Nuggets of History

Society Hill is a beautiful, wealthy, elegant and yet disjointed neighborhood. My wife and I biked there multiple times enjoying the rows of townhouses under the shade of trees and the little cafes. The problem arises with the high-rise buildings of the Society Hill Towers, which interrupt the sky, and Interstate 95 that severs the neighborhood from the Delaware river.

Anyone that would like a walk in the past — and there are many who go to Society Hill for that — would need a great imagination to see how different the neighborhood was not only in colonial time, but even just sixty years ago. This area is like a cake: layer after layer different flavors offer the visitor a various taste of the past, but the saccharine icing of the urbanistic renewal of the 1960s kills in part its character; yet, it is part of the cake.

The area destroyed in the renewal of 1956 (from the documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPuqgOyu8iU)

Workshop of the World: Philadelphia has a strong heritage as a blue-collar city, and Society Hill, under the new elegant coat hides a past of workshops, immigration, and warehouses. I decided to include six stops, arranged in a circuit:

1: Powell House - Description of the house as a warehouse after 1904.

2: 3^rd Street - The neighborhood between 1880 and 1950: immigration and population; the industrial use of the area.

3: Dock Street - A fast jump back to the 18^th century; reasons behind the odd shape of the street (the street once was a creek, then a sewer, then a street).

4: Korean War Memorial Park/Urban Renewal: How was the neighborhood before the renewal? Brief history of the urbanistic planning of the area; the Korean War Memorial.

5: The Docks on the Delaware- The evolution of the docks and of the area from the foundation to the building of interstate 95, and finally today.

6: Bayuk's first factory - Showing the exact site of the factory, the industrial heritage of the area; the working conditions; the Phillies cigars in American art and Music.

Creating a guide from scratch requires a certain dosage of imagination, but what really steered my thoughts were class readings. Public history is like a walk on ice: between you and an effective exhibit there is a slippery surface layered with cliche' and often problematic interests of the public on which it is difficult to maintain a good balance. Clearly to read the practices and analysis of experienced public historians is more than helpful. Probably the most influential for my mindset were Andrew Hurley's Beyond Preservation (1), Tammy Gordon's Private History in Public (2) and Dolores Hayden's The Power of Place (3): the first offers interesting perspectives and problems in public history dealing with cities and neighborhoods; the second illustrates some well done projects on urban communities; the third is a window through which to peek at the public's taste for the past.

These books, but not only them, helped me in shaping my guided tour, the purpose of which is to cut the cake for the visitors, provide them with spoons and hope for an “Oh, that’s interesting!”. With this objective in mind, I tried to diversify the arguments behind every stop, keeping in mind the fil rouge of the Workshop of the World.

The Eureka moment is precisely what makes the study of the past interesting. I fortunately had a couple of them during my research for the material, such as when, searching between the tons of photos of the waterworks archives, I found the picture of old 3^rd Street: Shops on the sides, men busy in their day's work and a couple of kids interested in the photographer and his camera, the image shows a lost neighborhood where immigrants set down roots for their life and families.

Another golden egg was on the atlas of Philadelphia of 1910: I was searching for some interesting workshops, perhaps a factory or warehouse, something that could be illuminating and serve as a good example of the industrial history of the area, now buried under the new boxy shapes of the modern houses.

online map: http://www.philageohistory.org/tiles/viewer/

Nearby Powell house (on another map) there was a perfume factory, which would have been elegant  in the research for the interesting contrast between the pungent industrial area and the fragrance of the factory's product, but it did not offer any hook; the same was for a candy factory, just on the other side of the street of the house. Looking more at the map however, I saw that on the corner of Third and Spruce there was a cigar factory, perhaps not really politically correct today, but the strange name — Bayuk — was interesting enough. I did not know, obviously, that this building was the first factory of the brand which  later changed their name to Phillies, one of the most famous brand of the U.S., the same brand that appears on one of the most famous masterpieces of American art.

Edward Hopper: Nighthawks. 1942.

That is the kind of thrilling nuggets that you find sifting through the dust of the past; a job that is rarely easy and often (or at least for most of people, the normal one unlike me) boring. Patience and resilience are needed when you are trying to find the photo or the story that catches the attention of the guests, the ones that are not under the influence of history, or perhaps, just not yet.

1)Andrew Hurley, Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010).

2)Tammy S. Gordon, Private History in Public: Exhibition and the Settings of Everyday Life (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2010).

3)Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995).