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 ...]]>

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

Last week I was researching Cramp’s shipyard in Fishtown so that I could add this site to the PhilaPlace map. Cramp’s shipyard was a fixture on ...]]> Slinky inventor Richard James and son Thomas, play with Slinkys on the stairs of the James family home in Philadelphia in 1945. Courtesy of the Independence Seaport Museum.

Last week I was researching Cramp’s shipyard in Fishtown so that I could add this site to the PhilaPlace map. Cramp’s shipyard was a fixture on the docks of Fishtown from 1830 until the end of World War II (with the exception of a twelve-year stretch during the Great Depression when it fell into disrepair). It had developed a reputation for producing not only commercial ships but also “men of war” starting in the Mexican War and continuing through World War II.  Cramp’s  good reputation was international– it produced ships for the Imperial Russian Navy as well as the Ottomans. Benefitting from lucrative naval contracts, during World War I Cramp’s employed 11,000 workers. During World War II, the number shot up to 18,000. Cramp’s was a major player in the shift from wooden clipper ships to steam-driven ships of iron and finally steel ships.

But here’s a little known fact my supervisor came across last week–the Slinky was also invented at Cramp’s when naval engineer Richard James’s work with tension springs gave him the idea for a children’s toy in 1943. He unveiled the new toy in Philadelphia at Gimbels department store in 1945. Here is yet another example of a consumer product that emerged (albeit indirectly) from capital the military invested in new technology. And conveniently, there is an exhibit about this very topic now running at the Independence Seaport Museum. The exhibit, which runs until January 3, 2011, includes such products as the Slinky, bellbottoms, and car tail lights. Yes, I know what you’re thinking– it does sound really cool. So check it out!

…and for your viewing and listening pleasure, alone, or in pairs: