The first version didn’t take advantage of the powerful new notifications framework in Farcaster frames, but today I’ve fixed that.

I’ve updated the plugin to use the “addFrame” method in the Farcaster frame SDK. Users visiting a Farcaster WP-enabled site through a frame in a supporting client (like Warpcast) will now see a prompt to add the website as a frame.

When they add the website, by default they will be subscribed to receive notifications when new posts are published from the site. Users can modify their settings later to disable notifications or remove the site altogether.

Notification subscriptions are managed in the WordPress site using a new webhook endpoint. I’ve also added a new Notifications panel on the Farcaster WP settings page which shows subscriptions on the site.

Here’s what the notification looks like in the Warpcast app.

The plugin is still awaiting approval for the WordPress.org plugin directory – the review queue is currently backed up and this could take a few weeks – but in the meantime you can download the plugin from Github.

If you have feedback or ideas for me, please get in touch. I’m on Farcaster @davisshaver and you can also send me an email at this domain (minus the .com) at gmail.com.

At launch, this plugin simplifies the setup of your /well-known/farcaster.json manifest file and the fc:frame meta tag.

Here is what the admin looks like.

The plugin is currently pending approval to be listed in the WordPress.org plugin directory, but in the meantime you can download it from Github.

In the future, I’d like to build on this foundation with features like auto-casting new posts, frame actions and triggers, and rich cast embeds.

If you have feedback or ideas for me, please get in touch. I’m on Farcaster @davisshaver and you can also send me an email at this domain (minus the .com) at gmail.com.

Following 19 months of construction and $11 million in funding, the existing stretch from 1300 Noble Street to 1100 Callowhill may some day constitute just a fraction of a miles-long path system that champions envision.

But for now, the crowds seemed plenty happy to enjoy what has been built so far. The park’s current identity stems to an August 2016 rebranding, before which it had been known as the Viaduct Park and/or Viaduct Greene.

“I can’t overstate how important this park is to the Callowhill neighborhood and the city as a whole,” said Mayor Jim Kenney.

Festivities were scored by a saxophone quartet from the Philadelphia Pops, and a traditional dragon dance was provided by representatives from neighboring Chinatown.

“This park it will connect people, it will connect communities, it will connect—ultimately when it extends the entire three miles which is the great vision for this Rail Park—it will connect our whole city,” said Philly Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott-Lovell.

Center City District CEO Paul Levy, an early advocate of the park, said that donations were collected from 297 organizations and individuals. The largest funding came from the State of Pennsylvania, William Penn Foundation, and  Knight Foundation.

Immediately following the ribbon cutting ceremony, crowds flooded the park, and enjoyed some pizza donated by nearby Bufad.

Read more coverage of the grand opening ceremony:

• Curbed
• Philly Mag
• Penn Live
• Philly Voice

Philadelphia’s Mummers are said to be primarily Swiss in origin, although other neighborhoods and immigrant communities surely contributed their own spin to this unique event.

The European “Mummers” poem linked to the festival:

Here we stand before your door,
As we stood the year before;
Give us whisky, give us gin,
Open the door and let us in.

Philadelphia, a city of neighborhoods, naturally turned this celebration into a sort of competition between communities, with different groups gathering into groups (and without the door-to-door wassailing).

The city officially began organizing the parade in 1901.

Mummers break into five types of groups: Comics, Fancies, Fancy Brigades, String Bands, and Wench Brigades. News organization Billy Penn broke them down like this:

Comic. Considered the traditional Mummers. They make fun of news or pop culture through skits and themes and often dress as clowns.

Wench Brigades. An offshoot of the Comic division. They portray a central theme through costume also intended to be funny. They’re pretty much men dressed like women and though they’re named after medieval women they trace their origins back to 19th century-era plantation women.

Fancy Division. Known for the most elaborate costumes. Like so elaborate you’ll feel like you’re in the song “Yellow Submarine.”

Fancy Brigades. They’re a spinoff of the Fancy Division, also known for elaborate costumes. They perform 4.5 minute broadway-style skits inside the Convention Center.

String Bands. The Mummers who strut and play music at the same time (now that’s a skill). They use instruments like saxophones, banjos, accordions, violins and various percussion instruments.

Early costumes were cotton-based but became more elaborate over time.

The Mummers parade continues to this day, although the route has changed slightly.

DJ Hy Lit (legally Hyman Aaron Lit) was the top DJ at WIBG-AM, known as Wibbage.

Lit had been introduced to the Beatles shortly before their famous February 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Lit knew immediately that the Beatles would be huge, so he called their booking agency, William Morris, and $25,000 later the Beatles were booked for the Convention Center. A week later, the shaggy-haired Brits went on Sullivan and the rest is history.

Tickets sold out within two hours. Booking the Beatles turned out to be easy compared to getting them into the arena. Though that could be said about virtually every stop during this famous 1964 tour.

The Beatles were playing Atlantic City’s Convention Hall, located on the Boardwalk, on August 30, just days after the Democratic National Convention had left town following their nomination of President Lyndon B. Johnson for a full term.

While in Atlantic City, the band enjoyed local delicacies like White House Subs and also screened their movie Hard Day’s Night with future Phialadelphia area broadcast reporter Larry Kane. The band departed Atlantic City in a fish truck owned by Hackney’s, an act of subterfuge arranged by concert promoter George A. Hamid Jr.

Hamid would later tell the Princeton Alumni Weekly, “After they left, I took two tranquilizers, shifted to martinis and said a prayer of thanks that the frenzy had moved to another town.”

Hy Lit also claimed that he and Frank Rizzo were involved in the plot –Rizzo had called Lit claiming that “his boss and children wanted to meet the Beatles”, so Lit asked for some help in securing the safe arrival of the fish truck. And that he did.

The fish truck was flanked on the New Jersey White Horse Pike with a bus caravan and an escort from the Philadelphia Highway Patrol and straight into a totally cleared out Philadelphia Convention Center parking lot. The Beatles would only be in the city for 5 hours as their manager Brian Epstein had cancelled the group’s reservations at the Warwick Hotel in favor of heading straight to their next stop in Indianapolis.

Daily News reporter Rose DeWolf recalled for the history, Read The Beatles:

If those guys were singing songs, I didn’t know it. The screaming was endless, but the kids were cute and so were the Beatles. I was in the front row with other reports, and minutes after the concert got underway, started pulling jellybeans and marshmallows from my hair. The marshmallows had messages written on them to the Beatles. Believe me, the real show wasn’t just the Beatles. The show was the kids in the audience!

After the concert, the Beatles had a long post-concert bus ride to the Northeast Philadelphia Airport and left for Indianapolis to continue their tour.

Set List

Twist And Shout • You Can’t Do That • All My Loving • She Loves You • Things We Said Today • Roll Over Beethoven • Can’t Buy Me Love • If I Fell • I Want To Hold Your Hand • Boys • A Hard Day’s Night • Long Tall Sally

Hundreds of thousands of women served in the armed forces, and many times more found themselves (and their households) being asked to contribute in new and different ways.

This effort was multi-faceted and both public & private in nature. Rose the Riveter was one symbol created by the US government, aimed at encouraging women to enter jobs at munitions manufacturers filling roles vacated by new enlistees.

Government efforts at chronicling and promoting the mobilization ended up consolidated in the Office of War Information by 1943. OWI photographers were the last to be funded by the government in a tradition begun a decade earlier by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of the New Deal.

These photographs depict the variety of roles women found themselves during these years.

The Burpee Seeds company, as it was colloquially known, had introduced a “war gardens” campaign in World War I that turned into “victory gardens” by World War II.

Located in the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot complex located along South 20th street, these employees of an Eastern quartermaster corps depot are sewing sleeves into army overcoats.

The Quartermaster Depot was expanded from the Schuykill Arsenal, which had been built on the site in 1800 and supplied the outfitting for the Lewis and Clark expedition. The complex was known locally as “the compound” and has provided ample employment for the area.

Mack began his career as a ball player for the Washington Nationals in 1886, the first of 10 seasons in the National League (plus one other in the Players’ League). As one of the first catchers to position himself behind home plate, Mack would have been known to posterity for that sleight innovation – if it weren’t for his prolific and legendary managing career that followed.

Following his playing career in 1896, Mack began working as a manager for a minor league team of the Milwaukee Brewers. Success there (which included a cut of the proceeds) led him to a larger position with the American League’s new Philadelphia Athletics, for which Mack would serve as manager, treasurer, and part owner.

Mack would lead the Athletics for 50-years winning 5 World Series and one American League Championship in the years before the major series had been introduced. “The Tall Tactician” this steely-faced Irishman preached personal discipline, but in person he was easygoing and kind. Mack believed strongly in personal character and self-motivation. This was the era of progressivism and self-improvement, no doubt.

It’s difficult for any person to have a career that long without suffering some incidents. At the time there were accusations of mismanagement and cheapness, common complaints even today for a Philly sports fan. After these complaints reached a boil when the Athletics fell into the second division, and the neither Mack nor the Philadelphia Athletics would never seriously chase the pennant again.

