Hi, I'm Wee Willie Bill Weber and I'm inviting you to join me today on WHYY as we embark on a walk for the entire length of Broad Street, the longest, straightest city street in the world.

It stretches 12 miles from the Navy Yard in the south all the way up to Cheltenham Avenue in the north.

And in addition to being long, Broad Street is quite diverse.

Our trip will pass through the streets' different racial and ethnic neighborhoods and showcase its role as Philadelphia's main street, encompassing seats of government and business and culture.

Now, I'm standing right here in the middle of City Hall Courtyard.

It's at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets, the very center of William Penn's original green country town.

However, it would take 150 years for this street to attain the prominence that Penn envisioned for it.

So let's begin our tour by heading down south to the foot of the Delaware River at the Navy Yard, where we'll be joined by Hyman Myers, a prominent Philadelphia architect and preservationist, who will be our expert guide to the history of Broad Street and its many, many points of interest.

Well, here we are at the bottom of Broad Street, and I really mean the bottom of Broad Street.

This is Hyman Myers.

He's an architect and a preservationist.

And in fact, he has his office right here in the Navy Yard.

We are in the Navy Yard in an area that, Hi, was really all marsh, wasn't it, when things started out?

Yeah, this is a great place to start a tour of Broad Street because this, in fact, is the absolute end of Broad Street.

In fact, it was William Penn coming up the river.

He saw the Schuylkill River.

He saw the Delaware River.

He said, "This is going to be my city between these two rivers."

He soon found out it wasn't.

Because this was all marshland.

This was the estuary.

So he went further up the Delaware to find the perfect spot where you could have landing of ships very easily.

And he found it at that shortest connection between the Schuylkill and the Delaware.

He laid out a line between them.

He said, "The shortest distance between those two is where I'm laying out my city."

And he began to lay it out there.

He didn't have any problems with airplanes back then, did he?

No.

Well, he wasn't so close to an airport.

But we are now.

Now we're on an island?

We're on an island.

And in fact... What's it called?

This was called originally League Island.

And League Island, it was named because it was three miles in circumference.

And a league is three miles.

So they named it for the length of the perimeter of the island, League Island.

Now, you know, we're talking about size.

How big is the Navy Yard?

What are we talking about?

It is incredibly big.

It is as big, almost, as Center City.

We're talking about an area of over 1,300 acres.

This was truly one of the largest cities in Pennsylvania.

- Amazing.

- 50,000 people worked here daily, and 70,000 people worked here during the Second World War at one time or another.

I'll bet you there's not a family in South Philadelphia that didn't have an uncle or an aunt or a father or a mother who worked right here.

Well, as you can see all around us are all these buildings and these were populated by these 50,000 people.

Well, there were also people who lived here on the site from the Navy itself.

And that required housing.

Typical Philadelphia row housing.

Yes.

By the hundreds.

And all those houses are still here.

A ghost town.

It is a ghost town.

Now living so, but the grass is cut and the swings are still in the backyard.

The whole residential area still here on the Delaware, a Delaware front.

You know, and it's interesting because at that time not only men worked here during the Second World War, but because of the men in arms, women were just filling the places.

Like Rosie the Riveter.

Rosie the Riveter is really where it developed here because this is where all those ships were built by Rosie.

And they built here during the Second World War 50 of these major ships, many like this gigantic one.

That's the battleship New Jersey.

Just recently it came from the West Coast.

Did it not, Hy?

It did.

People were gathered everywhere along its route, waving and cheering and shouting.

And I have spoken to some of the people who worked on that ship and made that ship, including women.

Right.

And, in fact, it is the most decorated ship in the Navy.

So this is an incredibly important ship.

Now, we looked at her, but the crane is not there.

But that's where it was, wasn't it?

Yeah, the crane was beyond here.

It was the great hammerhead crane.

And the hammerhead crane was such a huge crane.

It was the largest ever built at the time.

It could lift 350 tons.

Now, you could raise 350 automobiles.

That's taking a total parking garage full of cars, because parking garages are 300 or 400 cars now, and lift it up in one lift.

But this is one of my very favorite buildings, and in fact, if you look at the detailing, it's a wonderful Philadelphia brick, and then the trim around the windows, at the base, at the top of the windows is all in granite.

So look how beautifully that's detailed.

You know, Hy, a lot of people think that the Navy is gone, but in essence, it really hasn't left the Navy Yard, has it?

They really do still have a presence here.

And as you know, the mothball fleet, which everybody sees when they travel around Philadelphia on the bridges and look over and see all these ships, that mothball fleet is still here.

But the reason that they're here, the mothball fleet, is that this is one of the few ports on a major river is not salt water.

This is freshwater.

Oh yes.

No bottlenecks.

That's right.

The freshwater allows a lot less maintenance requirements than it would be if it were salt water.

And this is a great address isn't it?

This is a wonderful address.

And a beautiful campus and a beautiful location.

Just a hundred yards up the street we're going to come to another former swampy area.

Now this is Marconi, the statue of Marconi at Marconi Park.

Christopher Columbus is over on the other side.

And where are we now?

We're at Broad End.

Just below Broad and Oregon.

Right here is Broad and Oregon.

And this in fact was the great entrance to this new World's Fair.

The second World's Fair in Philadelphia.

The first was the Centennial.

This was the Sesquicentennial.

And they had some interesting things going on.

Number one, over this intersection they had a humongous bell, didn't they?

A recreation of the Liberty Bell.

Right.

80 feet in the air, 80 feet.

You could drive under it.

In fact, you wouldn't even reach the bell for 20 feet.

Cracking everything, hanging in the middle of the street, and then covered with a huge number of electric lights, all 15 watt electric lights.

And you could see this thing from the center city of Philadelphia from City Hall down Broad Street, you could see this Liberty Bell.

One of the great, interesting features of the fair was a total recreation of the buildings on High Street, that is Market Street, the beginning blocks of Market Street with the Market House right in the middle of Market Street.

And you could walk down the street amongst costumed participants.

So you felt like you were in the colonial city in that section.

And they introduced a lot of new things at this fair, didn't they?

And there were wonderful things.

Lining the building were a number of fair buildings, and in those fair buildings they had electric refrigerators for the first time on show.

Talking movies.

Talking movies.

Talking.

They also had things like radios and then dictating machines.

So this was technologically up to date.

It was an interesting thing to come down and see things that nobody else had seen before.

And this was the site during the sesquicentennial of the great Tunney Dempsey fight.

Ah, that's, oh how many people were at that?

That was the largest single gathering of people in one spot.

Over 120,000 people assembled on Broad Street to witness this great world title bout.

Who won?

Gene Tunney won the fight.

Okay.

Hy, this was sort of disastrous right from the beginning.

Opening day was a bit of a flop, wasn't it?

In 1926, they expected for this great international show to have 25 or 30 million people come.

And how many did they get?

Unfortunately, only about 6 million people.

Not enough to really call it a success.

Now, it was a failure for a number of reasons.

It was a failure because it rained most of the days it was cold and people thought one it's not going to go to the fair in the rain the cold but also opening day was promised by the mayor of Philadelphia to invite a huge convention down to the fairgrounds right here.

The Shriners?

The Shriners.

Right.

25,000 Shriners came to Philadelphia for the convention and they were coming to this opening.

