How the Other Half Lives

Last week, I asked the question, “A Jacob Riis Eye Opening expose, photographed and written in 1890, its title is heard in the INXS song Devil Inside. What is it?” The answer was, “How the Other Half Lives.”

The book can be found online, and what I’ve read of it is fascinating. People back then were dealing with many of the same issues that we deal with today. Invasion of privacy, rights of government over people’s lives, high rates of juvenile crime.

The situation was summed up by the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor in these words: “Crazy old buildings, crowded rear tenements in filthy yards, dark, damp basements, leaking garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables converted into dwellings, though scarcely fit to shelter brutes, are habitations of thousands of our fellow-beings in this wealthy, Christian city.” “The city,” says its historian, Mrs. Martha Lamb, commenting on the era of aqueduct building between 1835 and 1845, “was a general asylum for vagrants.” Young vagabonds, the natural offspring of such “home” conditions, overran the streets. Juvenile crime increased fearfully year by year…In that year the Board ordered the cutting of more than forty-six thousand windows in interior rooms, chiefly for ventilation–for little or no light was to be had from the dark hallways. Air-shafts were unknown. The saw had a job all that summer; by early fall nearly all the orders had been carried out. Not without opposition; obstacles were
thrown in the way of the officials on the one side by the owners of the tenements, who saw in every order to repair or clean up only an item of added expense to diminish their income from the rent; on the other side by the tenants themselves, who had sunk, after a generation of unavailing protest, to the level of their surroundings, and were at last content to remain there…The basis of opposition, curiously enough was the same at both extremes; owner and tenant alike considered official interference an infringement of personal rights, and a hardship. It took long years of weary labor to make good the claim of the sunlight to such corners of the dens as it could reach at all. Not until five years after did the department succeed at last in ousting the “cave-dwellers” and closing some five hundred and fifty cellars south of Houston Street, many of them below tide-water, that had been used as living apartments. In many instances the police had to drag the tenants out by force.

Of particular interest is the chapter on The Color Line in New York, a fascinating (and remarkably liberal for its day) look at race in New York City in 1890. As for the book itself, here is the lowdown. Riis was a big Dickens fan, and it shows in his work. Anyhow, just a reminder that there is usually a lot more to a simple trivia question than an answer!

Philly History: Philly Rappers Involved in Cop Killing in 1996

Old School Philly rapper Steady B is heard rocking the mic in the above song, Serious, a song I was a big fan of as a teenager. That song, along with another one called Goin’ Steady, were his biggest hits. He faded into obscurity in the early 90s. In 1996, he and another Philly rapper, Cool C, who was best known for a song called “The Glamorous Life“, robbed a PNC bank in Philadelphia. Cool C (real name Christopher Roney) and a friend named Mark Canty actually went inside the bank, while Steady B drove the getaway car. When police officer Lauretha Vaird responded to the robbery, she was shot and killed by Roney (who still proclaims his innocence). She was the first female officer killed in the line of duty in Philadelphia’s history. This from the NY Times article that came out after the rappers were arrested:
Mr. McGlone, who uses the name Steady B., and Mr. Roney, known as Cool C., were boyhood friends who began rapping with Fresh Prince when that television star was known as Will Smith, said Mr. McGlone’s uncle, Lawrence Goodman….The arrests came as a surprise, Mr. Nicolo said, because “these are not hard guys.”

The police said Mr. Roney and Mr. Canty accosted three bank employees at gunpoint before the branch opened on Tuesday, demanded access to the vault but left without taking anything.

Cool C is currently on death row, and was scheduled to be executed in 2006, but had his execution stayed by Rendell. This from prodeathpenalty.com: On January 6, 1996, around 8:30 in the morning, Christopher Roney and accomplice Mark Canty entered a Philadelphia bank dressed as utility construction workers and forced several employees to open the bank vault at gunpoint. Canty went into the vault with two of the women while Roney held a third at gunpoint. Canty shouted to Roney, “Here comes the heat,” and Roney replied, “Don’t worry; I’ll take care of them.” At this time, Police Officer Lauretha Vaird, who was the first officer to respond to the silent alarm, approached the front door of the bank building. As she entered the bank, Roney fatally shot Lauretha in the abdomen and then ran past her through the front door. Meanwhile Canty fled from the bank through a side entrance, leaving his gun behind. Outside the bank, Roney exchanged gunfire with the second officer to arrive on the scene. Escaping the shootout, Roney jumped into a getaway vehicle, a green minivan driven by another accomplice, Warren McGlone, and the vehicle sped away. Later that morning the three men met at McGlone’s home to discuss the robbery. In the meantime, police found the abandoned getaway vehicle and various pieces of the robbers’ disguises. They also recovered two weapons lying on the ground outside the bank. One weapon was traced to a relative of Canty, who had discovered the weapon had been stolen. It had last been seen in Canty’s possession. The other gun was traced to a friend of McGlone, who had purchased the weapon for McGlone. After being taken in for questioning, Canty and McGlone confessed to participating in the robbery. Roney was sentenced to death and the two accomplices received life sentences. Lauretha was 43 years old and had served for 9 years. She was a single parent raising two sons.

