2 Nov 2006 The Rest is History
Recently I was down at Liberty Lands Park, the small park that sits on the site of the old Burk Bros. Leather Works, between 3rd and Bodine Streets, just north of Poplar Street. On the south side of the park is a really nice mural by a fellow named Dennis Haugh, which prominently features the old Cohocksink Creek. The mural, a project in the works for quite awhile, was finally finished and dedicated recently.
It makes sense that the Cohocksink Creek is featured in the mural, as Liberty Lands Park sits on the southern bank of the old creek. The creek actually still runs right there, underneath Bodine Street, but was long ago made into a canal, then a culvert, then paved over and made into a sewer that runs beneath the street.
Historically, the creek served as the southern border for Kensington. There was a pond that fed the creek at about where the playground is today up above 5th & Thompson Streets. The creek flowed down Orkney Street to Cambridge Street, then down Cambridge Street to Bodine Street, down Bodine Street to Laurel Street, across Laurel Street at 2nd Street, then wound its way up Hancock Street to Allen Street, then down Allen Street to Canal Street, with Canal Street winding its way to the Delaware River, emptying into the river just below Poplar Street.
Today many of the new folks in the area would call the neighborhood along the “northern” banks of the old creek, the Northern Liberties, but actually it is Kensington. You won’t find any old map stating different. You can’t fault the new folks, they don’t know any better, they were probably told the area was the Northern Liberties by some real estate guy, but there are folks still living that call it Kensington, yours truly being one of them.
I tend not to listen to the real estate guys when they start changing the name of a neighborhood. Just look at what is happening right now in Fishtown. Fishtown is a hot neighborhood for real estate. Houses are bringing high values like they never have done before. In order to cash in on these high prices, realtors and speculators are starting to expand the traditional boundaries of Fishtown in the hopes of being able to sell homes to folks who are looking to buy in a booming real estate neighborhood and those new folks will proudly go along and call the area they moved into by the name that the realtor told them.
Check out any of the advertisements for real estate. You’ll see houses on Cumberland Street, Huntingdon Street, even Lehigh Avenue, are now all being called Fishtown, when they were never called nothing but Kensington, or perhaps Port Richmond, depending what hundred block they were. I even saw some advertisements by realtors that were calling the factory district around Front & York by the name of Fishtown. How blasphemous is that!
The same thing that is happening now to Fishtown, happened to Northern Liberties just a short time ago. When I was a kid, my family lived at 1149 Germantown Avenue (now the loading dock for the paint store) and Schmidt’s was just out our backdoor. We always called the area Kensington. I asked my mother what was it called when she was a kid and she also said it was Kensington, but along comes someone like Bart Blatstein with his various development projects, and he calls the area the Northern Liberties. Of course, to be fair to Bart, the artists and realtors were already calling the area the Northern Liberties before he got there, so perhaps he didn’t know either.
The old Schmidt’s Brewery, which Blatstein is developing, is clearly in Kensington, as old records show it was called the Kensington Brewery, plus the fact that is way north of the Cohocksink Creek. His project called “Artists Walk” is also clearly located in Kensington, as it sits next to Schmidt’s, above Wildey between 2nd & Bodine Streets.
Other developers have done the same thing. The Cigar Factory Condominiums over at 4th & Cambridge is in Kensington, as is Waterfront Square, those two new towers that are being built on the 900 block of Penn Street, on the Delaware River, just north of Poplar. However, both of these projects are advertised as the Northern Liberties.
I suppose we can consider ourselves lucky, lucky in the sense that since Fishtown is now a hot market, the Northern Liberties neighborhood won’t be expanding anymore. However, now large chunks of Port Richmond are quickly becoming Fishtown and Kensington keeps being decimated.
9 Nov 2006 The Rest is History
It would be great to own land in Florida, a house with a quarter of an acre. How about owning 5.5 million acres in Florida? Sounds crazy right? But this was true for a fellow who spent a good part of his life growing up in Kensington. The fellow’s name was Hamilton Disston, the son of famed saw manufacturer Henry Disston.
