Philadelphia's Lost Waterfront (19 page)

Sterling Helicopter operates Philadelphia's only public-use heliport at Pier 36 South, once a Reading Railroad property.

A potential hazard to local helicopter pilots is the Sparks Shot Tower, an unusual structure on the 100 block of Carpenter Street. Towers like this revolutionized the making of musket balls, based on the principle that molten lead will form perfectly round droplets while falling from up high. Firewood and lead were taken to the top of the tower, where a furnace was fired to melt the lead. Poured through perforations, the lead would spin into balls that hardened upon hitting pans of water on the ground.

This was one of the first shot towers in the United States, opening in 1808. Thomas Sparks, John Cousland and John Bishop raised the 142-foot-tall structure to turn out shot for sport purposes. But tons of ammunition were produced there during the War of 1812. Bishop, a pacifist Quaker, accordingly sold his share of the business to Sparks as a result of the change in production to purposes of warfare. The factory later produced shot during the Civil War. Four generations of the Sparks family kept the place running into the early 1900s. It was also called the Southwark Shot Tower and the Philadelphia Shot Tower.

Resembling a lighthouse or factory chimney, Sparks Shot Tower is thirty feet in circumference at its base and tapers to fifteen feet at the top. It acted as a landmark for ships coming up the Delaware River for many years, much as Christ Church steeple did. The structure is now part of a city playground with a gymnasium at its base. An excellent example of Philadelphia's reputation for superb brickwork, this is one of the last towers of its kind in the world.

G
LORIA
D
EI
(O
LD
S
WEDES
') C
HURCH

Gloria Dei (Glory of God) Church is at Christian Street and Columbus Boulevard. Its “Old Swedes'” nickname stems from the church's founding members being Swedish Lutherans who came to Wicaco from what is now Wilmington, Delaware.

A log blockhouse (a small fort) fronting the Delaware River was renovated as a place of worship in 1677 and was used until the present church was completed in its place in 1698–99. Gloria Dei was consecrated on July 2, 1700, making it the oldest house of worship in Pennsylvania and the second-oldest Swedish church in the United States.

This was the site of the first regular Lutheran ordination in North America. Justus Falckner (1672–1723) was ordained there in 1703 to serve Lutherans in New York. The first recorded use of an organ in any American church was at Gloria Dei for Falckner's ordination. Famous Philadelphians, such as Betsy Ross, were married at this church, and its cemetery contains the graves of notable early Americans, including John Hansen (president of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation), Alexander Wilson (poet and “Father of American Ornithology”) and five of General Washington's officers.

Old Swedes' has been an independent institution of the Episcopal Church since 1845. It is owned and administered as the Corporation of Gloria Dei Church by a small congregation that maintains the property and oversees a collection of relics. Affiliated with the National Park Service as a component of Independence National Historical Park, the church was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1942 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

The old church house is a resilient colonial survivor, wedged, as it is, between Interstate 95 and Columbus Boulevard. Although it sits east of a segment of Water Street (originally Ostego Street around here), Old Swedes' was not built on made-earth. It was constructed long before “making earth” on the Delaware's west bank became all the rage.

Gloria Dei thrives in spite of being so close to I-95 and being separated from its historic Southwark neighborhood, much of which the expressway destroyed. The highway's routing was first proposed to be closer to the river, where it would have passed directly outside the church's front windows—assuming that the church itself would not have been eliminated.

T
HE
M
ISCHIANZA

Joseph Wharton (1707–1776) was a member of a well-known Philadelphia family who prospered enough as a cooper to become a “gentleman.” In 1731, he bought a sizable tract in Southwark and gave the name Walnut Grove to the country house he built there. His estate had a long front yard that sloped all the way to the Delaware River, the equivalent of three city blocks away.

On May 18, 1778, Walnut Grove was the scene of the Mischianza (or Meschianza), an Italian word for medley or miscellany. This was an extravagant ball given in honor of British general William Howe during the occupation of Philadelphia. Howe, commander in chief of British forces during the early years of the Revolution, had resigned his post and was about to return to England. Twenty-two of his officers threw the ball, which was masterminded by Captain John André, a future British spy.

A parade of fifteen decorated boats with over four hundred invitees departed from a wharf in Northern Liberties. Conveyed on the Delaware to Southwark, the guests included: Admiral of the Fleet Richard Lord Howe, the general's brother; General Henry Clinton, Howe's replacement; Peggy Chew, daughter of Quaker lawyer Benjamin Chew; and Peggy Shippen, future wife of Benedict Arnold.

The Mischianza's festivities included a seventeen-gun salute by British warships, a tournament of jousting knights, three musical bands, a banquet and a fireworks display. One month after the fourteen-hour affair, some seventeen thousand British troops evacuated Philadelphia, having accomplished little—except throwing a great big party—during their occupation of Penn's City of Brotherly Love.

T
HE
S
OUTHWARK
G
ROUP
P
IERS

Two huge warehouse piers, Piers 38 and 40 South, jut 551 feet into the Delaware River at the bottom of Christian Street. Jointly known as the “Southwark Group,” the brightly painted piers date from 1915 and are each 357,000 square feet in size. They were once the city's busiest docks. For instance, international shipper Norton, Lilly & Company operated an around-the-world cargo service from Pier 40 in the 1920s. Vessels would travel twenty-seven thousand miles between visits to homeport Philadelphia.