Another Philly rapper later lent his two cents to the story, as G. Love recorded a touching tribute to Vaird called “Slipped Away”. A story on Action News a couple of months ago talked about her legacy, and interviewed one of her sons. You can see it here.

Bala Cynwyd Native Alexander Haig Dies

You knew that Haig was Reagan’s Secretary of State, but did you know that he went to St. Joe’s Prep and Lower Merion High School and worked at Wanamakers? Haig is a fascinating political figure. He worked for MacArthur in the Korean War and essentially ran the country when the Nixon presidency crumbled in 1974. He then had a brief, controversial reign as Reagan’s Secretary of State. Here is his obit in the New York Times.

The Dirty Truth About Wing Bowl

Emetophilia is a sexual fetish in which an individual is aroused by seeing other people vomit. And the largest congregation of emotophiliacs in the world assemble annually for Wing Bowl, hoping that their perverted desires are met by gargantuan wing-eaters and scantily clad strippers. These emetophiliacs are predominately angry men embittered by a lifetime of following Philadelphia sports teams (I am going to coin a new term here: emeto-masochists). A smattering of scantily clad sirens, hoping to get a quick rush of self esteem by exposing their greatest assets, populate the arena as well.

I arrived on the high one gets by staying up all night with friends, ready to tackle a new and unusual experience, combined with a fair amount of alcohol. We entered the arena, and as our buzzes wore off, our eyelids began to gain weight. That is because Wing Bowl is a 15 minute event stretched into a 2 ½ hour spectacle. The contestants’ lap around the arena floor takes an interminable amount of time. The first couple of guys to enter gain a fair amount of attention due to their scantily clad escorts, who occasionally satisfy the crowd’s incessant chants of “Show your wrists*!” It is initially amusing, but after you’ve seen the first eight pairs of fake wrists, you’ve seen them all.

Then as the crowd begins to to doze off, the Jumbotron displays the highlight of the 2001 Wing Bowl, when a losing contestant released a torrent of vomit that rivaled anything you emitted on your most drunken night of college. And the crowd goes wild, their emetophilian desires met.

I began to fall asleep, until a fan angrily screamed at to “Wake the heck up**!” (Apparently, I was sullying the integrity fo the event by falling asleep.) And so I awoke to what seemed like Dante’s seventh level of hell: slothful men, surrounded by women of vice, cheered on by the types of people who root for career ending injuries in football games, my faith in humanity irreparably damaged.

*Ok, so they were chanting something that sort of sounds like wrists. And the guy next to me chanted this at least 400 times, without ever uttering another sentence.

**He did not use the word “Heck.”

The Blizzard of ’09…1909

Interesting to note the last time we see near this much snow in December was almost exactly 100 years ago. It was Christmas Day, 1909, that the storm began, and it continued snowing for the next 24 hours. It is kind of funny to think that, as we constantly complain about travel delays, that they are nothing new. Numerous trains got stuck in the snow during this storm, with one train traveling from NY to Washington getting stuck on the tracks nearby for 12 hours while they replaced the engine, which had been damaged in the storm. I bet that was fun. I assume there was no way to keep the car warm with the engine off. Think about that the next time you’re whining about the fact your flight got delayed a half hour as you sit in a warm airport bar. Five people in Philly died due to the blizzard. There could have been a lot more deaths after a roof collapsed at a laundry business on 38th and Lancaster, but a miraculously, everyone survived:

Carrying a companion who had fainted from fright when the roof of the building, 3862-66 Lancaster avenue, collapsed under the weight of accumulated snow above the heads of herself and 12 other young women working in the Fairmont Laundry, Bessie Walker, of 3914 Walker street, stumbled down a wooden stairway and out into the street.

