Historic Philadelphia

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Top: John C. Bullitt (1824-1902).
COURTESY OF THE PRINT & PICTURE COLLECTION, THE
FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA (FLP).
Right: South Third Street, looking north
from Chestnut Street, circa 1869. John C.
Bullitt’s office at No. 32 is the house
with the dormer window in the center of
the block.
DRINKER
BIDDLE &
REATH LLP
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY COMPANY OF
PHILADELPHIA (LCP).
HISTORIC PHILADELPHIA
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Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP has been a
leading law firm for 150 years, representing
clients ranging from the Union Oil Company,
the University of Pennsylvania, and Western
Union Telegraph in the late 1800s, to Delphi
Automotive Systems Corporation, WorldGate
Communications, Inc., and Merck & Co. in the
1990s. Its growth parallels that of the city, state,
and nation as the firm moved from an industrial
age to that of advanced technology. Drinker
has built a deserved reputation through its
history of successfully handling unusually
difficult cases and transactions, along with its
commitment to understanding the firm’s
clients, their industries, and businesses.
Established by a young Kentucky attorney
in 1849, Drinker has grown to be one of the
largest firms headquartered in Philadelphia
with more than 350 attorneys. In November
1999, Drinker combined law practices with
the New Jersey-based firm, Shanley & Fisher.
In the late 1840s, Philadelphia was a prime
location for industry and textile production.
With the city poised for an era of accelerated
progress, John C. Bullitt, an attorney from
Louisville, Kentucky, relocated to Philadelphia
to set up his law practice.
Among Bullitt’s early clients were several
local transportation companies, including the
Camden Ferry Company, the Philadelphia &
Reading Railroad, and the William Cramp &
Sons Ship & Engine Building Company. By
the turn of the century, Bullitt’s law office represented
one-fifth of the region’s fifty largest
industrial companies.
But John Bullitt also recognized that
Philadelphia was more than just an industrial
power. He formed a close relationship with
his business neighbor Drexel & Co., an
investment banking company whose association
with the firm would last nearly a century.
By the late 1800s, the practice of business
law was becoming increasingly specialized
and centered on the organization and reorganization
of corporations and preparing public
issues of securities. The Bullitt law office had
acquired a reputation as one of the first to
specialize in these areas of business law
through the firm’s representation of the
Tidewater Pipe Company, and the railroad
reorganizations of the Reading Railroad and
the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad.
In the first decade of the twentieth century,
Philadelphia grew to a city of 1.3 million people,
the third largest in the United States. After
the death of John Bullitt in 1902, several significant
events reshaped the firm, most notably
the addition of lawyers Henry S. Drinker, Jr.,
Charles J. Biddle and Thomas Reath.
The two largest clients that Charles Biddle
brought to the firm were among Philadelphia’s
oldest companies—the Philadelphia Saving
Fund Society, the first savings bank in the
U.S.; and the Philadelphia Contributionship
for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire,
the nation’s first successful mutual fire insurance
company that became a property and
casualty company.
President Roosevelt’s New Deal created a
greatly expanded administrative law practice at