Henry Disston immigrated to Philadelphia when he was 14 years old. His father died after only 3 days in America. Henry stayed in Philadelphia and took a job for a local saw manufacturer. In 1840, after about six years of working, he had acquired enough skills and money, to start out on his own.
After initial setbacks, he became successful. In the mid 1840’s, he purchased a lot at Front & Laurel Streets, in Kensington. It was here that he built his saw works. It was at about this time that Hamilton Disston was born.
By 1850, Disston's saws began to be considered superior to his competitors. The Civil War brought a boost to his business. His Laurel Street plant eventually covered eight acres.
By 1871 Henry decided that the area around Front & Laurel Streets was becoming congested, making it difficult to expand, so he purchased land in the Tacony section of Philadelphia, on the Delaware River. He eventually purchased close to 400 acres, leaving 40 acres for his business and the rest for development of a town for his workers, hence the history of how Tacony developed.
Disston's saw works became famous the world over.
Henry died in 1978 and the business was taken over by his Hamilton. Hamilton started as an apprentice at the saw works in 1859. The business began to be relocated to Tacony in the 1870's, but the Front & Laurel Street plant did not close down until 1899.
During those early years, from the mid 1840’s through the 1860’s, Hamilton and his parents lived in Kensington, near to the saw works, but by 1870 Hamilton, like his father, moved to the "new money" neighborhood of North Broad Street, where many Kensington manufacturers moved to after acquiring wealth.
Besides being a mover and shaker in Republican politics during the 1870’s & 1880’s, Hamilton also served for a time as Philadelphia Fire Commissioner, as well as the first Fairmount Park Commissioner. His interest in real estate led him to go into business in Florida. He had a contract with the state of Florida to drain land and reclaim it. The land reclaimed would be split between Hamilton’s company and the state.
With Florida in debt due to the Civil War, in 1881 Hamilton purchased an additional 4 million acres of Florida, which helped to bail out the state from its debt. He later added over 1.5 million acres of land, giving him over 5.5 million acres, or over 15% ownership of the state of Florida. He was the largest landowner in America in his day and the main motivator for the development of Florida. Not bad for a kid who spent his formative years at Front & Laurel.
Besides his land company, Hamilton also developed railroads, bought a half interest in a large sugar plantation and ran a steamboat company.
The early 1890's began a financial ending for Hamilton. Besides the economy tanking in 1893, a bounty on sugar production was taken away by President Cleveland the next year, and on top of that, freezes in the winters of 1893 and 1894 wiped out much of the income from some of his projects. Land prices also started to drop. Expansion of the railroad into Florida made his steamboat company useless and drew people away from the areas he was developing.
The banks were about to foreclose on Hamilton for a $1,000,000 loan, however he beat them to the punch and dropped dead at the age of 48. Mystery surrounds his death. One paper reported that he committed suicide, with a bullet to his head while sitting in his bathtub on North Broad Street, confirmed by a cousin. However, many papers across the country reported that he died from a heart attack; the coroner's report stated the death was from natural causes. Could it be a cover-up?
Some thought Hamilton was distraught over economic ruin, and the thoughts that his personal ruin might affect the family business, as the business was used to get the loan. After Hamilton's death, the family was able to get together the money to pay off the debt, so that the old saw works was not affected.
So ends a great and sad story of a kid who grew up in Kensington.
16 Nov 2006 The Rest is History
The cemetery sat four feet above grade and “foul oozings from the ground poured out upon the pavement” creating “an intolerable stench,” which was “compelling the people to abandon their properties.” Those that still resided across from the cemetery “resided there with their windows closed.”
A newspaper reporter described the above scene of a Fishtown cemetery in 1885. The cemetery the reporter came to write about was the old West Street Burial Ground, a.k.a. Union Burial Ground, a.k.a. Malt House Ground, a.k.a. Thumlert’s.
The cemetery was located on the south side of Vienna between West and Gaul Streets. In today’s parlance, the it would have been the lot of ground that is taken up by the top halves of the two blocks between Montgomery and Berks and Gaul and Belgrade Streets, which has Miller Street running between them.
The cemetery dates to 1831, when a group of men from the Northern Liberties founded it. The trustees all had been previously involved with a group called the Union Burial Ground Association.
