A bunch of old Delaware Ave Photos.

[Phillyxpat]

CONTENTdm Collection : Item Viewer

[Phillyxpat]

CONTENTdm Collection : Item Viewer

[Phillyxpat]

CONTENTdm Collection : Item Viewer

[jbk]

CONTENTdm Collection : Item Viewer

Does anyone know what dates the USS Olympia was moored under the Ben Franklin Bridge? It doesn't appear to be in this photo.

[Phillyxpat]

Does anyone know what dates the USS Olympia was moored under the Ben Franklin Bridge? It doesn't appear to be in this photo.

I would put the photo in the late forties to early fifties based on the truck style. Cannot find anything on the internet with a history of the USS Olympia's permanent moorings after she exited the Phila Navy Yard which I guess to be about 1955 per the research below. You can continue your research on old Bulletin clippings by typing in "Olympia" in the search box upper right hand corner once you enter that page by clicking on the "CONTENTdm Collection : Item Viewer" link next to bridge photo. I cannot remember when the Bulletin closed and your clippings will likely end using that research source material.

CONTENTdm Collection : Item Viewer
As of 1953, she is still at the Philly Navy Yard


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Moved to old Market Street ferry terminal, ferry dock 4 – 1955


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At Pier 9 Cherry St, 1959 ( Is this the location you are thinking of? )


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As of 1963, she had been in Pier 4 South at Chestnut Street for five years since 1958(?)

[jbk]

1972:



According to this Cruiser Photo Index C-6/CL-15/CA-15/IX-40 USS OLYMPIA it looks like she was moved in 1957



This photo is large (and awesome), so I have not embedded it: http://www.navsource.org/archives/04/c6/c0643.jpg

Can't find any pictures of it covered in paint spots after they painted the BF Bridge above it without drop cloths.
.

[Phillyxpat]

I guess she got moved around a lot to some of these old piers before they tore them down etc.. The newspaper clippings are only clues, suggestions and no doubt a lot of PR.

[ZARK]

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I love this old Northern Liberties photo, problem is, it is not Delaware Ave. It is a photo of old Nectarine street, looking east from New Market street, towards Front street. This section of Nectarine street was vacated when the Reading Rail depot was expanded. Shame too, those were some pretty old houses there.

[Phillyxpat]

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I was going on the Temple labeling as having the structure at Delaware and Noble. Until I looked at it, I never realized that there were two main structures divided by Beach Street. Since Beach St. is only technically still there on the map off of Spring Garden, it is little more than a dead end or a private driveway/ delivery way into the building complex. As such I would label this one building in a modern sense as with a Spring Garden and Beach or N Front Street and Spring Garden street address label.

I put the image into the thread based on the fact that I think someone commented here that Phila. Storage is the only old building left from the glory days of the Port of Philadelphia. As such, until they tear it down, it is unique and iconic of those old days.

Good analysis from the ground and your memory Zark.



Bing Maps



Google Maps



Phila GeoHistory 1910 Map

[Phillyxpat]

[1]



[2]



[3]



[4]



[5]



[6]



[7] Is that Christ Church Steeple between the smoke stack and the ferry clock tower?



[8]



[9]



[10]



Doing some research and magnification of old photos I started to look for the name of the architect of the old Pennsylvania Railroad R.R. Ferries Terminal building at the foot of Market Street [1] built around 1899 or so it would seem to me. I also searched for some interior photos hoping for some grand lost architectural gem from the so-called Gilded Age at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

Looking further at the photos of what I thought was some lost cast iron façade of a lost grand building, I decided that cast iron may be involved, but more likely it was only a lumber and tin covered façade [5], mere facing to a bunch of old piers and docks may be the likely answer to the old ferry terminal [4].

Maybe it was a temporary measure. Maybe the envisioned new building never got built. I do not know at this time without further research. I am guessing that the Hollywood like temporary sets of the Columbian Exposition, the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, was the inspiration of the ferry terminal in transition and in connection with the widening of Delaware Avenue along with other port improvements never got past a quick façade stage of transitional building. The Bridge changed everything of that old Ferry waterfront culture. The only thing that probably kept the ferries going into the fifties when they went extinct was a marginal competition with the bridges tolls in the crossing of the big river, that if time was not a critical factor in the transportation equation.

And there is the consideration that this Ferry Terminal was privately owned and not a city owned financed project in terms of money and architecture budgets.

Below the photos above for your inspection are three port maps 1895 [8], 1910 [9] and 1942 [10] to show how four ferry docks eventually got reshaped into five docks and maybe the reason for a temporary façade in the late 1890s.

The idea of facades makes me think that the modern waterfront might in the future add a few facades of the old buildings to the landscape to mix the new with the history of the old. Just a thought.

[Phillyxpat]

[Phillyxpat]

[Phillyxpat]

[Phillyxpat]

Love the Studebaker

[Phillyxpat]

Philadelphia and Her Merchants: As Constituted Fifty @ Seventy Years Ago ... - Abraham Ritter - Google Books

[Phillyxpat]

Incomplete?











Philadelphia and Her Merchants: As Constituted Fifty @ Seventy Years Ago ... - Abraham Ritter - Google Books

[Phillyxpat]

I found this photo above of Yesler’s Wharf in Seattle in 1889 by Philadelphia born and educated photographer Frank La Roche 1853 – 1936, a helpful visual in regards to the above frames 115 and 116 of Philly’s early wharves.

The photo was taken after a recent major fire that destroyed Seattle’s business district in 1889.

I thought the two tall mast ships crowding onto, needing necessary space docked on the pier attached to the wharf an interesting shot and to illustrate the way things really looked like in the past.

That regarding those old illustrations of the wharves circa 1800, the whole waterfront looks quite confusing. It makes the idea of Delaware Avenue as it was planned and built around 1900 an infrastructural marvel.

The logs in the water are both for rebuilding Seattle and to drive into the shoreline for more wharf space and piers. It makes me wonder how efficient and more cost effectgive it would be to float a log down the Delaware near a sawmill and the wood to be made into lumber for piers, ships, boats etc. Before I do further research, anybody out there familiar with Philly history as to lumber being milled near the wharves in the downtown area around 1800?


::: Frank La Roche Photographs :::

[harryk]

See Philadelphia's Lost Waterfront (History Press, 2011) for a discussion of this riverside corridor. The book has a few pictures too. See also Northern Liberties: The Story of a Philadelphia River Ward (History Press, 2012 (in late fall)) for more info on this waterfront zone.

[JoeBaker]

...

Thanks for this. Good job.

[Phillyxpat]