You may be wondering, why pick a seemingly random year to look back at our neighborhood. 1914 was the year WWI began. It as also the year that Christ Church, whose parish included all of Old City, did a complete survey of the neighborhood. Young women were sent with detailed surveys, going door to door, from the river to 7th St and Vine to Walnut St. The results give fascinating insights into an early 20th century neighborhood.
Old City had a mix of factories, offices, stores and homes. It's residents were a mix of native born and immigrants. 58,935 people worked in the neighborhood and 3,522 resided there, some of whom also worked there. Residents included 1,276 Catholics, 502 Protestants, 1037 Jews and 707 unclassified.
Among the residents, the most crowded block was bounded by Front & 2nd, Vine & Race St. On that single block, 987 people lived, almost half of them children. The most common ethnicities reported were Polish, Russian & German. Almost no one lived between Market & Walnut St. Only 3 black families were described in the survey.
Among neighborhood workers, 1,971 were in the shoe industry, 3,801, clothing; 1,334, tobacco; and 833, wool. More than 24,000 worked in offices, many in the blocks south of Market St. Approx. 30,000 workers commuted via the ferries from N.J.
There were 4 churches, a Friends Meeting House, but no synagogue to serve Jewish residents. Church membership totaled 2150. Many in the neighborhood were poor and there were many charitable organizations to provide aid.
According to this report, the chief source of crime were the 65 saloons and 7 wholesale liquor distributors in the neighborhood. Police shut down 3 hotels in 1914 and 3 others routinely rented the same room several times in a single night. Police made 2,745 arrests in the area in 1914, most for public drunkenness. One police station and 3 firehouses served the area. With 370 streetlights, Old City was one of the best lit neighborhoods in the city.
In 1914, 1422 children were on public school rolls, but only 1182 attended. There was no public library, but there were four movie theaters. There were 10 hotels in the parish, and 15 "lodging houses", which provided housing for 404 residents. There were more than 40 tenements in the neighborhood.
With no playgrounds in the area, children went to the schoolyards and to the Race St and Chestnut St. recreation piers. Death rates in the parish were high, largely due to overcrowding and "unsanitary housing".
Old City was showing many of the signs of urban decline. The survey showed that many of it's residents lived in poor conditions; the neighborhood had fallen on hard times. The following decades brought much change to the neighborhood. The construction of the Delaware River (B. Franklin) Bridge removed many buildings in the neighborhood, including a church and a public school. The Great Depression caused many businesses to close. After WWII, city planners turned their attention to urban blight. Indirectly, they were addressing the issues raised in the 1914 report. Their redevelopment plans would ultimately lead to such major changes as the creation of Independence Hall National Historic Park, I-95 and the Vine St Expressway, Penn's Landing and more.
1915 maps of area
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