Race St Pier

Jan 6, 20222 min read

In 1896, Philadelphia initiated a waterfront improvement project to widen Delaware Ave from 50' to 150' and construct piers at the ends of Chestnut, Arch and Race St. Delaware Ave was widened by filling in the river to expand the land and building a concrete bulkhead.

The Chestnut & Race Street Piers included public recreation

facilities in a pavilion on the upper level and dock space for ships on the lower level. The Chestnut St pier, was completed in 1896 and demolished in 1921. The second pier, at Race Street, opened in 1901 (1st & 2nd photos).

The Race Street Pier served as a recreational site for urban residents where they could enjoy fresh air and a vista without actually leaving the city. From the pier, visitors could watch the coming and goings of the harbor, such as the ferries leaving the Market Street pier for Camden, or the banana boats unloading at the adjacent pier to the south. During the summer, the waterfront offered cooler temperatures than the crowded neighborhoods.

From 1901, when the pier opened, until 1919 when structural problems led the city to close the upper deck, the recreation area of the pier housed a variety of functions. The better documented of these activities are its uses as a recreation center for urban youth and as a summer hospital for infants. Starting in the summer of 1910 (thru 1914), the Department of Public Health created facilities to care for sick infants by converting part of the piers at Chestnut and Race Streets as open air hospitals during the hottest months of summer. In the days before air conditioning, infants suffering from a high fever would have found some comfort with cooling fresh air. The Race St Pier housed the sickest infants in a 60 bed hospital.

In 1914, in response to outbreaks of the plague in Europe and parts of the U.S., the Philadelphia Bureau of Health erected a rat receiving station at the Race Street Pier and offered a bounty: two cents for each dead rat and five cents for live ones. By January 1, 1915, the Bureau reported that 5,238 rats had been turned in to the station. (3rd & 4th photos)

A fire damaged the outshore end of the pier in 1926 (6th photo), and in 1928, the city condemned the entire structure. In the 1930s (7th), however, the City of Philadelphia decided to rebuild the deteriorated structure rather than replace it. What they rebuilt was a stripped down, utilitarian structure (8th), which was used for unloading cargo from ships and later housed police- and fire-marine units, and removed in 1992.

The new Race Street Pier opened on May 12, 2011 as an area for recreation and public enjoyment.