Mack said when he retired, “I’m not quitting because I’m getting old, I’m quitting because I think people want me to.”

Shibe Park (located on Lehigh Ave between 20th and 21st St), where the A’s had played, was renamed Connie Mack Stadium in 1953.

Shibe Park was also home to the “$100,000 infield”, a nickname for a group of players, based on the the purported market value of the four infielders who lead the Athletics to championships in 1910, 1911, and 1913.

After that, the new and well-financed Federal League enacted regulations that shifted the power balance and made it more difficult for Mack to compete.

Mack is buried in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery located in Glenside, PA, although he had lived in Mt. Airy while he was a manager.

Translated here into a more legible illustration.

In an earlier letter Whatley had also referred to the items as “YOUR invention of double spectacles”. While Franklin’s invention of the bifocal has been considered apocryphal by some historians, academic review of letters and other evidence so far supports the claim.

At the time Franklin had just returned to Philadelphia to find his way onto the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania and then appointed its President. Glasses were no newfound apparatus to the then-69 year old, who had advertised glasses for sale in his Pennsylvania Gazette as early as 1738. Franklin had moderate hyperopia and so would likely have needed them around that age, about 33.

Charles Wilson Peale’s 1785 portrait of Franklin feature him wearing bifocals.

By 1788 Peale had his own pair. He would paint himself wearing bifocals some 20 years later, perhaps honoring Franklin who had died in 1790.

Just one of the many great Franklin stories to tell… A very American invention!

Shawmont Station (also Green Tree Station and Nathans’ house)
7700 Nixon Street, Philadelphia
William Strickland (attributed), 1834

But when the house was built–when the canal was king–railroads were just around the corner. While the true dominance of the train lay some decades ahead, the impact landed immediately on Nathan Nathans, who had built the house as a quiet country retreat (to be spoiled by the locomotive outside!) and retained ownership by the time in 1834 when he ultimately had to sue the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad over their claim to the a right of way within spitting distance of the Nathans’ homestead.

(Editor’s note: The Philadelphia Preservation Alliance is the source for many of these facts, and indeed we owe more thanks to them for other reasons to be discussed momentarily.)

Ultimately the railroad won and Nathans gave up the property to a more willing local citizen. The line would first be rolled down by one of those sterling Baldwin trains built at Matthias Baldwin’s factory, in fact his first full scale locomotive, Old Ironsides.

Around 1835, Henry Croskey, who had acquired the building from Nathans, began improving the lot to fit its new purpose. He began calling it “Green Tree Station” and the building often lodged canal workers from the waterway (accessible out the backdoor) in an arrangement with the Schuykill Navigation Company. He held the property until 1853, by which point he had retired to a mansion on Rittenhouse Square, selling to the Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown Railroad. The station would later be renamed for Thomas Shaw who had acquired Croskey’s manor house on the hill overlooking Green Tree Station.

The rear addition came 1870, as did the a white paint job (its last coat would come in 1974, two years before Conrail took over the Reading Railroad’s passenger operations, only to be passed to SEPTA another three years later).

Read a timeline of Shawmont Station’s history here.

Just a few months ago, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission used its Transportation Alternatives Set-Aside program to award $1,000,000 for the restoration of Shawmont Station. Although the station has not been used by SEPTA since 1996, the path alongside gets more use than ever, with Venice Island and other parts of Manayunk seeing significant redevelopment.

The scene: Eastern State Penitentiary during the Civil War. Located on Cherry Hill at the outskirts of town, the prison was the first true “penitentiary”; that is, the first to emphasize reform over punishment.

Rebecca Capobianco, a historian at the College of William & Mary, sets the scene:

Scant records of Elwell’s time at the prison suggest that “as well as the official record is concerned, she may well never have existed.” She does not appear in the warden’s daily journal. Per prison policy, inmates were prohibited from communicating with each other or those outside the prison. Yet intermittent caches of letters reveal that “daily realities rarely matched official policy.” In the case of Elwell, the American Philosophical Society found itself in possession of at least a dozen exchanges sent by the woman, who was likely less than 20 at the time she entered the prison.

Thanks to these letters, we discover a remarkable love story. About a year into her sentence, we begin seeing exchanges between Elwell and another inmate, #4227, Albert Green Jackson. Jackson was black and hailed from Trenton, New Jersey. A barber charged with burglary.

A close read reveals not just a literary encounter but multiple and extended physical encounters as well. Defying the stereotype of the prison as a perfect system and revealing the agency practiced by inmates, testing the rules and seeking fulfillment through the seams.

As Capobianco details:

Another passage I adore:

An element of escapism undergirds these missives; Elwell and Green were both apparently married prior to entering prison, but also fantasized about living life together after their release, and even going as far as to begin addressing each other as husband and wife.

We do not know how the story ends. We have only their letters from prison.

Green was discharged in May 1863; Elwell in June 1863. Both were stated to be staying in Philadelphia rather than returning to their states of origin. It’s left to the reader to imagine what may have happened (or not).

In closing, I’d like to leave you with a poem written by Elwell during the last months of her stay.

The Bride

I pledge this toast for one whose love
Has been a heaven to me
A paradise with a waste,
A jewell in the sea.
A charte as a silver gleaming star
Fain as the sumer flowers are
Pure as the stream that winds afar
A down the mountain side
Oh life wood be a happy thing
If lizza were but my bride

Gentle and meek as a child
No vain coquette is she
To trifle with a bursting heart
And scater misery,
But free from every sing like that is she
True as the day is to the night
And lord of the cristal light
Oh life wood be all happiness
If lizza was my bride.

See full image.

Some details I enjoyed…

Apparently there was a water works at the central square? (Then called the “Public Square”.)

The Navy Yard was quite literally a yard owned by the Navy.

Detail of Pegg’s Run, a long-hidden creek that in fact shaped much geography of my neighborhood, Callowhill. I’m hoping to write about Pegg’s Run more in the future.

This one confuses me. Washington Square and Market Square… in West Philly? What’s that oval?

See more photos from the TODAY visit here.

Albert bought the house in 2016 for $755,000 after it had been originally listed for $1,000,000. The property was sold by Elfant Wissahickon, which specializes in historical homes. See the Redfin listing for more info on the lot.

In 1953, when Grace Kelly was not yet Princess Grace, she posed in front of the house with a Jeep that was raffled to raise money for Grace’s alma mater, the Stevens Junior School (now defunct).

When Prince Albert’s purchase of the house became public, he declared his intentions to convert the house into regional offices for the Princess Grace Foundation, as well as a occasional space for public events and tours (although he expressed a wish to respect the neighborhood’s residential vibe).

Curbed Philly’s Melissa Romero also took the following pictures, released through the Wikimedia Commons.

East Falls Local captured some great pics of the house in 2016 before any renovations began, including some shots of my favorite feature in the house, the built-in rathskeller in the basement.

You can see more footage of the house as it was historically in this interview shortly after the marriage announcement in 1956:

But this area of the city (especially FDR Park) once was a swampy sprawl, and the Navy Yard was separated from Philly by a back channel. It’s a great story of engineering and progress how League Island became a core part of the Philadelphia Experience.

Although many historic buildings have been restored fully or partially, some have been reclaimed by nature, and countless others remain only in our archives and historic records. The shipyard sitting nearby seems almost an afterthought. The eastern point of what was once League Island sits beyond an elephantine lot of recently-stevedored Hyundais and Kias.

What was the history of this place? How did League Island become the Navy Yard?

Even before the Navy Yard existed, South Philly was home to naval operations.

But as new iron-clad vessels began the norm, use of League Island picked up, and by 1868 the City had transferred the land to the US Government for $1 (somewhat due to fear that they would leave the city otherwise, showing a long history of enticements to keep jobs at the Navy Yard).

Construction for the updated campus commenced in 1871 following a blueprint that would set the master plan for League Island a century to come.

By 1897, as documented in this Webster & Hunt map, the League Island Navy Yard bustled in the foreground as the City Hall tower rose in the distance (the decades-long project was just a few years from completion at that point). Webster & Hunt was based at 1215 Filbert St.

The drawing even shows what looks to be a swimming pool within “Point Breeze Park”, land that would later be reclaimed as League Island Park for the US Sesquicentennial in 1926. More about that shortly.

The Navy Yard was home to both vessel and man, with quarters varying depending on rank (from tent to manse).

In 1921, Philadelphia was selected to host the upcoming 1926 Sesquicentennial celebration (a relief to the city that still recalled the centennial exhibition in 1876 so fondly). The plan for the Sesquicentennial involved wholesale transformation of the marshland north of the Navy Yard, an area that would be renamed “League Island Park” (to memorialize the land that would soon be very much not an island).

