Early history

Prior to its incorporation into the city proper, North Philadelphia was little more than a collection of primarily agricultural townships above the original City of Philadelphia. In the 18th century, as Philadelphia grew in importance and, consequently, population, then pastoral North Philadelphia became an attractive alternative to the burgeoning city. The mansions of wealthy Philadelphians began to dot the landscape, and by the late 18th and early 19th century, several small town centers had developed to anchor the growing population. However, this suburban landscape was to be interrupted around the middle of the 19th century, as rapid urban expansion led to The Consolidation Act of 1854. This state law annexed all of the townships within Philadelphia County to the City of Philadelphia. With new territory now under the aegis of Philadelphia's city planners, a rising influx of European immigrants led to the end of North as a suburb of Philadelphia. North Philadelphia's decentralized towns were gradually meshed into a sprawling network of the ubiquitous Philadelphia rowhouses. Many of the newly created neighborhoods retained the name of their ancestral towns and townships, for example, Northern Liberties was formerly Northern Liberties Township.

Industrial era

2600 Block of North Broad Street. Example of the late Victorian and Gothic stylizations of the German architects that designed buildings in North Philadelphia. Turrets like the one pictured still dot North Broad Street.

Philadelphia was one of the most important centers of manufacturing in the world between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries,^[2][3] and North Philadelphia is one of the sections of the city whose landscape was most deeply shaped by the industrial era. Its landscape still strongly reflects this heritage.

As the industrial age peaked in America, North Philadelphia became a working man's town. Upper North Philadelphia, Olney, Brewerytown, became major hubs of production. Large factories and industrial complexes were erected, covering vast swaths of city land. Thousands of row homes were constructed to house the burgeoning worker population. This expansion was also the impetus for breaking ground on the Broad Street Line subway, designed specifically to carry a passenger from the northern hub of Olney to Philadelphia City Hall in under 20 minutes. Major freight and passenger rail lines were built to intersect at the newly constructed North Broad Street Station and transmit cargo from the bustling factories. The completion of the BSL these major railways made the region a thriving hub of transportation. For a time, North Philadelphia station became the second most heavily trafficked rail station in the city, and the Olney Ave station the most used subway stop.

Along with many of Philadelphia's major manufacturing concerns came the nearby estates of the wealthy industrialists who had founded them. Lower North Philadelphia in particular housed a number of the nouveau riche: ambitious first or second generation immigrants or those that had made their fortunes starting manufacturing firms. Many were German Jews who had settled in the area, later founding companies and building synagogues. For a time, an age of opulence and grand architecture returned to North Philadelphia, centered on what is now zoned as the Historic North Broad Street Mansion and Speculative Housing Districts. Gentlemen's clubs, upscale restaurants and shopping districts grew in this southern tier for a brief moment in history, peaking in the late 1920s. Upper-class foremen and executives lived farther north along Broad Street, in what is now the West Diamond Street Townhouse Historic District. Thriving commercial districts sprung up along the great northern avenues: Columbia (renamed Cecil B. Moore Avenue), Susquehanna, Dauphin, Erie, Lehigh and Olney, to name a few. However, just as this wealth was so suddenly gained, it would just as suddenly be lost. The new money culture proved to be an unstable foundation for a lasting community, and like so many constructs of the Gilded Age, this core of wealth was doomed to rot.

Post-industrial economic decline

Over the next few decades The Great Depression, outsourcing and white flight took their toll on North Philadelphia in a fashion similar to other major US cities of the mid to late 20th century, if not in a more pronounced fashion. While residential corridors like Hope Street and Delhi Street had long housed primarily African-American residents, white residents moved out of the city as waves of poor blacks moved in. During the 40s and 50s, much of the area was racially integrated, although smaller streets were usually completely black or white. Whites began to move out slowly at first in the late 1940s as these residents became more affluent and Northeast Philadelphia began to develop new housing with lawns and conveniences such as modern plumbing. In most cases African Americans moved into the vacant houses and as this began to increase, true white flight began. Increasingly, people moved out of North Philadelphia not solely to move into newer homes, but to avoid facing decreasing property values and increased criminality. For a time, Lower North Philadelphia became a great center of black culture and music, most notably jazz. Many commercial corridors were maintained for decades, and a great many musicians came to North Philadelphia, like John Coltrane and Stan Getz. By 1964, North Philadelphia was the city's center of African American culture, home to 400,000 of the city's 600,000 black residents.^[4]

As the century marched past middle age, many other problems symptomatic of all US cities of the time came about. Many of the neighborhoods in North Philadelphia sprung up around one monolithic factory, which was the center of the community's income. Each factory that closed down devastated its host neighborhood. In this way, the wave of national industrial collapse caused the rapid break up of numerous "factory neighborhoods" in the predominantly working class North Philadelphia.

Neighborhoods

North Philadelphia, like many other sections of Philadelphia, is highly racially and socially segregated block by block. A noticeable pattern in the area is that, in the southern part of North Philadelphia (south of about Erie Avenue), Germantown Avenue (which later becomes North 6th Street) is the dividing point between the areas that are predominantly Black (to the west), and the areas that are predominantly Hispanic (to the east). However, this is slowly changing, with a small yet growing population of Hispanics living west of Germantown Avenue, and already significant population of Blacks living east of that street.

The area between Broad Street and 5th Street is increasingly becoming a "transition zone" between the larger predominantly black area west of Broad, and the smaller predominantly Hispanic area east of 5th. This section of Philadelphia has nearly equal populations of Hispanics and Blacks, although Germantown Avenue is still seen as a divider street, with areas between Germantown Avenue and Broad Street "more black" and areas between Germantown Avenue and 5th street "more Hispanic".

East of Front street, blocks start to get more diverse, with significant populations of Hispanics, blacks and whites. Also, as the Hispanic community continues to grow eastward, the ethnic white enclaves of eastern North Philadelphia continue to shrink.

See

North Philadelphia is usually described as an area north of Center City, between Front Street and Fairmount Park.

Sub-sections include:

• Lower North Philadelphia - Spring Garden Street to the south and Dauphin Street to the north
• Upper North Philadelphia - Dauphin Street to the south and Wyoming Avenue to the north

Blight and Brownfields

Today, many remnants of these more prosperous eras remain. However, many historic buildings have collapsed, either from neglect or demolition, and thousands more still lie abandoned. A handful have become protected historic properties, and 67 properties and districts were added to the National Register of Historic Places. Several blocks, with numerous old mansions, have been re-zoned as the aforementioned historic districts. A great many extravagant churches were built over the years, as well. Some still stand, but all too often money is scarce to preserve their deteriorating architecture. The trolley lines that once criss-crossed the northern streets and linked the region with the rest of Philadelphia were shut down by SEPTA in 1992. Immense, abandoned factories sit idle; warehouses lie empty; and disused heavy rail lines scar the landscape. The names of the old industrialists, such as Gratz, Poth, Uber, Bouvier and Schmidt, still adorn many buildings and street signs in the area but are otherwise foreign to many modern-day residents.

The Neighborhood Transformation Initiative or NTI, was a City program launched by Mayor John F. Street. The program called for the demolition of thousands of condemned buildings and the construction of large-scale, medium-density public housing, with restoration efforts to be employed on salvageable houses. Many blocks of old rowhouses have been bulldozed and replaced with suburban-style tract houses. This program has radically changed some sections of North Philadelphia. Some charge that little effort was made to save a number of historic buildings, others that NTI was needed to change blighted neighborhoods. The lasting effects of the program remain to be seen.

