October 18, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Keels’ book a must-have for history buffs
by JIMMY J. PACK

Thomas Keels’ new book, Forgotten Philadelphia, Lost Architecture of the Quaker City, can easily be called the ultimate Philadelphia book. Keels has clearly spent countless hours doing his homework and has crafted a book so dense in information and so sublime in meaning, that it might just earn the title of must-have book for all people who live in the city of brotherly love.

In a sense, Keels’ book is an elegy to the past of Philadelphia,  chronicling both the highs and lows of popular culture of our city. He focuses on areas around the city and both informs us of places some may never have known existed or reminds us of places we have once known.

Keels’ commentary on the loss of such treasures is minimal but the loss of so many beautiful structures belies the elegy contained within, whether a building/place was lost to greed, neglect or its use deemed obsolete, indeed many of these places were works of art and need to be remembered.

For instance, many people may not know of the mansion that used to be known as Compton, which stood where the grounds of the Morris Arboretum are today. The land was owned by the prominent Quaker family the Morrises, specifically John and Lydia Morris, who had an ornate, asymmetrical stone mansion erected on the highest point of the grounds. Hipped gabled roofs with Flemmish cross gables, intricate stone carvings and a square towers bespoke of the Gilded Age. The balcony overlooked views of the Bloomfield Farm, the farm owned by the Morrises in Montgomery County.

The residence was used mostly as a summer home and the estate was to be used as a botanical garden, horticultural school and museum after their deaths, which is now why the area is now known as the Morris Arboretum. Keels goes on to explain the controversy that resulted in the loss of the mansion in his book.

In another part of the book Keels reminds Philadelphians of the once great Civil War era hospital that once sat on the area occupied by Chestnut Hill Village and Superfresh.

Mower U.S. Army General Hospital was a stop off the former  Philadelphia, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Railroad. The stop, originally called Edgewood, is now Wyndmoor Station. War casualties were processed immediately as they were transported off the train and received care along with 3,600 other patients.

The hospital was intended to be a temporary structure, and after the war the buildings were demolished.  Some of the wood was used to build houses that still stand today. The chapel bell of the hospital now rings from the tower of Christ Ascension Lutheran Church on the corner of Southampton and Germantown avenues.

Keels spends much of the book digging up spirits of the past that will make many readers say, “Now why can’t we have a place like that today?”

Such is the case with Woodside Amusement Park, the only amusement park located inside the city’s boarders (what is now called Wynnefield Heights).

Founded in 1897 by the Fairmount Park Transportation Company, Woodside Amusement Park invited visitors to swim in the Crystal Pool, race bicycles on its circular track, picnic under the trees, take a ride on a small railway or enjoy swan boats on Chamounix Lake.

With more than 40 rides the standout was the Gustav Dentzel carousel, which was salvaged when the park was demolished in 1955. (After being housed by the Smithsonian Institution for many years, the carousel will return to Philadelphia in the newly remodeled Please Touch Museum in the old Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park.)

Keels will certainly dig up memories in his readers when they read about the old Gimbel’s Department Store on Market Street between Eighth and Ninth Streets in Center City. The former landmark department store was responsible for instilling the concept of the Thanksgiving Day Parade here in Philadelphia in 1920. Fifty employees in costumes paraded down Market Street followed by automobiles and a fire engine carrying Santa Claus, who was almost always played by a fireman. Santa would ascend a ladder and enter into an upper window into Gimbel’s. Not only was this Philly’s first Thanksgiving Day Parade, but the first in the nation. (Macy’s now nationally famous Thanksgiving Day Parade started in 1924.)

Keels digs up many memories and rare treasures many Philadelphian’s may never even heard of and also offers us a look, at the end of the book, of proposed plans that never came through (Robert Venturi Scott brown and Associates, Louis I, Kahn and Ed Bacon are all offered up in this part of the book as well).

Indeed, Forgotten Philadelphia, Lost Architecture of the Quaker City can be read both lightly and with an inquisitive mind that craves discourse. It’s a book that literally can be enjoyed by everyone. (Forgotten Philadelphia, Lost Architecture of the Quaker City, by Thomas Keels, Temple University Press, $40 list price, $26.40 on Amazon.com.)