In first decades of the twenty-first century, parts of West Philadelphia saw a revival. West Philadelphia contains many places of worship. Abraham Browers innovative omnibus service, introduced to Philadelphia in 1831, allowed new settlers speedy access into the central city. Most residents of West Philadelphia are U.S.-born citizens (88.93%) with a minority of non-U.S. citizens (6.25%) and an even smaller percentage of U.S. foreign-born citizens (4.82%). After years of neighbor complaints regarding the group loudly broadcasting political messages and neglecting its children, MOVE was ordered to leave the property. Of this, 45.85% are males and 54.15% are females. University City Science Center, the nation's first urban research park was conceived as an ambitious urban renewal project, but ignited racial tensions in a city marred by poverty. Immigration has become a major driver of population growth in Philadelphia in recent years, with long-term demographic and economic implications for the city and the region. The Darby Road also ran up to this point, granting access to communities like Chester farther down the Delaware River. The building, which still sports a large satellite dish on its roof, is now home to the West Philadelphia Enterprise Center. By the early twenty-first century West Philadelphia was about as populous as it had been in 1910, having lost more than a hundred thousand residents after 1950. On Chestnut Street, Drexel Universitys WKDU regularly welcomed local talent into its studio for live events, as did WPEN, which lent its studio to college broadcasters. The numbering pattern is mixed; someone traveling along Market Street into Upper Darby would cross 62nd Street, then Cobbs Creek Parkway/63rd St, then several named streets until finally arriving at 69th Street, skipping 6468. Measuring America's People, Places, and Economy. Becoming Penn: The Pragmatic American University, 19502000. We apologize for the inconvenience. Scope: population of Philadelphia and Allegheny West. Both College Hall and the library remain standing and are West Philadelphia landmarks. The student body continued to grow into the twentieth century and by 1900 the campus had expanded to thirty buildings including dormitories, laboratories, and the Frank Furness-designed library shown at left in this postcard. Hamiltonville as a continuation of Penns grid in Philadelphia proper. 3,248,528. Unveiled at the University of Pennsylvanias Moore School of Electrical Engineering in 1946, the world's first nontechnical computer, the ENIAC, consisted of 40 nine-foot-high cabinets containing 18,000 vacuum tubes, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches, and 1,500 relays. Photo: Lexey Swall/GRAIN for The Pew Charitable Trusts 30 Years Later, I'm Still Trying To Make Sense Of The MOVE Bombing (National Public Radio), PhilaPlace: Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (AICP) An Interview with Linda Hauber (Historical Society of Pennsylvania). The vintage year (e.g., V2022) refers to the final year of the series (2020 thru 2022). West Philadelphia Eastern North Philadelphia Kensington Strawberry Mansion West Philadelphia West Philadelphia is a diverse, close-knit and vibrant community home to family-friendly parks and schools, celebrated eateries, and an active arts and culture scene. In May 1985, an attempt to evict MOVE again escalated to violence. In the mid-1980s, crack cocaine reached West Philadelphia and wreaked havoc in many neighborhoods, resulting in a crime wave that scared off many middle-class African Americans and some of the remaining white families as well. One of West Philadelphia's most prominent features is the "El", or SEPTA's Market-Frankford Line or Blue Line. The eastern side of West Philadelphia is also known as University City. The introduction of electric streetcars in the 1890s further altered the area, as those with more resources moved farther out, leaving behind a more broadly based middle class. Philadelphia's connections to the Pacific World are as old as the city itself, including early participation in the China Trade and the first Japanese gardens in the United States at the Centennial Exhibition. Combined, these trolley routes convey more than 150,000 passengers daily, and operate 24-hour schedules, even in blizzards. Data Tool U.S. and World Population Clock See U.S. population by date, region, age and sex, and the top 10 areas by people and density. In 1840, the property was transformed into a cemetery with an arboretum of over 1,000 trees. The Black population swelled again during World War II, breaking West Philadelphia's racial boundaries by moving south of Market Street and west of Fifty-Ninth Street. Here, middle neighborhoods are places like East Mt. West Philadelphia was among the early streetcar suburbs, and a portion of it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District. For more than 150 years streetcars have served the Philadelphia area and helped Center City Philadelphia retain its commercial, retail, and entertainment supremacy in an ever-expanding region. The 36 trolley leaves the 40th Street transit tunnel running along Woodland Avenue until 49th Street where it turns south to continue along Lindbergh Boulevard turning at Elmwood Avenue starting at 55th Street. The University and Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets. Jake Blumgart is a reporter for WHYYs PlanPhilly. West Philadelphia's population expanded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thanks in large part to horsecars, then streetcars, and Schuylkill River bridges that allowed middle-class breadwinners to commute into the Central Business District a few miles to the east. top Male population 45.52% Female population 54.48% Citizen US Born 88.53% Citizen not US Born 5.24% Not Citizen 6.24% Moved from Abroad 0.94% Moved from Same