Market Street in West Philadelphia
The following is Chapter XXV of Joseph
Jackson's Market Street, Philadelphia: The Most Historic
Highway in America, Its Merchants and Its Story.
Originally published as a series of articles in the Public
Ledger in 1914 and 1915, it was republished by the
newspaper in book form in 1918.
CHAPTER XXV
WEST PHILADELPHIA-W
ASHINGTON STREET AND THE WEST CHESTER
ROAD-HAMILTONVILLE

WEST PHILADELPHIA IN
1839, FROM THE MAP OF CHARLES ELLET
Market street, from the Schuylkill to Mill creek, at this
time, was known as Washington street. The streets in
Hamiltonville bore the names of members of the Hamilton
family. Cramond street is the present Thirty-third. Till
street is now Fortieth, etc. No vestige of the West
Philadelphia railroad survives.
On some of the old maps of the city there is indicated a
canal around the western approach to the bridge over the
Schuylkill at Market street. This mysterious waterway was not
so mysterious when it is understood for what purpose it was
constructed. The bridge was without out a draw, and for the
benefit of small ships which were to be sailed north of
Market street it was necessary to provide a way for them.
This was done by the digging of a small, semicircular canal
around the western end of the bridge in 1833 by the West
Philadelphia Canal Company, but it never became anything more
than a nuisance, and half a century ago was filled in, the
corporation of the District of West Philadelphia being
authorized to do so under the act of 1849.
Until about the beginning of the last century Market
street in West Philadelphia was known as the West Chester
road, but after the death of Washington it was renamed
Washington street, through that section of it known as
Hamiltonville. West of Mill Creek, at Forty-sixth street, the
western bounds of the village, it retained its earlier name.
The name Washington clung to it until the time of the
consolidation of the various townships, boroughs, etc., into
the city of Philadelphia in 1854. It is true that it was
customary for Philadelphians to refer to the street as Market
street, in spite of its proper name, just as they
insisted upon calling High street by that name.
From the western end of the bridge to Cobb's creek, the
county line, the distance is three miles, and from a point
near the river westward to about Forty-sixth street, it
formerly passed through the tract of the Hamiltons. This
tract comprised six hundred acres, and the upper part was
laid out in Hamilton village. Market street seems to have
been the northern boundary of the estate, the remains of
which may now be seen in the eighty-six acres comprising
Woodlands Cemetery. The estate early in the eighteenth
century was owned by Andrew Hamilton and descended to his
son, William, who liked to call himself William Hamilton of
the Woodlands, the name of his estate. Before West
Philadelphia became a political part of the city of
Philadelphia there were recalled in the names of the streets
in Hamilton village the names of the Hamiltons.
There was Andrew street, now Walnut street, named for
Andrew Hamilton the second; Till street, Fortieth street,
named for his wife, who was a Miss Till; William street, or
Thirty-ninth, for their son, William Hamilton "of the
Woodlands." Ludlow street was called Oak street, and few
of the thoroughfares within the bounds of the village were
known by their present names. Thirty-third street was
Cramond; Thirty-fourth, Moore; Thirty-sixth, Margaret;
Thirty-seventh, Park; Thirty-eighth, Mary, and Chestnut,
James. North of Market street Fortieth street was known as
Cedar lane.
West Philadelphia originally was a very small section of
Blockley Township. In 1840 it was regarded as insignificant,
and, containing few inhabitants and fewer buildings, it was
mainly confined to a little district around the western end
of the Market street bridge. It was bounded by the villages
of Hamilton, Greenville, Powelton and a part of Mantua. On
the other hand, Hamiltonville was the choicest part of this
section of the county, and Powelton, whose name was taken
from the Powell family who had a magnificent estate just
north of Market street at Thirty-second, was then a new and
promising village.
A description of Hamiltonville at this time gives an
indication of the esteem in which it was held:
"A handsome village of West
Philadelphia, situated about one mile west of the Market
street bridge," notes this description, "It is
on the road to West Chester. Its plan is regular, and the
streets, most of which are prolongations of those in the
city, are wide and well regulated. The buildings, about
eighty in number, generally stand apart from each other,
leaving garden spaces between them. Taken altogether,
Hamilton is probably the prettiest village in the
neighborhood of Philadelphia. The dwellings are occupied
principally by families who reside in the city during the
winter season, or merchants and others, who reside here
and transact business in the city."
West Philadelphia, however, at this time contained about
150 buildings, including extensive furnaces and other
manufacturing establishments. It was predicted by the
guide-book writer that "it is rapidly improving, and
will ultimately form an important suburb of the city."