Well the mayor said they're gonna be here they're gonna open we're gonna show them around unfortunately they couldn't delay the opening because of that and the fair was not done so the Shriners 25,000 came looked at the fair and said my goodness that's not complete and that's not complete they left disgruntled and they bad-mouthed it when they got home all around the country yes they said my goodness don't go there it's not going to be complete.

Hy, looking back from our perspective in the millennium there was a success attached to the sesquicentennial yeah and we really didn't know it at the time of the fair because it was such a down time because of the lack of people coming to visit but what happened was this whole area which was undeveloped in 1926 except for the fair since it was all filled in the streets were paved this became a successful area for the growing immigrant population that came to South Philadelphia so what you're telling me is because of the sesquicentennial I can get the best pizza and the best hoagie in South Philadelphia and steak sandwich because this area Well, we're on Broad Street between Ellsworth and Federal and right in the middle of the street is a St.

Rita's of Cascia's Catholic Church.

Very unusual too because as you know most churches in Philadelphia are built at the corners.

Right.

But here is St.

Rita's right in the middle of the block actually becoming part of the fabric of this block of South Philadelphia.

This was a very important focal point and meeting point for the Italian Americans who came flooding into the South Philadelphia area in that era.

You mentioned it 1907 to 1915.

As far as the construction is concerned.

But this was very important to the immigrants of those days.

And they showed the importance in the quality of that facade for example.

Besides having the monumental quality, look at the size of that entrance doorway.

Yeah.

They did it in a classical style.

This is a renaissance style, 14th century.

And it looks like cut stone.

But it's not all cut stone.

The base is granite.

That's all real stone.

But above the base is all what looks like stone made of terracotta and infilled with brick.

You could buy these terracotta pieces from catalogs.

Right out of the catalog.

Now this saint, Saint Rita, is celebrating a hundred years of canonization.

So there are people from all over the world who come and visit this church, particularly those who have an Italian background, because of the fact that it's a hundred years since she was canonized.

And of course that's why they probably named the church after Saint Rita, because in 1907 she had just become newly canonized, and now they wanted to celebrate that with this church.

On the front of the building high there are, as you can see, two statues, but it's a very unusual design, isn't it?

Right, it is.

And again, these are precast niches in which they have set these wonderful marble statues.

They do that for two reasons.

One, they want to protect the statue, which is marble from disintegration, so they set them in niches.

And two, they could buy those niches again out of catalogs and put them right in the front of the building.

And St.

Rita is so kind as to ring the bells of her church.

Isn't that nice to hear?

Yes!

We're walking into a parking lot.

Now, you may wonder why we're doing that.

Well, right in this parking lot Hi, was a railroad station built so that the men from the Civil War, the Union soldiers, could gather here and head south into the action of the Civil War.

Now, that building was torn down, but this one is very similar in its architecture, is it not?

Yes, in fact, they were almost twin buildings.

The head house was out here for the railroad station right on Broad Street, but the depot itself was behind the head house, and that depot from 1876 Pennsylvania Railroad remains.

How many people have driven along Broad Street and wondered, "What the heck is that building?"

And if you look closely, all the signs are here is what it was.

For example, look at the canopies along the edge, supported by that cast iron work.

That's where the train came along and the freight was protected by unloading the train into that vast shed of a building, which was the freight depot.

And it's one single span of cast iron, which makes it column free inside.

They could move the freight anywhere they wanted.

One quick question if I may, and you see the skyline of the city in back, do you think anyone who used this railroad station ever thought there'd be buildings like that in Philadelphia?

I don't believe they could have conceived of it in 1876.

We're just across the street from Broad and Carpenter, where the Civil War railroad station is located.

And this is one of the most impressive sights Hy, on Broad Street, isn't it?

And this was an impressive building in 1878 when it was built.

Can you imagine?

This is one of the most imposing buildings still in Philadelphia, and in 1870 it was the most imposing.

This was in fact the library company, home of the very first public subscription library in Philadelphia, and in fact in the United States, founded by who else?

Old Ben Franklin.

He founded everything.

Now it has a Grecian look to it doesn't it?

It certainly does.

It's a classic style building right from the feeling of the architecture of the Acropolis in Greece and it's made of a wonderfully beautiful solid material stone which is granite and look at the quality even after all these years from 1878 to now how beautiful that still is.

Addison Hutton was the architect for this building and he designed this original fence.

So this dates from 1878, made of cast iron and Philadelphia was known as a center of cast iron building materials.

Here it is, Robert Wood and Company, Makers Philadelphia.

I would think that this was in the suburbs in that time.

In 1870s this was far out of town.

In fact, this was the problem.

The Ridgways who gave this through Dr.

James Rush, it was his wife's father's money that paid for this.

He donated this library in the name of his wife's family, Ridgway, and gave it to the library company with so many restrictions that at first they weren't sure they wanted to take it.

When it was all done, the two of them, the doctor and his wife Phoebe, were to be buried inside of this building perpetually as a memorial to them.

Well after a while, knowing the difficulty of being down here, all of their subscription members said it's too far away, it's out in the country, it's just not near where I want to be.

So they had to actually build another building in town, continue working there as a library, and keep only some of their things here and it was really an unhappy situation.

The library company in 1960 moved from here to a new building on Locust Street and you know what they had to take with them besides the books?

What?

They had to take with them two bodies as part of that legacy.

This is really the story of the Phoenix right from the ashes is produced something new and workable and marvelous.

And in fact this is exactly what happened.

As we said it was a quality building.

They finally found a use for it when they thought about making the Avenue of the Arts on South Broad Street and ending it with this performing arts high school.

And they decided to take this building, reuse it, and extend it, and extend it, and you can see the extension is about as big as the original building.

And with this new combination, make this really a quality location for learning about the performing arts at high school level.

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, O minas deus, act.

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, [choir singing] Well the Ridgeway School is just about a block and a half back down Broad Street.

We're heading to Broad and Fitzwater.

And this is a very interesting spot, Hi.

This is the Tindley Temple, United Methodist Church.

And it's just a fascinating story about how this man, Rev.

Tindley, started off as a slave, became the janitor of this church, then moved on to be the minister of this church.

Charles Albert Tindley taught himself to read and write.

He wanted to read the Bible from cover to cover.

But he wasn't satisfied after that.

He said, "Maybe I should learn Greek and maybe I should learn Hebrew so I could read earlier translations of the Bible."

And he did both of them.

And he did both of them.

What a remarkable man.

He's also listed as the grandfather of gospel music.

He wrote over 60 different gospel songs, including he wrote the music to "We Shall Overcome."

Reverend Tinley became pastor in 1902, and what he said was, "We have a church that can hold 500 people.

We have standing room only.

We're going to have to increase the size of our church."

So they built this huge building as the addition.

But it was greater than the original building.

This is a church built in 1924, and it held 3,200.

And they are full many, many days of the year.

In the early part of the 20th century, when this congregation wanted to move to Broad Street, generally, these were red-line districts.

areas along Broad Street couldn't be bought by blacks.

A corporation, an individual, not on Broad Street.

But Reverend Tinley was able to get them to buy a piece of property here on Broad Street and then expand.

So this was a wonderful thing for the first time to have an African-American congregation right on Broad Street.

And they have a very well-known organ in there, don't they?

The organ is a spectacular Moller organ.

It's one of the biggest in Philadelphia.

Actually, John Wanamaker's is a Moller organ.

And the relationship of the preacher, the music, and the Moller organ, great sounding organ, is something to behold.

