Broad Street (Philadelphia)

Image of City Hall from North Broad Street showing the new lighting masts. The lighting masts begin a block south of Spring Garden Street and move north.

Broad Street has gone through various changes since its beginnings in colonial-era America. Thomas Holme introduced the first geographical plan of the city to William Penn in 1687.[3] Proposing a center square, Holme designed the street to be roughly 100 feet (30 m) across and 13 miles (21 km) long. Penn intended that the center square would eventually be home to Philadelphia City Hall.[3]

During the American Revolution, Broad Street was often settled by Continental Army troops moving in and out of the city. As the city's population grew, Broad was extended both north to Vine and south to Dickinson, eventually reaching the Delaware River waterfront, where today's Philadelphia Naval Shipyard stands. It remains Philadelphia's longest straightaway and one of the longest urban boulevards in the United States.[3]

During the early stages of the 19th century, Broad Street was home to many wealthy residents, especially around the Rittenhouse Square area. Homes were designed in Victorian and Gothic styles. South Broad became center for the fine arts with the establishment of the Academy of Music in 1857.[3]

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Adelphi Theater were also built during the same time period. Banks and offices grew in number around center city as well as high rise structures. The corner of Spring Garden housed Baldwin Locomotive Works founded by Matthias Baldwin in 1825.[3] Baldwin's company was one of the biggest steam locomotive producers before the transition to diesel powered trains. Broad Street's biggest addition came with the construction of City Hall intersecting Broad and Market.

With the progression of the Industrial Revolution, Philadelphia became a center for trade and commerce. Transportation growth gained prominence with the construction of the Broad Street Station in 1881.[4] Social life dominated the street during the second half of the 19th century. Elaborate hotels such as the Divine Lorraine and the Majestic were centers for nightlife.[5] Standing over 10 stories tall the Lorraine was one of the tallest residential structures in Philadelphia. Private clubs such as the Columbia and Mercantile were popular during the Gilded Age.[5]

At the turn of the 20th century, Broad Street transformed from a bustling boulevard to a cultural magnet for music and the arts. On January 1, 1901, the very first Mummers Day parade was held, becoming a staple of Philadelphia culture. As jazz and gospel music grew in popularity in Philadelphia with the Great Migration of the early 1900s, numerous jazz and blues clubs opened in the city, including the Uptown Theater, which was built on North Broad Street in 1927.

By the 1950s, Broad Street residential areas had been replaced with skyscrapers as well as the newly developed Penn Center.[6]

Since the 1970s, the street has undergone various city renovations. Using $100 million in public funds, Broad received new lighting and streetscaping, theater restorations and new restaurants and cafes.[6] Lamp post fixtures have been improved as well as sidewalk pavements and subway entrances.[6]

In 2015, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter introduced a $8.7 million project to brighten North Broad with 41 stainless steel light masts.[7]

Southern Boulevard Parkway is a landscaped segment of South Broad Street in Philadelphia, connecting Marconi Plaza and FDR Park from Oregon Avenue at Broad Street southward five intersections to the gateway entrance of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The parkway consists of the central median landscaped area including the bordering east and west tree lined sidewalks and various sized green spaces which separates opposing lanes of traffic, and roadway intersections. Broad Street itself is a historic city street and this landscaped segment is bordered by an urban residential townhome community and the entrance to the major venues of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex and Xfinity Live!, and the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

In 1904, a plan for park and parkway improvements in South Philadelphia was designed by Samuel Parsons Jr., but work stopped by 1910. In 1912, the city's director of public works, Morris Cooke, engaged Olmsted Brothers, an architecture firm, to produce designs for League Island Park, Oregon Plaza[8] and the stretch of south Broad Street from Oregon Avenue south to Pattison Avenue and southward to League Island. The unifying medial green space including the tree lined sidewalks on the east and west connected the two parks developed from river swamp lands that were filled and regraded.

In 1926, a second Parkway was constructed on Moyamensing Avenue from Oregon Avenue to the intersection of Packer Avenue, and Packer Avenue was extended from 20th Street to Broad Street (Southern Boulevard) for access to the Sesquicentennial Exposition. Later, the two parks were renamed Marconi Plaza and FDR Park and the median landscaping known as the Southern Boulevard.

Olmsted's design was centered on the availability of open space to all residents. Olmsted wanted to create a place that took advantage of the best characteristics that the city and the country had to offer. The intended result was to create a "Suburban Village" by blending the countryside with the urban environments and developing an organization of open space, views and providing the advantages of increased health benefits of "purity of air" and "facilities for quiet out-of-door recreation". This original concept design facilitated surrounding development in the next century of a thriving urban residential community, countryside recreation and the focal location point for regional metropolitan spectator sporting events.

The Boulevard was utilized as the main entrance and central roadway in the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition, a world's fair hosted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the 50th anniversary of the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Open green areas, parking, and huge exposition buildings flanked the Boulevard lined with linden trees and flowering crab apple trees, individual obelisks as the 13 columns for each of the original colony States known as the "Founders Pylons", various standards, banners and a huge 80 foot high 27 ton replica of the Liberty Bell at the gateway of Oregon Plaza. The Boulevard was illuminated at night with spectacular visual displays of the huge Liberty Bell surrounded with 26,000 light bulbs, the Founder Pylons each with a powerful searchlight projecting skyward, and the shooting projection of lights from the Tower Of Light. This provided a fantastic effect for that time period.

The structures were demolished or removed following the close of the exposition, but the area continued to draw development in the 1960s with a new stadium, bowling alley, drive in movie theater, movie theater, and a major new Aquarium, Aquarama Aquarium Theater of the Sea. The development pattern continued with the centralized venues for professional sports in the form of Veterans Stadium and Spectrum which also have since been demolished and in 2012 now includes a complex of two Stadiums, one arena, and a new dining and entertainment district.

Although the thoroughfare carried the name of Broad Street the green space was officially designated in the 1950s Philadelphia Home Rule City Charter as part of the Fairmount Park urban park system as parkland, to be known as Southern Parkway. No traces of this name exist in this area today and it is merely referred to as part of Broad Street.[9]