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Chapter 1

The Most Traversed City by Railways inThis Country, If Not the World

Philadelphia, containing one hundred and twenty-nine square miles, is, doubtless, the most traversed city by railways in this country, if not the world. It has more than 600 miles of track on its streets, upon which are carried over 100,000,000 passengers annually. These figures do not include the steam roads, with over one hundred regular stations, and an ever-increasing business. All of these lines of travel form a network of thoroughfares through the limits of the city, and extend to its furthest outskirts.¹

As this excerpt from an 1887 guidebook to Philadelphia makes clear, the horse-drawn streetcars that John L. Smith road to the Centennial were just a small part of a complex urban transportation system that developed in the city during the second half of the nineteenth century (see figure 4 for a contemporary streetcar). Although the exact mix of steam trains, streetcars, and subways varied from city to city, the rapid expansion of transport facilities that happened in Victorian Philadelphia took place throughout the major cities of the Europeanized world at approximately the same time. The steel rails of these transit lines became “bourgeois corridors” that knit together the various strands of the emerging middle-class metropolis during the late nineteenth century. The vehicles were safe, usually comfortable, bourgeois spaces in the city, as were the homes, the department stores, the amusement parks, and the offices that these rail lines connected with each other.

These bourgeois corridors are what made both the reality and the perception of Philadelphia as a massive middle-class metropolis possible. For many modern students of Victorian Philadelphia, it is this interplay between reality and perception that makes the late nineteenth-century city so fascinating. The middle-class city was in part reality because there were simply so many areas spread throughout the region that were used largely (but never exclusively) by the bourgeoisie. But it was also a perception, an image held by many members of the middle class of an exclusively bourgeois city, their city. One native-born playwright recalled that “most of the people in Philadelphia are in one class. One great big stretch of middle class.” He and so many other members of the bourgeoisie missed the complex and heterogeneous nature of the city because of the seamlessness of the flow from one largely middle-class location to another along these corridors. This tension between the reality of bourgeois space in the multi-classed metropolis and the perception of the middle-class city is behind all the journeys that follow. This tension is also our key to understanding why the Victorian metropolis was so fragile: it was as much a product of the mind as it was of bricks and mortar.²

Figure 4. The intersection of Broad Street with Germantown and Erie Avenues in 1883. Courtesy of the Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.

Because these corridors were a part of the bourgeois city, middle-class women could use them on largely equal terms with their male counterparts to exploit the many resources of the metropolis. Bourgeois women traveled alone by day and night, no longer needing male escorts. The same cars that carried John L. Smith also took Eliza N. Smith of West Philadelphia (no relation) and her daughters throughout the region. Whether to Wanamaker’s for shopping, various schools for work, the Witherspoon Building for charity board meetings, or Delaware County for flowers, the female Smiths were frequent users of the bourgeois corridors. Without the freedom of movement brought about by the trains and the streetcars, many largely female spaces in the city—like the large department stores—could not have developed as they did.³

What set the bourgeois tone of these steel corridors in the late nineteenth century was unregulated capitalism. Throughout most of the Victorian period, the steam and street railways in Philadelphia (and the rest of the United States) were free to operate their services and to set their fares largely as they chose. Unlike in Britain, where the state-mandated parliamentary and workmen’s trains meant members of the working classes had some access to the rail facilities, the high charges of most American companies essentially limited everyday ridership on the trains and streetcars to the bourgeoisie and above.⁴

After the Centennial year, this growing array of transportation options helped middle-class Philadelphians remake their mental maps of the city and its region. How individuals chose to use those options—separate home from work, shop at a big dry goods store downtown rather than a smaller one closer to home—is what shaped Philadelphia’s new spatial order. Trains and streetcars did not dictate the rationalization of Victorian Philadelphia; their middle-class riders did. They used the transport facilities to develop distinctly middle-class locations in and around the metropolis, and these places reflected bourgeois culture. Urban geography, as represented by both city blocks and larger tracts, increasingly became specialized in use because bourgeois women and men slowly (and largely unconsciously) created a taxonomy of space for their city. Because this new Philadelphia of specialized spaces was created by hundreds of thousands of individual decisions, tracing its roots can be difficult. But what is so striking about the Victorian bourgeoisie’s world is that in so short a time it became so rationally classified largely without coercive governmental action. This suggests that there was shared belief behind all these individual decisions. This faith in rational classification became commonplace throughout middle-class society, and by the new century bourgeois Philadelphians had both mentally and physically transformed the texture of their city’s landscape and the rhythms of their lives through their use of money and technology in accordance with this sentiment.⁵

This comprehensive reconstruction along rational lines of “their” Philadelphia by the late nineteenth-century middle class represented an unprecedented intellectual victory over the physical world. Although there had been previous attempts at imposing order on smaller parts of the urban fabric, from like-minded firms clustering together to noxious producers moving away from those likely to complain, none were as impressive as that undertaken by the women and men of the middle class in the late nineteenth century. Not only did bourgeois Philadelphia encompass a vast region but it happened so subtly, or perhaps so “naturally” to the Victorians, that most contemporaries failed to connect the changes. Journalists, guidebook authors, and diarists all noted the individual transformations in the city—the tall buildings, the trolleys, the residential neighborhoods, and the like—but failed to see the underlying relationships. By the start of the twentieth century, the collective efforts of the Victorian middle class had created a detailed classification of space in the metropolis that would rival any present-day land use plan. To find this map, however, a scholar cannot go to City Hall, for formal zoning regulation would not come to Philadelphia until the 1930s, but must instead turn to the written words left behind in numerous diaries and letters. By following these bourgeois men and women as they went about their metropolis, the contour of the bourgeois city—where there was a place for everything and everything was in its place—slowly begins to appear through the rituals of everyday life.