In l844 the Borough of West Philadelphia was incorporated,
and its title was changed to the District of West
Philadelphia in 1851. When the Commissioners issued their
"Digest of Ordinances," in 1852, the compiler by
way of preface noted some of the good features of the
district as a place of residence. It was more of a promise
than the description of a work achieved as will be perceived
from a few quotations. Look at this beckoning finger across
the river:
As a place of residence, it may safely
be said, that no other location in the vicinity of
Philadelphia offers superior attractions. The ground in
general Is elevated, and remarkably healthy; the streets
are wide, and many of them bordered with rows of handsome
shade trees; and a large portion of the District has been
covered with costly and highly ornamental dwellings. New
streets are being opened, graded, and paved; footwalks
have been laid and gas introduced, and arrangements will
soon be made for an ample supply of water. Omnibus lines
have been established, which run constantly, day and
evening, thus enabling its residents to transact business
in the City of Philadelphia and adjoining districts
without inconvenience. A number of wealthy and
influential citizens now reside in the District, and
there is every Indication that the tide of population
will flow into it with unexampled rapidity.
Provision by law has been made for the
erection of two additional bridges over the Schuylkill,
and these will afford facility and convenience to the
great amount of travel and intercommunication which the
present avenues are inadequate to accommodate.
The present Thirtieth street, prior to the consolidation
of the city, was named Bridgewater and earlier Upper Ferry
road. It was the shortest avenue of communication between
this part of Market street and Mantuaville, which in these
days was reached by the upper permanent bridge, now
Callowhill street bridge. In earlier times the road led to
the Upper Ferry at the same place. Lying east of the road,
and not far from Market street, was from very early times a
burial ground which never seemed to have an owner. The
absence of all jurisdiction gave the impression that the
ground was dedicated to public uses. But after the victims of
the gallows had been laid away there for years without
protest, and in-numerable other burials conducted there, the
Society of Friends made it known in 1806 that the cemetery
had been given to them.
Beside the burial ground, probably a century before this
time, was the farm of a Friend named Duckett, in whose house
the members of the society held meetings. In the course of a
petition to the Legislature in 1809 it was stated that the
ground had been surveyed and had been held by the Society of
Friends for one hundred and twenty years, or since 1689. The
Friends admitted that their title was not complete, but
insisted that the presumptive evidence was in their favor.
They declared that they had exercised ownership for sixty
years, and, as the ground was not vacant nor unappropriated
land, the Legislature had -no right to interfere. This appeal
came in response to an action on the part of citizens to have
the ground declared public property, after the Friends, in
1809, had suddenly taken possession and refused
permission to other denominations to use the cemetery. The
controversy, which engaged the Society on one hand and the
Board of Health on the other, finally resulted in a
compromise in 1819, when the Society agreed to relinquish
possession to the Board with the understanding that the
ground be used as a place of interment of the dead forever.
When the Pennsylvania Railroad began operation and desired to
pass through this part of West Philadelphia, in 1850, the
plot was sold to the railroad company. In this little
cemetery were buried, during the latter years of the
eighteenth century and the early ones of the nineteenth,
several notorious murderers, among them Lieutenant Smyth, who
murdered Captain Carson, the husband of the strange woman,
Ann Carson.
A map of West Philadelphia made in 1839 defines a railroad
running from a point on the west bank of the Schuylkill
river, at about Chestnut street, in a more or less
northwestern course through the west side of the county until
it joined the Columbia Railroad at a point near Buck Tavern,
in Merion township, about six miles from the place of
beginning at the river. This road, known as the West
Philadelphia Railroad, which was to eliminate the inclined
plane, and which was not completed until 1850, crossed Market
street at Thirty-sixth, and then continued in a line nearly
parallel to Lancaster avenue.
The West Philadelphia Railroad was projected by persons
who objected to the use of an inclined plane at Belmont, and
believed that the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad should
enter the city at a lower grade. When the road was finally
built, and the inclined plane abandoned, it was on a route
very different at the eastern end from what is to be found in
these old maps. On the new route the road stopped at the
western end of the Market street bridge, and ran along
virtually the line now in use by the Pennsylvania Railroad to
a point near Ardmore station. At this time it was deemed
essential that the road should enter Philadelphia at Market
street, and in 1850 the remodeling of Market street bridge
was finished and the first trains on the new line, to cross
the bridge, were run on October 14. The old bridge was
destroyed by fire on November 20, 1875, and on November 29th
the Pennsylvania Railroad was running trains across the
temporary bridge that had been constructed in ninety working
hours.
