Historic Philadelphia

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Right: On the eve of the centennial Fourth
of July, crowds converged on brightly
illuminated Independence Hall. An
estimated three hundred thousand people
packed Chestnut Street and other streets.
When the tower bell struck midnight,
signaling the second century of
independence, one spectator reported that
“the whole town seemed to have broken out
in one mighty shout.”
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
Below: Memorial Hall, also known as the
Art Gallery, second smallest of the five
major Centennial buildings at 365-by-210
feet, cost $1.5 million and was the only
building designed to be permanent. It
still stands.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
HISTORIC PHILADELPHIA
82
lightning rods, scales, furniture, wire, paper,
felt, yarn, tacks, railroad switches, crackers,
chemicals: The list could go on. Somebody
coined the municipal slogan, “Workshop of
the World.” It didn’t seem an exaggeration.
The University of Pennsylvania began
building in West Philadelphia in 1871 and
would move there from Ninth Street. In
growing Fairmount Park, the Philadelphia
Zoo, the nation’s first, opened in 1874, and in
progress were park drives, landscaping and
plans for statuary. The Academy of Natural
Sciences built a $200,000 headquarters at
Nineteenth and Race in 1876.
The Pennsylvania Railroad had built a
freight depot on the south side of Market
Street between Thirteenth and Juniper in
1853, and in 1864, passenger service had
begun from the so-called Grand Depot. In
1874, with the new City Hall going up
virtually in the middle of the Pennsy’s tracks,
the railroad moved its terminal to West
Philadelphia. John Wanamaker had an option
to buy the huge building and move his store
there. But first, he let Dwight L. Moody and
Ira D. Sankey, the leading Christian
evangelists of the era, hold revival meetings in
the depot for two months. “The Lord’s
business first,” Wanamaker explained.
Wanamaker opened his store in the former
depot on March 12, 1877. Between 8 a.m.
and 8 p.m., 70,106 persons visited it.
THE GREAT EXHIBITION
The city designated 450 acres of west
Fairmount Park in 1873 for a grand observance
of the nation’s hundredth anniversary.
By May of 1876, the Centennial Exhibition
grounds held 249 structures, ranging from the
1,880 by 464 foot Main Building to six little
cigar stands, not to mention sixteen fountains,
a three-mile railroad, 153 acres of flower beds
and landscaping, and twenty thousand new
trees and shrubs, surrounded by three miles
of fencing with thirteen entrances. The cost
was nearly $7 million.
There were thirty-seven countries
exhibiting in the Main Building. Another
eleven had their own buildings, as did 19 of
the 37 United States. On the grounds were
large foreign food restaurants and stands
selling soda water and popcorn. There was a
steam monorail, three cents a ride. Daily
admission was fifty cents, exact change
required. That was expensive for a working
man’s family; Philadelphia cops, for example,
were paid $2.50 a day. (The mayor got $100
a week.)
President Grant opened the Exhibition on
May 10. A panel of international judges
awarded medals for various categories of art,