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The Middle-Class City. John Henry Hepp, IV
Читать онлайн.Название The Middle-Class City
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isbn 9780812204056
Автор произведения John Henry Hepp, IV
Издательство Ingram
The trains permitted many middle-class Philadelphians to spend part or all of their summers in the late nineteenth century “boarding” in the surrounding countryside. Escaping the heat of the city for the rural hinterland had long been common for the city’s elite, but the frequent train service meant that middle-class families could now join the summer exodus and still work or shop in the city. Edwin Jellett spent many of his vacations near Schwenksville in Montgomery County. Mary Smith’s family spent a month of the summer of 1896 on a farm just outside Hatboro. Her father commuted to the city on the trains of the Philadelphia & Reading and she, her older sisters, and their mother occasionally went into Center City to shop. Although the Smith family returned to their home in the city, the convenience of the train service first sampled in these summer stays may have helped convince other middle-class Philadelphians of the advantages of suburban living.34
There were many popular summer destinations for bourgeois Philadelphians along the New Jersey shore. From Cape May to Asbury Park, the coast was dotted with towns that catered to city dwellers escaping the heat of the metropolis for the cool sea breezes. Both the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading systems linked these shore communities with Philadelphia. By the 1890s, some of the fastest trains in North America plied the rails between Camden (linked by ferry to Philadelphia) and Atlantic City. Both railroads operated express trains with extra-fare Pullman parlor cars, cheap excursion trains for day-trippers, early morning locals full of anglers and Philadelphia newspapers, and “cottagers trains” at the start and end of the “season” to convey families and their possessions to and from the shore. The season for the shore started in late May and continued through early September with its peak in July and August. As was common in many late nineteenth-century businesses, the Pennsylvania and the Reading engaged in an odd mixture of competition and collusion; although they met annually to set fares and rules for excursion traffic, they battled for passengers by offering faster trains, better equipment, and even bribes to Atlantic City hoteliers and cab drivers.35
Figure 6. The bourgeois corridor. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
During the last few decades of the nineteenth century, the trains and the streetcars allowed middle-class Victorian Philadelphians to travel easily throughout the metropolis and to refine their visions of the city and its region. In this way, a new, better-ordered, more controlled relationship developed between middle-class Philadelphians and their metropolis. The trains and trolleys, however, were not perfect and this comfortable relationship could be undermined. Both nature, in the form of adverse weather, and man, in the form of accidents and strikes, could disrupt the city’s transportation system. During the late nineteenth century, snowstorms often shut down Philadelphia. Steam train and streetcar accidents, though usually less disruptive to the city as a whole, were far more likely and more deadly occurrences. Starting in the 1890s, strikes against the streetcar companies became more common and often interrupted the flow of travel in the city for middle-class Philadelphians.
The worst snowstorm during this period was the “Blizzard of ’88” that brought the city to a standstill for a number of days in early March. Although the city only officially received ten inches of snow, the combination of low temperatures and high winds halted all transportation in the region. One Philadelphian recalled, “During the blizzard of 1888, not even four horses could pull the [street]cars up that hill terminating at Poplar Street. Transportation [in the city] stopped.” William Hemsing recorded conditions along the Philadelphia & Reading’s line to Bethlehem. On Monday, March 12, the second day of the storm, he observed: “The storm still continues.… The telegraph wires are down and the local freight was delayed here all day.… The train that passes here at 10 A.M. with three parlor and sleeping coaches and two others, with two engines, one broken, reached here about six o’clock. I watched them as they passed up the road and soon heard that they were stuck in the cut.” Fifty-eight men from Lansdale worked for nearly two days to dig the stuck train out of the drifting snow. Finally, on Wednesday, Hemsing noted that “The unfortunate train at last started off in a snowstorm at 11:30 this morning nearly fifty hours late.” It was not until Thursday that service returned to normal: “Today all the passenger trains are running nearly on time. They had two engines for every train this morning, but this evening it is better We got all our papers today.” In the city, William Armstrong, an engraver, also recorded the unusual conditions: “Snow drift on the track Penna. R.R. near Wynnewood is 10 + 15 feet deep. All communication to New York is stop’t except by telephone.” Trains also were halted in southern New Jersey by the storm; Chalkley Matlack “saw the smoke of an engine at the Maple Shade Station [on Tuesday morning from his farm] and had my suspicions aroused that a train was probably blocked there, … discovered it had been since the preceding morning and that there was little likelihood of it getting away soon.”36
Even less dramatic snowstorms disrupted the horse-drawn streetcars in the city. One morning in 1880, John Smith noted that it had “Blowed + snowed all night” and the “Car horses [were] having a Rough time.” Later that year, he walked to work during a snow storm because “I waited for a Car [and when one finally arrived, saw] such a gang Hanging on I made up my mind that If I wanted to get down town I would have to walk.” John Wilson, an engineer, voluntarily postponed a business trip to Reading one day in 1883 because of snow, only to have the lack of streetcar service the next day further delay the journey. A heavy snowstorm right before Christmas caused “trade [to be] very poor for this season” at Septimus Winner’s music store, largely because the “cars and travel [were] almost closed up.”37
Although the cable cars and the trolleys were less affected by snow than were the horse cars, storms could interfere with service and, in the case of the electric trolleys, down the overhead electrical lines that supplied the power. During a heavy snow in 1895, Leo Bernheimer noted that most of the trolleys and horse cars had stopped and the “cable being almost the only cars going.” During a storm in 1899, Mary Smith observed that “Heavy snow all day long Street cars and steam roads completely blocked by evening. Market Street and Lancaster Avenue cars only ones running in West Philadelphia.”38
Nature was not the only force that could halt the smooth flow of Philadelphia’s transportation system and middle-class Philadelphians’ travels. Far more common were streetcar accidents. Many were fairly minor; they might disrupt service but caused no major injuries to passengers or crews. During the Centennial, one newspaper reporter witnessed three “narrow escapes” involving streetcars in just ninety minutes. All three he blamed on the “incautioness and carelessness on the part of the passengers,” a sentiment certainly to be echoed by the companies’ lawyers. Leo Bernheimer was a frequent witness to all sorts of mishaps. Once, while on his way to his uncle’s house in South Philadelphia, Bernheimer saw a derailed cable car but noted no injured people. Often in the 1890s, he was delayed because of minor electrical problems with the then-new trolleys, a useful reminder that cutting-edge technology is seldom perfect. More seriously, many passengers sustained minor injuries when they were entering or exiting the cars. Bernheimer ran into friend “with his face all bandaged. Had missed his hold yesterday while boarding a Woodland Trolley. Not seriously hurt, though sufficient as a caution.” Injuries to passengers while they tried to board a moving trolley were common; about a year after seeing his bandaged friend, Bernheimer witnessed another accident on the same line: “Had just got