 |
PENNSYLVANIA
RAILROAD STATION AT THIRTIETH STREET
Built in 1864, most
of the passenger traffic with Philadelphia passed
through this humble building until 1876. Although it
was advertised as located at Thirtieth Street, it
really was close to Thirty-first street. The
photograph gives an aexcellent idea of the type of
horse cars used by Philadelphians until 1893. |
In 1864 the Pennsylvania Railroad erected a
passenger depot at Thirtieth and Market streets, and for some
time this was one of the principal stations for passengers
for the West and for New York. The depot was abandoned in
1876, when the large station at Thirty-second and Market
streets was opened for the Centennial Exposition rush. This
was a busy neighborhood during the next four years, but this
station, too, was finally abandoned when Broad Street Station
was opened in 1881. The former station was built in a few
days more than two months, in time for the Centennial. It was
burned April 18, 1896.
 |
PENNSYLVANIA
RAILROAD STATION AT THIRTY-SECOND AND MARKET STREETS
Erected in 1876 to
take care of the crowds visiting the city for the
Centennial Exposition, it proved its incapacity
within a few years when Broad Street Station was
erected. The station was destroyed by fire in 1896.
Its site was west of the present West Philadelphia
Station. |
On the lot at the northwest corner of
Lancaster avenue and Thirty-second street, partly occupied by
the Armory for the Cavalry Squadron erected three years ago,
was held the first electrical exposition in this country.
This was organized successfully under the auspices of the
Franklin Institute, and was opened in 1884.
On Market street, from the bridge westward to Mill Creek,
there were four inns or taverns in the early years of the
last century, and one of them survives to the present day.
Between Thirty-seventh and Fortieth streets were several
horse bazaars and mule yards, and the vicinity is still noted
for this business. In 1814 there was a tavern which hung out
the sign of the "Golden Fish," at the west end of
the permanent bridge. This place was at the northwest corner
of Thirtieth street, and was kept by C. Young, one of whose
advertisements gives the information that a fox is to be
liberated there for the benefit of the city fox hunters, for
it must be remembered that a hundred years ago this section
of West Philadelphia was almost a wilderness so far as
habitations were concerned.
 |
WILIAM
PENN HOTEL, 3817 MARKET STREET
A stage to Newtown
Square set out from here until 1897 |
Near the corner of Thirty-second and Market
streets stood a tavern long known as the Mansion, although in
1839 this was, the Liberty. At the southeast comer of
Thirty-sixth and Market streets stood the William Penn House.
At the same time there was a William Penn Hotel on Market
street above Thirty-eighth, where the City Troop occasionally
met in the 50's. The William Penn near Thirty-eighth street
is still standing, and has the distinction of being the last
coaching house in the city. Until the West Chester trolley
line was established, about twenty years ago, a stage
carrying the mail used to set out for Newtown Square twice a
day from the William Penn. Between Thirty-seventh and
Thirty-eighth streets, on the south side of Market, stood
Ball's Inn, later known as the Bull's Head. Not many years
ago the original building was removed and the present horse
auction house erected on the site.
At Thirty-second street two diagonal avenues run off
Market street. The old Lancaster road starts off in a
northwestern direction, and a little east of it the Darby
road, now Woodland avenue, runs off in a south-western way.
The Lancaster road is the older of the two, and was opened
early in the eighteenth century. The road to Darby until late
in that century was from Gray's Ferry, but in 1780 a petition
was received by the Assembly asking that the road be opened
to Market street. This appears to have been reported
favorably the following year, and the act passed to have the
road opened through Hamilton's land. The Lancaster road had
the distinction of being the first turnpike road in this
country, and was the forerunner of "pikes" all over
the United States. Some of these survive much to the
annoyance of motorists, who do not relish the payment of
tolls at frequent intervals.
At the southeast corner of Thirty-seventh and Market
streets stands the last of the commissioners' halls, a relic
of the days before the consolidation of the city
municipalities. This building originally was erected for a
Masonic hall, and several lodges of that fraternity used to
meet there. About 1850 the Commissioners of West
Philadelphia, which had been erected into a borough in 1844,
and who had formerly held their meetings in a schoolhouse at
Thirty-third and Ludlow streets, and in Keen Hall, then on
Market street west of Thirty-third, removed to the building
at the southeast corner of Thirty-seventh and Market streets,
which they renamed Commissioners' Hall.
There is still another relic of the early days of West
Philadelphia in the headquarters of the West Philadelphia
Engine Company, which structure was occupied up to the time
the city fire department was organized. This building is now
numbered 3420 Market street.
On Market street, a little west of Thirty-seventh, the
Western Provident Society and Children's Home was founded in
1851. The organization was chartered in 1858 and afterward
erected the present building at Forty-first and Baring
streets. The title of the institution has since been
shortened to The Western Home for Poor Children. It maintains
on an average sixty or more white children.