The toal accumulation was 21 inches. It was the December record until Saturday, when we received 23.2 inches. Saturday’s blizzard was the second greatest ever, after the Blizzard of ’96, when the city received an absurd 30.7 inches of snow.

Gimbel vs. Gimbel

Here’s something I stumbled across a couple of days ago that I thought was pretty cool. It’s a 1935 piece about the Gimbel family in TIME magazine.

President Bernard, most popular of the Gimbel clan, is friend to Gene Tunney and lesser celebrities, spends leisure hours entertaining richly on his Port Chester, N. Y. estate. Cousin Richard, no socialite, expresses himself by pride in his four children and by collecting the works of Edgar Allan Poe whose cottage on Brandywine Street he endowed and refurnished. Between Cousin Bernard and Cousin Richard bad feeling has long existed.

Old Philly Postcards: The Divine Lorraine

I suspect just about everyone Philadelphia knows about the Divine Lorraine, the spectacular building found on North Broad Street. It has been written about extensively, has inspired poetry, is photographed regularly by urban explorers, and it seems like the City Paper does a tribute every year or so. Hell, it’s even got its own facebook page. But most of what has been written about the Divine Lorraine seems to have been written about Father Divine, who purchased the building in 1948 and is undoubtedly a fascinating figure in Philadelphia history. But since so much has been written on the Lorraine in the years it was owned by Father Divine, I’ve decided to focus on the first 50 years of the Hotel, because a) that’s when the postcard was taken b) it is a cool and underappreciated part of its history and c) because this is my website, so I can do whatever I damn well please.

Apparently, there was a lot of money in Philadelphia in the 1890s, as it seems like all of the grand hotels I’ve been writing about in the past week were erected in within a ten year period. Interesting, seeing as this all occurred right after the Panic of 1893. The architect for the building was Willis G. Hale, an interesting fellow who married up to both join the upper class and ensure himself numerous commissions from Philly’s rich and famous. On his architectural style, the best bio I found on him said this: A follower of the High Victorian Gothic school, Hale was an architect without precedent. He built during the post-civil war era, a time known for its flamboyance, its over-complication and its overwhelming presence. Although he was certainly influenced by his mentors Sloan and MacArthur and his better-know peer, Frank Furness, Hale was an eclectic original.

Shortly after his completion of the Divine Lorraine, however, the Victorian style he used fell out of favor and there was a pronounced backlash, sort of like disco.

Willis Hale died in Philadelphia on August 29, 1907 completely penniless and out of favor in the architectural community. His achievements in the field were wholly disregarded and he was seen as a fleeting oddity, who no one would much miss. Unfortunately, public interest has never quite swayed back toward Willis Hale. There is little published information about his life and work and most of his buildings that were not reabsorbed for more modern uses have been torn down.

Ironically, at the time he died penniless, people staying in the spectacular building he had designed were among the most wealthy in the United States. The nouveau riche moved to North Philadelphia, and when their friends came to visit, they rented rooms at the glorious Hotel Lorraine (the “Divine” was not added until Father Divine bought the building), which featured modern amenities such as electricity and telephones. Though it was opened as luxury apartments, for reasons I cannot quite ascertain after studying it online, the Lorraine was converted into a luxury hotel only about 6 years after opening, and was a luxury hotel at the time of Hale’s passing.

According to the postcard, rooms were $2.00 and had 360 rooms, but there is no postmark, so I’m not sure when the postcard came out. The GM at the time was one Mr. Chas. Duffy and Fred L. Scholl was the Resident Manager. I’m prety sure they’re dead now. They’re not on facebook.

A great source of the Lorraine’s early history can be found in the book Broad Street North and South. I highly encourage you to a) buy this book and b) check out the awesome photos it has of the Lorraine in the early 20th century. OK, BE READY TO TOTALLY TRIP OUT BECAUSE THIS IS AWESOME. Check out the photo of the Cafe Lorraine (below), which according to the book, “had a six piece orchestra that played from 6:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. and starting at 9 p.m., had a cabaret and dancing.” Then you can compare it with the photo below it, which I am fairly confident is the exact same room (There were two 10th floor cafes, but I believe this is the same one).