The improvement plan was overseen by the firm of Olmsted Brothers (son & step-son of the more famous scion). These improvements included today’s Marconi Plaza (originally Oregon Plaza) and the landscaped portion of Broad Street stretching from there to the park.

The Sesquicentennial Stadium built for the event would be renamed Philadelphia Municipal Stadium and later JFK Stadium, home famously to the Army/Navy game as well as (briefly) the Eagles.

The Navy Yard’s most significant expansion followed the sesquicentennial and its associated infrastructure improvements; 86 buildings were added over the next two decades including several eight-story warehouses and a chapel.

Today the Navy Yard is touted as a redevelopment win and it’s possible that the campus could get even larger, if say Amazon came to town.

But the grounds remain used for naval enterprises, not as much by the US Navy but rather Aker, which just this summer launched from the Navy Yard the “largest container ship ever built in America.”

Guided tours of the Navy Yard and its myriad architecture are offered occasionally, and there is also a self-guided walking tour that may be taken any time the campus is open (6am – 8pm). For more reading, you might want to check out the Hidden City archives.

Olmsted kept meticulous records of correspondence and plans, and although not all projects would end up realized, the scope of contacts demonstrates the firm’s prominence. Some of the files are in fact purely informative, perhaps including documents Olmsted received unsolicited. Many of the works here were also done by Olmsted’s son and step-son, who carried the firm on past his death.

If you have more info about any of these works, please leave it in the comments and we’ll update the post!

• Willow Grove Park (1901)
  • Job Number 00102
  • No plans available
• Fairmount Park (1866-1898)
  • Job Number 00121
    
  • No plans available
• Fairmount Park Extension (1914-1929)
  
  • Job Numbers 05942, 02948
    
  • 8 plans available
• Wissahickon Drive (1868-1873)
  • Job Number 00126
    
  • No plans available
• Mr. Bertram Private Estate
  • Job Number 00186
  • No plans available
• John T. Windrim Private Estate
  • Job Number 00456
  • No plans available
• Philadelphia Economic Plants Garden (1897-1899)
  • Job Number 01899
  • 9 plans available
• Harte-Spalding Private Homestead (1903-1908)
  • Job Number 02623
  • No plans available
• Philadelphia Park System (1895; 1904-1905)
  • Job Number 02939
    
• Kresheim Valley Drive and Estate (1906-1906)
  • Job Number 03152
    
  • 7 plans available
• Woodward Community (1906-1907)
  • Job Number 03202
    
  • 2 plans available
• John D.McIlhenny Club (1907, 1936-1937)
  
  • Job Number 03325
    
  • 2 plans available
• Walter Horstmann Estate (1908)
  • Job Number 03386
  • No plans available
• Charles Fearm Estate (1908)
  • Job Number 03420
  • No plans available
• John Story Jenks Jr. Estate (1908-1914, 1926-1929, 1934)
  • Job number 03479
    
  • 24 plans available
• Samuel E. Fairchild Jr. Estate (1909)
  • Job number 03646
    
  • 2 plans available
• Philadelphia Cricket Club (1909-1910, 19141915)
  • Job Number 03798
    
  • No plans available
• Philadelphia Parks (1909-1916)
  
  • Job Number 03820
  • No plans available
• Philadelphia Commission for City Plan
  
  • Job Number 03821
• League Island Park (1912-1925, 1968-1974)
  • Job Number 03822
  • 77 plans available
• Main Line Housing Association (1912)
  • Job Number 03823
  • No plans available
• Northeast Boulevard (1910-1915, 1920)
  • Job Number 03824
  • No plans available
• Washington Square (1912-1913)
  • Job Number 03825
  • 6 plans available
• South Broad Street Boulevard (1910-1915)
  • Job Number 03826
  • 60 plans available
• Dixville Notch (1911)
  • Job Number 05266
  • 1 plan available
• J. Wilmer Biddle Estate (1911-1916, 1930)
  • Job Number 05268
  • 40 plans available
• Herbert L. Clark Estate (1911-1913)
  
  • Job Number 05272
  • 14 plans available
• Robert L Montgomery Estate (1911-1912)
  
  • Job Number 05273
  • 3 plans available
• University of Pennsylvania (1912-1913)
  • Job Number 05481
  • 3 plans available
• William Warner Harper Estate (1912-1913, 1929)
  • Job Number 05517
  • 5 plans available
• Churchman & Molitor Thomas (1912)
  • Job Number 05522
  • No plans available
• Jay Cooke 3rd Estate (1912-19129)
  • Job Number 05572
  • 51 plans available
• James M Earle Estate (1910-1916)
  • Job Number 05657
  • 3 plans available
• Charles M. Lea (1912-1913)
  • Job Number 05785
  • 4 plans available
• College of Physicians (1913)
  • Job Number 05273
  • 6 plans available
• Allen Lane Station
  • Job Number 05940
  • No plans available
• Saint Martin’s Development (1913-1914)
  • Job Number 05941
  • 22 plans available
• Lincoln Drive (1913-1915)
  • Job Number 05944
  • 8 plans available
• H. H. Houston Estate (1910-1914)
  • Job Number 05969
  • 13 plans available
• Samuel J. Houston Estate
  • Job Number 05977
  • No plans available
• J. S. Clark Estate (1913-1914)
  
  • Job Number 05990
  • 10 plans available
• Hampton L. Carson (1914-1916)
  • Job Number 06076
  • 9 plans available
• E. T. Stotesbury Estate (1915-1917)
  • Job Number 06181
  • 58 plans available
• Mrs. Isaac Kemble/Phillips Hill (1915)
  • Job Number 06242
  • No plans available
• Girad College
  • Job Number 06346
  • No plans available
• Samuel F. Houston (1919-1920)
  • Job Number 06674
  • 14 plans available
• Pastorius Park/George Woodward (1915-1931)
  • Job Number 06678
  • 20 plans available
• Pastorius Park Extension (1916-1921)
  • Job Number 06955
  • 14 plans available
• Philadelphia Main Line Citizens Association (1919-1929)
  • Job Number 06702
  • 14 plans available
• Philadelphia Sesquicentennial International Exposition (1921-1929)
  • Job Number 07039
  • 13 plans available
• M. L. Cooke/St. George’s Road (1925-1926)
  • Job Number 07575
  • 5 plans available
• Horace Trumbauer (1927)
  • Job Number 07842
  • No plans available
• Bok-Curtis Burial Lot at Laurel Hill (1936)
  • Job Number 09455
  • 5 plans available
• George Woodward Group Home (1937-1939)
  • Job Number 09561
  • 4 plans available
• Dawson Job (1950)
  • Job Number 09863
  • No plans available
• Schuykill Arsenal (1875-1877)
  • Job Number 12126
  • 4 plans available

No, I don’t mean existentially, I mean here at the beginning of Phase 1? What’s special about this spot? The reason lies beneath the surface.

Across Philadelphia, ancient waterways branching from the Schuykill and Delaware Rivers lay buried in culverts and sealed off as sewers and drainage pipes. Some geologists believe these waterways at one point may even have formed a major conduit between the Schuykill and Delaware.

We’ll focus on two creeks in particular that served as vital connections between the two waterfronts: Pegg’s Run and Minnow Run, at either side of what is today Center City. Pegg’s Run was nearest the Rail Park, and today it runs as a sewer under Willow Street (approaching the Delaware River). The Spring Garden “spring” was fed by the same source as Pegg’s Run and it too was near where the Rail Park is today.

In the 1790s, engineers chose this location–because of the natural right-of-way formed by the streams between the rivers–to build a canal from the Schuylkill River to the Delaware River.

The Delaware and Schuylkill Navigation Company incorporated in 1792 as what is considered the first public canal project in the United States. The canal would run all the way from Philadelphia seventeen miles to Norristown.

Portions of the route were dug along what would become Pennsylvania Avenue towards Broad Street, a trench about 15′ by 5′. Work stopped when investors lost faith and the company bankrupted in the 1790’s. It’s not coincidental that principal Robert Morris was going through personal financial troubles at this time, too.

By 1834, the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad had laid tracks on the canal’s right-of-way. However, the portions along the Schuykill remained extremely active and valuable until the later 1800’s, when the silt accumulation became too much for the dredges to handle. Today many Philadelphians are familiar with the canal portion thanks to the Manyaunk Canal Towpath trail.

READ MORE ABOUT THE CANAL PROJECT HERE.

Back in Callowhill, with undeveloped space plus access to the rivers and points beyond, the neighborhood criss-crossed with rail track became home to companies like the Baldwin Locomotive Works, whose factories came to be centered at Broad and Hamilton Streets. Matthias Baldwin opened his first facility there in 1836.

The Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad was consolidated into the Pennsylvania Railroad by 1850, although the Philadelphia portion went to the Reading Railroad. The Reading Railroad Broad Street Depot was built in 1861 where the Terminal Commerce Building stands today.

Read more about railroads and canals in early Philadelphia

In the 1890’s. the Reading Railroad completed the City Branch tunnel and trench to bury the tracks coming into the city, creating the Pennsylvania Avenue megastructure structure we know today.

