Historic Philadelphia

from the project, and the Elkins and Widener
transit interests soon merged the street car
system with the high speed lines. Excavation
began for the Market Street Subway in 1903.
The first girder for the Market Street Elevated
west of the Schuylkill was put in place in
1905. The El, as the public nicknamed it, was
connected to the subway in 1907, and twocar
trains began running between Upper
Darby and Fifteenth Street. Service was
opened as far east as Second Street on August
3, 1908. A few months later, trains began running
over the Delaware Avenue elevated to the
Market-Chestnut station and the South Street
Ferries station. The base fare for trolleys, El
and subway was raised in 1908 from five
cents to two rides for fifteen cents. It wasn’t
raised again until 1947.
On Fourth Street below Walnut in 1904, a
seventeen-year-old immigrant opened a real
estate office. He had been born in 1887 in a
Ukrainian village, was brought to this country
by his parents in 1896, grew up above his
father’s grocery at Sixth and Spruce, and
Americanized his name from Avrum Moishe
Grunfeld to Albert Monroe Greenfield. He
dropped out of Central High School at fifteen,
clerked for a real estate lawyer, then borrowed
$500 from his mother and $500 from his
brother to go into business for himself. Within
ten years he would be worth $15 million.
Greenfield anticipated the growth that the
Market Street Elevated would bring. He
bought lots in West Philadelphia. When bigger
real estate companies woke up, they had
to deal with Greenfield to assemble parcels for
development. Greenfield also formed a company
to develop stores on Fifty-second Street
between Market and Spruce, and was acquiring
land in other underbuilt areas like Logan
and the Northeast. When he was twenty-one,
he was making $60,000 a year. (Public school
teachers started at $564 a year.) He was on his
way to becoming one of the most powerful
men in twentieth century Philadelphia.
WAR & HOAGIES
On Monday, June 13, 1910, a man flew in an
aeroplane from New York to Philadelphia. He
had planned to do it on Saturday the 11th, but
the daring technological achievement had to be
postponed, because it rained. Flying on the
Sabbath was out of the question, but on
Monday, Charles Hamilton, the aviator, made
the trip, in one hour and forty-eight minutes,
landing at Front Street and Erie Avenue while a
crowd of ten thousand cheered. He flew back to
New York, too, and collected the $10,000 cash
prize offered for the feat by the Philadelphia
Public Ledger and the New York Times. In 1911,
flier Lincoln Beachey not only came by aeroplane
from New York to Philadelphia, but,
when he got here, he circled City Hall tower.
A Philadelphia booster studied Census
data and reported that of 264 industries
classified in the 1910 Census, all but 53 were
represented in Philadelphia. He estimated that
every two seconds, the city produced, among
other things, 30 cigars, 20 loaves of bread, 20
pairs of stockings, 30 bushels of wheat, two
saws, three yards of carpet, 100 printed
newspapers, and a new hat. A new trolley car
was built every hour and a new locomotive
every two and a half hours.
There had been brief but nasty transit
strikes in 1895 and 1909, as the city’s street
car lines were consolidated and electrified.
The Carmen’s Union voted to strike in January,
1910, unless Philadelphia Rapid Transit
Company reinstated certain fired workers and
✧
The trackbed of the Frankford Elevated,
under construction in 1919, stretches south
from the platform of the Church Street
station. In the distance, the Juniata Park
neighborhood is still fields. Mayor J.
Hampton Moore personally took the
controls of the first train when the
Frankford El started service on November
4, 1922. The line ran from Bridge Street
and Frankford Avenue to Front and Arch
Streets, where it connected with the Market
Street Subway and over the Market Street
El to Upper Darby. A spur marked
“Ferries” took trains across Delaware
Avenue and down the waterfront to South
Street, connecting with four ferry lines to
Jersey. A subway-digging outburst ensued.
Trains started rolling in a Broad Street tube
from City Hall to Olney on September 1,
1928, and the tunnel was being extended
southward.
COURTESY OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, DEPARTMENT
OF RECORDS, CITY ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER V
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