, thus helping establish the distinct character of the region. 

Andrew Slemmon is a graduate student in the Department of History at West Chester University. (Author information current at the time of publication.)

Bridge Construction Types

Arch – A bridge whose substructure is composed of arches.
Truss – The load-bearing structure (truss) is composed of a series of connected elements, typically triangles.
Suspension – The roadway is hung below suspension cables (via vertical supporting cables), which transport tension to towers at either end of the bridge.
Cantilever – Each half of the bridge is a rigid structural element supported at one end only (a cantilever), which extends out over the river.

Bridges

Abbreviations of proprietors:
DRPA – Delaware River Port Authority.
DRJTBC – Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.
PennDOT – Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Benjamin Franklin Bridge: Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden, suspension bridge, DRPA, opened 1926.
Walt Whitman Bridge: Delaware River between Philadelphia and Gloucester, suspension bridge, DRPA, opened 1957.
Commodore Barry Bridge: Delaware River between Chester and Bridgeport, cantilever bridge, DRPA, opened 1974.
Betsy Ross Bridge: Delaware River between Philadelphia and Pennsauken, truss bridge, DRPA, opened 1976.
Delaware Memorial Bridge: Delaware River between New Castle and Deepwater, twin suspension bridge, Delaware River and Bay Authority, opened 1951.
Tacony-Palmyra Bridge: Delaware River between Philadelphia and Palmyra, tied-arch bridge, Burlington County Bridge Commission, opened 1929.
Burlington-Bristol Bridge: Delaware River between Bristol Township and Burlington, truss bridge, Burlington County Bridge Commission, opened 1931.
Milford-Montague Toll Bridge: Delaware River between Milford and Montague Township, truss birdge, DRJTBC, opened 1953.
Delaware Watergap Toll Bridge: Delaware River between Delaware Water Gap and Hardwick Township, steel plate beam bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1953.
Portland-Columbia Toll Bridge: Delaware River between Portland and Columbia, girder bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1953.
Easton-Phillipsburg Toll Bridge: Delaware River between Easton and Phillipsburg, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1938.
I-78 Toll Bridge: Delaware River between Williams Township and Phillipsburg, twin girder bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1989.
New Hope-Lambertville Toll Bridge: Delaware River between Solebury Township and Delaware Township, girder bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1971.
Scudder Falls Toll Bridge: Delaware River between Lower Makefield Township and Ewing Township, plate girder bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1961.
Trenton-Morrisville Toll Bridge: Delaware River between Morrisville and Trenton, girder bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1952.
Portland Columbia Bridge: Delaware River between Portland and Columbia, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1957.
Riverton-Belvidere Bridge: Delaware River between Riverton and Belvidere, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1904.
Northampton Street Bridge: Delaware River between Easton and Phillipsburg, cantilever bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1896.
Riegelsville Bridge: Delaware River between Riegelsville and Pohatcong Township, suspension bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1904.
Upper Black Eddy-Milford Bridge: Delaware River between Upper Black Eddy and Milford, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1933.
Uhlerstown-Frenchtown Bridge: Delaware River between Uhlerstown and Frenchtown, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1931.
Lumberville-Raven Rock Bridge: Delaware River between Lumberville and Raven Rock, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1904.
Center Bridge-Stockton Bridge: Delaware River between Center Bridge and Stockton, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1927.
New Hope-Lambertville Bridge: Delaware River between New Hope and Lambertville, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1904.
Washington Crossing Bridge: Delaware River between Upper Makesfield Township and Hopewell Township, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1904.
Calhoun Street Bridge: Delaware River between Morrisville and Trenton, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1884.
Lower Trenton Bridge: Delaware River between Morrisville and Trenton, truss bridge, DRJTBC, opened 1928.
Market Street Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, arch bridge, City of Philadelphia, opened 1932.
Walnut Street Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, truss bridge, City of Philadelphia, opened 1893.
Spring Garden Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, girder bridge, City of Philadelphia, opened 1965.
Gray’s Ferry Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, girder bridge, State Highway Agency, opened 1976.
Girard Avenue Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, girder bridge, City of Philadelphia, opened 1972.
Strawberry Mansion Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, arch truss bridge, City of Philadelphia, opened 1897.
Vine Street Expressway Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, girder bridge, PennDOT, opened 1959.
Schuylkill Expressway Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, girder bridge, PennDOT, opened 1956.
Columbia Railway Bridge: Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, arch bridge, City of Philadelphia, opened 1920.
Schuylkill River Bridge: Schuylkill River between Swedesburg and Black Horse, girder bridge, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, opened 1954.