County 9.19% Moved from Same State 2.37% Moved from Different State 3.65% Same House as Last Year 83.85% The Route 11 trolley runs along Woodland Avenue from the transit tunnel at 40th Street to the city line at Cobbs Creek and continues into Darby Borough. The population density in City Center West is 97% higher than Philadelphia; The median age in City Center West is 7% higher than Philadelphia; In City Center West 78.92% of the population is White; In City Center West 6.11% of the population is Black; In City Center West 11.66% of the population is Asian The Media/Wawa Line also serves University City and portions of Southwest Philadelphia before continuing to Media and points beyond. The search engine finds the neighborhoods that are the optimum fit to the set of criteria you choose. Under the guidance of university president Judith Rodin (b. But over the course of the twentieth century, as the area became majority African American, it was hobbled by racist lending and employment practices. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The consolidation was one of the many factors in West Philadelphias nineteenth-century population boom. The majority race in Philadelphia overall is white at 62.2% of residents. Although this part of the region witnessed small settlements of Lenape and Swedes who established Lutheran churches and log cabins on the west side of the Schuylkill, it was not included in the original plan of Philadelphia. Age Under 5 Years: 6.6% View All Data Tools and Apps Source & Methodology. This gradual elevation makes the skyline of Center City visible from many points in West Philadelphia. The home, a Federal-style mansion with a two-story columned portico, sat on a 250-acre parcel of land when it was constructed in 1770. In that year, 40% of the city's households were cost-burdened, a figure that is in line with many other major cities. The decision tarnished Penns community relations for many years to follow, especially as the University City Science Center failed to promptly live up to the universitys lofty goals. In two of West Philadelphias most infamous turns of events, a conflict between the urban black liberation organization MOVE and the Philadelphia Police Department left people dead and many other West Philadelphia residents without homes. Foreign Born residents have immigrated to the United States from another country and may or may not be naturalized citizens. The demographic statistics for this exhibit have been compiled from Social Explorer by the staff of the University Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. These include mosques such as Masjid Al-Jamia, a Sunni Muslim institution at 4228 Walnut Street. West Philadelphia is the home to several universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, and Saint Joseph's University. For the next half century at least, West Philadelphia largely became a suburb in the cityabetted by a series of advances in transportation technology, starting with the horsecars of the 1850s. The educational status of the citys residents who are 18 and older. After that, the population exploded from eleven thousand in 1850 to twenty-three thousand in 1860. Since the mid-nineteenth century, West Philadelphia's fortunes have risen and fallen with shifts in transportation and demographics. 1944), who was born and raised in West Philadelphia, Penn promised to not repeat the aggressive steps taken in the 1950s and 1960s. After Hamiltons death, much of the land was sold for residential and commercial development. Its western majority African American neighborhoods were declining in population and median income. The students of "West" were the children of middle-class black people, as well as of Irish, Jewish, Polish and other immigrant groups. Initial development was divided into block lots and sold in 1852 with the condition that "substantial stone or brick buildings" be erected. Another major transit link in West Philadelphia are the five Subway Surface Lines, often called the Green Lines for their representation on SEPTA route maps. On the morning of August 8, 1978, Mayor Frank Rizzo ordered police to enter the property by force. The show was produced in Studio B of television station WFIL-TV (Channel 6, now WPVI-TV), located in the station's then-new addition at 4548 Market Street. The 5 largest ethnic groups in Philadelphia, PA are Black or African American (Non-Hispanic) (40.1%), White (Non-Hispanic) (34.1%), Asian (Non-Hispanic) (7.36%), Other (Hispanic) (6.86%), and White (Hispanic) (5.2%). The demographic statistics for this exhibit have been compiled from Social Explorer by the staff of the University Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. Many young professionals and families have moved into the area. Instead, it provided unarmed security services to patrol the area and exercised soft power to provide incentives to staff, from professors to janitors, to buy and repair homes in a catchment area around the university. Every day, thousands of vehicles travel this route, which is one of the major commuter routes into and out of Philadelphia from Delaware and Chester Counties. 