This right of way remained active until the 1990’s, and was even considered for mass transit use in more recent years.

Over a million cubic yards of earth were excavated to create this sunken line, which is apparently the first subway project in downtown Philadelphia.

As this big dig was happening, construction of the Reading Terminal was also underway, that famous Italian Renaissance Revival style headhouse built on the spot of an existing open air market (that would find new home and identity as the Reading Terminal Market). The headhouse was designed by F. H. Kimball while Wilson Brothers designed the station. At the time of construction the train shed was one of the largest single-span arched roof structures in the world.

The last train left the station in 1984 leading up to the construction of the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Built next at the Broad & Callowhill intersection was the Elverson building, named after James Elverson Jr, who had been his father’s right hand man for many years. Known as Colonel Elverson he was tight with politicians and experienced in the newsroom.

Elverson never forget his training as a reporter. One evening he was at the Union League when a fire broke out across the street. He rang the city editor, who offered to send a reporter, but Elverson said he’d just cover it himself.

A technical challenge with the new building was supporting the immense weight of  the pressroom while keeping the train tracks clear underneath. Construction of the $10 million building began in July 1923 and was completed two years later. On July 13, 1925, the first issue of The Inquirer produced there came off the huge presses that were visible from the street.

The paper left the building in 2011. The structure is currently undergoing renovation to become the new headquarters for the Philadelphia Police Department.

Across the street from the Inquirer Building, the Terminal Commerce building was completed in 1930. Constructed for $4 million by the Reading Company, Philadephia firm William Steele & Sons constructed the building with designs by Clark Dillenbeck, chief engineer of the Reading Railroad. William Steele & Sons also built Shibe Park (1909).

The foundation has 228 footings up to 50 feet deep and 20 feet round. Each can withstand millions of pounds, helping to keep the building stay still despite vibration from the passing trains.

The building dominates a lot from Broad to 13th and Noble to Callowhill. It has undergone a major revival since 1997, when Inquirer reporter Michael Rozansky wrote, “The hulking building at Broad and Callowhill Streets in Philadelphia almost begs to be ignored.” The building went by its other name, the North American Building, in this article.

When filled with automobile dealers, its own post office, and innumerable other vendors, the glorified warehouse would have been a spectacle in its day.

In 1948, Inquirer publisher Walter Annenberg, who was about to launch TV Guide, constructed a sprawling new building adjacent to the original newsroom tower building on Broad Street.

This structure was originally designed by Albert Kahn, who is most famous nationally for his Detroit factories, but more recognizable locally as the architect of the Packard Motor Company Building that lies just south of the Inquirer tower on Broad Street.

The new building housed rotogravure presses used to print Sunday Inquirer sections as well as TV Guide and Seventeen, another Annenberg publication.

Later the building was used by the Inquirer and Daily News advertising department. Today the School District of Philadelphia runs out of the building. Some transportation advocates want the city to demolish the later-built storage space that now connects the rotogravure building with the tower building (note the lack of windows on this portion of the structure), providing visibility down the Cut.

Currently parked at the end of Noble Street is Reading Railroad Car #1186, which later served as a dining car on the Iron Horse Rambles that ran from Philadelphia through Pennsylvania’s Anthracite region. The car was constructed in 1927 and reconstructed in 1948-49 with a round roof.

The car was sold in the late 1970s and brought to Philadelphia from Reading, PA. The car was a steak and bagel shop (affiliated with Old Original Levis) until 2012.

Old Original Levis, by the way, was a offshoot of Abe Levis historic establishment in South Philly.

Read more about Ave Levis here

The next building on Noble Street is the Lasher Printing Company Building, which Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron described as “a gorgeous art deco castle.”

Explains Saffron of architect Phillip S. Tyre:

Trained as an engineer, Tyre was acclaimed for his industrial buildings and was already designing an addition to the Packard Motor Car Co. at Broad and Wood. That project maintained the look of Albert Kahn’s original car factory, but Tyre staked out completely new architectural ground for Lasher’s printing plant.

Treating reinforced concrete like clay, Tyre sculpted a gorgeous art deco castle. The Noble Street facade is divided into seven bays, separated by flat columns topped with tiered brick, wedding cake-shaped crowns. The central bay is embedded in a series of accordion folds and bookended by trianglular columns. The entrance bay culminates in a 12-sided tower meant to hide the water tank. A frieze of stylized chevrons above the first floor suggests that Tyre, like many art deco architects, was inspired by Native American motifs.

Lasher opened in 1927, just as the Broad Street Subway was finishing construction. This building contributed to the attainment of the Callowhill Industrial Historic District in 2012 after the owners of the nearby Heid Building initiated the process to secure tax credits for the renovation of that structure.

That brings us to the Rail Park.

Pulitzer Prize winning architecture columnist Inga Saffron has been writing about the Rail Park for the Inquirer since 2004, when it was known as the “viaduct”.

In 2005 while discussing an art exhibit, Groundswell, about urban renewal, Saffron drew comparisons to when parks were needed to provide refuge from “belching factories and crowded slums.” On viewing the MoMA exhibit, she remarked,  “it is hard not to be struck by Philadelphia’s rote approach to its landscape problems. The city administration has not yet begun serious planning for the Reading Viaduct park, which is the brainchild of volunteers. Yet, an elevated park could be a catalyst for repopulating the fledgling Loft District north of Vine Street and North Philadelphia.”

Some of this initial interest may have stemmed from a controversy around 2000 about the proposed placement of the new Phillies stadium right on the phase 1 right of way.

John Struble, a major opponent of the stadium, would play a role in the Freinds of the Rail Park. This was actually one of a few different sites proposed for the stadium, see the rest of them here.

In 2011 for the Inquirer, Saffron discussed a study that found it would cost $50 million to demolish the viaduct structure, but $36 million to retrofit it as a park – with higher appreciations for nearby real estate to boot.

Not everyone was a fan, though; according to a Daily News report that same year, John Chin of the Chinatown Development Corporation favored tearing down the viaduct: “It’s the dark shadows; it’s the trash. There’s more crime in this area around the viaduct. Many bad things have been associated with the viaduct and the fact that it overshadows the streets.”

In November 2012, Saffron reported that there were two competing long-term visions for use of the “cut” or the depressed railroad bed that lays between the Rail Park and the Pennsylvania Avenue tunnel nearby the Art Museum Target. This year, local TV personality Mike Jerrick endorsed the concept of a Viaduct Park as his “one great idea” for the Daily News feature.

One proposal would turn the “lowline” into a Bus Rapid Transit corridor, the other was the viaduct project known at that time as “Viaduct Greene”. Viaduct Greene was a brainchild of Paul vanMeter, an early advocate of a wild-like experience for the viaduct structure. vanMeter passed in 2014 from cardiac arrest, and by that time he had a parting of ways with the organization that would become Friends of the Rail Park. However, he and Liz Maillie were key forces in the popularization of what they branded as “viaductgreene” (in their preferred capitalization).

After vanMeter’s passing in 2014, the Viaduct Greene project merged with Friends of the Rail Park, started by Sarah McEneaney and John Struble, local artist and furniture-maker, respectively. By that time, the William Penn Foundation had already begun to study feasibility and pledging money to the effort.

In March 2015, Saffron reported about the teaming up to grant the Rail Park $1 million. At the time, Paul Levy’s Center City District was said to be managing the construction but would not be running the park.

“The William Penn Foundation has long been the dominant force in the creation of new parks around the city. It spends about $13 million a year to underwrite park design and construction, and is responsible for launching Sister Cities Park, the Race Street Pier, and last summer’s Spruce Street Harbor Park.”

There was some pushback, with Scott Cameron writing a letter to the editor about what he posed as the paramount question: “Will there be any artists left to occupy the studios the city envisioned forming a new SoHo, or will it be like so many other things we have painfully seen transpire, in which progress becomes merely a giveaway to the developers who have always put art and artists’ needs down the list after their interests and profits?”

In July 2016, Inga reported about the change to “Rail Park” branding. This year Inquirer columnist called it, “one of the last places in our changing city that still feels undiscovered. Like a secret.” But things were beginning to change, with the Rail Park becoming more mainstream as it achieved publicity through things like its collaboration with Heineken and the National Trust for Historic Preservation around a Bruno Mars concert/fundraiser (the goal was $12k in donations, according to the brief by Jacob Adelman).

Inga covered the park’s opening in a April prospective. The opening was held June 14, 2018. Said Mayor Kenney at the event: “I can’t overstate how important this park is to the Callowhill neighborhood and the city as a whole.”

Festivities were scored by a saxophone quartet from the Philadelphia Pops, and a traditional dragon dance was provided by representatives from neighboring Chinatown.

“This park it will connect people, it will connect communities, it will connect—ultimately when it extends the entire three miles which is the great vision for this Rail Park—it will connect our whole city,” said Philly Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott-Lovell.