Before we can understand the transportation dynamics of Victorian Philadelphia, we must consider a bit of its history. As late as the middle of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia (along with the other major cities of the Westernized world) had been a “walking city” for all but the elite. Only a very small percentage of the population could afford the horse and carriage that allowed for a significant separation of home from work. In 1850 the average worker lived within six-tenths of a mile of his or her workplace. The only modes of urban transport then available were omnibuses and a small number of steam railroad local trains. Both were relatively expensive and neither offered extensive service.⁶

In 1854, the Pennsylvania legislature took the first step toward creating the modern metropolis when it merged Philadelphia county (and its many political subdivisions) into the city. Although governmental fiat could create a unified political entity, it could not alter social reality. For years Philadelphia would continue to function as a series of large and small towns rather than as a single community because there was no form of reliable, inexpensive transport available. Two transportation changes occurred following the creation of the expanded city in 1854 that allowed for its effective consolidation by 1876: increased local train service and the development of the horse-drawn streetcar. Neither was a great technological leap forward, but both helped to transform the geography of the city for those who could afford their fares: the middle class and above.⁷

Since the opening in 1832 of the city’s first steam passenger railway company, technological change had been evolutionary—rather than revolutionary—in the railroad industry. Steam locomotives became bigger and more powerful, passenger coaches longer and more comfortable, and track heavier and more durable, but the basic technology remained largely unchanged. The importance of the steam passenger railway to intracity transportation grew slowly (and unevenly) during the Victorian age, but by the 1880s Philadelphia had a large network of lines that both served the city and connected the metropolis with its hinterland in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.⁸

Far more important for the city was the introduction of horse-drawn streetcars in 1858. Entrepreneurs combined two existing technologies—the body and motive power of the omnibuses and the track of the railroads—to create a new form of transport. The rails gave a smoother ride for passengers than the rough, stone-paved streets and the combination of metal wheels on metal rails made for less friction so the horses could both haul greater loads and accelerate faster. These two advantages helped to ensure the rapid decline of omnibus usage on any route with enough patronage to justify the higher capital investment of laying the rails for the streetcars. By 1880, horse-drawn street railways served almost all populated areas within the city limits and carried 99 million passengers annually.⁹

By the 1880s, middle-class Philadelphians had a more than adequate system of horse-drawn streetcars and steam-hauled commuter trains to serve their transportation needs in both the booming metropolis and its expanding hinterland in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The lines of the various privately owned streetcar companies occupied every major street (and many minor ones) in Center City and extended southward, westward, and northward from the original urban core along the Delaware River into the adjoining neighborhoods. In addition to these routes centered on the business district, there were a large number of local lines operating in the other densely populated portions of the city like West Philadelphia. The steam trains served not only the city but also the larger region. The 1870s and 1880s were a period of transition for the railroads; some lines had quite intensive service whereas others still had surprisingly few trains. For example, on its Chestnut Hill branch in 1876, the Philadelphia & Reading offered thirty round trips a day between Center City and Germantown, over twice as many as the Pennsylvania Railroad provided to suburban Bryn Mawr. In addition to having the most service, the Philadelphia & Reading lines serving northwest Philadelphia also had special-fare trains in order to encourage daily commuting. Overall, however, the steam trains were not used by many middle-class Philadelphians for their daily commute in 1880 simply because all of the downtown terminals were a long walk or horse car ride from the business district. By 1893, both major rail systems serving the city had relocated their main facilities to Center City and the daily commute by steam train became more viable for members of the bourgeoisie who could afford the fares.¹⁰

The electric trolley, introduced in the mid-1890s after a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with cable cars, quickly became the typical mode of middle-class transport and eventually the symbol of the late Victorian era. The advent of the trolley caused great excitement in the city as it was a technological marvel; science, in the form of electricity, replaced brute force, in the form of horses, on the streets of the city. In just five years, from 1892 to 1897, trolleys replaced all the horse-drawn streetcars and cable cars in the city. One person caught up in this technological fervor was Mary B. Smith of West Philadelphia, then in her early twenties. She noted in her diary the opening of almost every newly electrified line in the city, including those that were miles from her home and that she probably never used, such as the Twelfth and Sixteenth Streets line in January 1894. Mary’s enthusiasm grew as the wires and poles that were the physical manifestation of this technological marvel came closer to her home. She, her parents, and her siblings would often ride the new trolleys just to sample modernity, taking for the first time routes that had existed as horse-powered lines for years. Here is her record of the day electric service arrived on the line closest to her house: “Trolley cars started on Woodland Avenue. Papa and Lathrop took a ride on them as far as Paschalville. Papa and Mamma took same ride in evening.”¹¹

Mary’s excitement over the arrival of the trolley was typical of middle-class Philadelphians. Leo Bernheimer, then a high school student living in North Philadelphia, noted in his diary (emphasis in the original): “I rode down in the trolley car this morning for the first time.” Trolleys and the locations they served quickly became emblematic of bourgeois Victorian Philadelphia. ¹²