Well, Hy, we were at Broad and Washington, which is sort of the beginning of the Avenue of the Arts, and we're standing right now in what you call the anchor of the Avenue.

Right, this is the heart of the Avenue of the Arts, and it's the heart because this is the home of the Academy of Music, and right now the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

It really is a marvelous building.

In fact, I believe if there are, let's say, five wonderful, top-loved buildings in Philadelphia, this would be one of the five.

When William Penn laid out the city of Philadelphia, Broad Street was the wide, the main, the center of Philadelphia.

Well, it took from 1682 until 1857 for the city to grow from the Delaware to Broad Street in order for a major facility like the Academy to be deposited and built right here.

Well in 1857 when the architects won the competition for this, they told the academy they couldn't afford a wonderful outside, they couldn't afford a wonderful inside.

They had to choose.

They said, "Okay, we'll come back and we'll put marble on the outside."

1857 they said this.

"We'll put marble on the outside later."

They're still waiting for it.

"Let's do the interior."

And of course it always remained brownstone on the outside.

Never got to do the marble, but the inside.

Spectacular.

Absolutely spectacular.

Even as you walk in, beautiful ornate gold chandeliers, all original, all made by a company right here in Philadelphia who put them all over the United States.

Their name was Cornelius.

They even put them in the White House.

But the biggest one of all, and the biggest one they made at the time was the center chandelier in the main auditorium, which is in the domed mural ceiling.

And that chandelier has always been a piece de resistance of chandeliers in America, and one of the biggest that Cornelius Company ever built.

You know, we are in Philadelphia going to celebrate the Republican National Convention.

And this is not the first time we did that, is it?

No, in fact, there was a Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia in the Academy of Music in 1872.

And that's when they selected Grant as the nominee for his second term as the presidential nominee for the Republican Party in 1872.

We also had, at first, an indoor football game held in the Academy of Music.

So there are wonderful things that happen here that happen nowhere else.

Ta-da!

Through the magic of television.

We've had a bit of a set change here.

Hy, where did you get that coat?

This is a very special coat.

As part of the restoration of the Academy, we were asked to redesign the curtain to represent the original curtain, which had long been gone.

And the contractor Driscoll for the Academy curtain decided as a commemorative piece to make me this jacket, which I wear on very special occasions.

You wear it when you don't want to be recognized.

This is truly the anchor for this great avenue of the arts and will always be the anchor.

Hi has worked as an architect on many of the buildings along Broad Street.

He worked on the Academy and he's also done some work on the building we're located at right now huh the Bellevue Stratford right and this is really the social center of Philadelphia from a time it was built in 1904 until currently in fact George Bolt was the owner of this hotel and builder and he had a small hotel across the street which was called the Bellevue right and on the side of the Bellevue Stratford was another hotel of his called the Stratford he tore down the Stratford to build the Bellevue Stratford he had a party in the Bellevue which was still standing and then at midnight the whole party crossed over across Walnut Street went into the Bellevue Stratford the new grand hotel and had a party until the wee hours of the morning to celebrate the opening of the new hotel.

And how many bottles of champagne were uncorked that night?

Well I can't imagine how many.

But this has remained from that very date in 1904 until now the center of Philadelphia.

They had great restaurants, people would come to the restaurants in the Bellevue Stratford.

They even had the rooftop garden which you could stroll around amongst trees and flowers to have their own roof garden in a hotel.

Now, the Bellevue Stratford in 1904 was the most elegant hotel in the United States.

Compared only to the plaza in New York.

That's how wonderful it was.

Hy, you were mentioning George Bolt, the man who built the Bellevue Stratford.

And he liked English lit, didn't he?

He certainly did.

In fact, his favorite writer was Shakespeare.

There was a great mail shoot throughout the building.

And on that mailbox, he took a bust of Shakespeare, put it on the mailbox, and he said, "Here's a man of letters for Shakespeare."

This is an elegant, elegant staircase.

Bolt said to his architects, the Hewitt brothers, "I wanted you to design a stairway from the ballroom down to the lower lobby that will make women who come down the stairway look like queens."

The Hewitt brothers invented this elliptical stairway full of ornament and the railings, the plaster, to bring them down so they would look absolutely beautiful.

And you know, we are standing under a light fixture.

If I were told this, Hy, by anybody but you, I would think it was a legend.

But it is the truth, isn't it?

They say that Thomas Alva Edison designed the ornamental lighting throughout the building.

And if you look carefully up here, you see that the light fixture itself, the bulbs, are set in plaster rosettes within the ornament so that all these flowers that you see all have light bulbs in them.

And Thomas Alva Edison was said to have designed all of these systems throughout the building in plaster.

So these are really working Edison fixtures.

All right, let's see how elegant we could look high going down these stairs.

Okay.

Boy, that is a beautiful hotel, Hy, isn't it?

Well, it's nice to see a hotel reborn.

Yes.

Well, you know, we unfortunately have lost a lot of hotels here in Philadelphia.

Well, in fact, right across the street here, a lot of hotels have been lost, now demolished.

The John Bartram, which was the Walton Hotel, the Metropole Hotel, which was next to that.

But you've built some new ones here, too.

A new one being rejuvenated from an office building called the Ritz.

And in fact, right across the street was the real Ritz Carlton, the first Ritz Carlton Hotel, which is now under construction.

In fact, there's a surprise about the 1911 Ritz Carlton, which I'd like to tell you about.

Come on, let's check it out.

The Ritz Carlton was an elegant hotel built in 1911 and designed by Philadelphia Society architect Horace Trumbauer.

Now, they're working on it now, but they worked on it before, didn't they?

In the 1950s, they literally took the old Ritz-Carlton Hotel, stripped its facade, and made it into a modern building.

Well, where's my surprise?

Well, the surprise is coming, and we have to just walk around to the back of the building to see that surprise.

Let's go.

This is the back of the building, huh?

This is the alley that separates this building in the back from all the other buildings.

And this is the surprise that you were talking about.

And the surprise is pretty spectacular.

What we see here is this huge facade of limestone with the balcony, the columns, the great arches, and all the carving above was the major facade for this grand hotel, the Ritz.

And this same facade was duplicated on Broad Street.

On Broad Street and on Walnut Street.

And all of it was just taken away because in the 1950s they thought my goodness we'll make it modern looking and take off all this awful ugly old stuff.

Then why is it on this side of the building?

Well they didn't want to take the time and money to spend on the back facade which they thought nobody will ever see again and spend it here to remove it.

Nobody was ever going to see this.

Except us.

Except us and the loading dock people.

So this is what the Ritz looked like in its heyday back when it had a beautiful facade.

That's right.

We're at Broad and Sansom and we're here in front of the Union League.

Many many people have walked by this building high but I don't know how many have ever gone inside.

Very few.

Only members.

Tell me this.

Why the Union League?

Why was it formed?

Well, the Union League was really a group of people in Philadelphia who said, "We want to support what Lincoln is doing at the time of the Civil War."

The front portion here on Broad Street was a very important design with these grand stairs, but it only went back about a third of the block.

Later on, towards the turn of the century, they wanted a grand building.

They added it on in the back by Horace Trump Bauer, another very well-known Philadelphia architect.

In fact, the architect of the Ritz Carlton right across the street.

He designed a big addition in the back in the classical style.

You know, Hy, I can see that there's a reviewing stand between the two circular staircases going up.

That's got to be used for what?

