Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
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Row Housing as Public Housing: The Philadelphia Story, 1957-2013
Full text linkIN THE EARLY 1920S, Bernard Newman, the executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Association, extolled the Philadelphia row house as the ideal affordable shelter, urging row housing as a viable solution to what the “housers” of the 1920s and 1930s—prominent reformers such as Edith Elmer Wood, Carol Arnovici, and Catherine Bauer—called America’s “housing problem.” No evidence exists that between the fi rst and second world wars these housers, enthralled by European modernism, ever actually entertained Newman’s idea. Beginning in the 1950s, however, the idea that row housing—especially “used row housing”—could provide good, affordable accommodations for low-income, working-class families gained ascendancy among Philadelphia housing reformers, and by 1970 row housing had become a sizeable part of the city’s public housing stock. However, the late twentieth-century embrace of used row housing hardly signified reformers’ sudden adoption of Newman’s convictions about the efficacy of the row house. Instead it reflected, first, the city’s and the nation’s growing disillusionment with modernist public housing (and, for that matter, urban renewal) and the abrading of what historian Christopher Klemek has called the “urban renewal order.” Under planner Edmund Bacon, that order had flourished in postwar Philadelphia. Born out of early twentieth-century Progressivism, it proposed that government-orchestrated and government-funded action, guided by experts (urbanists, planners, engineers, and master builders, among others), could impose rationality upon the unkempt modern city. Second, the rekindled interest in old-fashioned row housing underscored not only the Quaker City’s dread about the widespread abandonment by whites of row housing itself but also its recognition of the stock’s great abundance, its low cost, and its availability for rehabilitation as public housing. This paper explores Philadelphia’s “Used House” experiment, and, ultimately, why it failed
Book Reviews
Full text linkHistorical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600-1850; A Peculiar Mixture: German-Lanugage Cultures and Identities in Eighteenth-Century North America; Setting All the Captives Free: Capture, Adjustment, and Recollection in Allegheny County; the Complete Anitslavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754-1783: An Annotated Critical Edition; Ship of Death: A Voyage That Changed the Atlantic World; Philadelphia on Stone: Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia, 1828-1878: Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War: The Trials of John Merryman; The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry: A History of Misery and Medicine; Byberry State Hospita
Legal Practice and Pragmatics in the Law: The 1821 Trials of John Reed, "Fugitive Slave"
Full text linkJohn Reed, a person of color, had come to Pennsylvania from Maryland, representing himself as a free man, some two or three years before the events that led to his being tried for two murders. To the reporters who publicized his case in the Chester County Village Record, “It appeared sufficiently clear” that Reed was the child of the slave Maria, who had been a queen in her native Africa.1 Between twenty-seven and thirty years old in 1820, married, and with one child, he lived in Kennett Township, where he worked odd jobs in the neighborhood.2 Reed’s life in Chester County was marked by anxiety; he rarely went unarmed and frequently expressed his fear of kidnappers who, he claimed, had previously tried to enslave him. As his neighbors would soon discover, his fears were not unwarranted. Samuel Griffith, a slave owner from Maryland, claimed ownership of Reed and considered him a runaway. Reed, it was later discovered, could not demonstrate his free status, as he could show “no proof of manumission.”3 On the night of December 14, 1820, Griffi th, supported by a posse of three—his overseer, Peter Shipley, and two men identifi ed as Miner and Pearson—attempted to seize Reed from his Kennett Township home in the dark of night. Griffith and Shipley were fatally wounded in the attack, succumbing shortly afterward
The Tragedy of Edward “Ned” Davis: Entrepreneurial Fraud in Maryland in the Wake of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law
No full textABSTRACT: The celebrated trials of Anthony Burns, Shadrach Minkins, and Thomas Sims were not the only compelling slave cases to occur after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. The little known slave case of Edward “Ned” Davis was arguably just as stunning as they. Although it did not receive the same attention or entail the same fanfare that these other, better-known slave cases did, Davis’s case nevertheless exposed a depth of corruption in the nation’s legal, economic, and political systems that they did not. Unlike Burns, Minkins, and Sims, Davis was not initially a slave; he was a free man of color like Solomon Northup. Unlike Northup, though, who had been illegally deceived and enslaved in the 1840s, Davis’s entrapment was perfectly legal. By 1851, multiple forces in local, state, and federal government—particularly in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware—had converged in such a way as to make it impossible for even a defense team composed of an abolitionist and a slaveholder to prevail. The Davis case scandalized Philadelphia’s abolitionist community, and launched the career of the prominent abolitionist poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Women in Early America
No full textThis is a book review for the April 2016 issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Engineering Philadelphia: The Sellers Family and the Industrial Metropolis
No full textThis is a book review for the April 2016 issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Commerce and Community: Philadelphia’s Early Jewish Settlers, 1736–76
No full textABSTRACT: Philadelphia’s earliest Jewish settlers created a web of connections that was reinforced by necessity, trust, and obligation. In the absence of any Jewish institution, they collaborated in observing their religion and relied on one another as they established themselves in business. Interdependence in these dual realms complicated their relationships. Successful economic collaborations often led to longstanding partnerships, and colleagues often merged their families. However, bad luck, dishonesty, and imprudence disrupted relationships and impeded the communal cohesion. Communal and religious needs and economic necessities sometimes facilitated and sometimes complicated the other
Palatines or Pennsylvania German Pioneers? The Development of Transatlantic Pennsylvania German Family and Migration History, 1890s–1966
No full textABSTRACT: This article situates the development of Pennsylvania German migration genealogy as a popular historical practice in time and ideological context, while contrasting perceptions of the role of the family in the nation in the US and in Germany. While Pennsylvania German family historians interpreted migration during the colonial period as a radical departure from the European past, German researchers, driven by völkisch ideology, interpreted migration as a moment of separation from a mythical German nation. National Socialist efforts to claim Pennsylvania Germans as Germans and foster closer cooperation during the 1930s had little success. However, these efforts left a legacy of infrastructure and resources that were developed, transformed, and used by researchers after the Second World War, when transatlantic Pennsylvania German migration genealogy became one means of establishing cooperative ties in an international environment
Mikveh Israel and Louis Kahn: New Information
No full textABSTRACT: The commission that Congregation Mikveh Israel gave to the Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn in 1961 fi nally ended when he was fi red in January 1973, before ground could be broken on the new structure to have it ready for the Bicentennial Celebration in 1976. Kahn’s design would have produced one of the great interior spaces of the twentieth century, but disagreement between the architect and the congregation over functional and spiritual aspects led to the eventual sad outcome. Based on newly discovered documents, this article clarifi es what is known about the end of the commission, explores the thinking of the congregation that led to Kahn’s dismissal, and reveals the steps that were taken to fi nd a replacement fi rm from a list of Philadelphia architects
Book Review: Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America by Daniel Richter
Full text linkIn Trade, Land, Power, distinguished colonial historian Daniel Richter brings together eleven essays focused on the relationship between native peoples and European colonists in the mid-Atlantic region. Most have been published previously, but Richter argues that combining the essays into a single volume allows readers to better grasp the complexity of several interconnected themes at work in colonial-era cross-cultural encounters: trade, land, and power. While Richter acknowledges that we may never fully understand the intricacies of native-European interactions, he “is more convinced than ever that we need to probe those mysteries, to trace the roles of trade, land, and power in the conquest of North America.