Cross section of the Southwark Group piers. Most early twentieth-century piers in Philadelphia were built like this.
Philadelphia City Archives
.

In the 1950s, the space between Piers 38 and 40 was filled in and paved to accommodate tractor-trailers. The buildings are used for warehousing these days, including a self-storage business. Few boats ever tie up to the Southwark Group Piers anymore.

16

A
T
W
ASHINGTON
A
VENUE

F
ORTRESS TO
S
HIPYARD TO
N
AVY
Y
ARD TO
R
AIL
Y
ARD TO
I
MMIGRATION
S
TATION TO
W
ATERSIDE
P
ARK

Love Lane was the early name for the eastern end of Prime Street, which is now called Washington Avenue. John Watson said that the lane was long ago shaded on both sides with large sycamore trees.

T
HE
B
ONNIN AND
M
ORRIS
W
ORKS
(A
MERICAN
C
HINA
M
ANUFACTORY
)

The second porcelain works in America was located on the west side of Front Street just south of what is now Washington Avenue. English émigré Gousse Bonnin (ca. 1741–ca.1778) and Philadelphian George Anthony Morris (ca. 1742–1773) partnered to establish the American China Manufactory in 1769–70. They wanted to prove that colonial Americans were capable of turning out high-quality domestic goods. The plant's proximity to the Delaware was necessary for the water-intensive process of making porcelain.

The Bonnin and Morris Works specialized in attractive blue-and-white tableware based on stylish English prototypes and often mistaken for English porcelain. They announced the first successful production of their wares in early 1771. But their business operated fitfully due to financial problems, foreign competition and disputes with the English and European potters they employed. One of the many early industries that lined Philadelphia's Delaware waterfront, the American China Manufactory closed in 1773.

Still, the firm had made some of the rarest porcelain museum pieces in the world. Certain items include a painted capital
P
(for Philadelphia or Pennsylvania), which is the earliest known maker's mark of any kind on American pottery or porcelain.

The works on Washington Avenue subsequently became an artillery (cannon) factory. Row homes now occupy the spot. Philadelphia's Mummers Museum is close by at Second and Washington. This part of the city is called Pennsport.

M
ILITARY
M
ATTERS
(V
OF
V): T
HE
A
SSOCIATION
B
ATTERY

Speaking of artillery, the first fortification to defend Penn's City was the Association Battery, located at the foot of what became Washington Avenue. Unlike the British barracks at Campington, this was a fort—and a locally inspired one at that.

When hostilities arose between France and Great Britain in 1744, the Quaker-led Common Council of Philadelphia refused to take steps for the city's defense. Consequently, Philadelphia and its merchant fleet were under threat of attack by French and Spanish privateers sailing up the Delaware. Benjamin Franklin, who argued for the common defense of Philadelphia in his political pamphlet
Plain Truth
(1747), finally roused the public into action.

Franklin and his cohorts formed a military “association”—the Association for General Defense—on December 7, 1747. This was Pennsylvania's first citizen militia and predecessor of the Pennsylvania National Guard. Hundreds and hundreds of men volunteered to become “associators.” Ben Franklin was virtually in command of this corps, despite having declined a commission.

The Common Council petitioned the Pennsylvania Propriety to supply arms and ammunition, which the colonial government promised if Philadelphians raised the money to build the fort. Without delay, Franklin and his Junto colleagues organized a lottery. The Association Battery (aka the Grand Battery) was erected in 1748 on a hill near Gloria Dei Church. It first mounted twenty-seven guns (cannons) and later held some fifty. Rudimentary drawings of the fort show three buildings enclosed by a crenellated stone wall rising about fifteen feet.

The Association Battery was Pennsylvania's largest early fortification but was never called on to defend Philadelphia. During the Revolutionary War, the British mounted guns there and built another battery and a redoubt nearby, all of which were used against American ships sailing on the Delaware. The Grand Battery fell into decay after the war and the eleven-acre site became the shipyard of master shipbuilder Joshua Humphreys in 1794.

S
HIPBUILDING
(III
OF
III): J
OSHUA
H
UMPHREYS
' S
HIPYARD

Apprenticed to a Philadelphia shipbuilder in his youth, Joshua Humphreys (1751–1838) was a ship designer during the War for Independence and helped draw up plans for the Continental navy frigate
Randolph
. The tragic story of the USS
Randolph
is too lengthy to tell here, but it is enough to say that this vessel, launched in Philadelphia on July 10, 1776, is regarded as the first true warship of the United States.

Humphreys was appointed as the first chief naval constructor of the United States in 1794, when Congress passed an act providing for the production of six frigates. Larger and faster than other warships of their class, they were the inception of the U.S. Navy and formed the core of American naval forces during the War of 1812. Each of these brilliantly designed sailing ships was made at a different port in the new nation. William Rush carved figureheads for four of them at his Front Street workshop.

The first vessel was the USS
United States
, built at Humphreys' Southwark yard. Visitors from all around walked through the shipyard at will, observing the three-masted ship's construction. Joshua Humphreys personally led President George Washington and First Lady Martha on a tour.

The
United States
was the first American warship launched under the U.S. Constitution, as well as the first American frigate and the first naval vessel christened “United States.” Authorized by President Washington as Commission No. 1, it was launched on May 10, 1797, and began a splendid career under Commodore John Barry's command. The highlight of its service was the capture of the British frigate
Macedonian
on October 25, 1812.