Posts Tagged ‘South Philadelphia’

March 21st, 2012

Journeys South

By The Historical Society of Pennsylvania

0370_0001_0001We are happy to announce the arrival of new content on PhilaPlace from “Journeys South” – a project of the city of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

Journeys South was a temporary public art project that drew inspiration from both oral and archival historical sources to trace the history of South Philadelphia as reflected in the legacies of immigration. It moved public art “off the wall” to examine the richly layered and evolving immigrant histories of South Philadelphia through four, interactive, community-based artworks that celebrated the stories of South Philadelphia.

The seven artists who collaborated on the four works used different media and techniques – from poetry and visual art to photography and choreography – to bring these stories to life.

While the original works are no longer on display, you can now see images of the works and read more about them here on PhilaPlace. Unique to PhilaPlace, you will find full transcripts of the interviews with South Philadelphia community members that inspired the project. Also unique to PhilaPlace are audio recordings of the poetry that formed the heart of “Neighbor Ballads” – one of the four artworks – read by artist Frank Sherlock.

Click here to start reading about this fascinating project!

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March 19th, 2010

Hand-drawn maps of Philly neighborhoods!

By Melissa Mandell

NO_LIBS_MAP_2010Last week, (my personal) über-cityblog Philebrity.com came up with the most brilliant idea ever (albeit borrowed from the blog Londonist) and entreated its readers to submit their very own hand-drawn maps of  their neighborhoods.    Why, oh why didn’t I think of that?  …it’s probably just as well since Philebrity gets a lot more traffic than the PhilaPlace blog anyway.   The resulting entries – ranging in style from cheekily “Maira Kalman-esque” to back-of-the-cocktail napkin crude — are, I think, very Philadelphian: often hilarious, totally subjective, probably offensive, painfully forthright, practical, sentimental, contradictory, and self-conscious.

Just check out these maps depicting the many conflicting and overlapping identities of  our very storied and often contested neighborhoods north of Center City:  two versions of Northern Liberties (so far); West Kensington; “Secret” Fishtown (Shadtown?); and Norris Square/”Olde” Kensington…”dark and gloomy” borders, “poverty,” and “one-stop gentrification”…mini-restaurant reviews, social commentary, and snarky in-jokes… it’s all here in these maps. Be sure to brave the resulting comments, too.

Visit Philebrity to see the rest, including Wash West, Old City, Pennsport, East Passyunk Avenue, Queen Village, and the ever-mysterious Eraserhood, courtesy of bhiladelphia :

erasercallownorthchihood

Keep ‘em coming, Philebrity readers…Hand-drawn Philadelphia could very well become its own blog if we can continue to  map the entire city and argue about it, too.

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January 14th, 2010

Library Company of Philadelphia online exhibition highlights the “Faces and Facades” of early 20th-century Philadelphia

By Charlene Peacock, Library Company of Philadelphia

Seven men and a young boy sitting on brownstone stepsThe Library Company of Philadelphia is pleased to be sharing with PhilaPlace visitors its collection of photographic portraits taken circa 1910-1940 by John Frank Keith (1883-1947). An avid photographer of the residents of South Philadelphia and possibly Kensington, where he lived, Keith captured groups of young men socializing on stoops, family members and friends posing on the sidewalk, and children playfully smiling. In addition to documenting the working-class residents of these neighborhoods, Keith’s portraits evoke memories and ideas of a time when families struggled economically, but enjoyed life and the friendship of their neighbors. They provide an important link to the rich history of Philadelphia’s oldest neighborhoods.

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January 8th, 2010

Antonio’s Anthology

By Donna Meidt

Antonio's PortraitSix years ago, I took possession of two large boxes which contained the papers of Antonio Nicola Pisano (1894-1979), my maternal grandfather. He came to America from Gasperina, a mountain village overlooking the Ionian Sea in Catanzaro, Calabria, Italy. He was sixteen years of age, and settled initially in the Queen Village neighborhood of Philadelphia. The portrait on the left was taken about 1915.  Antonio was a writer of poems and plays in Italian. He started a theater troupe called the Filodramatic Circle Gasperinese active between the First and Second World Wars in the neighborhood of 7th and Christian Streets. He was a storyteller and my babysitter. Among my earliest memories were sitting beneath this photo of his parents, Giuseppe and Maria Innocenza Voci Pisano.  Here he taught me the value of family history, and stressed the importance of remembering our ancestors. Thus, he passed on his interest and passion to me; leaving me with the task of having his story remembered.

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December 18th, 2009

Home Movies and Philadelphia History

By Dwight Swanson

Departure for ItalyIn 1923, the Eastman Kodak Company began marketing its Cine-Kodak movie camera and 16mm film, and just as the Kodak Brownie camera had opened the world to a flood of snapshots, 16mm movie film and later the cheaper 8mm and Super 8 formats, brought the world of moviemaking out of the theaters and into people’s homes.

Home movies are often thought of in terms of their technical limitations—the unsteady cameras and the overexposed films—and limited in their subject matter. These are often overstated, since over the years there have been incredibly talented home movie makers who have filmed almost every imaginable event, but what home movies do best (or at least most often) is capture peoples’ travels, celebrations, and daily lives. Because of this, scenes that never would have been shot by newsreel cameramen or professional cinematographers were captured on film, and we now can view scenes of Philadelphia life that we wouldn’t be able to see in any other way.

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December 10th, 2009

Southwark, 1939: A Day in the Life

By Amanda Zellner

SP0011_0011_001One afternoon here at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, I was hunting through the many boxes of photos that comprise the Philadelphia Record Photograph Morgue looking for evidence of South Philadelphia life during the Great Depression era.  The Philadelphia Record was a newspaper published daily from 1882 to 1947, and the Historical Society houses the Record’s photograph “morgue”—over 150,000 items depicting every facet of life all over the Philadelphia region. The black-and-white prints span from 1920-47, and include both published and unpublished photographs. In this vast collection, I stumbled upon a folder filled with photos and captions that described the life of Ms. Bella Iveson, resident of 111 Washington Avenue, circa 1939.

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November 30th, 2009

Sharing Stories from the City of Neighborhoods

By Melissa Mandell

0002_0182_001When the Historical Society of Pennsylvania decided to build a Web site that would explore Philadelphia’s neighborhoods through the lens of place, we asked people in those neighborhoods to tell us which places are and were meaningful to them. Over the past three years, we have been building content for the PhilaPlace Web site not only by drawing on the rich collections at HSP (like the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies Collections , The Philadelphia Record Photo Morgue, and the Society Print Collection, to name just a few), but also by collecting memories, stories, and photographs from the people who live or have lived in South Philadelphia and Northern Liberties and Kensington. The contributions PhilaPlace has collected from the community deepen the richness of the historical record by adding the personal stories and memories that make history real, and truly public.

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