POWELTON HISTORIC DISTRICT OF
UNIVERSITY CITY
32nd to 39th Streets, Lancaster Avenue
to Spring Garden Street in West Philadelphia
Placed on the National Register of
Historic Places May 9, 1985
The Powelton community [map]
that exists in the late twentieth century is the
result of three stages of building decisions: One
in the early nineteenth century when great estates
were built there; another in the middle of the century
when street and rail lines made it a successful
upper-class suburb; followed at the end of the century
by a phase of dense urban building. With the south
edge defined by the presence of Drexel on the southeast,
commercial and institutional buildings extending
along Lancaster Avenue, the rail yards of the Pennsylvania
Railroad of the east, and the red brick rows of
Mantua above Spring Garden Street on the north,
Powelton remains visually identifiable, an oasis
of tree-lined streets, porch-fronted suburban houses
interspersed with a few mansions and their commercial
support buildings dating from the second half of
the nineteenth century. Despite the growth of Drexel
University and the changing lifestyles in the region,
Powelton remains a worthy bearer of the name of
one of Philadelphia's first families. Of the approximately
900 buildings in the district, 25 are significant,
809 contribute to the district, and 34 are listed
as intrusions demonstrating the high integrity of
the community.
Powelton has a number of significant
streets that represent its various connections to
the remainder of the City: Lancaster Avenue, which
remained essentially institutional and commercial;
Spring Garden Street, formerly called Bridge Street
because it provided access to the suspension bridge
across the Schuylkill; and Powelton Avenue, which
was the focus of development as the region matured
in the decade after the Centennial. The initial
impetus for the development of Powelton came with
the 1840s construction of Charles Ellet's pioneering
suspension bridge across the narrowing of the Schuylkill
River bluffs below the waterworks wind dam. It is
because of that access along the Race and Vine Street
Passenger Railway that Baring, Hamilton and Spring
Garden Streets were first developed, leaving few
empty lots by the time of the Centennial, while
Powelton Avenue was relatively empty. A few of the
early houses still exist on Spring Garden, including
a handsome Greek Revival townhouse at the corner
of 36th Street and a wood-sided Italianate house
at 3502 that predates the 1854 incorporation of
the region into the city of Philadelphia, and thus
circumvented the building code requirement of fireproof
construction. In addition, a considerable number
of houses from the second era still remain, including
the stately Italianate mansion of developer Joseph
Brunner on the 3500 block of Spring Garden (now
Saint Agatha's School), and the large stucco doubles
on 32nd and 33rd Streets. Though no architects have
been linked firmly to any houses, the recessed panel
design of many suggests the work of carpenter-builder
John Riddell, whose published schemes show similar
styling. Others are similar to various projects
of Samuel Sloan, but may have been derived from
his books on villas and country homes.
The 1870s saw a considerable
group of stone-fronted mansarded houses erected
along Hamilton and Baring Streets, and the first
large houses identified with specific architects.
Of these, the most notable are a group erected by
various members of the Wilson Brothers, including
the notable Japoniste house at 205 North 36th Street,
Frederick Thorne's house at 36th and Baring, and
another by the same designer on 33rd Street (now
demolished). Addison Hutton's George Fletcher House
(216 North 34th) shows hints of the fashionable
"Olde English" styling.
That same decade saw the construction
of numerous institutions that still survive, including
Northminster Presbyterian Church at 35th and Baring,
erected in 1875 from plans by Thomas Richards, architect
of the new campus of the University of Pennsylvania.
It is an imposing English Gothic church derived
from Pugin rather than the polychromed English Victorian
Gothic. At the opposite end of the district is an
imposing Lutheran church at 38th and Baring Streets
which shows the coloristic variety of brownstone
framing stucco panels that suggest a link to pre-war
design. An early pre-Civil War Presbyterian church
(1846) at 36th and Spring Garden was refaced in
1911 as a Lutheran church (now Baptist) with a more
up-to-date English Gothic front. The Episcopal congregation
produced a series of buildings that culminated in
a brownstone group at 36th and Baring by the Wilson
Brothers. That congregation began in 1819 at 36th
and Sycamore (now Fairmount Avenue) as St. Mark's,
and when it moved it changed its name to St. Andrew's.
