Historic Philadelphia

THE CORRUPT & CONTENTED CITY
THE
NINETIES
Architect John McArthur died in 1890 after devoting twenty-one years of his life to erecting what
some critics called a “ponderous hulk” and “an architectural nightmare,” but others proclaim “perhaps
the greatest single effort of late nineteenth century American architecture.” Like scrapple, string
bands, Frank Rizzo, and other Philadelphia institutions, people either love City Hall or hate it.
Edwin S. Stuart became mayor in 1891. When he was thirteen, Ned Stuart had gone to work
sweeping floors at the bookstore of W. A. Leary and bought the business in 1876, two years after
Leary died. The store was nationally famous when it closed in 1969 after 132 years of operation.
Stuart was the only Philadelphia mayor ever elected governor of Pennsylvania, in 1907.
City Council overrode Mayor Stuart’s veto in 1892 and allowed the street car lines to replace
horses with overhead electric wire. There were only four traction companies left, due to mergers,
and three of them, combined, controlled ninety-four percent of the trackage. It was the right
moment for Elkins and Widener to move. With state and city permission, they formed the Union
Traction Company, and bought or leased all of the street car lines.
Charles F. Warwick was elected mayor in 1895. Boies Penrose wanted to be mayor, and boss
Matthew Quay and the state Republicans backed him, but the city organization headed by David
Martin feared his growing power. According to some of Philly’s juicier political lore, the machine
leaders got their hands on a photograph of Penrose emerging from one of the city’s more popular
brothels, and threatened to distribute it to the newspapers, so Warwick became the nominee.
Dave Martin’s success in hustling Warwick into the mayor’s office backfired. Quay and Penrose
called in every political favor in their ample pockets, and shifted their man, Israel Durham, into
the city party boss chair. In 1897, Penrose was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he would serve
for twenty-three years until his death.
New department stores were appearing. Rachel Lit Wedell established a dress shop on Eighth
Street above Market in 1890, and in 1893, her brothers, Samuel and Jacob, joined her in building
a store at Eighth and Market. Rachel was always an active partner, but the store was named Lit
Brothers. Though the store evolved into a full-service department store, Rachel stuck with her old
marketing gimmick: if a woman bought feathers, ribbons or other trimmings, Rachel would apply
them to a hat without charge. The slogan “Hats Trimmed Free of Charge” so caught the fancy of
Philadelphians that any attempt to remove it from over the store’s main door elicited public cries
of anguish long after the service was abandoned. The Lit siblings bought three adjoining buildings
in 1895, expanded eastward store by store, and by 1907 owned the entire block, putting a new
corner building at Seventh Street to duplicate the original at Eighth.
Other brothers arrived in 1894, seven guys from Milwaukee: Jacob, Isaac, Daniel, Charles, Ellis,
Bernard, and Louis—the Gimbel Brothers. Their father, Adam Gimbel, had come from Bavaria and
set up a store in Vincennes, Indiana, in 1842. Adam married a Philadelphia girl, and the seven sons
were educated here. The brothers started a store in Milwaukee in 1888 before making it big in
Philly. In 1910, they opened a New York store. In 1920, Ellis Gimbel would stage the nation’s first
department store Thanksgiving Day parade on Market Street. Rival merchant Macy’s began parading
in New York in 1924.
Another set of brothers on Market Street was Nathan, Samuel, and Joseph Snellenberg. Their
father, Joseph, had shops at various Philadelphia locations starting in 1838. In the 1890s, the family
moved to the Girard estate property on the south side of Market between Eleventh and Twelfth,
and by 1900 employed nearly two thousand persons.
The nineteenth century ended with Mayor Samuel H. Ashbridge entering City Hall. Nicknamed
“Star Spangled Sam” for his flamboyant patriotic oratory, the new mayor was alleged to have told a
✧
The first aerial photograph of Philadelphia,
taken from a balloon above Memorial Hall
in Fairmount Park on July 4, 1893. The
white dots on the banks of the Schuylkill are
picnickers. The poles along the rail of the
Girard Avenue Bridge are fireworks for the
evening. Note the unfinished tower of City
Hall; the reservoir where the Art Museum
now stands; the observation tower on
Lemon Hill; excursion steamboats on the
river, and Thirty-fourth Street under
construction next to the Zoo. The
photographer was William Nicholson
Jennings, riding in the basket of Eagle
Eyrie, the balloon of Samuel A. King,
Philadelphia’s foremost “aeronaut.”
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER V
91