Beginning in the 1920s, the Philadelphia region’s independent transit companies added motorized buses (autobuses) to their networks. Superior in comfort to the horse-drawn omnibuses of the nineteenth century and with more range and versatility than electric trolleys, autobuses offered passengers easier means to traverse the metropolitan area.

Prior to the internal combustion engine, mass transit relied on horse-drawn omnibuses (introduced in Philadelphia in 1833) and then streetcars, also called trolleys (introduced in the 1850s and electrified in the 1890s). With the automobile’s rising prominence following World War I, many of the private companies then serving the region’s commuters purchased gasoline-powered autobuses as a less-expensive alternative to maintaining the costly infrastructure necessary for streetcars. Free from the constraints of rails, motorized autobuses achieved wider geographic scope on the new or expanded roads and highways built for the region’s automobiles.

Autobus service within Philadelphia began in 1923, with the Philadelphia Transportation Company’s (PTC) first service running along Northeast Boulevard (later renamed Roosevelt Boulevard) between Erie and Broad Streets. By the late 1930s, buses operated on most major streets of Greater Philadelphia. The Delaware Coach Company (DCC) introduced autobuses in Wilmington in 1925, and the Trenton Transit Company added bus service in 1929. In 1936 the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company extended autobus routes between Center City and the Main Line suburbs. The region’s school districts instituted their first wood-framed, steel-paneled motorized school buses by the 1930s to improve safety and to phase out “kid hacks” (horse-drawn carriages) from driving students in rural areas. In 1939, following a recommendation by Columbia University education professor Frank W. Cyr (1900-95), school buses nationwide adopted the color yellow for safety purposes.

Interstate Bus Service Begins

Interstate bus services also came to the region. In 1925, after a series of regional bus line mergers, the Mesaba Transportation Company (renamed the Greyhound Bus Company and incorporated in Wilmington) initiated interstate service in Greater Philadelphia. As a response to Greyhound’s growth, National Trailways launched regional interstate service in 1936. To accommodate the transit needs of South Jersey residents commuting to Philadelphia, New York, and other points, Trailways in 1964 initiated service from Mount Laurel, New Jersey; Greyhound commenced service there in the mid-1980s. After the legalization of casino gaming in Atlantic City in 1978, bus companies eager to capture gamblers began daily service, often with discounted fares, from Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Trenton to the resort city.

In the decades after World War II, increased car ownership and suburbanization led many bus companies to consolidate, often under larger public agencies. In 1968, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) assumed and expanded the autobus lines run by the indebted PTC. The following year, the Delaware Assembly created the Delaware Authority for Regional Transit (DART) to oversee bus lines formerly operated by the DCC. New Jersey Transit (NJT), created in 1979, acquired bus lines serving Camden, Trenton, and other points in South Jersey.

Buses put an end to many of the region’s trolley lines. By the late 1940s, both Camden and Wilmington had replaced nearly all their trolleys in favor of autobuses. Many of Philadelphia’s trolley lines were replaced with buses starting in the late 1980s. In 1992, the city’s Route 23 trolley, once the world’s longest and running from South Philadelphia to Germantown, was suspended and replaced with diesel-powered buses. By 2015, the Route 23 bus ranked as the city’s third-busiest transit line, prompting SEPTA to split the route in two. With these mergers and upgrades, autobus lines ultimately provided transportation within and between nearly every area municipality.

Low-Cost Competitors

With ridership increasing and mounting concerns over fuel costs and emissions, in the early 2000s SEPTA and NJ Transit introduced hybrid autobuses intended to eventually replace their gasoline-powered fleets. Private companies including BoltBus and Megabus began in the 2000s offering low-fare service (with Wi-Fi connectivity) between Philadelphia and other points along the Northeast Corridor. The city’s “Chinatown bus,” connecting Philadelphia’s and New York’s Chinese neighborhoods, also offered inexpensive service. Interstate bus companies, such as Greyhound and Trailways, continued to serve the metropolitan area; in 2013, Philadelphia’s Greyhound Terminal (1001 Filbert Street) ranked as the nation’s fourth-busiest bus-only terminal, served by regional carriers including Bieber Tourways, Susquehanna Trailways, and Peter Pan Bus Lines.

Though lacking the romance of trolleys and the individual freedoms of the automobile, public and private autobuses provided many in the Greater Philadelphia area with affordable and accessible transportation.

Stephen Nepa teaches history at Temple University, Rowan University, and Moore College of Art and Design and appears in the Emmy Award-winning series Philadelphia: The Great Experiment. He received his M.A. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his Ph.D. from Temple University. (Author information current at time of publication.)