Big big to do's along Broad Street.

Any celebration that was to occur was to occur as a parade on Broad Street.

Spanish-American War.

Yes.

Peace Jubilee it was called with great decorations filled with lights.

So it was a glorious procession for troops or parades coming down Broad Street under these grand decorations.

And this balcony this stairway was a great location to view these celebrations.

I wonder how many were out there when the sheep came up.

Tell us that story.

There's a wonderful photograph when the Bellevue Stratford was already built.

So we're talking about after 1906, 1907, when they still had sheep in a flock come up Broad Street going to slaughterhouses.

Oh, well, listen, let's not be sheepish.

Let's go on in and see what this Union League is all about.

The first thing we see when we walk into the Union League is this bronze bar relief.

That's dedicated to some patriotic men.

Absolutely.

It was dedicated to the nine Union League regiments that fought during the Civil War that were commissioned between 1862 and 1865.

And you can see the names of the regiments and their commanders on the left and right side of the plaque itself.

Over Hy's shoulder is a flag, a little tattered, a little torn, but huge amounts of history associated with that flag.

Absolutely.

On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, July the 3rd, when George Pickett and his Virginia Brigade made their charge against the Union Line, it was defended by the Philadelphia Brigade, which was commanded by General Alexander Webb.

This is the flag that was used to designate Webb's position at any point on the Union Line.

That is the actual flag?

The actual flag that flew right behind the Union line as Pickett made the charge.

[Music] We're in the Lincoln Memorial Room, part of the library here at the Union League, and it's interesting, Hy and Jim, that this is really where the Union League got its start, with this gentleman that we're looking at right now.

Billy, you're absolutely right.

The League was founded to support Abraham Lincoln and his efforts to maintain the Union and reunite it after the war.

Lincoln is still the patron saint of the League.

This collection of books deals only with the Civil War, regimental histories, histories of battles, Lincoln himself, and then it's all topped by this great statue by John Otto Schweitzer, 1916 when this was cast, and then dedicated 1917.

Flanking the statue above the medallions is Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the world's most famous three-minute speech.

And in only 247 words, Lincoln probably said more than most people ever say in a lifetime.

The sentiment, the emotion, the thoughtfulness just cannot be found better any place else.

And in just those few words says it all.

We're moving up one block.

We're at Broad and Chestnut, Hy We're across the street from the Land Title Building.

And this has a special spot in architects hearts doesn't it?

It does because this is the really earliest skyscraper with a steel skeleton in Philadelphia and this was considered a really tall building when it was built in 1897.

Now that's the first section that you're talking about right now that's the one with the bay windows that's right now that's a little different style isn't it?

It is a little different style than Philadelphia was used to because Philadelphia imported a Chicago architect D.H.

Burnham to design this building because Burnham was from Chicago where skyscrapers were much more common in fact where the idea of the skyscraper really began.

Now it's really two buildings put together really.

It is tower one and tower two.

1897 for the first about 1901 for the second, but for the second one, they not only hired Burnham to come back, but they hired Burnham and Horace Trumbauer, the same architect we saw at the Union League and the same architect that we saw at the Ritz Carlton.

They teamed up for this building and you can see that the second building is much more classical in style.

You know another interesting thing, a little less than a hundred years, this has always been office space hasn't it?

And it's remained that way.

It continues to remain commercial office space and the reason the second tower was built because they needed it right downtown Philadelphia.

Obviously again, location, location, location.

This has been one of the most successful corners for offices in the whole downtown Philadelphia area.

Now, architects don't usually do this, but he left a little signature on this building, didn't he?

Yes, he did.

At the very, very top of the building, you can see in the middle portion of this open light and air shaft, you can see at the very top these little medallions and the face of cherubs in those medallions.

Those cherubs are Daniel Burnham's child, Margaret.

And so he put his own child's face at the very top of the building.

We're only what, a block or half a block to City Hall and there's that beautiful tower with I guess the most viewed statue at least in our area, Billy Penn.

Well, Billy Penn designed by one of the most famous sculptors in America, Alexander Milne Calder, designed the statue for William Penn 37 feet high.

That's almost four stories high bronze statue.

In fact, still remains the tallest statue on any building in the world.

And Calder designed it plus all the other sculpture on City Hall.

And that whole tower is covered with sculpture, isn't it?

Actually, the four sculptures that are just at the tier lower than Billy Penn represent early settlers in Philadelphia, like Indians and Swedes, for example.

And then there are four major eagle sculptures up at that level as well.

But the rest of the building is just covered on every side with sculptural decorations.

And how long did Calder do work on this?

He worked for almost two decades.

Twenty years.

On sculpture on City Hall by itself.

City Hall Courtyard is really the center of the city.

This is it.

It was not originally here.

It was moved here, wasn't it?

Right.

The first idea was to build a building not unlike this in design at Independence Square.

And then people balked at the idea of enclosing Independence Hall with this new City Hall building.

They had a referendum.

And the referendum decided that City Hall should be on Center Square.

And when in 1870 John MacArthur Jr., the architect for this building, won the competition to design City Hall, he said, "Let's make City Hall the tallest building in the world."

At that time.

At that time.

In fact, it remained the tallest building until the Singer Tower was built after the turn of the century in lower Manhattan.

And these two towers here you were going to talk about those remember This is City Hall plus the court building and the criminal courts are here, right?

The vans bringing the criminals to the court used to come in through these portals horse drawn horse drawn Unload right here the prisoners all in shackles and you were supposed to bring down your children to see this every day approximately 930 or 10 o'clock in the morning and little Johnny would stand here with his mother and his mother would say to Johnny now Johnny if you're a bad boy this is what's going to happen to you pointing to the prisoners coming in in shackles.

And Hy even the design of the door reflects that there's a there's a rattlesnake as the handle to the door and that's a sign of evil and this is where the bad people went in.

So if you're going to put a tower up and you got to have something big on the bottom to hold all that structure what do you do?

You build huge and I mean huge foundation walls.

How big?

Well let me show you how big.

Okay.

The foundation wall surrounding this small space that we're in begins here and goes all the way to here.

And if you mark it off, 25 feet thick, all solid.

There's more area in the wall than there is in the rooms that it surrounds.

They said, biggest building in the world, we're going to have the four continents hold up this tower.

So for example, North American, and you see the Indians.

Africa, and you see Africans holding that up.

The Orient, Chinese for example in this group.

And then Europe holding up with these Europeans.

And that's what holds up this gigantic tower.

And I bet a thousand people would walk through this passageway and not even look up.

Never even notice.

City Hall is the most beautiful building in terms of sculpture in the United States.

Well, Hy, we haven't walked too far.

We're at the north of City Hall and right across the street from us is not only the busiest bus location in the Philadelphia area, but also this beautiful Masonic temple.

Would you call that one of Philadelphia's secrets?

This is truly a great secret, a Masonic secret, because most people get to see the outside, this Norman architecture, beautiful, beautiful stonework, and this was designed by James Windrum.

Now, they selected the architect for this building by competition.

When was that?

What are we talking about year-wise?

Between 1870 and 1873.

But that was the exterior.

The interiors, and that's the secret, the interiors took 15 years to complete.

And these are the most spectacular of all the interiors in Philadelphia in one building.

Now to show you the quality of those interiors, they issued this book in 1875 to dedicate this building.

And look at the quality of the binding.

This gives you the first indications of what's inside the beautiful rooms that were beginning to be developed in this building.