Its original building was sold to St. Agatha's Roman
Catholic congregation. They later moved into an
impressive brownstone building with a central tower
that recalls German medieval styling by E. F. Durang,
1888. With its adjacent parish house by P. A. Welsh
(1891) and the School (1917) also by Durang, the
adaptive reuse of the Joseph P. Brunner House as
St, Agatha's School Of the Deaf, and the Bishop
Ryan Institute, they give that parish an impressive
presence in the community, and one that remains
to the present.
In the last generation of the
nineteenth century, the holes in the community were
infilled, making the community almost urban in its
density. That began with E. Spencer Miller's purchase
of Powelton and subdivision of it into two groups
of buildings: a row of elaborate Queen Anne houses
by G. W. and W. D. Hewitt for Henry Gibson (1882);
and to the rear, small suburban doubles, probably
by the same architects that Gibson had used. At
33rd, brewer Frederick Poth built a German beer
baron Gothic house (1887) with corner tower and
elaborate Queen Anne detail by A. W. Wilks, formerly
of Chandler's office, while his brewery architect,
Otto Wolf, built a row of "German Gothic" doubles
across the street. At 34th Street, T. P. Chandler
built the handsome stone Romanesque house for George
Burnham of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Further
west on the same block is an altered but still impressive
house by Bruce Price for Jessie Sabin (c. 1885),
in high Queen Anne style. Next door is a Pompeiian
brick modern Georgian house for Charles Febiger
by Horace Wells Sellers and Chester Kirk. The modern
Italian house for Henry Cochran by Wilson Eyre (1891)
at 36th and Baring culminates this group and indicates
the varied nature of this community. The range is
evident in the church denominations and also in
the range of architectural patronage, which includes
both elite architects such as T. P. Chandler, Wilson
Eyre, Jr., and Horace Wells Sellers, and nouveau
riche and industrial designers such as Otto Wolf,
T. P. Lonsdale and Willis G. Hale.
The twentieth century has altered
Powelton in directions common to many other late
nineteenth century suburbs. An institutional neighbor,
Drexel Institute of Technology, now Drexel University,
has expanded north from Chestnut Street. Many of
the major houses have been converted into fraternities
and others have been altered into student apartments.
Drexel commissioned a handsome setback skyscraper
in Art Deco classical style from Simon and Simon
for use as a dormitory for a site on Powelton Avenue.
Other buildings have not been as sympathetic or
sophisticated, but the university's presence is
now a significant fact of life in the region. The
changing nature of the community in the twentieth
century is also evident in the construction of a
significant group of apartment houses that began
with the conversion of a row of immense doubles
erected on the 3500 block of Powelton Avenue from
designs by WiIlis G. Hale.Their size--four stories--and
detail were not in keeping with the aspirations
of the Quaker City oligarchy, and the buildings
were left empty after their completion. Frederick
Poth acquired the buildings in 1908 and followed
the pattern of his earlier development on Parkside
Avenue by hiring architects Milligan and Webber
to join the buildings into a four-story flat house.
Later apartment houses were erected at 35th and
Powelton (demolished) and at 36th and Powelton in
a Neo-Regency style (J. Clark, 1925); and at 36th
and Spring Garden (J. Fieldstein, 1920). They all
mark the changing patterns of residence of the modern
city.
The southern edge of the district
remained commercial following the initial patterns
of the region. The commercial district that began
along Lancaster Avenue had broadened in its function
by the end of the century but it remained focussed
on serving the needs of the Powelton district. In
the 1890s an elegant apothecary shop with terra
cotta panels was built at the intersection of 36th,
Lancaster, and Race, while rows of yellow brick
apartments with shopfronts in the 3600 block provided
groceries, clothing and other services. At the end
of the century, one of the Lancaster Avenue lumberyards
and planing mills that had supplied materials for
the building boom was replaced by an extraordinary
high-style commercial block at 39th Street. The
curving almost "Art Nouveau" row of period yellow
brick storefront buildings accented by decorative
terra cotta panels were given individual interest
by tall wall gables that create a medievalizinq
air along the roof line. It recalls the scale and
detail of the rowhouses built on Spring Garden,
making it clear that the commercial zone was conceived
by the architects who designed the domestic rows.
In the early twentieth century, automobile services
were added along Lancaster Avenue in a group of
garages that show segmental decorative brick paneled
pediments above the garage door in the period style.