The Union Burial Ground Association ran the cemetery from its inception in 1831 to 1851, when it conveyed the unoccupied ground to Joseph R. Dickson with the stipulation the land would be used for burial purposes. Dickson died off by the late 1860’s when a fellow named Magargee was found to be handling his estate.
There were some veterans of the Civil War buried at the cemetery as there is mention in 1874 of the G.A.R.’s Walter S. Newhall Post, No. 7, coming to the cemetery during their annual parade marches to pay respect to fallen soldiers.
By the late 1870’s, the cemetery started to fall into decline and the actual ownership became in doubt. The city’s Board of Health declared the cemetery a nuisance in 1876. Besides the stench mentioned above, family and friends were removing bodies and not filling the graves back in.
At a meeting of lot holders in 1877, a committee was formed to try and deal with some of the complaints. Money was raised, a fence erected and flowers planted.
The cosmetic repairs had no effect, as the neighbors across from the Cemetery were back to complaining to the city the next year. The cemetery was finally declared a nuisance and by 1879 people were asked to remove the remains of their loved ones.
In 1885, when the newspaper reporter mentioned above showed up, the neighbor he talked to stated that the vandals in the neighborhood destroyed the place:
“…we have some powerful bad boys in this neighborhood. They got at the fence, and now, as you see, there’s nothing left but the posts, and they have dug up most of them…One lady had a brother lying there. She went to his grave to have him taken up. They opened it and found not one coffin, but six. The lady said to put ‘em all back again; she didn’t know which coffin was her brother’s, or whether he was there at all…The people about here used to be afraid to pass it at night for fear of ghosts.”
The reporter finished his story on the cemetery with the following comments:
“Thus spoke the resident, and in view of the neglect into which their long home had been suffered to fall, it did not seem wholly unreasonable to imagine it haunted, not by one ghost only, but by an entire indignation meeting of specters.”
In 1892, the cemetery was sold and the remains left were removed to Northwood Cemetery. A fellow named J.E. Sturgis Nagle stated in 1936 that, "…when they removed the dead …they dug up the bodies of soldiers, and the diggers gave the buttons from the uniforms to children."
The history of this cemetery is a classic example of the affects of outside ownership of property. Palmer Cemetery was founded nearly a hundred years previous to West Street and is still burying people today, whereas West Street lasted not fifty years. The fact that the founders and trustees of West Street were from the Northern Liberties and not Kensington, played a key part in the cemetery’s decline as there was not the same connection to the West Street Ground by its neighbors as there was/is to Palmer Cemetery, which was always controlled by residents of Kensington.
Eventually Miller Street was cut through the cemetery, with two blocks of homes built on top of the old cemetery and Gaul’s Malt House lot to the south. So today, if you happen to live in these homes and you smell a foul odor coming from your basement, it just might not be your sewer backing up.
23 Nov 2006 The Rest is History
Rich Remer, one of the founders of the Kensington History Project, was once described as being keen to introduce folks to the never-ending local parlor game called “What are the Boundaries of Kensington?” This Kensington parlor game, usually played at the corner tappy, has only one rule, to incessantly argue with the other person over the boundaries of the neighborhood.
Recently, my column on the 2nd of November drew in several more players to a new round of Kensington’s parlor game. Some folks agreed with me, some didn’t, but one reader (Mary Dankanis- letter to the editor, 9 Nov. 2006) thought that I was somehow distorting the boundaries of Kensington.
The District of the Northern Liberties (not to be confused with the township of the same name) was incorporated in 1803, seventeen years before Kensington incorporated, and it was the Northern Liberties who drew their northern border at the old Cohocksink Creek, so they, not the Kensingtonians, drew this borderline. My research on Kensington’s history is based on facts and thus historical Kensington does include that northeast corner of what some folks have started to call the Northern Liberties.
Bart Blatstein’s development projects at the old Schmidt’s Brewery, his Liberty Walks project, the Cigar Factory Condo’s at 4th & Cambridge, and the Waterfront Square project on Penn Street above Poplar, are all within the boundaries of “historic” Kensington.
I wouldn’t expect Ms. Dankanis to agree with me, that a slice of the northeast corner of her neighborhood is Kensington, particularly since she was one of the founders back in the mid 1970’s of the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association, a group active during the gentrification of that community.
