Nameless, not aimless
By Michael Roberts
2200 block of Madison Square
Photography by Michael Bryant
A couple of years ago, I bought the shell of what had been a typical red brick, 19th-century rowhouse in Southwest Center City. None of my acquaintances in Bella Vista, the neighborhood where I was renting, could hide their disdain.
They felt sorry for me, sorry that I wasn't going to be as fortunate as they, since Bella Vista now had everything a city neighborhood could hope to offer -- eclectic shops; exotic, ethnic, mostly affordable restaurants; good services; two supermarkets in addition to the Italian Market; and, of course, lots of pretty houses.
Most were renovated, but even the ones that remained untouched were swept up by the ongoing real estate frenzy and were often going for more than the inflated asking price. Since I knew I would end up ripping apart anything I bought, I figured I'd be pretty dumb to buy someone else's improvements.
That's how I ended up on the west side of Broad Street, in a section of South Philly that for many years had been, I was told, a "no-man's-land." Antea, my 19-year-old niece, came once and said she'd never visit again, though she has changed her mind. My suburban friends were impressed that I was urban pioneering. After all, I'm not 25 anymore, and this purchase was not a "starter" house. But I remembered what Bella Vista had been like 15 years ago, when I used to come to Philly to visit my brother: maybe not as dilapidated as much of my new neighborhood is, but certainly not as sparkly or vibrant as it is today. I figured there must be another neighborhood waiting to happen.
My new neighborhood is called, for lack of a better name, Southwest Center City. It encompasses the quadrant between South Street and Washington Avenue, extending west from Broad Street to the Schuylkill. It's sometimes known as South Central Philadelphia, less frequently BeSo (below South), and often South of South, which is what the neighborhood association's acronym, SOSNA, stands for. Real-estate agents like to list the area as Graduate Hospital. In the '70s the Redevelopment Authority tried the moniker Victoria Park. Who's Victoria? What park are they talking about? The name never stuck.
So, in a city where 395 neighborhood names have been in use during the last 350 years, I moved into a neighborhood that has, instead of a name, a mere geographic designation.
And it seems this part of the city never had a name. The western pocket of the area has been called Schuylkill and Devils Pocket, but I haven't found any name corresponding to the rest of the area, the anonymous expanse of rowhouses extending east to Broad Street.
The neighborhood seems to have begun its life in transition, mostly down and out of memory. People walked or drove around, not through it.
The area south of South Street was solidly built up following the Civil War. It was a neighborhood of immigrants. In 1870, 17th Street was almost entirely Irish, but it remained homogeneous for only one generation. By 1900, 60 percent of the residents on 17th Street were African Americans from North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. Whites, born in Pennsylvania, second-generation Irish Americans, made up the remainder. In 1910 the neighborhood was 90 percent African American, as the influx from the South continued. Christian Street had grander houses but changed to a neighborhood of renters.
"This neighborhood holds a lot of history," says Kim Brown, a neighbor who has planted two gardens on vacant lots on Catharine Street. "It was, I think, an elite black neighborhood. You can see it in all the churches."
The neighborhood is, in fact, home to at least 13 churches, most built in the late 19th century by Irish, Italian and German immigrants, but now home to black Protestant congregations. St. Charles Borromeo, an imposing Baroque structure with two towering campaniles at 20th and Christian, was built in honor of an Italian saint for an Italian community. It now ministers to an African American Catholic congregation.
None of the churches in Southwest Philly are small, (although today there are several storefront congregations). Grand edifices show lots of stained glass, built mostly in somewhat fanciful Romanesque and Gothic styles. At 19th and Fitzwater is Union Baptist, the church in whose choir sang the young Marian Anderson.
The first African American hospital, Mercy Hospital, opened in 1907, was expanded in 1919, and remained in the neighborhood until it merged with Douglass Hospital in 1948. Rosengarten Chemical Works, on the site of the Marian Anderson Community Center, occupying the entire block from 17th to 18th Street, was a large employer, as was Bower Chemical at 29th and Grays Ferry Avenue, next to the Peco gas works. And Center City with its many businesses was just a few blocks' walk. This was a working neighborhood.
In the 1930s, the neighborhood was redlined. No insurance, no mortgages, no home ownership. Over a period of 40 years, some owners, unable to sell, reluctant to perform any maintenance on rentals that generated meager income, neglected their properties. Eventually many were abandoned.
All that began to change when the boomer generation launched its escape from suburbia. The first neighborhoods to benefit from rediscovery were the least blighted.
With nothing else left to rehabilitate between Center City and Washington Avenue, Southwest Center City is now getting the attention of prospective homeowners as well as developers. The impression of Markey Ferreira, a broker with Center City Real Estate, who lives in the neighborhood, is that the majority of people seeking to buy a home in the area are young, professional couples without kids and empty nesters, people like me. Most are white.
"You find out you have things in common with people" not like you, says Kim Brown.
"One of the reasons I bought in the neighborhood," says Gary Spahn, a self-described zoning activist, "is its large inventory of existing housing. As long as the new construction conforms to the proportions of existing rowhouses, the neighborhood will maintain its charm.
"It's all about keeping the cornices, isn't it?"
With a stable population will come services -- supermarkets, shopping, restaurants and hopefully some movie houses. Our part of South Street is already more active. One hopes that the rejuvenation of Broad Street as the Avenue of the Arts will trickle as far south as Washington Avenue. What all this activity amounts to is the creation of a vibrant neighborhood.
Who can tell, it might finally even get a proper name.
Michael Roberts is a writer and chef living in Southwest Center City.