At the end of the nineteenth
century, severa1 important institutional buildings
were built on Lancaster Avenue as well, reflecting
the residential character of the neighborhood that
attracted other important institutions, including
the Presbyterian Hospital, the Blind Women's Home
(both by the Wilson Brothers) and the Old Men's
Home. An academic building for the Quaker meeting
in the Georgian Revival style by Bunting and Shrigley
(1901) stood next to the nineteenth-century Hicksite
Meeting House; on the same block was a "Mission
House," reusing a mid-century Italianate mansion.
They were joined in 1890 by the monumental building
group for the Industrial Home for the Working Blind,
which was located at 36th and Lancaster in close
proximity to the Blind Women's Home and public transit.
That building was designed by the architect who
completed City Hall, John Ord. Here he used red
brick with overscaled brownstone trim, and a handsome
corner tower capped by a dome to create a memorable
architectural accent at the 36th Street intersection.
As the above description suggests,
the community survives with a high degree of integrity.
From Spring Garden to Race Street there are a few
vacant lots and with the exception of the Powel
School, and more recent buildings for Drexel University,
few contemporary buildings. Most of the intrusions
and vacancies occur on the east edge of the community,
where light industry, located near the rail yards
on the bridge, has gradually altered the scale and
the perception of the region. Spring Garden Street
has the difficulty of being perceived as the edge
of the ghetto, and thus has been subjected to lower
valuations and less sensitive rehabilitation.
STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
1850s - 1930
When Lippincott's published
the 1887 edition of Philadelphia and Its Environs,
the Powelton neighborhood was described favorably
as containing "a multitude of pretty residences
of moderate cost [and] some of the handsomest
and most expensive mansions in the city." Indeed,
at the turn of the century after 50 years of development
the Powelton neighborhood was one of the most impressive
in the city, both for its architecture and its economic
and social diversity. Where Rittenhouse and North
Philadelphia mark the social extremes of the Quaker
City, old money elites versus nouveau riche, Powelton,
because of its proximity to the Pennsylvania railyards
and offices and the Baldwin locomotive works, was
the home of the industrial meritocracy. Their social
variety was reflected in the wide range of institutions,
juxtaposing a Catholic complex with an Episcopal
church, a Baptist church with Hicksite and Orthodox
Quaker meetings. The suburban flavor of the community
provided the setting for a variety of institutions
that contemporary wisdom assumed would prosper in
a more sylvan location, including a Quaker Mission
and the sheltered Working Home for the Blind, as
well as churches, schools and hospitals and now
Drexel University. Moreover, with the pre-Civil
War streetcar suburban homes, the institutional
and commercial strip along Lancaster Avenue, and
the core of Victorian mansions on Powelton Avenue,
the district describes with clarity and vigor the
values and lifestyles of many of the city's most
prominent industrialists. Fortunately, their taste
is recorded by the survival of vast numbers of buildings
by the principal architects Addison Hutton, T. P.
Chandler, Wilson Brothers, Willis Hale and others
of post-Civil War Philadelphia. Those buildings
form streetscapes that retain a high degree of completeness.
The community developed in
three phases, the first because of the construction
in the 1840s of Charles Ellet's pioneering suspension
bridge across the Schuylkill at Spring Garden and
the simultaneous publications by A. J. Downing,
Samuel Sloan and John Riddell extolling the merits
of suburban life. A second phase began with the
development of horsecar lines in the 1850s, making
Powelton accessible to the new managerial and upper
income industrialists who gave the community its
principal landmarks. Finally, at the end of the
century the middle classes arrived in smaller subdivision
houses on the site of the initial mansions.
Though none of the buildings
of the initial phase survive, it was that period
before 1850 which established the real estate subdivision,
located the major bridges across the Schuylkill
River and created the focus that brought suburban
development to the region. The second phase, from
the 1860s and 1870s, is extensively represented
by Downingesque cottages and suburban villas, churches
and institutions. Those buildings are concentrated
between 32nd and 39th Streets, above Lancaster Avenue
and below Spring Garden Street. Built simultaneously
with the suburban homes was a commercial/institutional
boundary along Lancaster Avenue, one of the principal
trolley routes into the community. Not coincidentally,
significant institutions, businesses and transportation
buildings existed there from the 1860s, and it became
increasingly concentrated by the end of the nineteenth
century. Finally, in the decade after the Centennial
celebration, the remaining large estates were demolished
including the great Powel house, "Powelton," that
gave the region its name. In their place came three-story
row blocks at the east end of the community, more
commercial development along Lancaster, and some
additional suburban homes. It is those houses, with
the mid-century villas, that give the region its
character.