Dankanis states her group argued in Harrisburg to prevent a South Kensington civic group from encroaching on her group’s brand new borders. Presumably, the South Kensington folks were not in agreement with the upstart group, since they probably considered the area in question as part of their community, much in the same way that some New Kensington residents are still scratching their heads when another upstart group, the Fishtown Neighbors Association, drew their new borders clear up to Lehigh Avenue, overlapping tremendously on another group’s turf (New Kensington CDC), and thus adding a new twist, along with the realtors, to the confusion as to just what is Fishtown’s northern border?
I would assume when the Bureaucrats in Harrisburg are looking to fund programming in city neighborhoods, an area that has nice square borders is more comprehensible, thus Front to 6th, and Spring Garden to Girard was a nice fit for the Northern Liberties. It was probably too much for the politicians to figure out the neighborhoods old border of the Cohocksink Creek, which ran in a serpentine fashion more crooked then their colleagues.
However, I owe some thanks to Mary’s letter to the editor; it did bring to light the exact points that I was trying to make in my column, that Kensington’s southern border only recently was changed by the folks in the Northern Liberties to suit their purposes, and that the border change was in the 1970’s, which is when I first remember the new folks starting to move in, and thus the early stages for gentrification beginning. My recollections of growing up on the 1100 block of Germantown Avenue in Kensington was from the 1960’s, so the timeline fits (as a side note, one of my readers, my mother Marie, stated that we lived at 1141 Germantown Avenue, not 1149, I stand corrected).
To prove that this Kensington parlor game has been going on for awhile, I’ll end with a quote from an article that I found in the Philadelphia Inquirer, dated August 26th, 1909, almost one hundred years ago:
“ Dear Sir: Noticing in today’s issue of a morning newspaper that Mr. Rowen, in his speech against the location of the immigrant station, refers to that part of Kensington as “Fishtown.” I will take the liberty of correcting him and protesting against his so calling it. That part of Kensington was not “Fishtown,” and not known as such. “Fishtown was a fishing village, mostly inhabited by fishermen, away above the Penn Treaty ground and up near to Gunner’s Run…Kensington was often referred to by outsiders, who knew nothing about it, as “Fishtown,” and often spoken of contemporaneously, but undeservedly, as good, industrious people lived there in Fishtown and many of our best citizens came from there…. I protest against that part of Kensington being called “Fishtown.”
To view historical boundary maps visit www.kennethwmilano.com.
30 Nov 2006 The Rest is History
It’s hard to imagine today, but that small cement island at what would be the northwest corner of Frankford and Delaware Avenues, was once part of a larger park called Shackamaxon Square.
According to Scharf & Westcott’s History of Philadelphia, the history of this park has a curious beginning:
“When the Point Pleasant Market, at the intersection of Frankford road and Maiden Street, was built, in 1819, …[by the]… commissioners of the district of Northern Liberties, there was left on its western side an open space, which it was proposed to convert into a public square. Upon the incorporation of the district of Kensington in 1820, authority over the market was vested in the Kensington commissioners, and … over the square. As the market was deserted by dealers, it was torn down, and the grounds were neglected until, in 1845, the commissioners resolved that two dozen seats should be placed in the square, and that it should be kept open, under the supervision of the police, from six o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock in the evening, daily, from the 1st of May to the 31st of August. At a later period in the same year an ordinance was passed for the regulation of the public square, prohibiting injury to the trees or benches, making it an offense for any one to lie down in the square, or to use insulting language to any person passing through the grounds. The commissioners gave no name to the place.”
By looking at the various “Digest of Acts of Assembly” for the District of Kensington when it was a self-governing (1820-1854) and by looking at old maps, you can piece together the history and size of this park.
In 1851, Kensington’s commissioners passed a law stating that the public square “bounded on the northwest by the Frankford road, on the southeast by Beach Street, on the southwest by Maiden Street, and on the northeast by Manderson Street, should be thereafter called Shackamaxon Square.” Today we know Maiden Street by the name of Laurel Street, and Manderson Street is now that little right turn lane when you turn onto Frankford Avenue if you’re traveling south on Delaware Avenue. Beach Street of course still exists, but it is now way across Delaware Avenue, a reminder that the park was obliterated when this road came through.
