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Market Street ferry

      The street and steam railroads did not just expand the customer base for the major Center City stores but they also spurred the development of a number of neighborhood shopping districts. The result was a series of nodes throughout the city, none as large as the central business district, but nonetheless important to local shoppers. These smaller shopping precincts first began to develop in the late nineteenth century as space in the heterogeneous “walking city” started to become more specialized in use. Local shopping evolved from corner stores scattered throughout the neighborhood to shops grouped along major thoroughfares. In West Philadelphia, Lancaster Avenue became a regional shopping center, as did Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia and Main Street in Germantown. Main Street in Germantown not only had streetcar service but also was served by two steam railroad lines. In the late 1880s, Mrs. Tucker C. Laughlin regularly took the train from her home in Chestnut Hill to the stores in Germantown. On a Friday he had off from school, Leo Bernheimer spent the morning shopping for his mother in North Philadelphia: “This morning I was first to the Globe market; then to 13th and Columbia Av., and then to the Girard Avenue market.”²⁴

      The trains and trolleys helped people to create these various retail districts not just by bringing customers to the shops but also by hauling the merchandise to the businesses and the purchases home. This largely unseen network of freight trains and express trolleys, along with the mail trains and trolleys, tied the expanding metropolis together as one market and linked it to the national one. They made it possible for Mrs. Tucker C. Laughlin in Chestnut Hill to have a carpet sweeper delivered from Wanamaker’s, her new stove brought from North Philadelphia, and her buttermints to arrive safely. They also allowed for strawberries grown in Florida to be sold on the streets of Philadelphia during a blizzard.²⁵

      None of these shopping locations—whether Wanamaker’s in Center City or a shoe store on Main Street in Germantown—served exclusively the middle class. The men and women of the bourgeoisie shared the streets and the stores (and the trains and trolleys) with both the elite and the working classes. Many of these businesses, however, consciously pitched themselves at the new “mass” market, which during the Victorian era consisted largely of the middle class. The downtown dry goods stores were in the forefront of this and, as we shall explore in more detail later, evolved into key nodes in the “bourgeois city.” The reality of many middle-class men and women shopping in certain locations coupled with the bourgeois tone and marketing of the stores helped to reinforce their perception of the bourgeois city.²⁶

      Beyond work, school, and shopping, middle-class Philadelphians used the streetcars and the trains to reach a variety of locations at which they hoped to have fun. Recreation could take many forms: visiting an amusement park or museum, exploring the city or region, calling on relatives or friends, or simply riding the train or trolley to escape the heat or boredom. Through these journeys of leisure, middle-class men and women helped to further expand and define their space in the region.²⁷

      Middle-class men and women used the trolleys and the trains to visit the various cultural institutions that began to develop in late nineteenth-century Philadelphia. Many of these, such as the theater district and the Academy of Fine Arts, were in Center City, while others were located in Fairmount Park (an area particularly well served by public transit because the Centennial had been held there), and still others, such as sporting venues and amusement parks, tended to be located along rail lines in the fringes of the city.

      The area with the greatest concentration of cultural and entertainment attractions was Center City, and middle-class Philadelphians went there often during the late nineteenth century to be amused, enlightened, or informed. The fringes of the business and retail districts quickly developed into the city’s leading culture zone. Mary Smith’s parents and siblings were regular theatergoers; they would take the same streetcar routes that her father used to commute to work to see a play in the evening. Members of her family also took the trolley to attend the art shows and other special exhibitions that took place in the large halls located in Center City. The Smiths’ frequent weekend and evening visits to downtown cultural institutions were typical of many other middle-class women and men who lived in West and North Philadelphia and could quickly and easily reach Center City by street car. For people living farther away, in Germantown, the suburbs, and the outlying portions of the region, the steam trains provided the same access. Edwin Jellett from Germantown regularly used both the Reading’s and Pennsylvania’s Chestnut Hill trains to hear opera at the Academy of Music or to attend various shows downtown. These excursions to Center City were an important part of Jellett’s social life; for the twenty-five-cent train fare and the admission fee, he could meet other young middle-class Philadelphians.²⁸

      Other special events also brought bourgeois Philadelphians from the neighborhoods to downtown by trolley and train. The regular occurrence of such celebrations helped establish central Philadelphia as a ceremonial space for the entire region. In the days of politics as spectacle, both parties staged parades and mass meetings in Center City. Edwin Jellett took the train in after supper on September 23, 1884, in order to stand “in front of the Union League” on Broad Street “to see the Republican Parade.” He spent the entire evening at the parade, reaching home at 1:30 A.M. on the last train. Events like the Constitution Centennial in 1887 and the “Peace Jubilee” in 1898 (celebrating the end of the Spanish-American War) drew great crowds to Center City. One middle-class man living in lower North Philadelphia wanted to go to the latter but failed “as the cars could not accommodate the people” by the time they had arrived at his street.²⁹

      After Center City, the next most popular set of destinations for relaxation for middle-class men and women were the various parks in and around the city. Fairmount Park, the large municipally owned green space along the Schuylkill River, offered a number of possible destinations. Although clearly a space shared with the women and men of the working classes, Fairmount Park maintained its bourgeois tone in part because of proximity: in the late nineteenth century, middle-class neighborhoods faced all the major entrances to the park. Starting in the 1890s, there were also a number of commercial amusements parks. Many of these were owned by the trolley companies to encourage patronage on their lines. Philadelphia never had one very intensively developed location like Coney Island in New York City but instead had a number of smaller sites located throughout the region. In general, all these enterprises offered the same types of services: rides, food, picnic sites, and music. More basically, they all offered an escape from the brick-and-stone row-house world of middle-class Philadelphia to a land of green grass and trees. Philadelphia, like most industrial cities, was dirty and crowded and the parks offered some momentary relief from the less enchanting conditions of everyday urban life.³⁰

      Finally, during the 1890s the trolley cars themselves were another popular middle-class destination. On beautiful days in the spring and fall many women and men used the trolleys to explore the city and region. For example, after supper one Sunday, Leo Bernheimer took the trolley to German-town just to see a new place. During the hot days and nights of the summer, middle-class Philadelphians used the streetcars to cool off. Eugenia Barnitz took open trolleys with her friends to Willow Grove Park as a teenager in the late 1890s. Because of the high fares that effectively limited working-class ridership, the cars themselves were a safe, middle-class space in the city.³¹

      In the late nineteenth century, the steam trains (and to a lesser extent the trolleys) also linked middle-class Philadelphians more firmly to the city’s hinterland and the nation as a whole. People rode the railroads for both business and pleasure. Professionals and tourists visited New York and Washington for the day and took extended trips to Pittsburgh and New England. Towns along the New Jersey coast became destinations for thousands of middle-class men and women on hot summer days. The rail lines were not just “metropolitan corridors” but bourgeois ones as well in which middle-class men and women sped through the countryside from one bourgeois space to another in comfort and modernity. Not only was Atlantic City part of the world of Philadelphia’s bourgeoisie but so too were the trains of the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading that connected the two communities. The illustration in figure 6 of a well-dressed woman being

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