{"id":8039,"date":"2013-11-01T20:23:08","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T00:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egp-staging.camden.rutgers.edu\/?p=8039"},"modified":"2022-03-11T00:09:37","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T05:09:37","slug":"northeast-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"egp_locations","link":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/locations\/northeast-philadelphia\/","title":{"rendered":"Northeast Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

From its initial, colonial foundations as a sparsely populated farming hinterland to its dramatic postwar housing development after World War II, Northeast Philadelphia developed into a desirable destination for those seeking to improve their economic, social, and cultural standing within Philadelphia\u2019s city boundaries. Even as Northeast Philadelphia came to symbolize a middle-class environment rooted around homeownership, commercial development, and mass affluence following World War II, it spurred acrimonious racial tensions between white and Black residents and confronted city politicians and policy makers about local concerns related to zoning, commercial, and municipal services. Stretching from Frankford in the lower Northeast to Somerton in the Far Northeast, its vast geographic expanse underwent dramatic spatial, economic, and racial transformations throughout its complex and still unfolding history.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Northeast Philadelphia, 1883. (Library of Congress<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Northeast Philadelphia\u2019s earliest enclave, Frankford, consisted of Lenni\u00a0Lenape Indians<\/a> and Swedish settlers prior to the founding of the\u00a0Pennsylvania colony by William Penn in the early 1680s. Immediately following Pennsylvania\u2019s establishment in 1681, Quaker settlers constructed a meetinghouse, built in 1684,\u00a0 and\u00a0post office at William Penn\u2019s request in what was initially designated the Manor of Frank\u00a0during the mid-1680s. Situated to the northeast of the city of Philadelphia, Frankford\u2019s\u00a0importance as a center of commerce and trade grew principally because of its geographic\u00a0location along the King\u2019s Highway (present-day Frankford Avenue). It developed into a\u00a0manufacturing village in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,\u00a0drawing in German and English settlers, who opened numerous mills along the Frankford\u00a0Creek. In addition to European settlers, free blacks established fraternal, religious, and\u00a0anti-slavery institutions in the village to counter the creeping signs of residential\u00a0segregation and employment discrimination surrounding them.\u00a0 Located within the\u00a0boundaries of Philadelphia County, Frankford\u2019s commercial dominance attracted nearby\u00a0farmers, who principally resided in Northeast townships, such as Lower Dublin and\u00a0Moreland, to process their raw materials and farm products in Frankford\u2019s bustling mills. The village also became a vital munitions site for the U.S. Army after the War of\u00a01812, when the federal government began the construction of an arsenal, completed in\u00a0the mid-1820s, \u00a0along the banks of the Frankford Creek.<\/p>\n

Other settlements, primarily centered on farming and mill activity, dotted\u00a0Northeast Philadelphia\u2019s rural terrain and creek beds prior to and following the\u00a0Consolidation Act of 1854<\/a>, with pockets of gilded affluence appearing sporadically along\u00a0the Delaware River in the late nineteenth century. Multiple townships throughout the\u00a0Northeast possessed small, farming enclaves and communities, especially Bustleton,\u00a0Somerton, and Fox Chase. In the early 1850s, residents from the Northeast decried the\u00a0city\u2019s plan to annex their communities into a newly consolidated city-county governance\u00a0authority, which aimed to confer municipal services and policing functions on outlying\u00a0suburbs in exchange for jurisdictional control over their neighborhoods. Some Bustleton\u00a0residents, afraid of losing their independence, resisted the city\u2019s annexation plan in 1852\u00a0by initiating legislation, which ultimately failed, to thwart the proposal. While the Northeast remained predominantly rural following the Act of Incorporation\u2019s\u00a0passage, some of Philadelphia\u2019s well-heeled elite erected palatial mansions and estates in\u00a0Holmesburg and Torresdale, with the most notable Victorian structure being the opulent\u00a0Glen Foerd mansion<\/a>, which still overlooks the Delaware River, in Torresdale.<\/p>\n