215, 267, and 445. Per capita is the best measure of the average spending power of each person in the city. miles) 13.6 : Sex : Total Population: 275,579 : Male: 128,893: 46.8% Updated annually. The next most-common racial group is black at 20.3%. Median household income provides the best measure of the budget of the typical family or other non-family household. Streetcar suburbs blossomed throughout the Philadelphia area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as streetcar lines radiating from the city's heart allowed people to move further into its fringes. Starting at $1,140 USD /mo. In West Philadelphia, this incorporated the West Philadelphia and Belmont districts as well as Blockley and Kingsessing Townships into the city. 77th and 86th Streets run just a few blocks before they leave the city for surrounding jurisdictions. Finally, note that Social Explorer has included in its Comprehensive Reports most, but not all, of the variables available for each census year. MOVE, founded in 1972 by West Philadelphia native John Africa, was originally headquartered in the Powelton Village neighborhood. Most of these passenger trips originate outside of the city, but more West Philly residents are using SEPTA's multi-ride "Transpass"[citation needed], which allows unlimited rides on SEPTA vehicles within the city limits. Development was enabled by the creation of the horsecar, which pushed development to about 43rd Street, and, after the arrival of the electrified streetcar in 1892, accelerated to the west and southwest.[2]. [4], The Philadelphia Police Department divides West Philadelphia into four patrol districts: the 16th, 18th, 19th, and 92nd.[5]. As the student body swelled in the first half of the nineteenth century, the center city campus was expanded and new buildings were constructed to replace the Presidents House, but the school still needed more space. West Philadelphia was divided into townships and districts with independent governments. During the 1940s, the Warriors drew crowds to the Philadelphia Arena at Forty-Fifth and Market Streets. Airy, West Oak Lane, East Oak Lane, Rhawnhurst, Germantown, Mayfair, Tacony, Wynnefield and Olney. The first building constructed, College Hall, was designed by the universitys professor of architecture, Thomas Webb Richards, and clad in green serpentine, giving it its distinctive color. Along with a decrease in crime and a trend toward urban living, most of University City underwent gentrification. The world view has basic facts, trade, and projections by country. In 2008, the area around the Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia Zoo, and the Mann Music Center was designated the Centennial District: an area to be revitalized by the country's 250th birthday in 2026. For the 1844-54 legal entity, see, Neighborhood of Philadelphia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Running above and, for a portion, under Market Street, this transportation link is one of Philadelphia's two major transit lines that transport hundreds of thousands of students and workers daily into and around the city. of Pa. U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum and Library, National Museum of American Jewish History, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=West_Philadelphia&oldid=1128789657, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox settlement with no coordinates, Articles needing additional references from July 2017, All articles needing additional references, Articles to be expanded from December 2009, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2009, Articles needing additional references from December 2010, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2012, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2010, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Non-Hispanic Black or African-American: 164,921 (76.2%), Non-Hispanic White/European: 37,010 (17.1%), This page was last edited on 22 December 2022, at 00:50. Community opposition fell on deaf ears and the city demolished vacant houses, declared Black Bottom a blighted neighborhood, and purchased it through eminent domain. The law profession in Philadelphia dates back to the days of William Penn. The Route 13 trolley runs along Chester Avenue from the transit tunnel at 40th Street and Baltimore Avenue to 67th Street where it turns off Chester Avenue and continues along PA Route 13 into Yeadon, Delaware County on to its terminus at Green Lane. In the latter decades of the twentieth century West Philadelphia kept changing as the white population continued to drain out of the city. It was purchased by the Woodlands Cemetery Company that year for use as a rural cemetery. The Woodlands mansion and cemetery continue to operate today. Social Explorer was created by a group of New York demographers to provide online access to U.S. socioeconomic data from a variety of sources, including the United States Census. One of the single largest sectors of the city of Philadelphia at almost fifteen square miles between the Schuylkill River to the east and Delaware County to the west, West Philadelphia at its peak, in the early twentieth century, attracted an influx of new residents to its verdant, suburban-feeling neighborhoods. From 2000 to 2016, the number of foreign-born residents rose by roughly 95,000 while the number of U.S.-born Philadelphians fell by 44,500. Largely commissioned by speculative developers and designed by some of the city's most prolific architects, they were purchased by industrial managers and other professionals who led the first movement of upper and middle class from the more crowded city center. By the 1840s developers in Philadelphia, which was the second-largest city in the United States at the time, were already looking beyond the Schuylkill for fresh land. In 1924, the president of Drovers and Merchants National Bank argued that West Philadelphia should have its own seat on the local Federal Reserve Board. During the latter confrontation, police firebombed the group's headquarters, killing 11 people and destroying an entire block of Osage Avenue and Pine Street. In the following decade, farther to the east, general violence continued to rise, as it did in the rest of the country. Second, the questions asked by census takers usually vary from one census year to the next. A major wagon route, Lancaster Pike, ran through the area, and in 1805 the first permanent bridge was built over the Schuylkill at Market Street. Much of West Philadelphias housing stock was built on speculation during the nineteenth