By the centennial year, Philadelphia boosters were justifiably proud of their city’s transit infrastructure. One guide boasted that the metropolis had “the best system of street [railway] transportation in the Union.…” A decade later, a similar guide enlarged the claim and Philadelphia was “the most traversed city by railways in this country, if not the world.” Middle-class women and men used these bourgeois corridors in a variety of ways and for a multitude of reasons in the late nineteenth century and, largely without realizing it, helped to radically reshape their vision of the region. We can rediscover this Victorian middle-class metropolis amongst the jumbled streets of the multi-classed city by following bourgeois Philadelphians as they traveled by train, omnibus, streetcar, and trolley. By the 1880s, such trips encompassed a series of middle-class areas in the region: residential neighborhoods, downtown, the surrounding countryside, and the New Jersey coast. In the 1890s, these journeys would add new destinations: suburban homes and amusement parks. ¹³

The regular travels of John L. Smith nicely illustrate the commute by streetcar of tens of thousands of middle-class Philadelphians in the two decades between the Centennial and the coming of the trolley. In 1880, he lived with his mother in North Philadelphia, and about two and one-quarter miles separated his home from his South Sixth Street shop. He could walk the distance in about an hour, and he did at times, but he usually took the streetcar. Slightly over one-third of the streetcars’ patronage consisted of regular commuters like Smith. Many white members of the “old” middle class—small business-owners and professionals—started to separate their homes from their workplaces at mid-century. Also, like Smith, the vast majority of these Victorian commuters were not suburbanites; they lived within the expansive limits of the city. The largely middle-class neighborhood of North Philadelphia was well served with routes, so Smith had a number of options. It is likely that he usually took the Philadelphia Railway Company’s Ridge Avenue route as it offered the most direct service (on one of the few diagonal streets to disturb the city’s extension of William Penn’s grid) with only short walks at both ends of the ride. On mornings that he was willing to hike the few blocks to Columbia Avenue, he could take a red car of the Philadelphia Traction Company that would leave him within a half block of his office. Philadelphia Traction also offered a number of other routes that came close to Smith’s house that connected with their main east-west lines to Center City.¹⁴

Another bourgeois neighborhood well served by the streetcars was West Philadelphia. J. Harper Smith, coal merchant and father of diarist Mary, lived with his family in an Italianate semi-detached house at 509 Woodland Terrace, which was on the fringes of development in the 1880s. He worked in rented office space downtown. The nearest line to the family home was the Darby Branch of the Philadelphia Traction Company, which ran on Woodland Avenue, one-half block away to the south. In horsecar days, Smith probably never used this line for his commute to work as he would have had to change cars to reach downtown. The Darby Branch was one of those local lines that served the neighborhoods and operated as a shuttle between Darby and Thirty-Second and Market Streets in West Philadelphia. A five block walk north would take him to Philadelphia Traction’s Chestnut Street line and cars that would leave him almost at the door of his office. When the Darby Branch was electrified in 1894 and the service extended into downtown, he likely switched to the more convenient trolleys. Had he and his family lived a few blocks to the north in the more densely populated area, they would have had as many transit options as John Smith did in North Philadelphia.¹⁵

Every day, middle-class students used the same corridors to travel throughout the region, and their trips helped to further define the bourgeois metropolis. Most grammar school students walked to school as the institutions drew from the surrounding neighborhood. Mary Smith’s younger brother Lathrop had only to walk a couple blocks to attend the Newton School in West Philadelphia. Once students moved beyond grammar school to attend Central High School, Girls High School, or the Normal School, and (possibly later) the University of Pennsylvania, they usually needed some type of urban transport to reach the facilities. One such student was Leo G. Bernheimer, who often rode the streetcars between his home in North Philadelphia and his classes at Central. Following his graduation from high school, Bernheimer continued to live at home while he attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia. He usually rode to Penn as it was quicker than walking. Early in his first semester he noted that his ride from campus to home “in Lombard (via South) and up 8th [took] about 45 minutes or 50 [compared to] about 75 walking there.” But the cars were not always faster; sometimes delays, missed connections, and traffic jams significantly slowed the trip. Leo complained one morning that he had arrived at college “late though I started soon enough not to be” because of “coal wagons” impeding the trolleys. In the course of his student career, he took just about every possible combination of routes between his home and the campus. ¹⁶

As Leo Bernheimer’s experiences indicate, in general, the horse-drawn streetcars only slightly increased the commuting range. The cars were typically (but as Bernheimer learned, not always) faster than walking. In addition, because the inter-company transfer privileges varied, sometimes the most direct route could not be taken without paying a second fare. Finally, many streetcar commuters liked to walk whenever possible (or necessary) to save money. The streetcars and later the trolleys helped to develop the inner ring of bedroom communities but could not greatly extend the metropolis. The steam railroads, however, allowed the middle class to radically alter the urban landscape because of the trains’ higher speeds and greater distances between stops.¹⁷