Flourishing Industry<\/h3>\n

Additional industrial enterprises and communities emerged and flourished\u00a0immediately north of Frankford along the Delaware River in the mid- to late nineteenth\u00a0century, as some industrialists sought additional space to accommodate their expanding\u00a0companies. Henry Disston<\/a> (1819-1878), an English industrial entrepreneur, moved his\u00a0burgeoning saw works enterprise from the congested confines of Northern Liberties to\u00a0Tacony in 1872. Upon relocating his saw works, he gradually constructed a\u00a0self-sufficient company town<\/a> to house his workers. Disston\u2019s company town attracted\u00a0both existing and newly arrived ethnic, European immigrant communities, namely Irish,\u00a0Italian, Polish, and Germans, and offered them generous benefits and homeownership\u00a0opportunities, melding them into a productive and loyal working-class community.<\/p>\n

In the early twentieth century, Philadelphia\u2019s elected officials embraced the\u00a0City Beautiful Movement with the intention of improving the city\u2019s infrastructure and\u00a0attracting affluent suburbanites to downtown Philadelphia. One of these projects, the\u00a0Northeast Boulevard, which was renamed the Roosevelt Boulevard <\/a>in 1918, opened in\u00a01914 to much fanfare, as builders and private developers soon capitalized on the city\u2019s\u00a0investment in the roadway to construct single- and twin-family dwellings along its\u00a0expansive corridor, especially in the Northwood section of Frankford in the lower\u00a0Northeast. As the Roaring Twenties progressed, commercial development also coincided\u00a0with residential expansion in the lower Northeast. Local booster organizations,\u00a0especially the establishment of the Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, and\u00a0Sears-Roebuck\u2019s new merchandising facility, which opened in 1919, symbolized the\u00a0Northeast\u2019s flourishing commercial identity.<\/p>\n

The Great Depression\u2019s<\/a> onset, however, soon dampened the homebuilding spirits\u00a0of Northeast boosters and exacerbated economic tensions between middle-class WASPs,\u00a0who inhabited bungalows and mansions along the Boulevard, and ethnic whites and\u00a0working-class blacks, who remained consigned to industrial enclaves closer to the\u00a0Delaware River. In the mid-1930s, the Home Owners\u2019 Loan Corporation, which created\u00a0detailed, color-coded residential security maps to demarcate desirable from dilapidated\u00a0housing throughout the city of Philadelphia, documented and widened, through its\u00a0discriminatory redlining policies, the emerging residential and class disparities\u00a0in the lower Northeast.<\/p>\n

The oldest, residential precincts, especially in Tacony and Wissinoming, primarily\u00a0housed skilled workers laboring in the Disston Saw Works and other industrial facilities\u00a0east of Torresdale Avenue. Meanwhile, Mayfair, Lawndale, and the Northwood section\u00a0of Frankford, home to a mixture of white- and blue-collar workers, had experienced\u00a0significant construction and residential upgrades immediately south of Cottman Avenue\u00a0and along Roosevelt Boulevard during the 1920s and early 1930s.<\/p>\n

Public Housing Segregation<\/h3>\n

The growing demand for adequate housing during World War II<\/a>, in fact,\u00a0led to increased racial segregation in, and civic resistance to, public housing projects in\u00a0Northeast Philadelphia. The 1941 Lanham Defense Housing Act established the\u00a0funding provisions that facilitated the construction of Pennypack Woods\u00a0and Oxford Village I in 1942, with both housing complexes only accepting applications\u00a0from white war workers and their families. Speaking on the behalf of anxious, middle-class homeowners in the Northeast, the Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce\u00a0resented what it regarded as the federal government\u2019s intrusive wartime housing schemes,\u00a0openly assailing the government\u2019s intention to provide affordable housing to war\u00a0workers in the Northeast, albeit on racially segregated terms.<\/p>\n