Center City District CEO Paul Levy, an early advocate of the park, said that donations were collected from 297 organizations and individuals. The largest funding came from the State of Pennsylvania, William Penn Foundation, and  Knight Foundation.

Immediately following the ribbon cutting ceremony, crowds flooded the park, and enjoyed some pizza donated by nearby Bufad.

Here’s some footage from right after the park opened:

The Friends of the Rail Park is the non-profit fundraising organization that continues to coalesce support and funding for the park.

The organization hired its first executive director, Kevin Dow, in the months leading up to the park’s opening. Prior to joining the Rail Park, Dow had been Senior Vice President of Impact and Innovation at United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey.

Friends of the Rail Park Board of Directors

• Liz Maillie, Chair
• Sarah McEneaney, Vice Chair
• Michael Garden, Vice Chair
• H. Allen Hall, Treasurer
• Melissa Kim, Secretary
• Sally Elk
• Sunanda Ghosh
• Tiffany Newmuis
• John Struble

The Rail Park was designed by Bryan Hanes through his firm Studio Bryan Hanes. The Hanes project was a collaboration that involved input from numerous stakeholders and residents in the surrounding Callowhill and Chinatown neighborhoods.

Hanes described his vision to Billy Penn: “So your experience in walking the elevated piece can be through a shady grove, out into the sun and meadows, and then back into a grove.” Hanes explained that there are three main layers, with London plane trees as the upper layer; multi-stem oaks, Kentucky coffee, birch and other tree varieties in the medium layer; and a diverse lower level featuring sage, milkweed, sumac, fern, grasses, indigo, petunias, and more.

Previously the park had been dominated by pawlonia trees, a non-native and fast-growing species that came to the States through international trade, wherein pawlonia seeds provided a cheap and lightweight packing materials.

The Rail Park’s construction was overseen by Urban Engineers, and with their help the project saw wholesale transformation of Noble Street from Broad to 12th. Noble Street now features traffic calming measures, sidewalks, and a wire mesh wall and ivy to hide an adjacent parking lot.

The Rail Park couldn’t have been built without private philanthropy, an effort that continues through the Center City District Foundation. Throughout the park you’ll see plaques designation donations from different individuals, families, and companies. Opportunities range from $100,000 for a set of entrance stairs, $50,000 for the interpretive wall or tiered seating, $25,000 for a swing, and then going all the way down to $100 for a shrub or perennial.  In addition to the Knight Foundation and William Penn Foundation, which served as anchor sponsors, other donors included Poor Richard’s Charitable Trust, the Mclean Contributorship, the Tuttleman Family Foundation, Victor Keen and Jeanne Ruddy, Bank of America, Post Brothers, Five Below, and many others.

The Rail Park also subscribes to the “Percent for Art” program, at this point manifesting through the site-specific artwork Dawn Chorus by Brent Wahl and Laynie Brown. The piece features a repurposed utility pole and seven cast aluminum birds, with a viewing spot paved by stones inscribed with poetry from different languages, including excerpts by Seamus Heaney, Gertrude Stein, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Anna Akhmatova, and many more.

The industrial-looking Rail Park swings also evoke a makeshift ropeswing that used to hang on the other portion of the viaduct, past the current Callowhill cutoff. These swings can support up to 10,000 pounds. All the platforms and benches in the park were built with a durable hardwood called ipe, which is nonflammable, water/mold/scratch-resistant, and imported from South America.  The steel is meant to rust just a little bit so there’s an industrial look that should be maintenance free. Phase One of the High Line also used ipe, although Phase Two used recycled teak.

Now let’s talk about some of the buildings we can see from the Rail Park. Looking north from the Rail Park, a twin steeple church stands out on Spring Garden Street.

The Gothic-style Church of the Assumption at 1121 Spring Garden Street is the oldest surviving work of prolific Catholic architect Patrick Keely, who also designed Manayunk’s St. John the Baptist. It is also the building most endangered of demolition currently.

The structure was built 1848-49 and expanded at the end of the 19th century. It closed at the end of the 20th century in 1995. The church has significance in local Catholicism as being the baptismal church of Saint Katherine Drexel, daughter of a wealthy banker who became a missionary to Native Americans and African Americans. St. John Neumann also administered confirmation here twice and, according to lore, also assisted in the church’s consecration.

Stained glass at the site was designed by George Morgan and the Tyrolese Art Glass Company. There are 9 figurative windows and 33 ornamental windows, although it is not clear that all are intact.

According to Catholic historian Andrew Jackson Reilly, the site is also the location of Ben Franklin’s famous kite flying experiment, and as he explained in an account about the church’s early history: “The kite hovered in the air immediately above the site where the church is to be erected, but as no man can say positively the actual spot, I propose to put up two spires, so that we may say somewhere between these points, happened the most heroic act ever performed in the interests of science.”

Looking east from the Rail Park, you can make out the top of Esslinger’s Brewery.

The complex today encompasses at least 8 distinct buildings ranging in construction date from 1826 to 1964, with major expansion at the end of Prohibition when it became the first Philadelphia brewery to mass produce cans of beer. William F. Koelle designed the “Plant No 1” building to wrap around two tall Victorian era brew houses, the long frontages balancing marketing benefit with accommodating the production line. The building remains active as a soap factory for the company National Chemicals, making one of the industrial building with the longest continuous history in Philadelphia.

Looking south from the Rail Park, the gray and green of the newly renovated “Goldtex” building stands out.

The Goldtex building was built as the Smaltz Building by Ballinger & Perrot for Isaac H. Goodman. Just a few years ago, this building would have been a totally different sight, with the reinforced concrete superstructure visible.

For a time this was the city’s tallest reinforced concrete structure. Goodman used the building for his Smaltz ladies shoe manufacture until selling it to Gold-tex sportswear manufacture who purchased and used the building from the 1950s to 1990s.

The Goldtex building actually wasn’t the first built by Ballinger & Perrot for Goodman, as he had previously commissioned the nearby Goodman Loeb Building from the firm (1909). Today the Goodman Loeb Building goes as the Beaux Arts Lofts, and it stands out as the first building converted to lofts in the neighborhood (1995).

The earliest Ballinger & Perrot building in the area is the Rebman Building near the Noble Street entrance to the Rail Park.

This building was one of the first renovated into condos; prices started at $80,000 but now reach $500,000.

On the other side of the parking lot adjacent the Rail Park (an open space previously occupied by a coal yard until paved for parking in the 1970’s) is the Wolf Building, built at 340 N. 12th Street in 1920 for a paper company that pioneered paper bags for retail use.

Wolf moved operations to the suburbs in 1966, after which a firm Ring Brothers (later Larami Toys) bought the building. It was that that some bright designer invented the super soaker, which the company began manufacturing there in the 1980’s, according to a report by longtime Daily News reporter Gar Joseph. Super soaker production ceased after Hasbro acquired the company in 1992. A group of investors purchased the building in 1997 and began redeveloping it as a cultural and technological hub; the event space Underground Arts occupies space on the lower levels and has been one of the most notable projects by Cornell, Penn, and Wharton trained architect/owner Gary Reuben.

Caddy corner from the Wolf Building, across what was once a portion of Camac Street, is the Heid Building, constructed for Frank P. Heid’s hat and cap manufacturer in just 8 months, from October 15, 1926 to June 15, 1927.

PRDC Properties purchased the building in 2017 and began a $13m renovation to turn the building into 96 luxury apartments, complete with a rooftop terrace, demonstration kitchen, coworking space, and lounge space. As part of construction nearly two dozen students from Benjamin Franklin High School’s Career and Technical Education Vocational Center were given internships and apprenticeships on the project. The Heid Building was designed by J. Franklin Stuckert.

The area around the Rail Park continues to change rapidly, and there are still many other buildings we haven’t mentioned in the post above. Check back here for updates in the future, and visit RailParkTours.com if you’d like to hear all this and more during a 60-minute tour of the park.

More info

Rail Park official site

Bars and breweries near the Rail Park

Restaurants near the Rail Park

Rail Park hours of operation

The Fairmount Park Transit Company had incorporated as a New Jersey corporation in 1894 as the Fairmount Park Transportation Company (the name change to come a couple decades later).

(Shameless plug: If you want to see the trail for yourself, the next guided walking tour led by former Fairmount Park Conservancy Project Manager, Chris Dougherty, is August 19, 2018. Book here.

The project was an early and contentious example of a public-private partnership, as seen here from a July 1895 Philadelphia Inquirer page seven headline:

By November 1896, the system was in testing and it would launch to the public the following year. Here are some pictures to give you a sense of the system. Shoutout to The Trolley Dodger for being a terrific resource on this subject.

The construction of the system cost millions of dollars and the system, ultimately, turned out to be a financial failure.

Hidden City Philadelphia has written about some of the construction, shouting out “The Prettiest Old Bridge to Nowhere”. Author Bradley Maule offers some context:

Some of the bridge spans go 100′ or more, and although they don’t remain intact, the pedestals are clearly visible and appear as seemingly ancient ruins in the reclaimed land.