Notable people

• Tierra Whack
• Cecil B. Moore
• Jaguar Wright
• Billy Paul
• Rasheed Wallace
• Teddy Pendergrass
• Lil Uzi Vert
• Bernard Hopkins
• M. K. Asante
• Blanche Calloway
• Cassidy
• John Coltrane
• Bill Cosby
• Freeway
• Young Gunz
• Vivian Green
• Kevin Hart
• Meek Mill
• Lee Morgan
• Ursula Rucker
• Jill Scott
• Monnette Sudler
• Walter E. Williams
• Maalik Wayns
• Kyle Lowry
• Danny Garcia
• Eddie Alvarez
• Gabriel Rosado (boxer)
• Pedro "Peedi Crakk" Zayas - rapper
• Kahleah Copper

Redevelopment and gentrification

View of North Philadelphia from One Liberty Observation Deck

Some areas, like Olney, Allegheny and Erie, still have relatively active communities, but even they are often troubled by drugs, crime and/or social underfunding. Allegheny West has advanced, mostly from the support of some of the last industries in North Philadelphia, such as Pep Boys, which is headquartered in the neighborhood.

Several parts of North Philadelphia, especially those that border the Center City district, have recently been experiencing varying levels of gentrification. Once economically divested neighborhoods like Brewerytown, Francisville, Northern Liberties, Poplar and West Kensington have seen large scale development break ground. Other regions have seen virtually no change, save the rising housing values that have accompanied increased attention in urban markets. Many residents of communities in North Philadelphia have voiced resistance towards these gentrifying forces, viewing the sudden investment as an invasion that threatens the traditional character of the neighborhoods.

Racial demographics

^[7]

• Non-Hispanic Black: 169,494 (49.8%)
• Hispanic or Latino of any race: 103,806 (30.5%)
• Non-Hispanic White: 34,375 (10.1%)
• Asian & Pacific Islander: 17,017 (5.0%)
• Mixed or Other: 14,635 (4.3%)
• Native American: 1,021 (0.3%)

Most of North Philadelphia's population is made up of African Americans and Puerto Ricans.^[8] The eastern half of North Philadelphia has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in the country, this section of North Philadelphia is over 75% Puerto Rican, and over half of Philadelphia's Puerto Rican population resides in this section of the city. North Philadelphia also has a high concentration of Black Muslims.^[8] The area also has significant Irish and other White Americans, Dominican, Haitian, Cuban, Korean and Polish populations, among others.^[8] About half of the population lives below the poverty line.^[8]

Public education

Public and Charter schooling in North Philadelphia is handled by the School District of Philadelphia. The region is divided into several "clusters," which administer individual schools. By region, these clusters are:

Lower North Philadelphia

• William Penn (William Penn High School closed in June 2010)
• Strawberry Mansion
• Murrell Dobbins C.T.E.
• A. Philip Randolph C.T.E.
• Franklin (current closed for asbestos removal)
• Masterman
• Roberts Vaux (now a Big Picture Charter School)

Upper North Philadelphia

• Gratz (now a Mastery Charter School)
• Edison

Olney/Oak Lane

• King
• Olney
• Central
• Philadelphia High School for Girls ("Girls High")

YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School, which is chartered by the School District of Philadelphia, is also located in North Philadelphia, just south of William Penn High School.

The Mastery Charter Schools system operates the Clymer School in North Philadelphia.^[13] The system opened the Mastery Charter Lenfest Campus (7–12) in September 2001 in an office building in North Philadelphia. The school moved to Old City in Center City in 2002.^[14]

North Philadelphia has the largest concentration of Charter Schools in Philadelphia

Post-secondary education

North Philadelphia hosts a number of institutions of higher learning.

• La Salle University
• Community College of Philadelphia
• Messiah College, Philadelphia Campus
• Temple University
• Harcum College at Congreso.^[15]

Libraries

There are thirteen branch libraries of the Philadelphia Free Library located in North Philadelphia.

Museums and cultural sites

• Church of the Advocate
• Philadelphia Doll Museum
• Wagner Free Institute of Science
• The Blue Horizon - closed
• The Village of Arts and Humanities
• New Freedom Theatre

Uptown Theater is an iconic part of the music scene of North Philadelphia. It was a springboard for many notable artist of our time.^[16]