The Middle-Class City - John Henry Hepp, IV

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of the Pennsylvania’s West Philadelphia station compared to the ferry terminals.8

      Of the ten railroad passenger facilities in use in the mid-1870s, the busiest by far were these four: Prime Street, West Philadelphia, and Ninth and Green rail terminals, and the Market Street ferry. Prime Street was the northern terminus of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad, an independent line that served the cities in its name and formed part of the jointly operated route between New York and Washington. The Pennsylvania Railroad’s West Philadelphia station had trains for New York, Pittsburgh, and Washington (the through trains from New York). The Ninth and Green depot, operated by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, was the city’s busiest commuter terminal, with trains to Germantown, Chestnut Hill, and Norristown. Ferries from Market Street connected with trains in Camden for many points in southern New Jersey, including the rapidly growing resort of Atlantic City and the elite suburb of Haddonfield. The remaining facilities were not as busy. They either served less important lines (like the small West Chester & Philadelphia) or were the downgraded remnants of once major stations, as the Kensington depot had become following the takeover of the Philadelphia & Trenton by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the subsequent transfer of most of its train service to the West Philadelphia station.9

      Through the 1870s, the Philadelphia railroads remained committed to their outlying locations. But on December 5, 1881, the Pennsylvania Railroad made travel more convenient for many middle-class Philadelphians and contributed to the radical alteration of the fabric of the city when it opened its Broad Street Station at Centre Square. The new structure replaced not only the railroad’s West Philadelphia depot but, because of corporate consolidations, the West Chester & Philadelphia and Prime Street terminals as well. When it opened, the new station was just west of the central business district, about a ten-minute car ride from the old State House.10

      By the turn of the century, as illustrated in the map in figure 10, the station stood within the expanded downtown. Four separate but related decisions dramatically shifted the focus of the city core to Centre Square from the old State House in the late nineteenth century: the municipality’s construction of a new City Hall in the square, John Wanamaker’s 1876 conversion of an abandoned railroad freight station into a large retail establishment one block to the east, the opening of Broad Street Station one block to the west, and the establishment of a new Philadelphia & Reading passenger terminal three blocks to the east in 1893.

      The complement of modern train stations in Philadelphia was completed by the Baltimore & Ohio’s Twenty-fourth and Chestnut Streets depot in 1887 and the Philadelphia & Reading’s 1893 Reading Terminal. The B&O facility befitted the railroad’s late arrival and minor role in the city: it was smaller and was the only late nineteenth century station not built within or near the central business district. Reading Terminal at Twelfth and Market Streets in Center City, however, was an appropriate competitor for Broad Street Station. When it opened, the Reading closed both the Ninth and Green and Broad and Callowhill depots and significantly downgraded the Berks Street station.

Image
Key:
1 Twenty-fourth and Chestnut Streets station Baltimore & Ohio
2 Broad Street Station Pennsylvania
3 Reading Terminal Philadelphia & Reading
4 Berks Street depot Philadelphia & Reading
5 Kensington depot Pennsylvania
A Old State House
B Centre Square
C Market Street ferry
D Chestnut Street ferry
E South Street ferry

      By 1901, the two main railroad stations for Philadelphia were in the heart of the commercial district. The only two passenger facilities that were far from downtown were the two in Northeast Philadelphia, both of which survived as distinctly minor terminals serving largely local needs in an industrial section of the city. As one guide to the city put it: “Third and Berks and Kensington depots … are but little used, because the major part of the business has been transferred to [the new stations.] They are, moreover, remote from the center of the city, and offer few conveniences for travelers.” By the turn of the century, most train riders bound for Center City could walk from either the new Pennsylvania or Reading depot to their final destinations. The travel time to Wanamaker’s department store, for example, was reduced from twenty minutes by street car from the Reading’s Ninth and Green station to just a two-minute walk from the new Reading Terminal (or a five-minute one from Broad Street Station). In addition, passengers traveling to locations in the city outside the central business district had access to more car lines at the new locations. According to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s official history, “the superior location of [Broad Street Station] seemed to create new traffic.” By moving their terminals closer to the new offices, stores, and theaters, both the Pennsylvania and the Reading dramatically increased the potential for local passenger traffic. The Center City anchors of the middle-class metropolis were firmly in place.11

      Broad Street Station and Reading Terminal were not only more convenient to downtown but were also larger and qualitatively different because of the services that they offered to the public. During the late-nineteenth century, the railroads redefined the very nature of space in and around their central terminals. The depots were transformed from simple transportation hubs to civic landmarks. To reach these new terminals the railways separated their trains from road traffic by an increasingly elaborate network of bridges, viaducts, and tunnels. Not only did space become more carefully defined between the railroad and its surrounding community, but it also became more ordered within the stations. Passenger trains were separated from freight trains. Space for trains became more clearly divided from that for people. Incoming and outgoing passengers had separate routes through the buildings. The number of amenities dramatically increased. All in all, the world of the railway traveler became more elaborate and better organized.

      The Ninth and Green Streets depot was typical of the enlarged “train barn” stations built throughout the United States in the 1850s. In Philadelphia, both the Philadelphia & Reading’s Main Line depot of 1859 and the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore’s Prime Street station were similar. At its base, this style of building consisted of a head house structure, which usually contained waiting rooms and ticketing and baggage facilities on the first floor and company offices on the second, attached to an enclosed train shed (typically with a largely solid, wooden roof). The structures, though palatial compared to the original depots of the 1830s that they replaced, tended to be small; the station at Ninth and Green Streets (figure 11) took up half of a smaller than average city block and its train shed contained but three tracks.12

      Like most antebellum stations, the interior layout of the Ninth and Green terminal was simple, with few divisions. In part, this was because these depots offered little to the public except

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