Maule at Hidden City also notes the history of Upper and Lower Chamounix Lakes, totally forgotten today as they were destroyed for the Schuykill Expressway (along with the falls from which East Falls got its name).

The Strawberry Mansion Bridge was constructed in 1904 to expand the service of the trolley.

The trolley also made use of a right of way that had a much older role in America’s transportation infrastructure, the Belmont Inclined Plane, a major feature of the Main Line of Public Works (yes the same Main Line that would later be used by the railways and come to define the whole area). The plane connecting the Schuykill with the rail line above helped Philly compete with New York and Baltimore, port cities that were developing new transportation links to the rapidly growing American Midwest. The plane was abandoned in 1850 when a new line was built.

In total, the trolley made 14 of 16 stops in West Fairmount Park. Another major attraction was Woodside Park, located close to the present Target Monument Road. The Park was opened by the trolley company and operated until 1955, lasting slightly longer than the trolley itself.

Via the Broad Street Review’s Bruce Klauber:

The trolley shut down in 1946 and its assets were auctioned off.

Decades after the trolley had been dismantled, following much organic use and evolution, the Fairmount Park Conservancy Park staff began in 2007 mapping these newer user-created trails and working with the Belmont Plateau Trails Alliance (BPTA) to reduce the environmental impact of the trails. Since then, the effort has become a multi-organization campaign to define and protect this trail system for bikers, hikers, and all kinds of pleasure seekers.

Maps

This quote does the industry a disservice and in this column I argue that publishers should use an older framework, noblesse oblige, to better understand their social obligation.

Mencken’s quote absorbed by us, the modern reader: We read into that royal verbiage, a higher calling, a sense of duty. Yes, true. But we must contextualize the calling in the social milieu where Mencken grew up.

The son of a union-busting cigar factory owner, Mencken’s journey into journalism was made possible by his father’s death, giving Mencken the opportunity to move into journalism. Mencken was no man on a social mission. In fact, his social stances would be considered bigoted today.

Calling his vocation the life of kings, Mencken does not focus on the obligation of his calling, but the solipsistic pleasures of being a journalist. The peace of mind one has, the agency one can exhibit, the novelty of new information and ideas. Mencken didn’t call it the “life of kings” because he was doing something grand with his life; in his own words he did it because it was fun:

As I look back over a misspent life, I find myself more and more convinced that I had more fun doing news reporting than in any other enterprise. It is really the life of kings.

Mencken only understood a fraction of what it means to be in news. He focused on his experience as a producer, an agitator, a reporter, becoming enthralled with his own voice. Heck yeah, it’s fun.

Sadly, many managers in today’s news industry show a similar career trajectory to Mencken. A large percentage of these people, namely older white men who constitute the majority of media leadership, were directly inspired by Watergate and a newfound relevancy for the news media that hadn’t been seen since the muckrakers. Ever seen All the President’s Men? Delightful movie, right? It helped inspire a new generation that, yes, this “life of kings” might be for them, too.

There is a tendency by newsroom middle management to believe that because they were the ones who showed up first, they have some greater claim to leadership. What they don’t realize is: The very ability to show up had in it embedded the same socioeconomic disparities that are evident at every level of the newsroom.

As a privileged person it can be difficult if not impossible to appreciate the amount of social security built into our very family fabric. Being able to accept a job in journalism is a great example.

I believe that there are many out there who might qualify as yeoman reporters, those with a burning desire to do this work and a reasonable (if sometimes dwindled) confidence that they will be financially secure, at some point. Some examples of how family money matters in these early stages:

• College tuition/expenses
• Down payments for apartment
  
• Interim health insurance coverage
  
• ???

One’s ability to accept a low-paying job as a “foot in the door” reflects not their drive, not their passion, but centuries-old accumulation of systematic inequities. As with Greek life, there is surely some element of hazing in this setup – “I went through a shitty low-paying period, so you should too!” At face value this sentiment is despicable, punitive and small. Even being able to “hedge” a life in journalism by trying an internship while you supplement with other income, this is not really a feasible or advisable situation for those who live with daily financial risk.

I have a noblesse oblige when it comes to news. My privilege, my education, my experiences – they have equipped me to do good in this field. And “do good” to me specifically means implementing systems that increase equity in local news: Ownership matters.

Equity means that we have living wages for every position we hire.

Equity means that we actively try to identify under-represented and under-heard populations and raise them up.

Equity means that at times we make decisions which will negatively impact our net worth in favor of a greater good.

Equity means employee stock option plans.

Equity means that actively seeking and addressing structural issues.

Those most in need of hearing this message will have already reacted allergically to the idea that somehow their privilege, their whiteness, their heteronormativity is somehow here a problem. I don’t have a good answer to you, it’s a struggle I also face and will until I die. What was my obligation? Did I meet it?

In the near future (with a dash of luck), this will be a business issue and not just a moral one. Diverse workforce produce better results. Labor won’t tolerate misguided management forever, and new organizations with these principles embedded will begin to change the news industry from within.

While it may seem strong to reject criticisms, to circle up the wagons and show no weakness, there is much greater power in humbly processing and acting on critical feedback. Doing so is tough and it requires vulnerability – vulnerability to the public, to our staff, to ourselves. But quite frankly, it’s the only damn way we are going to fix this mess.

HF “Gerry” Lenfest should be honored among these titans of commerce, and a statue should be erected in his honor at City Hall to remind future generations of this man who made it his mission to give away as much wealth as possible before he died (he was a signer of the Giving Pledge).

READ MORE: How Lenfest grew a small Lebanon Valley cable company into a multi-billion dollar fortune.

Lenfest and his wife, Marguerite, donated $1.2 billion to cultural institutions, primarily in Pennsylvania. He personally made possible the Museum of the American Revolution, the unique Inquirer ownership situation, and the Barnes on the Parkway. Lenfest wanted the control over his philanthropic legacy; he told the Inquirer in 2014, “During your lifetime, you can direct how your wealth is spent for the most good. But after your death, it is problematic. You don’t have the control.”

Lenfest is the type of business leader we should tell our children about. Living much of the time in a house the couple purchased in 1966, the Lenfests held their wealth with grace, and their 2017 acceptance video of the Medal of Philanthropy is a testament to their philosophy of philanthropy (Three tenets: Don’t create a foundation in perpetuity, Have professional management, Never have a family foundation.)

It took 15 years for the Octavius Catto statue to be realized. (Or, nearly 150 years, depending how you look at it.) So don’t expect this process to go quickly.

In sculpting Catto, artist Branly Cadet sought to embody Catto’s values of respect, growth, fairness, education, and civic engagement. What values would Lenfest’s statue embody?

Perhaps this could be a topic of conversation at Lenfest’s memorial service later this month.

One way to fast track the statue would be for Comcast or another Lenfest legacy organization to donate the statue; this would make the decision easier for the pholks at Phila.gov (and this is the precedent set by the Baldwin statue, donated by his namesake company).

The biggest caveat to my recommendation is that the courtyard has an awful shortage of statues honoring women, especially historical women (true for the city at large, although Philly is not as bad as New York or DC). While this gap doesn’t reduce the merit of a Lenfest statue, it’s an important issue to note whenever discussing the City Hall courtyard.

None of the statues feature multiple people today, but I would be in favor of memorializing Marguerite too— she is proof of the old adage, behind every great man is a great woman. In a Cable Center oral history, Edgar Masinter (NYC attorney and Mercersburg classmate/now chair of the board) remarked, “Gerry’s success would not have happened without her. She can trim his sails when nobody else can. And she also believes in him at those moments when he might think no one else has a reason to. It’s very much a partnership.”

In a letter to Melinda Gates written in 2010 after the couple signed the Giving Pledge, Gerry explained:

One is not measured by how many homes, yachts or airplanes you have. The ultimate achievement in life is how you feel about yourself. And giving your wealth away to have an impact for good does help with that feeling.

Philly should honor Lenfest for his ultimate achievement by erecting a statue in his honor at City Hall.

Since I’m often condemned by people for printing things which they say ought not to be printed, I’ve sometimes considered making a standing apology, published once a year, to be read anytime this happens. I’ve been too busy previously to do this, but given the extraordinary offense at an “N.B.” ad in a recent handbill I printed, it seemed like the time was right, even if my thoughts are a little rushed.