Starting in the 1870s, continuing through the 1880s, and accelerating in the 1890s, steam railroad commuter trains played an important role in the city’s transportation mix. The old “city” terminals of the 1870s were simply too far from the business district to be of much use to daily commuters. As the combination of new stations and an expanded commercial core rectified this problem, the steam roads increased services, cut fares, and added stations to build ridership. In 1875, the Philadelphia & Reading introduced “workmen’s trains” on some of its branches that reduced the fares (on specified trips) to nearly that of the streetcars (for example, between stations in the city and the downtown termini the railroad charged between seven and ten cents compared to the six-cent horsecar fare). The competition between the Philadelphia & Reading and the Pennsylvania Railroads also helped to spur service improvements in the city and both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey suburbs. New areas in the city and its hinterland were opened for residential use as steam commuter trains radically altered time and space relationships in the region. For example, to go from Center City to German-town by streetcar could take one hour and forty minutes while it required just thirty minutes on a Philadelphia & Reading train. Overbrook, located at the city limits in far West Philadelphia, underwent rapid development in the late nineteenth century because it was only fifteen minutes from Center City by train, significantly closer (in time) than much of the intervening area that was linked to downtown solely by trolley. The wealthy “suburb in the city” of Chestnut Hill and its bourgeois neighbors of Mount Airy and Germantown also underwent massive growth in the late nineteenth century largely because steam railroads made them convenient to Center City. Germantown and Chestnut Hill were particularly well served by frequent trains of both the Pennsylvania and Reading systems.¹⁸

One regular Germantown commuter was Edwin C. Jellett. His first job outside of the neighborhood in 1886 was as a clerk at a steel mill. Initially, he usually walked from his home to the works and only took the Reading when he was tired or the weather was bad. As time went by (and his pay increased), Edwin rode the train more often. By 1888, he was buying monthly or season (quarterly) tickets for the railroad, illustrating that he had all but given up on walking and that he had firmly entered the middle class (for the monthly tickets cost $5.25 and the quarterly $14.15, payable in advance). In September 1888, Edwin moved from the plant to the main office downtown and spent the remainder of his life commuting to various white-collar jobs in Center City. Except for a few periods immediately after the introduction of electric trolleys in the 1890s, he stayed a loyal rider of the Philadelphia & Reading.¹⁹

The streetcars, trolleys, and trains allowed the white middle class to begin to withdraw their homes from heterogeneous walking city to bourgeois neighborhoods like Germantown, West Philadelphia, and North Philadelphia. Racial discrimination restricted the housing options of the city’s African-American bourgeoisie and, although they were active users of the trains and streetcars, middle-class blacks generally lived in more class heterogeneous neighborhoods than their white counterparts. For the white bourgeoisie, the middle-class home on the middle-class street in the middle-class neighborhood became a reality well before Philadelphia began to suburbanize in significant numbers around the turn of the century.²⁰

For these white bourgeois neighborhoods to exist, their residents needed easy access to places other than just work and school. They had to buy food, clothes, and sundries and, after commuting, shopping was the most frequent activity for which middle-class Philadelphians used the streetcars and trains. Over one-quarter of all streetcar riders in 1880 were shoppers. The streetcars and the trains not only helped make the Center City department store possible but they also allowed other shopping nodes to thrive: the local equivalents of Center City’s Market Street in Germantown and West Philadelphia.²¹

Middle-class men and women frequently used the trolleys and trains to shop at the large retail establishments of Center City. Starting in the 1870s, these palaces of consumption drew customers not only from the residential neighborhoods and the early suburbs but from throughout the nation. This retail area was especially busy and festive during the Christmas season; in 1877 John L. Smith noted the “Splendid” display windows on Chestnut Street and the “Great Many Persons out … Shopping for Christmas.” A few years later another shopper, Edwin Lehman of West Philadelphia, described in greater detail the excitement he found in the display windows at two early department stores “… a Christmas scene at Sharpless window of St. Nicholas with his pack full of toys on his back in a sleigh + driving for reindeer—he is descending a hill + the winter scene around him is beautiful. There are also other pretty windows—Wanamaker has one of flower stalks + flowers trailing along the side of this window—composed entirely of silk [handkerchiefs] of [different] colors—also a mantel and a looking glass—the frame and decorating of mantel piece being all made of pocket + other hdkfs. of different colors—making a very odd + novel display.” By the end of the century, visiting the large department stores became as much a part of a trip to Philadelphia as touching the Liberty Bell in the lobby of the old State House.²²

The department store zone that anchored this retail district was a relatively compact area that developed in the 1880s and 1890s as the central business core extended westward. By the turn of the century, all the major merchants had picked sites along an L-shaped, eight-block-long corridor (figure 5). Convenient to the trains and streetcars and surrounded by specialty stores and restaurants, shoppers and visitors flocked by the tens of thousands every day to this retail district. It was a very rare day in the 1890s when at least one member of Mary Smith’s family did not take the trolley from West Philadelphia to go shopping in Center City.²³

The locations of the street railway lines (and to a lesser extent, the steam railroad depots) are what shaped this retail zone. The city’s main east-west car lines on Market, Chestnut, and Arch streets brought shoppers from the New Jersey ferries, from many of the outlying train depots, and from the middle-class residential areas of West Philadelphia. On Eighth Street, one axis of the department store district, ran the only double-tracked north south street railway in the central business district. This line connected Center City with the bourgeois sections of North Philadelphia and Germantown. Where these two transit corridors crossed, at Eighth between Arch and Chestnut, by 1900 could be found five of the city’s largest department stores: Cimbel Brothers, Lit Brothers, Marks Brothers, Partridge & Richardson, and Strawbridge & Clothier.