I bet they had a great celebration when they opened the doors.

Oh, when they opened the doors for this building.

Parades and everything.

Oh, had a great parade from Broad Street, from the north of Broad Street, down to the Masonic Temple and then into the Masonic Temple.

Well, if you say that the real secret's inside, why don't we go inside?

It's worth a trip.

Let's take a look.

These are the most fabulously decorated rooms in all of Philadelphia.

In fact, one might think in all of the United States.

Here we are in a room in the Egyptian style and quite authentic by the way.

They really researched it to make sure that was correct.

But when you look at all these details, look at the lotus capitals, look at the winged orb, look at the pyramids, the Sphinx, all of these features of Egypt are included in the room.

Not just in the decorations of the walls and the columns, but the ceilings, the light fixtures, the furniture, all this furniture in the Egyptian Revival style right down to the carpets, all made as part of that style.

And we have Bud Garvey with us, who is Chief of Staff here at the Masonic Temple.

In this particular room, you hold ceremonies here or religious gatherings or what?

This entire building is a song of architecture.

In this particular room, Egyptian Hall, as in the rest of the rooms, yes, indeed, we have Masonic meetings most every night.

There are no religious ceremonies and we are very clear in that we are not a religion.

In order to become a Mason, one must profess a belief in a Supreme Being.

Now you mentioned that there were seven of these rooms.

There are.

It's hard for us to understand that, but maybe you can tell me what they were so we can get an idea.

Well, there is Oriental, which is Moorish in style.

There's Gothic.

Some of the furnishings in Gothic are actually older than this building.

Ionic, which is most enjoyable due to the life-size portraits of grandmasters in that particular room.

Renaissance, of course, speaks for itself with a type of religious style to it.

Norman Hall, some of the what looks to be woodwork is in fact plaster of Paris.

And then of course Corinthian, which is dedicated to the Greek arts.

We're seated in the Worshipful Master's Chair and this has a specific location doesn't it?

Yes the Worshipful Master's Chair is always placed at the east end of the room.

East because that's where the Sun rises and the day begins.

This is marvelous.

This is solid hand-carved ebony.

This is one of the heaviest woods and hardest to carve in the entire world.

And if you try to move this chair you would find it almost immobile.

Now not only is the chair ebony but the lectern is as well.

Yeah all this is hand-carved ebony.

The quality is really extraordinary and to find furniture of this magnitude and scale in solid ebony hand-carved is absolutely unusual.

Well, you know, you look around and you say, "Boy, this is a perfect room."

Well, you might use the word perfect and it certainly seems so, but there's this very careful understanding of the world.

They say only God can create something perfect.

So, no matter how carefully they lay out the room and design the room, they always include absolutely purposefully one mistake within the room.

And that's here somewhere.

And if we look for it, we certainly could find it.

But it's well hidden, but it is here.

Well, you know they talk about an imperfection in every room, but boy I couldn't find it.

My eyes couldn't seek it out.

Now this is really a perfect place to find a hidden treasure.

This whole area, Broad Street, North Broad Street, a lot of institutions were in this area aside from the Masonic Temple.

You have for example up the street here the Scottish Rite Temple and then above that the Elks which became the Broadwood Hotel and then the Odd Fellows Temple right in the next block up here and right across the street from the Odd Fellows.

Oh one of our great masterpieces of American architecture by our own Philadelphia architect Frank Furness the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Hi that's a beautiful beautiful building.

Why was it placed here?

Well the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts wanted to locate in a very good area.

They thought oh here's a wonderful downtown location only two blocks north of City Hall.

This was going to be a great civic location.

Well it was designed in 1876, opened in time for the great centennial celebration here in Philadelphia.

And you can see these wonderful variety of materials.

Really it's a sign of the use of many materials that Frank Furness, the architect, decided to use.

And that stained glass window looks like it's from a church.

Well, this is, the style that they call this is Ruskinian Gothic.

And that central stained glass window is one of the "Gothic" features.

How about the relief panels we see in the front?

Well, there are three on one side and three on the other, and that was an indication of art and art school.

And if you look on either side of the doorway at that same height... I was wondering about that.

There's nothing there.

Two panels that are yet uncarved.

Why?

Originally detailed to be carved, and the Academy, when it opened, ran out of money, stopped the carving to save the money, and they've never been carved since.

And doesn't that sound familiar?

Even today that happens on some buildings.

Not mine, not the ones I work on, of course.

Well, Hy, when you walk inside this building, you open the door and see this spectacular staircase.

You see those arches are rather low.

You have to duck under them, kind of.

When you pass under those and you go about halfway up the stairs, all of a sudden this space pops open and pops open to the sky.

(music) In front of that stained glass window was a beautiful, original, ancient artifact which was dug up of a Greek statue.

Unfortunately, it lost its arms, but clearly a historical statue.

And that's inside so we can take a look at it, huh?

Well, no.

It's inside, and you might get a look at it sometimes, but it no longer looks like what it did originally.

What happened to it?

It began to get attacked by the environment, and pieces began to fall off.

They took it off the pedestal, took it inside, and put it in the basement.

Along comes a student in the 20s, sees this wonderful piece of marble that looks like it's deteriorated and nobody wants it, takes it and uses it as a student project to carve a marble duck.

And that duck was selected to be an acquisition by the Academy, so that piece is in the collection and therefore the original statues of Ceres is somehow still in the collection.

That could happen to us, Hy.

We could come back reincarnated as ducks.

You never know.

We're at Broad and Callowhill, Hy, and a lot of newspapers were in this area, weren't they?

The Philadelphia Record took over the old Packard building.

And now we have the Philadelphia Inquirer.

They wanted to be on Broad Street again, a major public building, the Philadelphia Inquirer.

And crossing Broad right here was a major spur of the railroad.

So they could bring in huge amounts of paper to put into their presses and this was an easy way for them to do it.

Who was the architect on this?

A landmark building, isn't it?

Landmark building.

This was Rankin, Kellogg and Crane.

Here they did a building in Terracotta, 1925.

And then they stepped the building back, built a tower at the center to make it even higher than a dome and then on top of the dome a beacon.

Now that was symbolic wasn't it?

The beacon was very symbolic.

The Enquirer said we want to be a beacon of news and knowledge to the world, to the Philadelphia world.

And that was their symbol, being the beacon to this region.

And in fact the newspaper was and still is.

Last time we visited the Inquirer High, no snow.

We have it today.

We've got it today.

This is an interesting intersection because we're talking about the state building, we're talking about the very familiar Inquirer Tower but that's not what it used to be back in the 1820s.

No when Baldwin Locomotive Works came to this area and occupied all these all these blocks from Spring Garden to Calla Hill right from Broad Street all the way out to 18th Street when they first came here this was really far out of the city.

This was the boonies.

This was truly farmland and the boonies and he came here and his first locomotive old iron size was built in 1820.

He made here at Baldwin Locomotives Works 76,000 locomotives.

Oh.

In what the 91 year history of this firm.

And he specialized in custom work.

He would custom it for you, wouldn't he?

He would not let any locomotive go out that wasn't fitted for your particular railroad.

Whatever the gauge or size or specialty was, he would do that.

Hy, With all this success, what happened?

Well, the Baldwin Locomotive Works was kind of an industry that didn't change.

And when you don't change, things go bad.

Here, the steam engine was for 91 years the workhorse of America.

