Feature Article |
The Rebirth of North Broad
By John Marchese
Ironically, the desolation of the area means that crime is less of an issue than you might imagine. In 2006, only six of the city’s 406 murders took place in the North Broad corridor between Spring Garden and Temple’s campus (though some of the most murder-dense neighborhoods in the city are less than a mile away).
One afternoon, I ride around the neighborhood with Darrell Clarke, whose Fifth City Council District takes up much of the area. He’s a relaxed and easygoing guy, but at one point, as he talks of Frank Rizzo-era policies, an edge comes into his voice, and he describes a kind of reverse-logic, Vietnam-like policy — destroying the neighborhood in order to save it. In those days, the government officials talked of “Urban Renewal,” but the actual residents bitterly dubbed the various programs “Negro Removal.”
"WHERE YOU'RE STAYING was a factory,” says William Savin, proprietor of the Savin funeral home, which has operated at 12th and Brown since the ’30s, started by his parents seven years before he was born. Savin, a tall and dapper man with fancy glasses and a bemused air of authority, was sitting behind us in Osteria the other night. Dixie, who has a much sharper reporter’s instinct than I do, told me, “You have to talk to him; he’s somebody.”
We introduced ourselves, and he invited us to come for a visit. So Dixie and I leave our vertical gated community and head on foot toward the frighteningly barren stretches east of Broad Street on a hot afternoon. City planning department documents I’ve read describe this area frankly — and accurately — as blighted. But a funny thing happens when we pass the few clumps of houses that are standing and occupied. Everyone we see says hello to us. There’s no way to say this without just saying it: We feel conspicuous for being white. But we don’t feel unwelcome or unsafe.
William Savin seems very happy to see us. He brings us to a small paneled office and asks what we want to know. Tell us about North Broad Street, I say.
“Broad Street,” he begins, “used to be where all the automobile showrooms and used car lots were. We used to go and sit in those places when the parades came down — Thanksgiving, and New Year’s with the Mummers. Even the Elks had a big parade back then.
“We all ate at Linton’s, which was at Broad and Wallace, across the street from where you’re stayin’. There’s a pizza place there now. Linton’s was crowded in the morning and afternoon and evening. When people got done with the nightclubs, they would stop at Linton’s. ’Cause it was open just about all night.
“You had a jazz club right up the street from Linton’s called Just Jazz. Back in the ’50s, the Blue Note was across from the Lorraine Hotel. Billie Holiday sang there.
“I remember when Father Divine came here and bought the hotel. He brought a suitcase and paid in cash. In those times, I don’t remember any black people staying in that hotel until he bought it.”
Father Divine was one of the great charismatic preachers of the early 20th century, and also set up social service systems in the neighborhoods where he owned property. Local folks could eat cheaply in his hotel dining rooms. He sold them discount gasoline and heating oil — doing what government would soon gain an incompetent monopoly over.
Savin points toward the eastern side of 12th Street. “I watched them tear the houses down and build the projects here,” he says. “Right across the street — that was one of the first projects. It was called Richard Allen. A lot of prominent people lived there. People started moving in in ’41, ’42. It wasn’t just all black. White people lived in there, too. It was a prominent place to live. It kind of changed later on in the ’60s, when the gangs and the drugs started coming to the surface.”
I don’t push Savin to go beyond euphemism. To say that the Richard Allen Homes “kind of changed” is like saying that Hiroshima had some urban renewal. But he’d lived through it and next door to it — some of the worst urban problems anyone could imagine — and while the undertaker seems nostalgic for some parts of the old days, he’s happy for what might be ahead. I ask him what he thinks about places like Lofts 640 coming into his neighborhood.
One afternoon, I ride around the neighborhood with Darrell Clarke, whose Fifth City Council District takes up much of the area. He’s a relaxed and easygoing guy, but at one point, as he talks of Frank Rizzo-era policies, an edge comes into his voice, and he describes a kind of reverse-logic, Vietnam-like policy — destroying the neighborhood in order to save it. In those days, the government officials talked of “Urban Renewal,” but the actual residents bitterly dubbed the various programs “Negro Removal.”
"WHERE YOU'RE STAYING was a factory,” says William Savin, proprietor of the Savin funeral home, which has operated at 12th and Brown since the ’30s, started by his parents seven years before he was born. Savin, a tall and dapper man with fancy glasses and a bemused air of authority, was sitting behind us in Osteria the other night. Dixie, who has a much sharper reporter’s instinct than I do, told me, “You have to talk to him; he’s somebody.”
We introduced ourselves, and he invited us to come for a visit. So Dixie and I leave our vertical gated community and head on foot toward the frighteningly barren stretches east of Broad Street on a hot afternoon. City planning department documents I’ve read describe this area frankly — and accurately — as blighted. But a funny thing happens when we pass the few clumps of houses that are standing and occupied. Everyone we see says hello to us. There’s no way to say this without just saying it: We feel conspicuous for being white. But we don’t feel unwelcome or unsafe.
William Savin seems very happy to see us. He brings us to a small paneled office and asks what we want to know. Tell us about North Broad Street, I say.
“Broad Street,” he begins, “used to be where all the automobile showrooms and used car lots were. We used to go and sit in those places when the parades came down — Thanksgiving, and New Year’s with the Mummers. Even the Elks had a big parade back then.
“We all ate at Linton’s, which was at Broad and Wallace, across the street from where you’re stayin’. There’s a pizza place there now. Linton’s was crowded in the morning and afternoon and evening. When people got done with the nightclubs, they would stop at Linton’s. ’Cause it was open just about all night.
“You had a jazz club right up the street from Linton’s called Just Jazz. Back in the ’50s, the Blue Note was across from the Lorraine Hotel. Billie Holiday sang there.
“I remember when Father Divine came here and bought the hotel. He brought a suitcase and paid in cash. In those times, I don’t remember any black people staying in that hotel until he bought it.”
Father Divine was one of the great charismatic preachers of the early 20th century, and also set up social service systems in the neighborhoods where he owned property. Local folks could eat cheaply in his hotel dining rooms. He sold them discount gasoline and heating oil — doing what government would soon gain an incompetent monopoly over.
Savin points toward the eastern side of 12th Street. “I watched them tear the houses down and build the projects here,” he says. “Right across the street — that was one of the first projects. It was called Richard Allen. A lot of prominent people lived there. People started moving in in ’41, ’42. It wasn’t just all black. White people lived in there, too. It was a prominent place to live. It kind of changed later on in the ’60s, when the gangs and the drugs started coming to the surface.”
I don’t push Savin to go beyond euphemism. To say that the Richard Allen Homes “kind of changed” is like saying that Hiroshima had some urban renewal. But he’d lived through it and next door to it — some of the worst urban problems anyone could imagine — and while the undertaker seems nostalgic for some parts of the old days, he’s happy for what might be ahead. I ask him what he thinks about places like Lofts 640 coming into his neighborhood.
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Posted by Anonymous | Nov. 6, 2007 at 2:12 PM