Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Some Things I've Learned About Society Hill

Today I went down to see a movie at the Ritz, Once, which was a lot better than it had any right to be, like a bum who charms you into giving them a quarter you should have spent on the bus and you're sort of mad later but wasn't he a lovable bastard, really? But that's an issue for another post. This post has to do with Society Hill, which the Ritz borders, and which has been, for as long as I know it, an incredibly upscale section of the city. I mean, Jesus, the name says it all. They ought to host debutante balls on the roof of the Ritz, overlooking the river and the roofs of the old colonial houses. For someone like me who doesn't know much about architecture, most of the houses seem to be impossibly old, and it's not hard to imagine that everyone in this neighborhood has been more or less rich and powerful since the beginning of America.
So it came as some surprise to me to find, during my recent research into Philadelphia's history, that Society Hill used to be a pretty down-on-its-heels kind of neighborhood. In fact, for pretty much all of the first half of the twentieth century, Society Hill was basically in the same state that parts of West Philly are in now, and that the part of West Philly I live in was in before it was subsumed under the umbrella of University City.
One of the major differences was that the population was predominately white. The 1937 Home Owners Loan Corporation Study called it a primarily white working class neighborhood. From 1900 onward, what is now Society Hill was full of tenements and shops catering to the people who lived in them. A "seedy, skid-row district", according to a website celebrating the work of Sidney Williams, who photographed a bunch of historic buildings in accordance with the City Planning Commission and their desire to revitalize the neighborhood.
And revitalize they did. They tore down tenements and replaced them with gated housing developments. They put up the Society Hill towers, which are now the tallest buildings in the area. They set the stage for the enormously successful transformation of the area into a residential space for urban professionals.
Not that this is anything altogether striking, really. Plenty of neighborhoods have received this kind of treatment. What gets me about Society Hill, though, is both the scale and character of its success. If what the history books claim is true, then Society Hill has fooled me for my entire residence in Philadelphia into believing that the neighborhood has existed more or less as it appears now for centuries.
Of course, this is exactly what the planners intended. Not only did they try their best to create houses that would fit into the overall 18th century scheme, while doing their best to remodel whatever old houses they could, but they went to the trouble of installing period lighting, benches, and masonry all over the district. Society Hill was intended to fool me, as it was intended to fool all of us. The planners of the Society Hill revitalization wanted those who moved in to feel as if they were really a part of a historic neighborhood, a history that failed to take into account the last fifty to a hundred years of the district.
This sort of historical tomfoolery is really interesting to me. I really do not want to give the impression that there is something wrong with Society Hill being the way it is. I think there are plusses and minuses to all urban revitalization. I just wish I had had my eyes opened a little earlier, and I wonder if anyone else my age knows what Society Hill used to be like. I also wonder if the massive restructuring of the neighborhood has something to do with the fact that businesses open and close along the lowest blocks of Market Street as often as flu season. Society Hill has undoubtedly become a bastion of the Center City revitalization, which is the main bright spot for Philadelphia planning in the last half-century. But, along with the Independence Park project - which I think needs a separate post entirely - the way the city has dealt with the lower stretch of Market and the whole historic district has been troubling. Even someone with no knowledge of city planning like myself can see that making Old City into a destination for tourists and Society Hill a home for urban professionals - the recent demographic study posted on the Society Hill Civic Association website shows that residents live in mostly single member households, and less than 10% boast more than two members - avoids the issue of the dead zone that stretches almost unbroken down Market St., all the way from City Hall to Independence Hall.
Obviously, I need to do some more research on this. Luckily, the Penn archives have detailed census studies for 1950 and 1960, and I plan on seeing if old Society Hill had more families than it does now, right when renewal commenced. When I figure out something more it will be posted. Until then, check out the lampposts when you wander through Society Hill, and pay good attention to the houses. See if you can spot the fake and the real. Maybe we can have some sort of history geek contest.

1 comment:

thecrazydreamer said...

that's all interesting to me, even though i'll never live in, or probably even visit, the area in my life.