I request anyone who’s mad at me for printing things they don’t like to consider the following:

1. Opinions are as diverse as faces, an observation so common it’s become a proverb (“So many Men so many Minds”).
   
2. Printing is chiefly about opinions, whether promoting one opinion or opposing another.
3. This results in the peculiar problem of printing, where it’s hard to make a living without giving offense to some (and perhaps many) people.
4. It’s unreasonable to think that any one man would be pleased with everything printed.
5. Printers are taught that both sides ought to be heard, and that truth will generally prevail, so they tend not to care which side a particular writer supports (as long as they pay them well!).
6. Because of this exposure, printers become unconcerned whether they are printing “right” or “wrong” opinions. It’s their daily grind to print extremely venomous articles with calmness and indifference, and without ill will to the ones targeted, who nevertheless think the Printer is as much an enemy as the author.
7. It’s unreasonable to imagine printers approving everything they print, since they print so many opposite and contradictory things. This makes it unreasonable to suggest that printers should only print what they approve, since doing so would put an end to free writing and the world would have nothing to read but the opinions of printers.
8. If all printers were determined not to print anything unless it didn’t offend anyone, there would be very little printed.
9. If they do print something vicious or silly, it might not be because they approve it, but because the people don’t appreciate the finer things. For example, I have seen Robin Hood’s Songs sell out, while having spent much longer selling a smaller quantity of David’s Psalms.
10. Despite all this, printers DO continually discourage the printing of a great number of bad things. I myself refuse to print anything that might promote vice or immorality, even if there was a lot of money on the line. I have also refused to print things that might do real injury to a person. These refusals have made me many enemies, and it’s tough to remain so vigilant with denials. But the public doesn’t realize this, and therefore don’t give printers the benefit of the doubt that a mistake may have been made. As Waller says,
    Poets loose half the Praise they would have got
    Were it but known what they discreetly blot

This brings me to the case at hand, regarding the “N.B.” advertisement. The background is that an ad was brought to me about a ship headed to Barbados, with a notice at the bottom, “No Sea Hens nor Black Gowns will be admitted on any Terms.” I printed the ad and collected payment, and the handbill was hung up around town as usual. I didn’t think to ask about the meaning at the time, nor did I have any idea that it would cause offense. But several good men are very angry with me, saying I was too smart to do something like this, and that they wouldn’t have done the same in my position. Since therefore I had to be acting out of malice (according to them) they will no longer buy any of my papers nor deal with me in any way. This is very hard!

I wish I had refused to print the ad, but it’s in the past and cannot be revoked. I want to offer the following thoughts, some in mitigation and others beside the point. Please read these in good humor.

1. I ran the ad without any malice and interpreted it at face value.
2. I never saw the word Sea Hens before in my life, and though I knew that Black Gowns meant clergy of Church of England, I thought they wouldn’t mind a trifling mention of their dress.
3. I have many clergy customers and friends, and I must be very malicious or stupid to print this for a small profit if I thought it would have given them offense.
4. If I did have malice against the clergy, it’s odd that I haven’t written about it before, even though it’s easy to make jokes about.
5. If I did have malice, there would be better ways of injuring the clergy.
6. I only got $50 for it.
7. No one who is mad at me would have paid that much to suppress the ad.
8. If people could pay to suppress content, I could probably live a very easy life, and there would be very little printed.
9. I am thankful for everyone who subscribes to my paper, even to those who once subscribed but have now canceled, but I beg they not encourage others to cancel, as it seems unnecessarily malicious to me.
10. It’s impossible to know what you’d do as a printer unless you have been a printer.
11. Discounting a few incidents as a rash youth, I have avoided printing items that give offense to the Church or State.
12. I’ve printed thousands of ads that didn’t mention Sea Hens or Black Gowns, and this being the first example of an offensive ad, I had expected forgiveness.

I’ll end with an old story about a well-meaning man and his son who were headed to the market with a donkey. The road was bad, so the man road but the son walked. The first person they passed asked why he was letting his son walk alone, so the man pulled up his son. The second person they passed asked about the donkey, so the man hopped off and let his son ride alone to give the animal a rest. The third passerby laughed at the son who had apparently persuaded his dad to bear the hard burden, and so the father asked if they might walk together.

Finally, someone sees them leading the donkey by the halter when they get called blockheads for going on foot when they had a ride at-hand. The old man could no longer bear it: “My son, we cannot please all these people. Let us throw the donkey over the next bridge so we are no longer troubled by him.”

Had the old man done this, he’d have been called a fool for caring about the opinions of all that wanted to find fault with him. Therefore, although I also want to please everybody, I intend not to imitate him by leaving printing. I shall continue my business. I shall not burn my press and melt my letters.

The tip was about motivating your team by showing them what motivates you.

Motivation has to start with why. But motivation by itself has no direction. One could want to do X with no earthly idea how.

Motivation requires direction to achieve an outcome. In other words, a vector, a quantity containing both magnitude and direction. So when we think about an individual person’s productivity, one can imagine it described through these terms – the outcomes one attains are the function of magnitude (motivation) and direction.

And in fact, this mathematical metaphor scales to the organization. Another concept worth understanding is the slope field, or vector field. Vector fields plot these doublets of magnitude & direction across space, typically illustrated as vectors on a cartesian plot.

One can consider an organization’s total productivity as the aggregate of a vector field over time. That is to say, if we consider this graph as representing each individual’s motivation and direction at a given moment in time, adding these slices over some period should reflect the outcomes of that organization over the same period.

This illustration of vector addition should demonstrate the downside of organizational misalignment. It is so easy for two hard working people to totally nullify each other’s impact on the organization, or end up with some other unexpected impact once the outcomes are synthesized.

This is the same idea as “rowing in the same direction” but expanded to reflect the multi-function setup of a modern corporation, whose considerations are slightly more complex than your average eight-person shell.

Amazing things can happen when an organization or a community shares motivation and direction across its constituents; serendipitous things can happen when there are certain controlled divergence across vector direction; but dangerous be the group where vectors oppose or intersect perpendicularly.

That’s all I got for now. Enjoy your day!

To recap: When it comes to media ownership, hedge funds aren’t equal to foundations aren’t equal to public companies aren’t equal to private companies, etc. Frustration around how different owners mismanaged their business has caused me to changed my metric from ‘the cumulative number of years outlets had been serving their communities’ to ‘the number of journalists earning living wages reporting on their communities’.

A number of technologists have imagined the platform that might make it easier for journalists to pursue their livelihood by handling all the non-editorial work/monetization for them (and delivering a better UX & business model in the process).

Time and experience have changed how I view this platform idea. A few years ago, I felt extremely bullish on the prospect of a high-growth local news/info play that could be made into a big company. The incongruity between the social importance of local and its existing monetization performance suggested that there were fortunes to be made on that difference. Could there be a next Gannett? It seemed to me like Jeff Bezos wouldn’t mind this role. Neither would I – hey, it’s good to be the king!

But there is a king already (Gannett), and even if their quarter to quarter looks as bad as they do now, they won’t give up their hegemony without a fight. The consolidation of financial interests across the rest of the sector is as scary – ComBuzzVoxNBCU, TrinClair, MicWPP, etc. Paper money orchestrated by the same people that screwed us over last time. Or if you don’t like that slightly leftist phrasing, think of the problem from a pure economical analysis of the information economy, we’ve got a media environment approaching oligopoly.

There aren’t many good publishers these days, and that’s not just my opinion. In addition to the consolidation demonstrated above, there’s a growing sense that nobody speak – smarm won as New York’s digital reporter & producer underclass got slowly sucked into extant newsroom cultures & conglomerates. Choire’s running the Style section for G-d’s sake. The verve of early blogging no longer an identity but a tactic, faux counter-culturalism designed to elicit engagement. I pine for the muckrakers.

What’s the slingshot? How do we take down a legion of goliath and empower small local publishers? How might we help publishers realize the economic benefits of consolidation while maintaining independence?

A few weeks ago at SRCCON, I learned about the Park Slope Food Coop, and it inspired some lateral thinking about how the framework of coops might be applied to news organizations. The 7 principles of coops were new to me, and so they might be new to you, too.

1. Voluntary and Open Membership
2. Democratic Member Control
3. Member Economic Participation
4. Autonomy and Independence
5. Education, Training and Information
6. Co-operation among Co-operatives
7. Concern for Community

I really dig these principles, and they seem to rhyme with the values of open source, too.

Here’s a problem I tweeted yesterday.

[twitter url=”https://twitter.com/davisshaver/status/898207568866168832″ /]

Open source is typically time consuming and distractive from your main business objectives.

At the same time, open source is powerful, and can lead to measurably better software outcomes.

For small media companies, choosing which software they open source can seem risky in opportunity cost and competitive advantage. And sure, you could try one-off partnerships with organizations, but partnerships typically entail significant coordination cost.

The coop model would hire a professional staff to maintain the technology stack and possibly other non-core business functions, like HR, payroll, taxes, etc.

To promote upstream contributions, the concept of sweat equity could be applied to technology so everyone in the network has incentive to better the whole. I’ve even wondered if a blockchain could be used to track the contributions of members over time, essentially capitalizing the co-op through in-kind contributions of time and code. The coop could have an ICO to fund initial development of the platform. Whether a classic coop or a newer “programmatic” coop based on blockchain, the insight is aligning participation/contribution with voice/stake. By capitalizing the coop in this way, we also create an economic framework for transitioning a “seat” to another publisher based on free market pricing of the coop coin.

