Society Hill (and Pennsylvania Hospital of Washington Square West) Historic District Historical Significance
The Society Hill (and Pennsylvania Hospital of Washington Square West) Historic District occupies an extraordinary place in the history of urban planning, architecture, development, society, culture, commerce and religion. It not only contains the largest concentration of eighteenth and early-nineteenth century buildings in the country, but also illustrates the course of urban design well into the second half of the twentieth century. Within this context stands a broad spectrum of architectural styles ranging from modest Colonial dwellings through elegant Georgian, Federal and Greek Revival houses to modern high-rises. These buildings illustrate more than the evolution of architectural fashion.
Society Hill occupies a large portion in the southeastern quadrant of Penn's original city. The district derives its name from the Free Society of Traders in Pennsylvania, a joint-stock company chartered by Penn in 1682 to foster development in the colony. Penn granted to the Free Society one hundred acres of city land in a strip approximately from the Delaware River toward the Schuylkill between Pine Street and Spruce Street. This parcel contained a hill overlooking Dock Creek at Front Street known as the "Society's Hill." The name prevailed even after the demise of the Society itself and the sale of its remaining lands in 1723.
Society Hill maintained stability throughout most of the eighteenth century as a socially and economically mixed community. During this era of the "walking city," Society Hill was characterized by socioeconomic diversity, and size of housing rather than location denoted affluence and social status. Although the condition of the streets and the absence of affordable if any - public transportation in the walking city contributed significantly to the high degree of residential intermingling in Society Hill, some clusters did emerge by the end of the eighteenth century. The census of 1790 reveals a concentration of African Americans west of South Fourth Street and from Pine Street to below South Street.
Late 19th century improvements in transportation and the growth of large factories in other parts of the industrializing Philadelphia reshaped city space, creating segregated communities centered on job opportunity while spacious living arrangements were developed elsewhere for the elite. Many well-to-do residents moved west to new, more fashionable, and generally larger houses around Rittenhouse Square. Finding work in the needlecraft trades and tobacco business, Eastern European Jews started to settle in the port neighborhood of Society Hill. Although the new occupants altered many dwellings to provide ground-floor stores, the houses of Society Hill escaped the widespread demolition and replacement experienced in "Old City" Philadelphia. Additional surviving structures that illustrate the Jewish presence during this era include the Rebecca Gratz Club, a foundling hospital, and B'Nai Abraham, a synagogue. Often financially backed by Philadelphia's older German Jewish population, these Russian Jews constructed meeting halls, lodge headquarters, funeral parlors and organizations concerned with health, mutual aid, temporary shelter and social work. In the early twentieth-century, Philadelphia's expanded electric street-car system provided efficient and economical transportation that opened new residential areas for middle class development, and an exodus of the upwardly mobile Jewish population from Society Hill followed.
By the mid-twentieth century, Society Hill had become a deteriorated area that housed disadvantaged immigrants and minorities, and a variety of manufacturing and distributing facilities. Most of the housing stock had minimal amenities and some lacked even the most basic, such as hot water and central heating. After World War II, Philadelphia found itself with a shortage of housing adequate for the standards of the day; at the same time political and social reformers sought to establish that access to well-built housing was the right of all members of society. With this in mind, and in an attempt to revitalize and beautify Philadelphia, increase its declining tax base and provide an enhanced context for the development of Independence National Historic Park and Independence Mall, Philadelphia's leaders recognized the potential of the Society Hill area.
The City Planning Commission and Redevelopment Authority, with assistance from the newly created Philadelphia Historical Commission, instituted the Washington Square East Urban Renewal Plan in 1958, utilizing federal urban renewal monies. The redevelopment plan included two major goals: sympathetic infill of new structures around existing historic buildings and increased density of population. This plan gained national attention as one of the first attempts in the country to upgrade a deteriorated neighborhood through the restoration and revitalization of existing housing stock. The new residential scheme included not only housing, but of ¿greenways", parks and public art with an emphasis on outdoor sculpture, to create a neighborhood sympathetic to its historic structures.
Society Hill's many architecturally and historically significant churches reflect the fruition of Penn's Quaker belief, religious toleration. Among the district's five colonial churches is Old Pine Street Church at Fourth and Pine Streets, the last surviving colonial Presbyterian church in Philadelphia. Two Catholic churches, Old St. Joseph's and St. Mary's, tell the story of newfound religious freedom. Two Anglican churches built in 1761, St. Peter's Episcopal Church at Third and Pine Streets and Old St. Paul's Church, remain. Ironically, although the Pine Street Meeting House once stood on the Society's Hill, no Quaker meeting house survives in Society Hill. Post-revolutionary churches in Society Hill express Philadelphia's sustained tradition of ethnic and religious tolerance. At Sixth and Spruce Streets, Holy Trinity Church (c. 1789), served a German Catholic congregation and founded the first Catholic orphan asylum in America. The Romanesque Revival building of Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church, built in 1889-90, stands on the oldest parcel of real estate owned continuously by African-Americans in the United States. Founded in 1793 by Richard Allen, a former slave, this is the mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which became a national organization in 1816, with Allen as its first Bishop. At 521 Lombard Street, the Neo-Romanesque structure of B'Nai Abraham, was built in 1900 to serve the oldest Russian Jewish congregation in Philadelphia, founded in 1883. The history of Thomas U. Walter's Spruce Street Baptist Church, built in 1830 and remodeled in 1851, traces the ethnic patterns of Society Hill. First it changed to Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagodal Nusach Ashkenaz, next to the Rumanian-American Congregation and then simply Society Hill Synagogue, a title it bears today.
Since the Colonial era, Philadelphia has been the nation's center for medicine and medical research. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond founded Pennsylvania Hospital. Samuel Rhoads designed the first purposely-built hospital in British North America for the site at Eighth and Pine Streets, then on the outskirts of the city. David Evans, Jr., designed an extensive addition in 1794-1804. This new central pavilion, one of the finest examples of Federal architecture in the country, housed an oval operating theatre, located on the top floor beneath a skylight to provide adequate illumination.
Besides providing a backdrop for Publishers Row, Washington Square has played many roles throughout the history of Society Hill. In his grid plan for Philadelphia, Thomas Holme had created five squares of open space, one at each corner of the city and one in the center. Colonial residents used the southeast square as a potters field and pasture. Jacob Shoemaker paid rent for the privilege of pasturing his cows on the Square. During the Revolutionary War, it became the burial ground for many soldiers, which may earn the Square a place in Independence National Historic Park.