Figure 5. The Center City department store district in 1901. Based on a 1876 John L. Smith map of Center City in collection of author.

Key:
A	John Wanamaker	Thirteenth and Market
B	Nathan Snellenburg	Twelfth and Market
C	Joseph Darlington	Tenth and Chestnut
D	Blum Brothers	Tenth and Market
E	Gimbel Brothers	Ninth and Market
F	Partridge & Richardson	Eighth and Chestnut
G	Strawbridge & Clothier	Eighth and Market
H	Lit Brothers	Eighth and Market
I	Marks Brothers	Eighth and Arch
1	City Hall	Broad and Market
2	Reading Terminal	Twelfth and Market
3	Old State House	Fifth and Chestnut
4	Market Street ferry

The street and steam railroads did not just expand the customer base for the major Center City stores but they also spurred the development of a number of neighborhood shopping districts. The result was a series of nodes throughout the city, none as large as the central business district, but nonetheless important to local shoppers. These smaller shopping precincts first began to develop in the late nineteenth century as space in the heterogeneous “walking city” started to become more specialized in use. Local shopping evolved from corner stores scattered throughout the neighborhood to shops grouped along major thoroughfares. In West Philadelphia, Lancaster Avenue became a regional shopping center, as did Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia and Main Street in Germantown. Main Street in Germantown not only had streetcar service but also was served by two steam railroad lines. In the late 1880s, Mrs. Tucker C. Laughlin regularly took the train from her home in Chestnut Hill to the stores in Germantown. On a Friday he had off from school, Leo Bernheimer spent the morning shopping for his mother in North Philadelphia: “This morning I was first to the Globe market; then to 13th and Columbia Av., and then to the Girard Avenue market.”²⁴

The trains and trolleys helped people to create these various retail districts not just by bringing customers to the shops but also by hauling the merchandise to the businesses and the purchases home. This largely unseen network of freight trains and express trolleys, along with the mail trains and trolleys, tied the expanding metropolis together as one market and linked it to the national one. They made it possible for Mrs. Tucker C. Laughlin in Chestnut Hill to have a carpet sweeper delivered from Wanamaker’s, her new stove brought from North Philadelphia, and her buttermints to arrive safely. They also allowed for strawberries grown in Florida to be sold on the streets of Philadelphia during a blizzard.²⁵

None of these shopping locations—whether Wanamaker’s in Center City or a shoe store on Main Street in Germantown—served exclusively the middle class. The men and women of the bourgeoisie shared the streets and the stores (and the trains and trolleys) with both the elite and the working classes. Many of these businesses, however, consciously pitched themselves at the new “mass” market, which during the Victorian era consisted largely of the middle class. The downtown dry goods stores were in the forefront of this and, as we shall explore in more detail later, evolved into key nodes in the “bourgeois city.” The reality of many middle-class men and women shopping in certain locations coupled with the bourgeois tone and marketing of the stores helped to reinforce their perception of the bourgeois city.²⁶

Beyond work, school, and shopping, middle-class Philadelphians used the streetcars and the trains to reach a variety of locations at which they hoped to have fun. Recreation could take many forms: visiting an amusement park or museum, exploring the city or region, calling on relatives or friends, or simply riding the train or trolley to escape the heat or boredom. Through these journeys of leisure, middle-class men and women helped to further expand and define their space in the region.²⁷

Middle-class men and women used the trolleys and the trains to visit the various cultural institutions that began to develop in late nineteenth-century Philadelphia. Many of these, such as the theater district and the Academy of Fine Arts, were in Center City, while others were located in Fairmount Park (an area particularly well served by public transit because the Centennial had been held there), and still others, such as sporting venues and amusement parks, tended to be located along rail lines in the fringes of the city.

The area with the greatest concentration of cultural and entertainment attractions was Center City, and middle-class Philadelphians went there often during the late nineteenth century to be amused, enlightened, or informed. The fringes of the business and retail districts quickly developed into the city’s leading culture zone. Mary Smith’s parents and siblings were regular theatergoers; they would take the same streetcar routes that her father used to commute to work to see a play in the evening. Members of her family also took the trolley to attend the art shows and other special exhibitions that took place in the large halls located in Center City. The Smiths’ frequent weekend and evening visits to downtown cultural institutions were typical of many other middle-class women and men who lived in West and North Philadelphia and could quickly and easily reach Center City by street car. For people living farther away, in Germantown, the suburbs, and the outlying portions of the region, the steam trains provided the same access. Edwin Jellett from Germantown regularly used both the Reading’s and Pennsylvania’s Chestnut Hill trains to hear opera at the Academy of Music or to attend various shows downtown. These excursions to Center City were an important part of Jellett’s social life; for the twenty-five-cent train fare and the admission fee, he could meet other young middle-class Philadelphians.²⁸

Other special events also brought bourgeois Philadelphians from the neighborhoods to downtown by trolley and train. The regular occurrence of such celebrations helped establish central Philadelphia as a ceremonial space for the entire region. In the days of politics as spectacle, both parties staged parades and mass meetings in Center City. Edwin Jellett took the train in after supper on September 23, 1884, in order to stand “in front of the Union League” on Broad Street “to see the Republican Parade.” He spent the entire evening at the parade, reaching home at 1:30 A.M. on the last train. Events like the Constitution Centennial in 1887 and the “Peace Jubilee” in 1898 (celebrating the end of the Spanish-American War) drew great crowds to Center City. One middle-class man living in lower North Philadelphia wanted to go to the latter but failed “as the cars could not accommodate the people” by the time they had arrived at his street.²⁹

