INTRODUCTION

Philadelphia is one of America’s most historic cities and has been hailed as the “Cradle of American Democracy.” As the birthplace and former capital of the United States, our great history is not merely displayed in important showpieces like Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell or the Constitution Center. Nor is it exclusively linked to any one of the city’s long list of American “firsts,” such as the first bank of the United States, the first public hospital, the first volunteer fire department, the first public lending library or the nation’s first public zoo. No, in Philadelphia, history is everywhere. From its skies to its culverted streams and from its roads to its rivers. From its buildings to its bedrock and from its charity to its crime, Philadelphia is history.

As the 135 square miles that make up modern Philadelphia were filling up with homes, industries and tangible ethnic barriers, the city’s physical landscape was forced into a metamorphosis. A smorgasbord of row homes, factories, stores, banks, churches, firehouses, police stations, schools, hospitals, theaters, parks, cemeteries and railroads—all clustered together like a shopping mall. It was this marriage of community, industry, economy and an almost unique sense of “Americanism” that gave Philadelphia the titles of “Workshop of the World,” “Athens of America” and, of course the “City of Brotherly Love.” But with its delicate scales so easily upset, the bigheaded city also presented its risk-takers with an unquenchable thirst for power and domination of this majesty, resulting in Philadelphia’s seasoned relationship with corruption.

It has been said that a good history, at least one with an enjoyable learnability, is a well-balanced story, comprising about equal parts joy and pathos. Since the nation’s founding, Philadelphia has embraced its vital role in American history, capitalizing on it whenever possible—both for the pity of its sorrows and the attention of its accomplishments. However, more than three centuries of politics, war, technology, economic changes and forceful population shifts have created the craggy landscape that is Philadelphia today. Therefore, its habit of recording its proud historical significance has waned almost completely away. Most American cities have shifted from their manufacturing roots, having learned the lessons of their older counterparts. But Philadelphia, the nation’s stubborn overachiever, never seemed quite able to forego these old-fashioned American values—industry, production, building. As the city’s biggest strength, this proud labor-based cultural trait has seemed to hang on through the generations and, for better or worse, has shaped the modern city’s collective face.

Given its proud patriotism and urban lineage, Philly is in a real kerfuffle. Philadelphians seem to have long possessed an almost vain sense of homegrown regality, stemming from the city’s primal habit of thriving on its own past. But today things are very different. Like anything that decays, Philadelphia’s appearance has changed slowly, not instantly. The half million row homes and mansions that used to belong to families whose names titled their streets are in various stages of decomposition. The shuttered factories that rise above that sea of squares and rectangles were once the employers of a city and the pioneers of American technology. However, three busy centuries have killed, buried, dug up and reincarnated Philadelphia many times over. And yet history has managed to hang on, in both physical and metaphysical forms. The Workshop of the World has decayed into a fascinating set of historical skeletal remains.

Nuances of Philadelphia’s stubborn culture are still very much alive in the second decade of the twenty-first century. And as before, old becomes new again as sections of the city recently thought of as hopeless ghettos—such as Brewerytown and Northern Liberties—are slowly seeding toward re-gentrification. The abundance of crumbling historic structures that clutter the city were part of the reason its mid-twentieth-century inhabitants fled to the suburbs. Ironically, today it is these same fragile structures that have become coveted by a new wave of history buffs. Recently, there has been a rejuvenation of interest in what had simply been the inconspicuous past to the last of the city’s pre–baby boomers. But to a curious new generation of millennials, the unsettling physical remains of this mysterious past are anything but boring.

As such, the act of exploring and photographing vacant buildings is by no means a new trend. But it would take the power of the Internet to fuel this little-known hobby into an over-the-top commercialized branding known as “Urban Exploration” or “Ruin Porn.” For many, the sheer act of trespassing somewhere they don’t belong is unfortunately the driving thrill. Some sadly take advantage of the dying structures by way of graffiti and vandalism. For others, the photographic opportunities are the interest. But when it comes to a fascination about American history, Philadelphia’s long list of abandoned sites has proven a mecca to its committed urban explorers.

The locations in this book were not necessarily selected for their individual histories—Philadelphia includes myriad other locations with interesting pasts. They were also not chosen based on size, age or condition—the city is host to hundreds of examples of historic architecture that range from freshly vacated to crumbled ruins. The locations presented here were selected because each is an arterial vein in Philadelphia’s beautiful body of history.

Without the vital existence of each of these entities, the city would not be the wonderful, enigmatic caricature of Americanism that it is today. There could be made many volumes chronicling Philadelphia’s mysterious abandoned sites. This book is merely an attempt to highlight one shade of this vibrant collage of American culture from the perspective of the rotting remains of the City of Brotherly Love.