In 1850, Kensington’s commissioners ordered that the “clerk of the Beach street Market be directed to take the public square at Maiden and Beach streets under his charge.” The Beach Street Market (a.k.a. Point Pleasant Market) was located on the west side of Beach, from Shackamaxon Street to the “Bridge or Brown Street,” and the “south side of Manderson Street from Frankford Road to Beach Street.” The “Bridge” would have been the bridge that one took to cross Kensington’s southern border, the old Cohocksink Creek.
When the Market declined in the 1840’s (perhaps because of the industrial buildup of the area and the emergence of other markets, most notably the nearby markets along Girard Avenue, east and west of Front Street) an emphasis was placed on refurbishing the adjacent public square area. According to Scharf & Westcott:
“The commissioners were authorized to keep the inclosure in good order, for the purposes intended, and to tear down and remove the market-house fronting on Beach Street whenever they should deem it expedient to do so. This privilege was soon exercised, as the market-house had become useless, except as a resort for the disreputable classes of the vicinity.”
In 1851, Kensington’s commissioners stated that the square would be properly enclosed and planted with trees and no buildings would be erected. With later maps showing a bathhouse located at the square (circa 1876), it appears that once Kensington became part of the city all bets were off.
It’s hard to imagine Shackamaxon Square today, with only a tiny triangular piece of cement, barren of trees or benches, to go by, but according to Hopkins’ Atlas (ca. 1875) the square measured 120’ by 150’ with a center circular area and two wide paths criss-crossing at angles through the park.
Bromley’s Atlas of 1922, shows only two small green triangles left of the park, the one that is cement today, and another, which would have been somewhat catty-corner to today’s cement island. The park had been obliterated with Frankford Avenue cutting directly through the center and Delaware Avenue previously running through its eastern edges.
It would be good to plant a tree and place a bench on that cement island, as a way of salvaging Shackamaxon Square’s history.
7 Dec 2006 The Rest is History
The real estate craze that is currently going on in the neighborhood is apparently claiming another historic site of Fishtown. Tulip & Palmer Streets, the spot where A. J. Reach built his sporting goods empire, and helped to put Fishtown and Kensington’s stamp on Major League Baseball history is currently being considered for development.
Over the last century, or so, our neighborhood’s connection to America’s pastime, has been through her native son, Benjamin F. Shibe (1838-1922). Shibe was an early office man in Major League Baseball, a half-owner and president of the famous Philadelphia Athletics club, from 1901 until his death in 1922. It was the most successful sports franchise the city every produced (9 pennants, 5 World Series).
Shibe was also partners with A. J. Reach in his sporting goods business, which among other things, supplied baseballs to the major leagues. History has credited Ben Shibe with inventing cork-centered baseballs (patented in 1909) and the machinery used to make standard baseballs. The baseball today, the two-piece stitched leather design, is also credited to Shibe.
Ben Shibe was from that old part of Kensington known as Fishtown. He became an expert at leather working and carried on the business of making whips. His family lived in Fishtown for some time and were said to be fishermen. When Shibe was starting out in the baseball business, he lived at 1053 E. Norris Street.
With Shibe’s knowledge of leatherworking, Reach thought Shibe would be a good fit for the ideas that Reach had about the emergence of the demand for sporting goods and in about the year 1880 he approached him about becoming a partner.
Reach had been a well-known baseball player in the early years of baseball (1860’s-1870’s) and is credited by most as being the first “openly” paid professional baseball player. Baseball people recruited him in 1883 to become the owner and president of the Philadelphia Phillies, a new franchise in the newly formed National League.
Shibe was said to have been a bit of a sporting man himself. There was a local Kensington baseball club called Shibe founded sometime before the 1880’s, but as yet, I can not be sure if it was Ben’s club, or not, but it was managed by Billy Sharsig, another Kensington fellow who appears to have played baseball, managed local clubs, and was involved with the founding of the American League. Sharsig eventually was picked by Shibe and Connie Mack to handle the financial affairs of the Philadelphia Athletics.
