Hi everybody,
Hope you’ve had a great summer. I know it’s been awhile since the last blog, but in the past few months, we’ve added seven sites in the Fishtown/East Kensington area. These include a few along the Delaware waterfront such as Penn Treaty Park, the Sugar House, Dyottville Glass Factories, and Cramp’s Shipyard, as well as a few on or near Frankford Avenue like St. Mary’s Hospital, Newt’s Playground, and Palmer Cemetery.
The story of Palmer Cemetery goes hand-in-hand with the history of the neighborhood and is a good place to start in understanding its development. Anybody with an interest in utopian experiments will get a kick out of Dyottville, which was a very interesting response to “the labor problem” in early industrial–era Philadelphia. Next, the Sugar House and Cramp’s Shipyard reveal Kensington at the height of its proud industrial history as well as its subsequent decline. The numerous fights over the proposed closings of St. Mary’s Hospital and the rehabilitation of Penn Treaty Park both demonstrate the resolve of the community in the face of decades of hardship after World War II. And the story of Newt’s Playground , featuring an interview with a veteran of the formerly cinder-covered field, provides a glimpse of what it was like to grow up in the Fishtown of the 1960s.
The Sugar House (Pennsylvania Sugar Company), Delaware & Shackamaxon, 1936
The Sugar House Casino, Delaware & Shackamaxon, September 2010
T. W. Dyott’s Glass Works at Richmond & Beach, as seen from the Delaware River, 1831
Stay tuned in the next few weeks, because we’ll also add sites west of Front Street like Fairhill Cemetery. And, I’m finishing up a couple longer essays dealing with Kensington west of Front Street that I blogged about when I first started my internship. One piece focuses on the company-produced employee newsletters of Stetson Hats and features an interview with a former Stetson employee, and another tells the story of the now defunct Old Kensington Redevelopment Corporation through three interviews.
Meanwhile, here are some contemporary shots of some of the sites. Check them out!
Penn Treaty Park, Delaware & Beach, September 2010
Palmer Burial Ground, Palmer & Memphis, September 2010
Shissler Recreation Center, or “Newt’s” to longtime Fishtowners, Blair Street, September 2010
View of the El from Newt’s, September 2010
Neumann Senior Housing, formerly St. Mary’s Hopsital, 1600 E. Palmer Street, September 2010
Olde Kensington Pavilion senior housing, 3rd & Thompson, September 2010