It is as the architectural
setting of the meritocracy that Powelton is now
of greatest interest, with each block containing
architecturally significant buildings for important
industrialists. Though the pre-Civil War architects
are difficult to determine because of insufficient
documentation, it seems likely that John Riddell,
Samuel Sloan and Edwin Rafsnyder, among others,
were designing the early suburban homes. With the
Centennial era and better documentation, attributions
are more secure. Quaker architect Addison Hutton
designed George Fletcher's imposing Queen Anne house
on 34th Street below Powelton Avenue in 1882, and
worked on the houses of Henry Mitchell, E. P. Alexander
and Edward Lewis (demolished). The Wilson Brothers,
architects for the Pennsylvania Railroad, designed
houses in Powelton, including John Wilson's own
house at 302 North 35th Street (demolished for the
Powel School); Fred Thorne's house at 36th and Baring,
with its prominent castled turret; Robert Gibson's
house (208 North 34th); the Thomas Sparks house
(213 North 33rd, (demolished); two houses for William
H. Wilson, as well as St. Andrew's Church at 36th
and Baring Streets, all between 1875 and 1883.
Together they form the setting
for the gems of Powelton, the great houses along
the Avenue between 33rd and 35th Streets, including
the house for George Burnham by T. P. Chandler (1886)
at 34th Street, the house for brewer Frederick Poth
by A. W. Dilks (1887) at 33rd, the house for Max
Riebenack, passenger agent for the Pennsylvania
Railroad at 34th and Powelton by Thomas Lonsdale
(1890), and the Jesse Sabin House of the Sellers
Machine Works at 3407 by New Yorker Bruce Price
(c. 1890). Each is profoundly different in style:
Chandler's Burnham house shows the influence of
the Richardsonian Romanesque in its vigorously massed
stone facade. The Riebenack House remains indebted
to the English monochromatic Victorian Gothic in
Lonsdale's conservative style. Dilks combined Queen
Anne motifs with the bombastic rhetoric of the German
Revival architects in Poth's house while Bruce Price's
Jesse Sabin House was, with a Germantown house by
Cope and Stewardson, the best Queen Anne, hung-shingle
house in Philadelphia. The range between Shavian
shingle style in Price's work, Richardsonian Romanesque
in Chandler's design and the more middle class houses
by Dilks and Lonsdale accurately describes Powelton's
social variety. With peripheral houses such as Eyre's
cubic modern Italian, Pompeiian brick house for
Henry Cochran, the region is a center of domestic
building of considerable architectural merit.
The churches are similarly
notable, with four important examples of post-Civil
War taste joined by other lesser but representative
buildings. The Emmanuel Lutheran Church (1873, architect
unknown) is a handsome brownstone and stucco Romanesque
design that marks the transition toward the polychromed
styles of the Centennial era. That was followed
in 1875 by the Northminster Presbyterian Church
by Thomas Richards, founder of the School of Architecture
at the University of Pennsylvania. Its board included
several noteworthy community members, among them
developer John Shedwick and leather goods manufacturer
Edward P. Alexander. This church was a highly styled,
originally green serpentine building similar to
Richards' University buildings. Presumably the deterioration
of the stone caused its replacement in the early
twentieth century by the continuation of the Wilson
Brothers who were joined by a member of Richards'
family in the firms of Wilson, Harris, and Richards.
With its landmark tower capped by four spires and
its traditional rose window, it is among the more
visible landmarks of the region. St. Andrew's Protestant
Episcopal Church marks the affiliation of the Wilson
Brothers, the principal architecture/engineering
firm in the city and probably in the country at
the time with that socially elite denomination.
A church had existed in the community since 1819,
but was arsoned. The present congregation began
in 1851, and in 1865 purchased the 36th and Baring
Streets site. An initial building was erected at
that time, and was enlarged in 1884 by the Wilson
Brothers, who designed the present handsome brownstone
Gothic building. The most flamboyant of the church
buildings is the splendid St. Agatha's Roman Catholic
Church, erected around 1898 from plans by E. F.
