Historic Philadelphia

Handlers of Girard’s estate developed houses
on his old farm in the Neck about 1906. The
farmhouse stands in a public park at Twenty-
First and Shunk Streets.
Only five afternoons after Girard died,
Mayor Benjamin Richards presided at a
meeting at the Merchants Coffee House (a new
name for the old City Tavern at Second and
✧
Left: A village in Roxborough Township
grew between the Domino Road and Sherr’s
Lane, because of the mills burgeoning along
the Schuylkill. The Schuylkill Canal reached
the area, sometimes called Flat Rock, in
1819, allowing barges to bring flour, coal,
and produce down the river. It also made
water power possible for heavy machinery,
and the first mill was operating by 1820.
The town would become a major textile and
paper producer. (This “modern” photo shows
the canal in 1901.) In spring of 1824, after
a couple of meetings and some
disagreement, the citizens named the town
Manayunk, an Anglicization of the Lenape
name for the river; it means “drinking
place.” Today its Main Street and old mills
house trendy shops, restaurants and, yes,
drinking places.
COURTESY OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, DEPARTMENT
OF RECORDS, CITY ARCHIVES.
Below: It took from 1823 to 1829 to
construct the Eastern State Penitentiary,
designed by John Haviland, on the
topographical bump known as Cherry Hill.
Its grim corridors were lined with the new
1820s cure for criminal behavior, solitary
confinement cells.
COURTESY OF THE URBAN ARCHIVES, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY.
CHAPTER III
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