Soon after creating the partnership, Reach’s new company opened up a plant at the northeast corner of Tulip & Palmer Streets where they manufactured baseballs, baseball gloves, footballs, boxing gloves, as well as other sporting goods.
The original buildings of the company were erected about 1883 and at the time a Hexamer Survey was done in 1893, the company employed about 200 to 250 workers, with about 80 of them being females. Today, much, if not all, of the original buildings from the 1893 survey would appear to be gone, however you can still find some old-timers who can tell stories of sitting on the stoop stitching baseballs for the company.
Baseball legend Connie Mack approached Ben Shibe to become half owner in Mack’s team in the newly formed American League, called the Philadelphia Athletics. It’s stated that Reach encouraged Shibe as a way of making sure their business interests would be secured in both leagues.
Ben Shibe, as the largest shareholder of the Athletics, became president of the club, with his son’s Tom the vice-president and John the secretary and business manager. Connie Mack was the treasurer and also controlled all the on field aspects of the team.
In 1909, the Athletics played their first season in their new baseball stadium, Shibe Park, built at 21st Street & Lehigh Avenue.
Shibe died in 1922, his son Tom took over the presidency of the club and after his death in 1936, was succeed by his brother John, who did not last long, resigning for health reasons by the end of the year. At this point Connie Mack and his sons took full control of the ball club, both in the office and on the field.
In 1953, Shibe Park would be renamed Connie Mack Stadium to honor the longtime owner/manager of the Athletics and Mack’s family would take over the ball team, buying out the remaining Shibe family members. In 1954, the Athletics left town for Kansas City, and later Oakland, and thus ended Fishtown’s chapter in baseball history.
14 Dec 2006 The Rest is History
Last week I talked about the baseball man Ben Shibe and in previous weeks about Kensingtonians who made their marks as giants in industry. But this week we have a little bit of a twist. To show that Fishtown and Kensington was not all about hard work, I’m turning my eyes to two fellows, both with connections to the area, and who happened to have been two of the funniest comedians known to America.
Claude William Dukenfield, a.k.a. W.C. Fields, was born on 29 Jan 1880. One story states he was born around 9th & Cambria, but the 1880 Census shows his family living at 64th & Woodland, when Fields was only 4 months old.
W.C. Fields was the oldest son of James Dukenfield and Katie Felton. His father made a living as a huckster, peddling produce.
His father was an English immigrant, whose parents first settled in Kensington, on Norris Street just west of Front, in the late 1850’s. W. C. Fields grandfather, John Dukenfield, was a combmaker and had a very large family. Field’s father had at least 7 brothers and two sisters.
James Dukenfield, Fields’ father, served in the Pennsylvania Infantry during the American Civil War. On the 1890 Veterans Schedule Census Fields’ parents were living at 2803 Germantown, another stop before moving to Marshall Street, above Erie Avenue, where the family continued to live for awhile.
It is stated that Fields’ formal education stopped at the 4th grade. He early on became interested in vaudeville and the stage. H. M. Lorette, billed as the “Original Dancing Juggler,” lived as a youth at 15th & Cumberland Streets and is said to have practiced with Fields when he was learning how to juggle.
Fields started at an amusement park on the Delaware River, and then worked a gig for a week at Plymouth Park, near Norristown. Lorette states that he helped Fields get a spot at the Fortesque Pavilion in Atlantic City, after which Fields met up with the Spencer Brothers, an Irish comedy group. He went with this group on a tour with a “Turkey Burlesque” show called “The Monte Carlo Girls,” where he met his wife Harriet Hughes, of New York, who was one of the chorus girls in the show.
Fields married “Hattie” in 1900 and together they had a son, W. C. Fields, Jr. However, Harriet refused to travel on the road with the boy, and it appears that may have been the end of the marriage. While the marriage soured, they never divorced and were still married when he died.
By the time he was a teenager, Fields began performing on stage and at about the turn of the century (1900), the Keith Orpheum Circuit, a well-known vaudeville group, signed Fields. His pantomime and juggling acts took him all over the world, even playing before King Edward VII, at Buckingham Palace.
