York Avenue

Feb 5, 20212 min read

Ever drive, walk or bike south on 4th St. and notice how, between Wood St. and Vine St., the road widens on the right and then gradually thins back into its original width within that one block? That’s not just a quirk of crazy angle parking - that block-long half-street is all that remains of York Avenue.

For most of its life, York Ave. ran from 4th & Vine St. to 5th & Spring Garden St. In the mid to late 1800’s, York Ave. was a well-traveled highway through a bustling neighborhood.

Where York Ave., Wood & 4th St. met, there used to be an 85 foot high flagpole with a large Native American figure on top, supposedly put up in 1819 to commemorate the last Lenni Lenape council held in Philadelphia. This was also the starting point of (Old) York Road, laid out beginning in 1711 to connect Philadelphia to New York City.

The flagpole and statue were replaced on several occasions, in 1835, 1854 and, for the last time, in 1894. The last record of the pole is in a 1920 article in The Bulletin.

"Where Wood street cuts York avenue and Fourth street there stands a tall white flagpole, surmounted by an enormous weather-vane representing an Indian with bow and quiver, holding one arm outstretched…. That pole, which is still standing, is eighty-five feet from ground to truck. The Indian figure is nine and one-half feet high; it stretches nine feet from the rear end of the bow to the outstretched hand....."

There do not seem to be any accounts of when the pole was finally taken down or the whereabouts of the statue.

So what happened to York Avenue? After it’s heyday, York Avenue went into extreme disrepair. The area became a slum. Wooden houses survived up into the 1960s.

In the early 1970's the part of York from Spring Garden to Callowhill St. was destroyed as part of the Callowhill redevelopment project. In the 1980’s, the eastern portion of the Vine St Expressway was built and took out the southern portion of York Ave, leaving the little sliver of it where it meets 4th St. A plaque (final photo) on the Belgian Block stones near the corner of 4th & wood commemorates this lost piece of our history.