After Center City, the next most popular set of destinations for relaxation for middle-class men and women were the various parks in and around the city. Fairmount Park, the large municipally owned green space along the Schuylkill River, offered a number of possible destinations. Although clearly a space shared with the women and men of the working classes, Fairmount Park maintained its bourgeois tone in part because of proximity: in the late nineteenth century, middle-class neighborhoods faced all the major entrances to the park. Starting in the 1890s, there were also a number of commercial amusements parks. Many of these were owned by the trolley companies to encourage patronage on their lines. Philadelphia never had one very intensively developed location like Coney Island in New York City but instead had a number of smaller sites located throughout the region. In general, all these enterprises offered the same types of services: rides, food, picnic sites, and music. More basically, they all offered an escape from the brick-and-stone row-house world of middle-class Philadelphia to a land of green grass and trees. Philadelphia, like most industrial cities, was dirty and crowded and the parks offered some momentary relief from the less enchanting conditions of everyday urban life.³⁰

Finally, during the 1890s the trolley cars themselves were another popular middle-class destination. On beautiful days in the spring and fall many women and men used the trolleys to explore the city and region. For example, after supper one Sunday, Leo Bernheimer took the trolley to German-town just to see a new place. During the hot days and nights of the summer, middle-class Philadelphians used the streetcars to cool off. Eugenia Barnitz took open trolleys with her friends to Willow Grove Park as a teenager in the late 1890s. Because of the high fares that effectively limited working-class ridership, the cars themselves were a safe, middle-class space in the city.³¹

In the late nineteenth century, the steam trains (and to a lesser extent the trolleys) also linked middle-class Philadelphians more firmly to the city’s hinterland and the nation as a whole. People rode the railroads for both business and pleasure. Professionals and tourists visited New York and Washington for the day and took extended trips to Pittsburgh and New England. Towns along the New Jersey coast became destinations for thousands of middle-class men and women on hot summer days. The rail lines were not just “metropolitan corridors” but bourgeois ones as well in which middle-class men and women sped through the countryside from one bourgeois space to another in comfort and modernity. Not only was Atlantic City part of the world of Philadelphia’s bourgeoisie but so too were the trains of the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading that connected the two communities. The illustration in figure 6 of a well-dressed woman being deferentially served by a Pennsylvania Railroad conductor is a window into this world.³²

At the most mundane level, the trains and trolleys allowed middle-class Philadelphians to explore for a day the countryside around the city. The women of the West Philadelphia Smith family, for example, often used the trolleys to collect flowers to decorate their home. Edwin Jellett and his friends regularly took day trips to the Pennsylvania and New Jersey countryside in order to “botanize.” Jellett was a particularly active user of the region’s transportation system; he filled his Sundays with trips to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; Burlington, New Jersey; and dozens of other locations throughout the area in the late nineteenth century. Others, like the map-maker John L. Smith, took the trains and trolleys to follow the expansion of the metropolis; nothing seemed to make him happier than to record “the many improvements” he found in some outlying district.³³

The trains permitted many middle-class Philadelphians to spend part or all of their summers in the late nineteenth century “boarding” in the surrounding countryside. Escaping the heat of the city for the rural hinterland had long been common for the city’s elite, but the frequent train service meant that middle-class families could now join the summer exodus and still work or shop in the city. Edwin Jellett spent many of his vacations near Schwenksville in Montgomery County. Mary Smith’s family spent a month of the summer of 1896 on a farm just outside Hatboro. Her father commuted to the city on the trains of the Philadelphia & Reading and she, her older sisters, and their mother occasionally went into Center City to shop. Although the Smith family returned to their home in the city, the convenience of the train service first sampled in these summer stays may have helped convince other middle-class Philadelphians of the advantages of suburban living.³⁴

There were many popular summer destinations for bourgeois Philadelphians along the New Jersey shore. From Cape May to Asbury Park, the coast was dotted with towns that catered to city dwellers escaping the heat of the metropolis for the cool sea breezes. Both the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading systems linked these shore communities with Philadelphia. By the 1890s, some of the fastest trains in North America plied the rails between Camden (linked by ferry to Philadelphia) and Atlantic City. Both railroads operated express trains with extra-fare Pullman parlor cars, cheap excursion trains for day-trippers, early morning locals full of anglers and Philadelphia newspapers, and “cottagers trains” at the start and end of the “season” to convey families and their possessions to and from the shore. The season for the shore started in late May and continued through early September with its peak in July and August. As was common in many late nineteenth-century businesses, the Pennsylvania and the Reading engaged in an odd mixture of competition and collusion; although they met annually to set fares and rules for excursion traffic, they battled for passengers by offering faster trains, better equipment, and even bribes to Atlantic City hoteliers and cab drivers.³⁵

Figure 6. The bourgeois corridor. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

During the last few decades of the nineteenth century, the trains and the streetcars allowed middle-class Victorian Philadelphians to travel easily throughout the metropolis and to refine their visions of the city and its region. In this way, a new, better-ordered, more controlled relationship developed between middle-class Philadelphians and their metropolis. The trains and trolleys, however, were not perfect and this comfortable relationship could be undermined. Both nature, in the form of adverse weather, and man, in the form of accidents and strikes, could disrupt the city’s transportation system. During the late nineteenth century, snowstorms often shut down Philadelphia. Steam train and streetcar accidents, though usually less disruptive to the city as a whole, were far more likely and more deadly occurrences. Starting in the 1890s, strikes against the streetcar companies became more common and often interrupted the flow of travel in the city for middle-class Philadelphians.