W. C. Fields starred in the famous Ziegfield Follies for the1915 edition, and oddly enough that year he was teamed with another Kensington fellow named Isaiah Edwin Leopold, a.k.a Ed Wynn.
Ed Wynn was born in 1888, of Jewish immigrant parents. The family lived at their millinery business at 2518 Kensington Avenue, not too far north of where W.C. Fields’ father first lived when he came to America. Ed Wynn worked for his father selling hats, before eventually running away to seek his fame and fortune on the stage.
Ed Wynn became one of America’s best known funnymen, having not only starred in the Ziegfield Follies, but also with a successful vaudeville & Broadway career, and radio, television, and film career as well. He starred in a number of big screen movies including The Diary of Ann Frank, which won him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in 1959. Wynn died at Beverly Hills, CA, in 1966.
W.C. Fields was considered by many to be a comic genius, with even some going so far as to say that he was “quite probably the funniest single individual America has ever produced.” Besides his vaudeville and Broadway shows, Fields also made a number of films, both in the silent era, as well as when the talkies emerged. Some of his most memorable films were done later in his career, including My Little Chickadee and The Bank Dick, both in 1940. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, in 1941, was his last feature length film.
W. C. Fields died in 1946 in Los Angeles, from Internal Hemorrage, complicated by Dropsey. He was 66 years old.
21 Dec 2006 The Rest is History
Often when I run into people on the street, or talk history with folks, if they are readers of Star, they invariably ask, “Isn’t it hard to come up with ideas to write about? Or, “How do you find all this material?”
My typical response is…well, no, it’s not hard at all and there is plenty of material out there if you know where to look. Of course I say that with the background of having studied the history of Fishtown, Kensington, and Shackamaxon for about twenty years now, which certainly helps.
Once you acquire just a little knowledge of the history of the area, you realize quickly that it dates back to before the city of Philadelphia itself and with a history that stretches over three centuries, there are literally thousands of stories to tell.
Almost every week I find new information on the history of Kensington and every week I could easily write a new column based on what I learnt that week, instead of putting together columns from research that I have done over the last twenty years, but never got around to writing it up.
For example, just this week I learnt of a fellow named Johann Gottlob Klemm (1690-1762). I had known that Klemm was an early purchaser in Kensington, as he showed up on Anthony Palmer’s estate map, that was compiled by Lewis Evans circa 1750 (Palmer died in 1749, he was the founder of Kensington.). As well, I knew that Klemm was an organ builder, which at the time I researched those early deeds, I thought it was rather interesting that a German organ builder was living at the southwest corner of Frankford Avenue and Norris Street in the middle of the 18th Century.
However, what I did not know until recently was that Klemm is considered by many as the father of Pennsylvania Dutch organ building. This piece of news came to light to me via correspondence with a fellow who writes on just this topic, organ building and music. It turns out that Klemm is held in high esteem as one of the granddaddies in American organ building history.
Connected with this newfound knowledge of Klemm came another story, that of Michael Hillegas. I knew about his father, also named Michael, who was another early purchaser in Kensington, having bought directly from Anthony Palmer several lots, in particular the lot that over time became Palmer Park, at Palmer Street and Frankford Avenue.
I remembered reading about a Michael Hillegas that became the first treasurer of the United States and figured he was probably related to this early Kensington landowner, and as it turns out, he was, it was the son, who I also found out, happened to have owned the first music store in America, and if it was not the first, certainly one of the earliest.
Kensington has such a very long history that I rather doubt I will ever run out of stories to tell. I remember when the Kensington History Project (a group I am involved with) use to give history talks at the Fishtown Library; I would sometimes meet folks who were descendants of those first families that purchased land directly from Anthony Palmer. These folks were still living in Kensington, over 275 years later!
If someone were to ask me what do I find most unique about Kensington, it would be this very thing, that the Fishtown area of Kensington still has families living here that arrived over 275 years ago. Yes, you read about it in Chestnut Hill, or Rittenhouse Square, or the Main Line, the old money families of early Philadelphia still live here, one only has to read the board of directors, or the contributors list of any downtown cultural institution, but those families moved around a bit. However, it is quite rare that you find in a big city in America, where there is an inner city, working class European ethnic neighborhood, that has been stable and intact for such a long period as Fishtown, as to allow families to remain for such a long period. I think it goes to show the character of the people of Fishtown, and the attachment to their community.
