Historic Philadelphia

✧
In 1925, in a speech accepting an honor
from the Franklin Institute, Elihu Thomson
(top, right) of General Electric Co.
mentioned that he had been first to
demonstrate the principles of radio
communication, in 1875 at Central High
School. He transmitted electricity from a
coil in Professor Edwin J. Houston’s first
floor laboratory to a brass doorknob in the
observatory ninety feet above. Both men
were Central alumni and faculty members.
The pair founded the Thomson-Houston
Electric Co. in 1883, which joined Thomas
A. Edison’s company in 1892 to form
General Electric. Shown here is Thomson’s
$47.91 pay voucher (top, left) for a month’s
teaching at Central in 1873.
PORTRAIT COURTESY OF THE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN
PORTRAITS. VOUCHER COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
HISTORIC PHILADELPHIA
78
1853 and got a job in a dry goods store. His
name was Justus C. Strawbridge. Eight years
later, he bought a clothing and yard goods
store on the northeast corner of Eighth and
Market Streets. He became friends with
another Mount Holly Quaker whose employer
supplied merchandise to Strawbridge. The
friend was Isaac H. Clothier. In 1868, they
leased a five story building at Eighth and
Market and went into business together. They
called the store, naturally, Strawbridge &
Clothier. They were right down the street from
a clothing store called Oak Hall, at Sixth and
Market, started in 1861 by a South
Philadelphian named John Wanamaker.
Philadelphia’s department store center was
beginning to take shape.
CENTENNIAL
TIME
Ground was broken for the new City Hall
on August 16, 1871. It was a quiet ceremony,
with no crowds or reporters present, because
there was so much squabbling over the
project. The new hall would replace the little
one built in 1791 at the east end of the
Independence Hall complex. Since 1860 there
had been arguments over the design and the
location. The site, Washington Square versus
Penn Square, was settled in the 1870
elections. The people chose Penn Square. The
next argument was whether there should be
one great building, blocking the Broad and
Market intersection forever, or four separate
buildings. The one building plan was finally
adopted. The cornerstone was laid with
Masonic ceremonies on July 4, 1874, and
work would continue through the rest of the
1870s. And the 1880s. And the 1890s.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the U. S.
Constitution in 1870 barred voting discrimination
because of race or color. When Daniel
M. Fox was elected mayor in 1869, he had
fired most policemen who were Republicans,
and replaced them with loyal Democrats like
himself. Fox ran for reelection in 1871, and
African Americans were expected to vote in
large numbers for Republican William S.
Stokley (a candy manufacturer nicknamed
Sweet William). And if Fox lost his job, so
would most policemen.
That’s why, as testimony in a later investigation
revealed, some policemen were at the
polls bright and early, dragging black voters
out of line. There were brawls at a polling
place at Sixth and Lombard and elsewhere. By
3 p.m., a black man was dead, hit with an ax;
five whites and seven blacks were injured.
At ten minutes to four, the disorder came to
a shocking conclusion, with the death of
Octavius V. Catto as he walked toward his
home at Eighth and South Streets. Catto was, at
age thirty-two, a prominent Episcopal layman,
a nationally known educator and a star baseball
player. He was coming from the Institute for
Colored Youth, at Ninth and Bainbridge
Streets, where he was head of the boys’
department. The Institute rivaled the Central
High School; it contained not only classrooms
but an exercise room, laboratories and a library