And then diesel power came in.

And because of that diesel power, they didn't change to diesel.

And therefore, that product was no longer called for.

And can you imagine losing 17,000 jobs in Philadelphia?

We'd love to get a new industry in Philadelphia that might give us two or three thousand.

So this was a big loss for Philadelphia and it was the first signs that the workshop of the world that was Philadelphia was just beginning to fray at the edges and change.

And we're gonna see a lot of changes happening from the perspective of North Broad Street as we move up.

We're at Broad and Green.

We are about a block and a half from where we were before at Spring Garden.

And this is a spectacular Byzantine building.

This is Rodef Shalom.

Rodef Shalom Synagogue.

And it was built in 1927 for a German Jewish congregation that lived in this area.

Now they came here initially in 1866, built their building here.

And that first building was by the famous architect Frank Furness.

And it was built in a Moorish style, a Byzantine style as well.

On the outside, you see a rich array of features, all of which are Byzantine, starting with this limestone column with a Byzantine capital, and then these wonderful ornaments.

Now that's hand done, isn't it?

The tiles that you talk about are all hand cut, and they really do look like tiles from the Alhambra in Spain, and that gives the Byzantine feeling of the entrance.

And inside this building is a dome that is just unbelievable, and that's the Byzantine style as well?

Yes, this was a pendentive dome that really reflects the structural design of buildings like Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

The stained glass is by the same company that did the wonderful tiles on the exterior, the Desenzo Company.

Hi, there's something very interesting about where the Torahs are kept in Rodef Shalom.

They're marble-columned, and then they are enclosed by a set of bronze doors.

Heavy doors.

Thousand-pound bronze ornamental doors.

And miraculously--and this is so unusual-- they part by electricity.

So there's nobody there.

Usually they're opened by people, one on each side.

Here they open miraculously.

And a little controversy about that.

This is a reformed synagogue which allowed electricity to be used during the service and allowed therefore those doors to be open on cue.

And in most congregations that wouldn't have been permitted.

Again, being a reformed congregation, they had an organ.

Very unusual again, because people thought, well, organs were used in churches.

And again, trying to be more Americanized, set aside that tradition, brought music into the synagogue by the use of an organ.

But that organ was taken from the old building that was on this site.

It was so many pipes, 4,000, and some of the big pipes so long that it had to come in via the roof.

Oh.

In other words, they lowered it.

They lowered it where the roof wasn't there so that you could get it in the building.

And built it in.

I noticed at the altar there was a hand, and that's the sign that Leonard Nimoy used in the Star Trek series, but it has a much older connotation here, doesn't it?

It does indeed.

In fact, Spock probably remembered it, in fact he has said so, from when he was a child from his Jewish education.

It is the sign of the priestly benediction.

Now the rabbis, let's say when you're bar mitzvahed, will give a priestly benediction carrying that tradition forward and puts their hand above your head in that form and that's the sign of the priestly benediction.

And they actually have two areas of the congregation now don't they?

That's right.

There's a whole congregation of Rosh Shalom in the suburbs and they still maintain their main synagogue space.

And you find this packed on high holidays, you find it packed on weekends for Shabbos services, Saturday services.

This is still a heavily used facility.

Well we're walking up Broad Street, two blocks from Road of Shalom High and we're at Broad and Fairmont actually.

This is an interesting meeting place of many different roads, isn't it?

It really is.

This is one of the most important nodal points on Broad Street.

You have Ridge Avenue, which is an enormously long street going all the way up to the northwest.

And then you have Fairmont Avenue crossing into Broad Street as well.

And then you have Broad Street going north.

And they built right in front of us this at that time 1894 immense hotel originally called the Lorraine for R.C.

Lorraine who was the owner of the building.

One of the great details of the hotel was this little statue on top of the entrance which we believe is one of the Knights of Lorraine and it was kind of a pickup on the owner's name, Lorraine.

If you look all the way up near the top but below those great dormers, you see little statues literally holding up the cornice.

Those are caryatids made out of terracotta again.

So throughout, between the terracotta used on the bays, the terracotta used on the little cornices going around, the statues, I mean this is really a well done and well detailed hotel.

And on the top of it, the great electric sign of the Divine Lorraine, owned by the organization headed by Father Divine.

I guess they took over in the late 40s.

1948, they came here, bought this hotel, and made it one of the first integrated hotels in Philadelphia.

Well, it was an integrated group of followers that purchased this hotel.

My father, Divine, was really a pioneer in civil rights.

The Bellevue Stratford was not integrated.

There was no integrated hotel in Atlantic City.

But from the very time the doors opened under the operation of the followers, we have had light-complected people and dark-complected people of all walks of life.

The Crystal Dining Room, which was the cafeteria, they served cafeteria style, and they integrated definitely and they furnished meals at very, very low rates.

The men and women are accommodated on separate floors and we do not permit people visiting other people in their rooms.

This was Father Divine's Holy Communion banquet table.

We would be seated around the table demonstrating the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.

We are across the hall from the dining room, Hy, and this one is very similar to the other one they're both they're like twins.

There is a stage here and it was likely on that stage you might have a small orchestra and there's a wood floor here rather than a marble floor.

Better for dancing.

Much better for dancing and so all of a sudden it looks like this was a location for parties and dances.

In 1948 when the Divine Peace Mission came and bought the hotel they in fact put in these chairs.

Oh yes when we would have church services father would be seated seated up on the platform and I would be too and when he felt moved he would speak.

We are real true Americans And Americans 100% aren't you glad?

Hy, we're at the Broad and Poplar and we are looking at one of the saddest scenes on this whole street, aren't we?

And what is this place?

Well, we call it today the Met, but it was built as the Philadelphia Opera Company, Opera House, and it was founded by that great impresario Oscar Hammerstein in 1908.

He had this idea to build a new Opera House, he wanted to know where to build it.

This was the home on Broad Street of all the newest rich people in Philadelphia.

So he said I'm going to build this Opera House right in the area where all of these wonderful people will come to my Opera House.

And it not only was originally beautiful on the outside but also on the inside and it was always a little bit more than the Academy had.

Well that's interesting because the Academy of Music had 3,100 seats.

Right.

The Met 4,100, a thousand more.

The proscenium of the Academy, 50 feet wide, he made his a hundred feet wide.

There were six entrance canopies.

On this building only one at the Academy.

So he was going to improve on everything.

The Academy was made of brownstone on the front.

He decided to make his white marble and white brick because he wanted his to be bigger in appearance, more glamorous in appearance.

Now they announce opening night because they know when they're going to have it and it's on such and such a date whatever it is and then what happened November 17th 1908 right he knows that he's going to have a grand production so he builds a grand production 700 cast members at at the Met for Carmen right the Academy says we're going to be in competition we're going to start right from day one November 17th same night Enrico Caruso and Enrico Caruso at the Academy whoa so now Philadelphia Society doesn't know where to go shall I go to the Academy shall I go to the Met they do both what they do the Academy filled to the brim 3100 seats full house can't get a ticket everybody goes to the Academy at intermission everybody leaves the Academy big big rush of this automobile and horse traffic up to the Met that's the first traffic jam here on Broad Street.

it probably was the first traffic jam the Met delays intermission they go inside and follow the Carmen opera and it was Philadelphia's greatest opening night because both theaters were full to capacity however we mentioned it was a sad story what's the sadness behind it short-lived what happens after 1910 it begins to go down and finally he has to sell out Oscar Hammerstein in bankruptcy to another rich Philadelphian, Stokesbury and Stokesbury tries to make it again but it fails again and from then on it becomes less and less and less of a success probably one of the saddest pieces of architectural and social history in Philadelphia.