Until about ten years ago the West Philadelphia Institute
occupied its building at the northwest corner of Fortieth and
Ludlow streets. It was one of the group of mechanics'
institutes which came into being in the early 50's. There
were five of them in all, one the city proper, the City
Institute, still in active service at Eighteenth and Chestnut
streets, and one in each of four districts-Spring Garden,
Southwark, Moyamensing and West Philadelphia. The latter was
incorporated in 1853, at which time it occupied a building on
Thirty-ninth street, north of Market. The West Philadelphia
branch of the Free Library occupied quarters in the Fortieth
street building, until its new home at Fortieth and Locust
streets was completed about ten years ago. The original
purpose of the Institute having been supplanted by other
agencies, especially the growth of the Free Library, the old
building was sold.
 |
PAUL
BUSTI'S HOUSE, AT FORTY-FOURTH STREET
It became the
residence of Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride |
From Forty-second street to Forty-ninth
street on the north side of Market, or rather from
Forty-fourth street, now, runs the walls of the Pennsylvania
Hospital for the Insane, familiarly known to old
Philadelphians as "Kirkbride's," after the name of
the first superintendent, Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride. This large
estate was the property of Paul Busti, whom we mentioned as
living on Twelfth street below Market about the close of the
eighteenth century, in one of the houses south of Dunlap's
mansion. Mr. Busti was an Italian by birth, but had been in
commerce in Amsterdam before coming here in 1799 as agent for
the Holland Company. The house on the estate was built in
1794, and the farm, with its mansion house, were occupied by
Busti from about the beginning of the last century until his
death in 1824, as his country place. In 1836 the property was
purchased by the managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital for
their newly planned department for the insane. About twenty
years ago Markoe street was opened through the grounds, and
now there is a movement on foot to have the property acquired
by the city for a park and a recreation centre, but
principally in an effort to aid transit in that part of West
Philadelphia.
In 1913 citizens of West Philadelphia succeeded in having
an ordinance to cut Forty-fourth street through the grounds
of the hospital passed by City Councils. In a legal battle
which followed with the hospital corporation, the right of
the city to open the street was sustained by the Court of
Common Pleas. In appeals successively to the State Supreme
Court, and the Supreme Court of the United States, whither
the hospital authorities carried their opposition, the
decision of the lower court was sustained.
The opening of the Market street elevated and subway
railroad, in 1907, was responsible for the building up of
Market street from Forty-sixth street to the City Line, at
Cobb's Creek. Before the advent of the road there were
-numerous vacant lots and even farm lands in the neighborhood
of Fiftieth street and westward, but within a few years, or
while the elevated structure was in the course of erection,
these lands were rapidly covered by rows of houses and
stores, and a new city came into being, thus proving the
correctness of the prophecy made as far back as 1840.
The old woolen mills of E. Wrigley, now occupied by the
United Gas Improvement Company at Farragut street, alongside
Forty-sixth street station of the Market street elevated
road, were for many years a landmark on the West Chester
road, as this part of Market street then was known. It was
the custom to give a popular name to mills, which was branded
upon their products; so this one bore the name "Good
Intent Mills." Until about forty years ago Mill creek
passed the mills to the east, and in those days ran through
the hospital grounds.
Just beyond the hospital grounds, until about twenty-five
years ago, ran Rabbit lane, a diagonal road which originally
crossed Market street near Fiftieth, but later had to be
entered from Fifty-second and Walnut streets. This road ran
in a southwestern direction down to Baltimore avenue, and
near the latter road, then the Chadd's Ford turnpike, was an
old farm house which had been obtained by a party of
well-known horsemen in Philadelphia, such as Captain Joseph
Lapsley Wilson, Wayne MacVeagh, A. J. Cassatt, Edward Rogers
and Hartman Kuhn. These organized themselves into a driving
club called the Rabbit, after the farm on Rabbit lane. From
1867 until 1872 the house on Rabbit lane was occupied by the
club, but later the headquarters were removed to Hay lane,
and not so many years ago to a spot near Christ Church
Hospital, just outside the bounds of the West Park.
On the old maps of eighty years ago, from a point about
Forty-fifth street, west, we find scattered widely apart the
names of Lewis Bills, at Forty-fifth street; Pennel, a little
west; and further on Cuthbert, Gamber, J. Sellers, Hoffman
and Plankley. At Fifty-sixth street stood the Farmers and
Mechanics Inn; at Fifty-ninth street, the Blockleyville
Hotel; and at Sixtieth street, the Cross Keys Tavern, the
site of a theatre of the same name. At the end of Market
street runs Cobb's creek, the county line, passing through
the recently opened Cobb's Creek Park.