Durang, the principal architect of the Catholic
Church of the era. Its sandstone is richly carved
with decorated Gothic detail which forms a contrast
with the jamb colonnettes of deep red granite. The
plain style Hicksite Meeting on Lancaster Avenue
formed quite a contrast to its Gothic peers.
Another important group of
buildings contains the large institutional facilities
that are scattered throughout the region. Some are
relatively unpretentious like the small Colonial
Revival American Oncologic Hospital by Walter H.
Thomas (1913) which was enlarged by Quaker architects
Bunting and Shrigley. Others, like the Working Blind
Home, are monumental, occupying nearly a quarter
of a block and bringing the scale of industrial
architecture to the region. Its four stories, articulated
by bays at regular intervals, show John Ord's ability
at handling large masses of masonry in a quasi-suburban
setting. The tall Drexel University dormitory named
for the Van Rensselaer side of the Drexel family
marks the architectural continuity into 1920s Art
Deco in the region. That building was designed by
Simon and Simon, who were also the architects of
the extension to the Drexel auditorium complex,
but who are best remembered for such commercial
landmarks as the Strawbridge and Clothier store
and the University Club at 16th and Locust Streets.
Together with the Mission House, the Quaker school
and other Drexel buildings in the area, they form
a significant group that describes the range of
Philadelphia charities.
One last building in the region
remains to be noted, the three-story factory at
the northeast corner of 32nd and Spring Garden Streets,
which was erected in 1886 from plans by Kister and
Oren for community resident H. D. Justi (3401 Baring
Street) as a manufactory for dental materials. Though
most of its workers came from north of Spring Garden
Street, its prominent location at the approach to
the Spring Garden Street Bridge and the importance
of Justi as an early developer of the region links
it to the Powelton community. The 1876 Atlas shows
his home as one of the largest of the community
and numerous other plots of land in his possession.
His manufactory process for porcelain teeth was
successful enough to warrant a Chicago outlet. Finally,
though Powelton is primarily residential with a
sprinkling of institutions, it was made to be self-contained
by its own neighborhood commercial strip along Lancaster
Avenue. These are already in evidence in the 1875
Atlas of West Philadelphia, which showed most of
the avenue devoted to commercial use, presumably
because of the proximity to the streetcar lines.
The first businesses provided the necessities of
suburban life. Ebersole's Grocery provided food,
while the nearby Union Transfer Company delivered
groceries to the individual houses. Initially, Lancaster
Avenue was also the site of two important lumberyards,
owned by the McIlvain family who were involved in
the construction of many of the houses of the community,
and resided in the neighborhood as well, at 315
North 33rd Street and at 3505 Baring Street. Their
location, at 32nd Street, and at 39th Street placed
them at strategic points for delivery of materials
to the building sites of the growing community;
when the region was essentially developed, they
were replaced by housing on the east end of the
avenue, and by the splendid "Hamilton Hall" commercial
row at 39th Street. With its curving facade, its
elaborate terra cotta ornament, and medievalizing
gables, it formed a fitting conclusion to the development
of the commercial zone, though as late as 1910,
a reduced lumberyard remained in the back yard.
In the intervening third of
a century between 1875 and 1910, Lancaster Avenue's
development paralleled the growth of the community.
Laundries, storage buildings and additional shops
were erected, primarily between 36th and 38th Streets.
Among the most noteworthy of these is the handsome
Pompeiian brick apothecary at 36th and Race, with
its art nouveau terra cotta ornamental cornices
and leaded glass windows. Across the street, a handsome
row of storefronts on the south side of Lancaster
continues the theme of commerce at the turn of the
century. With these commercial buildings, the district
was more or less self-contained, providing all of
the retail essentials for the residents -- but unlike
a true village, without work to provide a complete
closed-living system. Work, of course, was provided
via the trolleys and trains that gave the neighborhood
its connections to the industry and commerce of
the city, continuing Powelton's nature as a true
suburb. Fortunately, that complex suburban form
of housing, shopping street and institutional buildings
remains largely intact, describing the origins and
the first fruition of the suburban movement which
has so changed the nature of urbanism in the United
States in the past century.
As a memorial to individuals
who shaped the city economy, as a concentration
of architectural landmarks by the taste makers of
the city, as the residential campus of Drexel University,
that still preserves the scale and form of the community,
the Powelton Historic District warrants being placed
on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Powelton Historic District
nomination was researched and written by George
E. Thomas and Carol Benenson.