Unfortunately, this very thing that makes Fishtown unique, just very well might be at its end. The value of real estate has risen so dramatically that working class people will find it more and more difficult to purchase a home here. Soon, like Boston, New York, and San Francisco, Philadelphia’s Fishtown will have priced the working class out.
28 Dec 2006 The Rest is History
Casino licenses were awarded last week. While most folks were preoccupied preparing for their Christmas holiday, the folks at Harrisburg were busy treating themselves to some early political cheer.
It’s hard to believe it, but some folks I talked with actually seemed surprised that Sugarhouse Casino won a license to put a casino at the old Jack Frost refinery site in Fishtown. By many accounts their proposal was not one of the best. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board however thought different and gave a license to an out of town guy from Chicago who never was able to secure a casino license in his own state. However things work differently in Philadelphia, particularly when you partner with a former Pennsylvania State Supreme Court Justice, a high power politically connected Philadelphia lawyer, and a highly connected builder.
Last week in my column I talked about the fate of Fishtown, how gentrification may very well end the working class history of this 275 year-old working class neighborhood. What now will a casino do to the mix? Will Fishtowners and Kensingtonians really get a crack at the better jobs? And will the jobs be able to afford them to continue to live in Fishtown?
A slot parlor never existed in Fishtown before, but we did have a sugarhouse. The origins of our local sugarhouse, the one called by the name of Jack Frost by many, and the one that use to sit at the foot of Shackamaxon Street, actually had its roots in a small sugar company founded by John Hilgert in 1868 called the Girard Sugar Company. About 1868, Hilgert started his sugarhouse near 5th Street and Girard Avenue. His sons Charles and John joined the company and the firm became John Hilgert’s Sons, until 1881 when the death of the elder Hilgert put the company in the control of his son Charles. Charles built a new refinery at today’s pier 46 on the east side of North Delaware Avenue.
Over time the refinery would expand to include not only pier 46, but also piers 47 and 48, which brought it up to the foot of Shackamaxon Street. The Hilgerts appeared to have built their refinery from buildings that were left over from a soap and oil works, partially run and owned by the famous Kensington Landell family, who also ran the Kensington National Bank.
Hilgert’s refinery failed and was sold to the Pennsylvania Sugar Refining Company, one of the last of the independent sugar companies, which held out for quite awhile from being taken over by Sugar Trust. Eventually Pennsylvania Sugar was taken over by the National Sugar Refining Company and over time sugar refining halted in the early 1980’s when National Sugar closed the plant and sold the property.
At its height the sugarhouse complex consisted of 18 massive brick and stone buildings, a far cry from the small renovated 5 brick and frame structures that it started out as. The buildings ranged from the 1 story shipping and receiving building that sat across Shackamaxon Street and several 5 and 6 story structures, to a 7 story pan house, the 9 story refinery, and the 12 story char house.
Back in 1982 when AMSTAR closed their sugarhouse in South Philadelphia, just a year after National closed the sugarhouse in Fishtown, it was written that the city officials were caught off guard and were a bit surprised. The company apparently did not approach the city, nor did the city approach them, about their closing. A rumor had circulated several months earlier in Pennsport, the neighborhood adjacent to Amstar. City officials were related the rumor and called the company to set up a meeting with high level officials of the company, but got no response, and the city then preceded to drop the issue as they stated the “rumors” stopped. This was the effort at that time that our elected officials made to prevent a major industry from leaving Philadelphia.
One could say that just like in 1982, our local elected officials dropped the ball on preventing casinos from invading our neighborhoods. It seems that the first I saw where any local politician became concerned about casinos coming to the riverwards, was when the campaign season began to hit for the 2006 November elections, then all of a sudden there was a push for the founding of riverward groups, a design group was brought in, there was an outrage over Harrisburg potentially taking over the policing of local zoning laws, etc., and then in the end, the most politically juiced proposals win the licenses.
Our politicians work hard, let’s remember them on Election Day and give them a deserved early retirement!