Generous government benefits, namely the Servicemen\u2019s Readjustment Act of\u00a01944 (GI Bill) and FHA home lending policies, assisted returning veterans, the majority\u00a0of whom were white, in their quest to move from Philadelphia\u2019s densely packed\u00a0industrial neighborhoods to the quasi-suburban atmosphere of Northeast Philadelphia\u00a0following World War II. Prominent builders, most notably Hyman Korman (1891-1964)\u00a0and A.P. Orleans (1888-1981), capitalized on these circumstances to expand\u00a0home construction west of Roosevelt Boulevard in the Near Northeast, especially in\u00a0Rhawnhurst, Lawndale, and Oxford Circle, in the late 1940s and 1950s. The Far\u00a0Northeast, on the other hand, remained largely undeveloped until the late 1950s and\u00a01960s, at which point large contingents of affluent, white households, many of whom\u00a0were Jewish, were drawn to Cape Cod and ranch dwellings designed with a suburban feel\u00a0nestled in Bustleton and Somerton. Residential development of a mixed, aesthetic\u00a0character, containing both row house and single-family dwellings, also unfolded east of\u00a0Roosevelt Boulevard in the Far Northeast, especially in Torresdale, Holme Circle, and\u00a0Academy Gardens, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, where an assemblage of white,\u00a0ethnic Catholics with strong community affiliations to nearby parishes bought homes.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Gimbels was the anchor of the Bustleton-Cottman shopping center, which opened in 1961 and competed for Northeast customers with Philadelphia\u2019s central business district. (Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Commercial development, especially shopping centers, also molded the\u00a0spatial alignment of Northeast Philadelphia\u2019s neighborhoods in the postwar period.\u00a0Just as mini-strip shopping centers began to dot the Northeast\u2019s still developing landscape\u00a0during the 1950s and early 1960s, some Northeast residents, apoplectic about commercial\u00a0overexpansion in their neighborhoods, requested the construction of a major shopping\u00a0facility to counteract the sometimes unwieldy dimensions of commercial growth in\u00a0the Northeast. In 1961, for instance, civic boosters, city officials, and residents\u00a0congregated at the Bustleton-Cottman shopping center<\/a>\u2014a newly erected major regional\u00a0shopping facility that openly competed for Northeast customers with Philadelphia\u2019s\u00a0central business district\u2014to mark its\u00a0 opening, with Gimbels serving as its principal\u00a0anchor department store.<\/p>\n

Amid the rising tide of middle-class prosperity coursing through Northeast\u00a0Philadelphia in the postwar period, there also developed a residential backlash among\u00a0white homeowners toward proposed zoning changes to accommodate public housing in\u00a0residential neighborhoods and fair housing proposals offered by civil rights advocates. In July 1959, Harold Stassen <\/a>(1907-2001), the Republican mayoral candidate, sought the\u00a0support of Northeast voters by claiming that he would disassemble \u201cCity Hall\u2019s bungling\u00a0socialistic experiments\u201d aimed at providing public housing for low-income families and\u00a0racial minorities in Northeast neighborhoods. While popular defiance toward public\u00a0housing in the Northeast persisted over the next two decades, Northeast Realtors and\u00a0residents also resisted anti-discriminatory overtures in the private housing market, as calls\u00a0for fair-housing legislation mounted among Philadelphia city officials and state\u00a0legislators in the late 1950s and early 1960s.\u00a0 Although the Pennsylvania state legislature\u00a0passed a fair-housing law in 1961 to end discriminatory practices in the private\u00a0marketplace, Cecil B. Moore<\/a> (1915-79), a prominent African American civil rights\u00a0advocate who grew dissatisfied with the pace and trajectory of residential desegregation,\u00a0still accused the Northeast of being a \u201clily-white island\u201d within the city\u2019s limits in 1964.<\/p>\n

Racial animosities between whites and blacks in Northeast Philadelphia\u00a0intensified further around busing and school-desegregation proposals\u00a0 during the late\u00a01960s and 1970s. As president of the School Board of Philadelphia, Richardson\u00a0Dilworth<\/a> (1888-1974) faced staunch opposition from white residents in both the Near and Far Northeast after the school board, working in conjunction with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, released its 1968 desegregation plan for the city\u2019s public schools. In their effort to achieve racial equilibrium and enhance educational standards across Philadelphia\u2019s public school system, Dilworth and the school board encountered massive resistance to the busing of Black students into the Northeast\u2019s overwhelmingly white schools, and \u201creverse\u201d busing, which entailed busing white children into predominantly Black city schools.<\/p>\n

