Turning the Corner

I've become a phillyhistory.org junkie.

by Duane Swierczynski

Have you checked out the online treasure trove at phillyhistory.org yet? It's the closest thing we have to a time machine.

The site, run by the city's Department of Records, currently has more than 22,000 historic city images uploaded, and according to their newsletter, some 3,600 images were scanned in the last month alone. What's that — a thousand-plus images a day? This is the best use of taxpayer money I've heard of in a long time. I'd even be willing to pay more taxes, if it would speed up the image uploads.

I've become a phillyhistory.org junkie.

The first thing you'll want to do is search for your own neighborhood. I did. Currently, there's nothing on the street where I grew up — the 4700 block of Darrah — which is disappointing, because I'd heard that a tiny street used to bisect my block. In fact, my childhood home and the house next door, the story goes, were built after the street was erased, and they connected the rows of homes on the opposite sides. I would have loved to see it before.

But I did find a photo from a block away, at the corner of Frankford Avenue and Margaret Street. It's an intersection I know well, because it's where I stand and wait for the 59 bus most days.

The photo was taken June 6, 1917. And — surprise, surprise — the corner looks absolutely nothing like it does today.

Then, you had a restaurant on the corner — Starr's Light Lunch Café — which proudly advertised OYSTERS, STEAKS & CHOPS in the window. Next door, a candy, cigarette and stationery store. Next to that, the original headquarters of the News Gleaner. (A while back, current Gleaner owner Skip Henry told me that the presses are still down there, in the basement of that building.) The streets are immaculate.

Most striking, though, is the absence of the hulking Frankford El. Sunshine hits the buildings and sidewalks in this photograph.

Today, you've got none of that. The corner buildings are gone — taken out by the El station. The structures on the other side were also demolished, but just a few years ago. Local businesses try to thrive in the remaining buildings, but the ground is inhospitable. Most people move through here. They don't stay here. Unless they live here.

The corner looks ruined, draped in perpetual shadow.

I kept searching the database, moving down Frank-ford Avenue. I found another image, taken just three months later: Sept. 11, 1917. Here, at the intersection of Frankford and Church, things look more familiar to me. The skeletal structure of the El has already made its way down Frankford, curving to the right where it hits Unity.

This photo doesn't look all that different from what you'd see today. Especially if you squint a bit.

Look at enough photos, and after a while the images cease being static and two-dimensional. You've got dates, so you've got that extra dimension: time. You put the pieces together in your head. You can see the city change. You start to realize, this isn't the way it always was. And if you're lucky, you can pinpoint the moment it changed.

What changed for Frankford was the El.

Now I ride the El. I like the El. Lately, I get a lot of column ideas from the El.

But the Frankford El killed Frankford.

It's something I've always known. For the first time, though, I was able to watch it happen, and it was a surreal experience. Check out phillyhistory.org and tell me what you see in your neighborhood.

New on the Masthead

I've spent nearly five years trying to recruit Tom Namako , our newest staff writer. He didn't know it then. Neither did I. But Tom was a member of the first journalism class I taught at La Salle, back in the fall of 2002, and I remember thinking: You know, if I were ever able to hire somebody, it'd be someone like this guy. Since escaping my class, Tom served as the editor in chief of the La Salle Collegian, took a masters in journalism, and worked as a reporter for the Press of Atlantic City. Now that I'm in the position to hire somebody, I'm absolutely thrilled it's this guy. Tom's a fierce reporter who knows how to tell a story. Despite what I taught him.

(duane@citypaper.net)