Well, Hy, just north of the Blue Horizon we're heading north on Broad we're coming to Master Street and this is an interesting building we have here mansion because it was built by a man named Galle who never lived in it.

In 1855 Galle just finished this house.

He was a beermeister?

Beermeister his brewery was right down Master Street in 26th 28th Street area which was kind of a brewery town.

He wanted to live close to his brewery and so he wanted also to live in a fashionable area.

He was a good industrialist making some money and being a prominent citizen.

And then a bit of a switch where they were mostly entrepreneurs.

They were the industrialists of the time building, owning these big homes.

This building was bought by an actor.

The very first major professional actor, a celebrity, an actor celebrity, lived here from 1855 to 1872.

And then he not only built the house, but he built an addition.

His own This was a theater.

So he could act and perform for his guests.

It also served as his art gallery because he had one of the earliest major art collections in Philadelphia.

This has been many different buildings, hasn't it?

The Philadelphia School for Women for Design was here from 1880 until 1960 and then they moved to the Parkway where it is now as the Moore School of Art.

And then after that we had Heritage House come here for African culture and education and now we have the new Freedom Theater.

We're here with Walter Dallas who is the artistic director of the Freedom Theater.

Happy to have you aboard.

This is really the northern anchor of the Avenue of the Arts.

That's right we're very proud of that and we have two major programs here at the theater.

One is a training program for young people and adults.

We have about 900 students a year and then we have a professional So we offer classes to the community and then first class, world class professional theater.

And here's a first professional major celebrated actor, Edwin Forrest.

His own home has now become your home at Professional Theater 150 years later.

Well, Hy, we're about a half a block up from the Forrest Mansion.

We're heading towards Jefferson and Broad and Jefferson, and we're into a mansion, aren't we?

Oh, this is really a marvelous mansion.

This is the Ellis mansion.

Right.

Ellis was the industrialist who really had money in trolley car lines and also was an owner of a lumber yard.

And he was able to design this fabulous house in brownstone in the Romanesque style and every inch of this house is covered with this decoration.

That was the style, wasn't it?

I mean, if they found a little space, they'd put a little cherub in there or they'd do something.

They wanted to show that this man was really at the top of the line, that he was wealthy and he could show it off and he was proud of it.

And even on the side of the house.

The whole side of the house is extraordinary in this house because it's covered just like the front even though it wasn't to be seen.

Even in the chimney of the fireplace.

This was essentially a heated house but it had fireplaces for show and even outside they made a wonderful ornament of the chimney.

Twenty colonnades of brownstone all gathered together like a bundle capped at the very top by a beautiful piece of cut brownstone.

So people may have passed this a hundred times not knowing what it is and now they get an idea.

Well what could top this beautiful outside of a great mansion on Broad Street?

Well wait till you see the inside.

That'll top it.

We're inside the Mansion High and this is a very very interesting lobby.

This I would think would be the first place the guests would be taken.

This would be the and this is the place where you want that guest to say, "Wow, look at this place!"

And also some newfangled ideas, huh?

Absolutely, like this one.

This newfangled idea was electric, which was brand new, and they weren't sure of it yet, and up at the top, gas, which they were absolutely sure of.

So they were playing it safe.

And we're talking 18... 92.

92.

So this was technically up to date.

These are all oak and these are the best cuts and hand carved oak all with this floral details.

Above us crowning the biggest space in the whole building again for show he crowns it with that incredible skylight.

And then look here at this hearth.

You know when I first looked at that, that looked like a rug to me.

Well, it is fine marbles.

They're all actual, they're colored marbles that are taken from natural colors.

All right, now we've had dinner and we want to dazzle some of our guests.

So where do we take them now?

The lady of the house would take them over to the conservatory, open up the sliding doors, stained glass sliding doors, and display in the middle of winter the most exotic flowers that were blooming, and miraculously blooming.

But they had the technological advantage of heating systems just for exotic plants to show their guests.

We're in the master suite of the Ellis Mansion and it's really three different sections, isn't it high?

Right.

The farthest section with the Moorish arches and this little alcove area, but it's quite large, is a very modern technology for this house.

On either side are two closets, built-in closets, no longer armoires.

And then in the center section, originally, a beautiful sink for the vanity.

That alcove represented really a special place for the lady of the house to come and write her letters, plan her day in the morning, and also read.

Look at the beautiful wood, all the cherry wood, with its Moorish designs, all this over window design, Moorish arches, Moorish floral designs, Moorish columns, very much like you'd see at the Alhambra in Spain.

- You told me before that there were literally thousands of these homes.

- All along Broad Street, North Broad Street, the nouveau riche, this new money, the new industrialists came to build these fine houses.

- And where'd they all go?

- All demolished, except for a handful.

And that's one of the great things about this particular property.

It was saved by the Palace Mission Church and Mother Divine opened it up to us to let us come in and just take a look at it.

And it's just so rare now to find a house intact, not only the facade and the outside, but all the richness of the interior.

We're on Broad Street at Temple University.

My son graduated from Temple and your sister graduated from Temple.

So we know this territory pretty well.

Interestingly though, Hi, we see Temple all around us here and then right smack in the middle is Baptist Temple.

Now how did that happen?

Well, Russell Conwell, the founder of the original Temple College, also founded Baptist Temple.

And the Baptist Temple was built in 1889 and it was opened in 1891.

And it was the college was sort of a seminary for students.

Correct.

And in fact, they met in the temple.

And after a while, they built their own building, and that's right next door, Temple College.

Now, both buildings look very similar.

They're both in the Romanesque style, very popular on Broad Street, in fact, in the 1880s and 1890s.

And that's the largest congregation in America, at least, maybe the Western world.

It seats over 4,000 people.

At that time, this was the largest.

It was a huge auditorium in a semicircle with a huge balcony in which all these people could sit and stand.

And he had many, many a lecture and sermon in there to full house capacity, 4,000 people.

People who come to the Baptist Temple see that also there's a sign on the front which says, "This is the famous Chapel of the Four Chaplains," showing the various religions.

And I think this comes from the concept that Conwell had early on about a non-sectarian seminary, theological seminary.

Now he had his own speech called "Acres of Diamonds" that he gave over 6,000 times around the world.

Well the Acres of Diamonds story goes like this.

He was traveling and he heard an old Islamic tale.

And the tale was that a man was looking for diamonds.

And he went all over the world looking for diamonds.

Spent his life looking for diamonds.

Never found any diamonds.

When he died, he died in his home.

And shortly after that, they found diamonds in his backyard.

Now, the moral of the story is that you really can find diamonds in your backyard.

Tepp University was truly a diamond in that it is one of the finest urban colleges in the United States.

And what a great legacy of diamonds to leave to the country.

We're at Broad and Glenwood.

This is the North Philadelphia station of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

And this is an exciting thing for you because it brings back some interesting memories, doesn't it?

I used to come and use this platform as a kid.

And I would come and go to the end of the platform where you could look down Broad Street from this height.

And it was wonderful.

It's one of the best views in the old days of looking at City Hall.

This was a grand station.

1896 it was built.

And it was built in this chateausque style.