century, when revolutions in transportation allowed wealthier citizens to live outside of the crowded city center but still commute in for work. 2.57. The Woodlands Cemetery, which is located near the west bank of the Schuylkill River, was originally the estate of Andrew Hamilton who bought the property in 1735 from descendants of Blockley Township's founder, William Warner, who hailed from Brockley, England. . West Philadelphia's streets are laid out in a modified grid. During a confrontation at the fortified compound of the anarcho-primitivist group MOVE in 1985, the police attempted to drop a high explosive on a bunker atop the radicals home. Elementary schools include Morton McMichael Elementary School and Lea Elementary School. It remained to be seen whether the ascendancy of the eastern section of West Philadelphia, where old industries and worker housing were giving way to new investment, would be enough to buoy the fortunes of the outlying, formerly middle class areas. The community has a fair number of Afro-Caribbean/Caribbean American residents, from the Jamaica, Haiti, Barbados, and other areas of the West Indies, as well as a growing number of African immigrants. White 1 Hispanic 2 Black Asian Mixed 1 Other 1 -42.4% 35.3% 77.7% +6.3% 12.4% 6.12% +31.8% 42.9% 11.0% +3.8% 6.90% 3.14% +0.3% 2.05% 1.71% +0.2% 0.53% 0.28% 1 non-Hispanic 2 excluding black and Asian Hispanics Relative Ethno-Racial Composition by Age #3 The NBC drama American Dreams is set in West Philadelphia in the mid-1960s. A plethora of recreational bike trails and a bike sharing program provide cyclists with new options in the twenty first century. The original bridge, often called the Schuylkill Permanent Bridge, was first built with exposed trusses, but covered a few years after its completion with a wooden roof and walls adorned with sculptures by William Rush. Today several bridges span the river, connecting West Philadelphia neighborhoods to the citys commercial heart. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. As West Philadelphia became majority African American, the University of Pennsylvania began an ambitious expansion framed by its 1948 master plan (the universitys first update in almost half a century). Hampton Demographics. The group refused to leave and a year-long blockade followed. Asian and Hispanic residents may identify with one of the more specific subcategories. For eight remarkable decades, local Philadelphia fans consistently supported a series of Black baseball clubs whose successes generated racial pride and represented a triumph of African American institution-building. A few large estates were built during this time as well, most notably the Hamilton familys Woodlands with its iconic Georgian mansion and that of John Bartram (1699-1777), the renowned botanist and Quaker who cultivated extensive gardens along the banks of the Schuylkill. In the period after World War II, many white residents and industrial jobs left the city for its suburbs, leaving in their wake overwhelmingly black communities with few employment opportunities. 8,376,755. Much of the vacancy and crime that blighted West Philadelphia could be found in these areas, which were still cut off from legitimate employment and capital markets. Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries. Housing was at a premium, and due to the desirability of the area, the newspaper of record noted that more than any other section of the city, West Philadelphia encouraged the construction of apartment buildings and the subdivision of old mansions to accommodate the boom. Many public sector unions became majority African American, or at least enjoyed large minorities of Black members, giving their neighborhoods larger political and economic anchors. The two 77th Streets (as well as all numbered streets after 58th) are miles apart. It stood divided, like much of the city and the country, between the haves and the have nots. It is situated directly across the Schuylkill River from Center City . Click the Quick Info icon to the left of each row in TABLE view to learn about sampling error. Check out how our partner Point2 can help you generate more leads by making your listings and profile stand out. Unlike the bucolic landscape of Stanfords park, the University City Science Center was to be located in the densely populated areas just north of the college campuses. U.S. District Court for the Eastern Dist. An additional but smaller and less ornate 16 Italianate, brownstone, semi-detached houses, similar in form to the initial houses, were built around Chester Avenue. Grades Offered Grades 9-12 Total Students 372 students Gender % Total Classroom Teachers 32 teachers Students by Grade School Rankings The Callowhill Depot built by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company to house their fleet of streetcars. In . Public sector employment in city government and the school district offered a wide range of employment opportunities for Black workers, from professional positions as managers and teachers to jobs that required less formal education, like sanitation and transportation. School Dropout Rate for Population 16 to 19 Years : Civilian Population 16 to 19 Years Old: 17,540 : Not High School Graduate, Not Enrolled (dropout) 1,023: 5.8%: High School Graduate, or Enrolled (in school) 16,517: 94.2% : Employment/Unemployment for Civilian Population in Labor Force Age 16 Years and Over : Civilian Population in Labor Force . Discover your neighborhood's best match, anywhere. and the West Virginia border. It was the first covered bridge in the United States. Penn also invested in local public schools, founding the Sadie Alexander School, for pre-K through eighth grade. Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy, TheEncyclopedia All the trademarks displayed on this page are the property of Location, Inc.