Rizzo’s Mandate<\/h3>\n

Repeated attempts to implement full-blown school desegregation waned during the mayoral tenure of Frank Rizzo, as he appeased many white residents\u2019 anxieties, especially after receiving an electoral mandate from Northeast whites in 1971, by curtailing liberal\u00a0demands for racial parity within Philadelphia\u2019s public schools. Public support for\u00a0mandatory school desegregation in the city\u2019s public schools eventually faded in the mid-1970s, at which point city officials and residents agreed to institute a voluntary school-desegregation plan commencing in 1978, which experienced less popular resistance in the\u00a0Northeast.<\/p>\n

As deindustrialization and white flight threatened Philadelphia\u2019s already shaky\u00a0fiscal foundations and deteriorating municipal services during the 1970s and early 1980s,\u00a0some Northeast residents, including Republican State Senator Hank Salvatore (b. 1922),\u00a0questioned the logic of remaining wedded to the \u201cCity of Brotherly Love.\u201d After W.\u00a0Wilson Goode (b. 1938), the first African American elected mayor of Philadelphia, made\u00a0repeated calls in the 1983 mayoral election to erect a \u201cmini-City Hall\u201d in Northeast\u00a0Philadelphia in order to offset Northeast residents\u2019 fears about declining city services,\u00a0Senator Salvatore, unmoved by Goode\u2019s proposal, declared his intention to introduce\u00a0legislation in the state legislature that would permit Northeast Philadelphia to secede\u00a0from the city and become formally known as \u201cLiberty County.\u201d Goode, living up to his\u00a0promise, opened the mini-City Hall in the Northeast Center Shopping Center along\u00a0Roosevelt Boulevard in 1985, severely undercutting the legitimacy of Salvatore\u2019s\u00a0secession agenda, which lost its popular appeal by the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

Over the subsequent two decades, Northeast Philadelphia underwent significant\u00a0demographic and racial changes to become an increasingly diverse, urban community. Starting in the 1990s, white families and individuals relocated, principally because of\u00a0their economic mobility and aging households, to the surrounding suburban\u00a0counties and outside the Philadelphia metropolitan region in increasing numbers. In\u00a02011, the Pew Charitable Trusts<\/a> released a citywide population study that documented\u00a0the dramatic racial and ethnic transformations that had occurred throughout Philadelphia\u00a0during the previous twenty years. It found that Northeast Philadelphia\u2019s white\u00a0population had fallen precipitously, from 92 percent in 1990 to 58.3 percent in 2010. As\u00a0middle-class whites migrated outside the city\u2019s limits, racial minorities began the process\u00a0of inhabiting the once predominantly white corridors of Northeast Philadelphia and\u00a0relied on affordable mass transportation links, such as the Frankford El, for their daily\u00a0work commutes into the city. Indian families and ethnic Russians moved into the Far\u00a0Northeast neighborhoods of Bustleton and Somerton, respectively, while African\u00a0Americans, various Asian groups, and Hispanics relocated from North Philadelphia\u00a0into the lower Northeast neighborhoods of Mayfair, Frankford, and Oxford Circle. Once a bastion of racial defiance and material affluence, Northeast Philadelphia\u00a0evolved into a dynamic, cosmopolitan atmosphere in the early twenty-first century to embrace economic, cultural and racial diversity in its private and public spaces.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Matthew Smalarz<\/em>,<\/b> who grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, is a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Rochester who teaches at Manor College.\u00a0 His dissertation examines middle-class whiteness in the making of private and public space in Northeast Philadelphia following World War II. (Author information current at time of publication.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","egp_featured_subjects":[],"class_list":["post-8039","egp_locations","type-egp_locations","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_locations\/8039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_locations"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/egp_locations"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_locations\/8039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11038,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_locations\/8039\/revisions\/11038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"egp_featured_subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_featured_subjects?post=8039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}