In fact, if it was any city other than Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, or New York, this would have been the grand central station of that city.

Tell me, Hy, what's that little building over there on Glenwood Avenue?

That little building is very important because it used to be connected by a covered passage to the main station.

And so people who got off the train at the station would go through the station, through this little covered walkway to that little building, and that little building gave them access to the trolley lines.

It's the railroad, it's businesses in North Philadelphia, it's homes being built for the workers who worked in the businesses.

Which came first?

Well, what came first was the railroad.

They had this right-of-way, and soon as the right-of-way was established, industry began to use the railroad to bring its goods and services to and from the industry.

So the industries came along the side of the railroad right-of-way.

And soon as the industry came, people had to man that industry.

Now they couldn't go far away because there was no good transportation system except trolley systems locally to bring them to the businesses.

So they lived close by, as close as they could to the industry that was nearby in which they had to work.

Now listen, we've had an inexorable march from the Navy Yard north, but we're going to go back one block, right, to Broad and Lehigh.

And that is in fact a place we should go take a look at because that's one of the great industrial buildings that used to house thousands of workers and we should see it.

We've backtracked one block, we're at Broad and Lehigh at the old Botany 500 plant.

Rather unusual shape for a building high.

And the shape is really due to the road systems on the right which is Broad Street.

The west side is where the Reading Railroad went.

So it borders the Reading Railroad and that's why the building is there because the Reading Railroad gave access to that industrial building.

So they've got their own siding, they've got everything they need to transport, well in this particular instance, clothing.

But this is not where it started out.

Wasn't Ford Motor here?

Ford Motor Company was here until 1925-26.

It then became Joseph Cohen and Sons Company, big industrial clothing manufacturer.

And then it became Botany 500.

In fact, you can see the remnants of the Botany 500 sign right on the top of the building.

But you can see it was a modern building from 1910.

This kind of stripped classical building, brick, with an ornamental base and great industrial windows.

They wanted to bring as much light into the inside of that building as absolutely possible.

And you know, speaking of the inside of that building, I would really love to see what the inside of an abandoned Botany 500 building looks like.

Well, let's go and take a look.

We're in the loading dock area.

As you can see, we have some beautiful concrete columns that go throughout the building.

This building has been around for a very long time.

It's over here you can see to my left the elevator shafts.

You can still see an unused forklift that some of the workers have probably used in the past.

These elevator shafts basically took all the raw material up to the upper floors where they were pressed and cut and made into suits.

If you can come with me this way, I can show you to the upper floors where some of the clothing was made.

Just follow me.

Okay, now we're up to the press room where all the raw material is brought up.

And here you see some old presses.

This is where a lot of the stuff and steam was brought down here through these pipes here to the pressers.

And you'd have quite a number of people would be working on these presses.

I don't think it's a one man operation here.

It'll be cut and then steamed and pressed to the finished product.

And then the suits will be laid out on these wires.

So these sort of a conveyor belts here that we have over here.

And there would be hundreds of people working.

Totally.

So the building was filled with 100 people on this floor and maybe 100 people on the next floor.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Boy, that must have been an amazing operation.

If these walls could talk, I think they had some pretty interesting stories to tell.

I'm sure they would.

I mean, from my past going through this building, I mean, you do see some small artifacts of people's lives that were left here, you know.

Can you imagine all the wonderful workers that worked in this building and all the workers that worked in all the other industrial buildings in North Philadelphia?

Well we're at Broad and Erie and Germantown Avenue comes by here.

This is another one of your nodal points, is it not, Hi?

It is, and it's a very important one.

And it's a busy intersection even today.

Oh yes, yes.

A lot of people, a lot of traffic, a lot of commercial activity.

Tell me, there is a legend that you could stand anywhere on Broad Street and see the clock at City Hall.

Now, let's face it, that clock was a big clock.

What, about 20 feet?

In diameter.

A huge clock.

But I can't see that clock.

So it turned out it was a myth.

Well, there's truth to every legend.

And in fact, that story has a lot of truth to it.

In fact, people used to set their pocket watch, right?

Even if they were 20 miles from Philadelphia.

At nine o'clock at night, they would blink the lights on City Hall clock tower and people 20 miles away could see the blink of the clock and therefore set their watch.

Now they couldn't read the time, but the blinking light would give them the right time nine o'clock at night.

Hi, we're a little bit off Broad Street.

We're about 50 feet off.

And this is the Albert Einstein Medical Center.

Very well-known spot.

People have passed it up and down Broad Street for many years.

It was originally called the Jewish Hospital, wasn't it?

Right.

1865, it was founded by Meyer Guggenheim, a Philadelphian.

And he started the Jewish Hospital as a free of color, free of creed hospital for everyone in Philadelphia in the outskirts, farmland of Philadelphia at that time.

You know the key, I guess you'd call it logo, or the key piece of architecture in front of the Albert Einstein Medical Center is this.

That's right.

And five other ones.

And there are six columns here and people pass it all the time when they enter the hospital and they wonder what are these six columns?

And the answer is they are the columns from the original portico of the U.S.

Mint that was in downtown Philadelphia built in 1833 and designed by Philadelphia's famous architect of the period William Strickland.

And they came from that building when it was demolished.

Now normally when you build a column like this they come in sections don't they?

I mean about this size here and then they put another one there.

Not so with these.

Not so with these.

One complete shaft.

One piece of stone all in this granite material which is absolutely beautiful.

Looks as good as new.

Yes.

And it's in the ionic style.

All hand carved and brought here in single pieces.

And that's what I think was the ability to save them.

They were brought up here as one piece, set on this plinth, and they just went away.

And here they remain all these years.

1833 until today.

So next time you pass the Albert Einstein Medical Center and you see those these unbelievable columns, you'll know from whence they came.

Hi, we're at the end of Broad Street right here at Broad and Cheltenham and you've had an idea about what Broad Street consists of.

It's really homes, isn't it?

It's true.

And all along Broad Street we find homes from row houses to mansions to semi-detached houses like we find here to individual houses and they line Broad Street.

And it comes to a screeching halt right here doesn't it?

At what they call the Big B. And it really is something that when you came up Broad Street you focused on in 1951 when it was built a huge B. How big was that?

40 feet high, 80 feet above the street.

You had City Hall looking down the south, but when you came north you saw this icon of the B right in front of this store.

Now some people, even in your youth, were telling you that that stood for Broad Street.

My father, when I first came to Broadstreet and saw this B, told me, "Well that's for Broad Street."

So everybody was sure what street they were on.

Now what's the real story?

Well, the real story is that B stood for the Baltimore Market.

And this was a super, super market, the most modern of its day in 1951.

Was it always called Baltimore Market?

Well, it was Baltimore Market first, and then later it became the best market, keeping the B icon on top of the building.

Then it became a car dealership, and then it became like Rite Aid and the furniture store that you see today.

Well, we hope you enjoyed our visit, a walk up Broad Street, ending right here on Cheltenham Avenue.

Hy, have we missed anything?

Well, there's a few hundred buildings we haven't seen that are really interesting along Broad Street.

Well, what are we waiting for?

Let's walk down Broad Street.

Wow.

That's a long walk.

Well, what the heck.

It's a beautiful day out, huh?

That's true.

Can't fight that.

And these are semi-detached or?

These are singles, but the next ones are semi-detached.

And it's an array styles.

Some built as early as the 1880s, 1890s.

And some built as late as 1920s and along this area.

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