The worst snowstorm during this period was the “Blizzard of ’88” that brought the city to a standstill for a number of days in early March. Although the city only officially received ten inches of snow, the combination of low temperatures and high winds halted all transportation in the region. One Philadelphian recalled, “During the blizzard of 1888, not even four horses could pull the [street]cars up that hill terminating at Poplar Street. Transportation [in the city] stopped.” William Hemsing recorded conditions along the Philadelphia & Reading’s line to Bethlehem. On Monday, March 12, the second day of the storm, he observed: “The storm still continues.… The telegraph wires are down and the local freight was delayed here all day.… The train that passes here at 10 A.M. with three parlor and sleeping coaches and two others, with two engines, one broken, reached here about six o’clock. I watched them as they passed up the road and soon heard that they were stuck in the cut.” Fifty-eight men from Lansdale worked for nearly two days to dig the stuck train out of the drifting snow. Finally, on Wednesday, Hemsing noted that “The unfortunate train at last started off in a snowstorm at 11:30 this morning nearly fifty hours late.” It was not until Thursday that service returned to normal: “Today all the passenger trains are running nearly on time. They had two engines for every train this morning, but this evening it is better We got all our papers today.” In the city, William Armstrong, an engraver, also recorded the unusual conditions: “Snow drift on the track Penna. R.R. near Wynnewood is 10 + 15 feet deep. All communication to New York is stop’t except by telephone.” Trains also were halted in southern New Jersey by the storm; Chalkley Matlack “saw the smoke of an engine at the Maple Shade Station [on Tuesday morning from his farm] and had my suspicions aroused that a train was probably blocked there, … discovered it had been since the preceding morning and that there was little likelihood of it getting away soon.”³⁶

Even less dramatic snowstorms disrupted the horse-drawn streetcars in the city. One morning in 1880, John Smith noted that it had “Blowed + snowed all night” and the “Car horses [were] having a Rough time.” Later that year, he walked to work during a snow storm because “I waited for a Car [and when one finally arrived, saw] such a gang Hanging on I made up my mind that If I wanted to get down town I would have to walk.” John Wilson, an engineer, voluntarily postponed a business trip to Reading one day in 1883 because of snow, only to have the lack of streetcar service the next day further delay the journey. A heavy snowstorm right before Christmas caused “trade [to be] very poor for this season” at Septimus Winner’s music store, largely because the “cars and travel [were] almost closed up.”³⁷

Although the cable cars and the trolleys were less affected by snow than were the horse cars, storms could interfere with service and, in the case of the electric trolleys, down the overhead electrical lines that supplied the power. During a heavy snow in 1895, Leo Bernheimer noted that most of the trolleys and horse cars had stopped and the “cable being almost the only cars going.” During a storm in 1899, Mary Smith observed that “Heavy snow all day long Street cars and steam roads completely blocked by evening. Market Street and Lancaster Avenue cars only ones running in West Philadelphia.”³⁸

Nature was not the only force that could halt the smooth flow of Philadelphia’s transportation system and middle-class Philadelphians’ travels. Far more common were streetcar accidents. Many were fairly minor; they might disrupt service but caused no major injuries to passengers or crews. During the Centennial, one newspaper reporter witnessed three “narrow escapes” involving streetcars in just ninety minutes. All three he blamed on the “incautioness and carelessness on the part of the passengers,” a sentiment certainly to be echoed by the companies’ lawyers. Leo Bernheimer was a frequent witness to all sorts of mishaps. Once, while on his way to his uncle’s house in South Philadelphia, Bernheimer saw a derailed cable car but noted no injured people. Often in the 1890s, he was delayed because of minor electrical problems with the then-new trolleys, a useful reminder that cutting-edge technology is seldom perfect. More seriously, many passengers sustained minor injuries when they were entering or exiting the cars. Bernheimer ran into friend “with his face all bandaged. Had missed his hold yesterday while boarding a Woodland Trolley. Not seriously hurt, though sufficient as a caution.” Injuries to passengers while they tried to board a moving trolley were common; about a year after seeing his bandaged friend, Bernheimer witnessed another accident on the same line: “Had just got in Woodland Av. car, … when we were a little past the church, a fellow jumped on the car and fell, looking as though he moved a somersault. The conductor stopped the car.… I don’t think it was the conductor’s fault.” The accidents, however, could be far more serious, even deadly. One morning, on his way to Penn, Bernheimer “had a close shave from a trolley collision. Cars at right angles almost crashing together, the tracks being slippery.” Other people were not so lucky, deadly accidents were not uncommon on the streets of Philadelphia in the late nineteenth century. Pedestrians were run over when they crossed the often busy streets of the city without being alert for the cars. The same reduction in friction that allowed the horse cars and trolleys to travel quickly also made them difficult to stop. Passengers also died from falls from the open platforms at the ends of the cars.³⁹