By addressing the tragedy of the commons (for no one actor is it rational to maintain the open source community) we can create a coop-level open source project wherein developments are shared for the exclusive benefit of member organizations. The same goes for whatever other workflows or products the coops request; specific approaches and the ethics of programmatic advertising and data management platforms aside momentarily, it’s generally a true statement that the more data you have a consumer, the more effectively you can monetize them.

Other benefits to this coordination include bulk contracts with vendors, knowledge sharing, and potentially content sharing as well. Simple geographic buffer zones around member outlets could create scarcity around the seats and prevent in-market competition between coop outlets. Regional clusters seem like they’d be an outcome of this approach & that seems okay to me, independent publishers of that stature could play an important role in our nation’s overall political economy. Publishers in a corollary Gannett cluster do not have that ability.

This is a disruptive idea because it optimizes for local growth rather than corporate profits. I have some idea about how we might ensure that our local outlets are also equitable in the distribution of their revenue to staff, but I’ll save that for a later post. At this point I’d simply like to hear what you think in the comments.

Update: The “moment of inspiration” described above at SRCCON is probably overblown. Gabe Stein of Massive points out that he mentioned this idea (and related it to Visa) in the conversation with Sean & Noah referenced in the Platform post. I hope it’s a good sign that a bunch of us are thinking about this simultaneously!

The President is a distraction. No doubt, real damage is being wrecked, but the election was a symptom and not the cause of our current disease of the body politic.

Mass media, corporatization, consolidation, the Internet, and finally the financial crisis resulted in the dissolution of the local media business model.

The Times, The Journal, The Post – they are safe. Subscribe, yes, but don’t worry about their sustainability in an existential sense. Myopically, shamelessly, ruthlessly: I believe the problem is local.

I’m excited there is a small batch of promising local news startups that have to varying degrees refrained from the siren call of venture or corporate funding.

The news companies that excite me most today are WhereBy.Us, Charlotte Agenda, ARLNow, Levittown Now, and Technically Philly. I want to pour fuel on their fire. Despite my enthusiasm, there is one nagging thought at the back of my mind: How do we prevent this from happening again? What enabled corporatization and consolidation?

Ownership is the material thing. Hedge funds, not awesome. Public or pre-public company, okay. Billionaire philanthropist (or his philanthropy), now we’re talking. But even better than having a good owner is being a good owner.

We can focus on grooming and supporting independent and strong publishers who can begin the slow and low multiple effort of building service-oriented local news businesses. Publishers who believe in sharing the journey – emotional, financial – with editorial staff. Labor and capital intertwined.

Why not? Decision making power need not correlate with financial share, so Church and State should not be an issue any more than a blind trust would be in a political setting.

We all should know by now that not all ownership, not all publishers, are created equal. Love those who speak truth to power and support your local news collective!

We’ve seen the Platform in a few incarnations. CoPress. Nick Denton, Kinja, Gawker, the Lafayette Project – the furthest we’ve seen the concept go so far. Spirited Media could have been a contender, but less likely now with the Gannett investment. Facebook wishes it could step into this space but Zuckerberg needs the news media for now. Medium took too much VC to approach product development in the maker-friendly way that will be required for success. The Chorus Suite represents the walled garden approach. Jeff Bezos, Jarrod Dicker, Shailesh Prakash, and ARC certainly see the opportunity, and their sales efforts seem to be heating up.

The Platform connects the makers and consumers of content. Different people have described the idea in different ways. Shopify for News (Noah Chestnut) and Nation Builder for Publishers (me) are two examples based in the startup world. Nick Denton has described the platform as breaking down the distinctions between content creators and consumers. On the consumer side, Netflix for News (Austin Smith) is a moniker.

The Platform, to me, embodies a product and an ethos.

Its first principle is that a content creator or journalist should be able to begin distributing content digitally with a system that supports the full news lifecycle: planning, composing, editing, producing, distributing, monetizing, measuring, and engaging.

The hypothesis is that the Batavian’s one-man band model of hyperlocal/hyperinterest journalism is not the best path forward, and contrary to popular belief that local doesn’t scale, the intelligent provisioning of customer relationship management, analytics, programmatic advertising, and subscription/event management tools would allow a conglomerate to manage the publications in a more profitable way than any individual outlet could by itself. I’m not sure what the specific revenue model should be – rev share? franchise fee? SAAS? owned & operated or partnership? – but the strategy seems sensible to me. Direct sales are most at risk for any outlet moving from local sales to conglomerate, but I believe that can be partially mitigated by introducing more SMB-friendly private marketplaces. Geo-targeting and AR should be fair game too.

On the consumer side, the Platform is qualitatively better than legacy news products. Personalization usually plays a role. Sources go direct and user generated content probably play a role. Membership/subscription fees & events gotta be on the table. Ads should generally be better targeted and better produced than most display inventory. Maybe even no ads.

The idea draws from Doc Searls’ Cluetrain Manifesto (markets are conversations) and some of Dave Winer’s thoughts about diversifying the publishing industry.

The goal would be to recreate Gannett for the digital age by focusing ruthlessly on technology execution and enabling editors – publisher as a service. The Platform. Whaddya think?

The cumulative number of years our newsrooms have been serving their communities.

I estimated this figure to be in the thousands. The New Haven Register has been doing business for 205 years; The Denver Post for 125; The Daily Freeman for 146. That’s just three papers!

But holy crap, have I became a sad & cynical person at my not-so-old age of 28. Was it me? Was it the newspaper industry? I pay a therapist pretty well to help me figure that out. There was so much history riding on us getting this right. Why do folks push back against innovation and change?

And, even if these newspaper institutions were bullish on change – if DFM hadn’t closed Thunderdome and had backed “Brother.ly”; if PMN knew how the Crovitz/Friedlich investment in the ultra-light digital model reconciled with their own weird cerberus of two newspapers and a site – what does it say about the future of the paper brands? The same could be said about Gannett, which continues the bloodshed with no real roadmap for the papers in sight.

I’m finding less and less reason for optimism. Help me!

I’ve been thinking about changing my metric. In some ways, this feels like giving up. But in others, it feels like a breath of fresh air.

The total number of journalists earning living wages to cover their local communities.

History remembers institutions, but what is an institution other than the cumulative character of its people? Should we care who employs a journalist so long as they can practice ethically? How else should we respond to institutions that aren’t taking care of themselves?

Have you ever wondered whether Jeff Bezos might want the same? He’s conquering retail and cloud computing, has sights on voice, long bets on space, and a thriving publication at the Washington Post.

Alright, so, how might Bezos eventually takeover local news? A play in a a few acts… With the Greek chorus here being something about the rise of the operations-focused technocrat.

Start with revenue. You may have seen the Washington Post’s Zeus product, a rethought ad stack with all ads loading < 2 seconds. Key phrase: “It’s pitching Zeus to other publishers”. Washington Post product director Jarrod Dicker says they have no plans “right now” to bundle 3rd-party publisher inventory in the Washington Post’s private marketplace, but with Amazon’s programmatic arm (A9) already thriving this is an eventual no brainer.

Play to print. Bezos has a weak spot for print, or at least he says he is. That’s what lead to the Post’s early Kindle Fire attempts at print replication, the project where current Post rockstar Joey Marburger may have first landed on Bezos’ radar. Print is a presence throughout the Amazon/WaPo/Local news trifecta, too. Digital subscriptions are getting a bigger presence on Amazon.com; the Post has been experimenting for a couple years now with WaPo digital access as a local news add-on; early attempts at using newspaper delivery service for last mile have given way to Bezos building a nationwide infrastructure to do just that himself. No one seriously expects print to grow going forward, but presenting Bezos as an innovator who appreciates print culture will be a key part of this longterm sales process.

Have the best tech. While we have to guard against the “unicorn CMS” tendency, ARC is up there with Chorus in cobbling together an ever shifting set of tools into a sensible constellation of a content management system. ARC tackles jobs that digital shops have traditionally been less fixated on, like section front production, workflow management, and digital asset management. The solutions for analytics, multi-variate testing, and editorial optimization hold their own against startups and big tech co alternatives. Coral Project has a base at WaPo, and of course this whole smorgasbord is built on Amazon Web Services. There are additional single player benefits here with data and optimization, read this for a hint.

Live on big contracts until self serve is ready. Here’s the big trick. Tribune Company, er, Tronc has already signed onto ARC. There are dozens of other clients who’ve done the same. But the Post hasn’t really begun selling ARC yet. The sales cycle at this point requires reaching out and a high degree of publisher buy-in and collaboration. The Amazon model will push ARC to become more of a self-service product so that the product can be profitable even when sold to smaller clients, like regional chains and legacy family companies. By that time all the kinks around integration will have been worked out and the process might be as simple as a DNS change.

I’m not saying this is definitely going to happen, but Bezos has a good chance of becoming even more of a media baron in the years to come.