I've seen photos taken from the front porch of Calvary UMC c 1906 looking west -- COWS in the meadow!!
Not surprising... the area was only "opened up" in about 1870 when the replaced the ferry across the Schuylkil with bridges and laid the Street railways west -- but they ended at 40th street.
Levit was the one who pioneered the "vast tracts of land" model of development. Before that, development occurred on a much smaller scale, usually no more than a block or two at a time. The market just wasn't there to support it.
My aunt and uncle built a house in Bustleton (far North East) behind the Methodist Church on Bustleton Ave... in the middle of a cornfield -- in 1957! They had no neighbors except crows until 1963.
And remember, Byberry (the assylum) was a working farm up until about 1980 -- (I forget just when Judge Brodrick finally closed it down.)
The City County Consolidation Act of 1852 gave the City lots of room to grow. It never really consumed all of that space and today we find that it is actually "re-greening." That is, population density is dropping and many of the core city rows are becoming empty lots again. It's an interesting process of development. Quite different from the old Maya cities where generation upon generation built upon the foundations of the previous. Excavating sites in Philadelphia would only lead to a "Motel of the Mysteries" type "find" -- as the only thing under the vast majority of the buildings is "land fill."
T.T.F.N. William H. Magill [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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