Accidents also plagued the steam railroads that served the city. Trains derailed, ran into each other, and ran over pedestrians at grade crossings. The high train speeds that allowed middle-class Philadelphians to assert control over their environment contributed to these railroad accidents, as did the lack of effective safety regulation. John L. Smith had his “first Experience in R.R. accidents” on a Philadelphia & Reading train for New York in 1880 when “the Engine Broke the Piston Rod it Broke in Half + tore wood work of Locomotive fearful wonder it did not kill the Engineer.” No one was killed and Smith made it to New York only an hour behind schedule. Accidents at grade crossings (where streets met the tracks at level) were also common. On his way to school one morning, Leo Bernheimer noticed a crowd near the Philadelphia & Reading crossing “at 9th and Girard.… A man had been struck by a train. I have since learned that his name was Goldman, Jewish. He died.” These crossings were dangerous in part because the space between the railroad and the pedestrian was poorly defined (a topic that will be revisited in Chapter 2).⁴⁰

During the late nineteenth century a number of strikes against the railroads and traction companies also disrupted service. Most of the labor actions were short in duration. In 1887, for example, there was a strike against the Philadelphia & Reading that lasted for only a few days and had little impact on passenger service.⁴¹

On December 17, 1895, however, workers struck the newly formed Union Traction Company (which by then operated most of the trolley and streetcar service in the city) at the peak of the Christmas shopping season and maintained the action for a week. Leo Bernheimer noted by the afternoon of the first day of the strike that “practically none [of the city’s transport services] except the Broad St Bus, and the Hestonville, Mantua RR. cars are going Most of the people have to walk.” Although the labor action did not last long, it was a crucial event in the world of middle-class Philadelphia. By 1895, many bourgeois families had used the trolley to separate home from work and shopping. No longer could they easily walk to their daily destinations, and people coped as best they could. The traction company’s attempt to operate service with police escorts met with limited success because of the combination of union solidarity, public support for the strike, and violence. Leo Bernheimer rode some of these “scab cars” and his experiences were not positive. Early in the strike he “took a car, a Market Streeter then coming along, police fore x aft and four mounted police as escort to the bridge [over the Schuylkill River]. The conductor said he would not make the next trip, had had enough.” Later, Bernheimer rode another trolley “with a ’scab’ conductor. He had no uniform on and did not seem to be a conductor. The remarks made about him were not complimentary. He seemed to be a very poor man, and anything but happy. I felt very sorry for him.” Bernheimer, like other middle-class Philadelphians, also took the steam trains (all three of the railroads serving the city continued to operate) and “huckster wagons” to work and shopping (see figure 7 for the triumph of practicality over bourgeois respectability during the strike) . Mary Smith’s father either walked the two miles to work or took a crowded train on the nearby Pennsylvania Railroad.⁴²

Despite the violence, many middle-class Philadelphians supported the strike because of their dislike of the new traction monopoly. Albert Edmunds, a librarian at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and no friend of organized labor, recorded, “General strike of motormen and conductors of the Union Traction Company, which has created popular disapproval of late by raising fares and reducing wages.” Septimus Winner, a small-business owner, expressed his toleration of the violence: “A magnificent’ day, splendid for pedestrians, we all had to walk on account of the Great Strike in opposition to the ‘Trolley Grab’ of double fare 8 cents. A very exciting day all over the City big rows, cars smashed and lots of fun.” Another indication of the anti-monopoly feeling was the “people going along with cards on their hats, saying ‘we are walking,’” noted by both Edmunds and Winner.⁴³

Figure 7. The victory of practicality over respectability: passengers on a huckster wagon during trolley strike. Courtesy of the Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.

The strike ended on Christmas Eve with a partial victory for the union. The workers received a small wage increase and a twelve-hour day. Middle-class women and men were happy to have their cars—and their lives—back to normal. Albert Edmunds was not the only Philadelphian who had missed “the roar of the street-cars by day and night” during the strike and found the “thunder of electric cars” on Christmas Eve “music.”⁴⁴

The strikes, accidents, and storms disrupted both Philadelphia’s transportation system and the rhythm of everyday life for middle-class men and women in the city. By the turn of the century, the women and men of the bourgeoisie were dependent on the trains and the trolleys that had given them the physical mobility to remake their mental images of the city. Many middle-class Philadelphians found themselves wedded to a monopoly institution—the Union Traction Company—that they did not like but needed every day to travel the length and breadth of “their” city.

For the bourgeoisie, the steam trains and the electric trolleys represented modern society’s triumph over nature. The middle class used these bourgeois corridors to remake the physical and mental geographies of their Philadelphia. Going from one carefully classified, perceived middle-class space to another within the safety and comfort of the region’s trains and cars, late Victorian bourgeois Philadelphians felt confident in the continued progress of their city by the dawn of the twentieth century. This new middle-class world also included the buildings that served as entrances to these corridors. The next chapter will look at the remaking of space and time in and around Victorian Philadelphia’s railway passenger terminals. But, as will be developed in Part II, the monopoly traction company and the transit workers’ strikes hinted that all was not well in the order created by Philadelphia’s subset of the transatlantic middle class. Caught between a rapacious elite and an increasingly demanding proletariat, the early twentieth-century bourgeoisie would have to resort to politics to defend their carefully classified version of the world.