Want something even trippier? Check out this urban explorer’s video of this same room, set to piano music, and watch it while looking at the old black and white photo. Too cool. Another cool video is this one, which shows the view from the roof. As for the Lorraine’s current status? Hard to say. It was slated to be renovated for apartments for your professionals and was partially gutted, but those plans seem to have stalled and now it’s unknown what will happen to the beloved building. Here’s some discussion about its future on phillyspeaks.

RELATED: When we are looking for great photos regarding Philly’s architecture, the first place we always turn is phillyskyline.com. The pics on there of the inside of the Divine Lorraine don’t disappoint, (Though we must say that we are a little sad that B-Love, the man behind the website, called it quits last week.)

Postcards from the Edge of Time

In case you missed it last week, I bought some 100 year old postcards of old Philadelphia landmarks and decided to do research on the buildings on the front of them. There is some very cool stuff here.

This is the best one. The history of the Divine Lorraine.

The Hotel Walton.

The Bellevue Stratford.

The Hotel Hanover.

The House for Orphans of Oddfellows.

Old Philly Postcards: The Bellevue Stratford

There is plenty of documentation on the old Bellevue-Stratford (above, in postcard I just bought), now known as Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue. According to Bellevuephiladelphia.com: The Bellevue-Stratford opened its doors in 1904 and became known worldwide as Philadelphia’s pre-eminent hotel, nicknamed “The Grande Dame of Broad Street.” Famed hotelier George C. Boldt (he also managed the Waldorf-Astoria in New York) wanted to build the best hotel of its time—and he did.

The price tag on the hotel was $8,000,000 (1904 dollars) which means that technically Samuel Dalembert is worth more than the Bellevue. The postcard I have is postmarked 1909, so the person who was staying there (Harry) was there when the place was just 5 years old. It has long been considered one of the premiere hotels in Philadelphia, if not the premiere hotel.

Famous guests include Jacob Astor, J.P. Morgan, William Jennings Bryan, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, and the Vanderbilt family in addition to countless socialites, luminaries and heads of state. Every US President since Theodore Roosevelt has visited The Bellevue.

Here’s more cool info on the early history of the Bellevue-Stratford: With a price tag of $8 million (real money in those days), the new hotel had more than 1,000 rooms and a staff of 800, including women “whose only duty is to act as trunk packers for the women guests, and who are skilled in putting away expensive dresses without mussing them.”

The hotel also included an elegant ballroom that boasted a moveable stage, lighting fixtures designed by Thomas Edison and a spectacular grand staircase. It quickly became the place for society events. Eleanor Dorrance’s debutante ball in 1926 is still legendary. Daddy Dorrance, president of the Campbell Soup Company, shelled out $100,000, including the cost for two orchestras so the music could continue uninterrupted. (One, led by Paul Whiteman, featured Bix Biederbecke on cornet and Bing Crosby as one of the vocalists.)

And you thought the spoiled rotten brats on My Super Sweet 16 were a new development. Of course, the Bellevue is also well known in Philadelphia for the Legionnaires tragedy of 1976. The hotel briefly closed, but was soon reopened. Business was slow in the 80s, and it closed again in 1986. It reopened in 1989. It was bought by Hyatt in 1996, and they have been running it ever since. It looks now much the same as it did 100 years ago. There is much more history to be covered on the Bellevue, but I gotta get to working on questions, so I’ll write some more in the next few days.

Old Philly Postcards: The Hotel Hanover

If you visited Philadelphia in the late 19th or early 20th century, you might have spent a night at the Hotel Hanover, located on the corner of 12th and Arch. According to an 1896 Rand McNally book, rooms at the Hanover were going for $2.50 a day. In the 1903 Rand McNally, we learn that “This is a large and well appointed hotel…and is conducted on the American plan. Although but recently opened it is already widely known for the excellence of its table and the comfort of the rooms.” Scroll down, and you can check out the best restaurants in Philly in 1903. Very cool stuff.

There is, quite frankly not much more I can find on the Hotel Hanover. Here is a photo of the hotel. Here is another shot of the Hanover. But no record I can find of contruction date or destruction date. Anyone have any more info on this place? In case you are curious, there is a picture below of what the same intersection looks like now below. Ugh. Practical, I suppose, but not nearly as attractive.

Another interesting thing about this postcard: The note on the back, written in 1916, starts thusly, “Dear Marty: Sup.” I did not know that “Sup” was a shortened version of “What’s up” almost 100 years ago.

UPDATED: A close up view of the Hanover after the jump.

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