A while back someone asked if I knew where Dashiell Hammett had lived during his time in Philadelphia. Sadly, Hammett hardly lived here at all. Just a year and change around 1900, when Hammett was only six years old, before Hammett's father moved his family to Baltimore. (So I guess we won't be launching any
Philly Poe Guy-style crusades anytime soon.) Biographer Richard Layman includes the two Philly Hammett addresses in his
Shadow Man: 2942 Poplar Street and 419 N. 60th Street. (Layman's source was Philadelphia city directories from 1900 and 1901.) At first, when I did a Google map search and a PhillyHistory.org search, I was hopeful... could the Hammett homes still be there?
Above is the intersection of Poplar and N. 30th, and according to Google, 2942 is just one house in from the corner (on the left side). This photo was taken January 11, 1932, a little more than 30 years after Hammett lived here. However, a real estate search reveals that these homes were built in 1920; the original Hammett home razed by then. Same thing with the N. 60th Street address; those rowhomes, too, were built in 1920.
Still, we can claim that Hammett probably skinned his knees on the mean streets of turn-of-the-century Philly...
(Photo courtesy PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Philadelphia Department of Records.)
One of my favorite images of one of my favorite buildings in Philadelphia. One hundred and six years old this month. Site of the infamous Legionnaires Disease outbreak in '76. Still an awesome place to knock back a highball.
Check out this short film (sans audio, alas) featuring a model of downtown Philly that somehow calls to mind both Inception and Transformers.
Check out Matthew Styer's "Rephotographing Philadelphia," where he takes vintage city images from PhillyHistory.org, then photographs the same location in the present. Amazing stuff.
Newsboys begging for tobacco coupons, June 1910.
Strikers attack a horse-drawn car in Kensington, late February, 1910.
A while back someone asked if I knew where Dashiell Hammett had lived during his time in Philadelphia. Sadly, Hammett hardly lived here at all. Just a year and change around 1900, when Hammett was only six years old, before Hammett's father moved his family to Baltimore. (So I guess we won't be launching any Philly Poe Guy-style crusades anytime soon.) Biographer Richard Layman includes the two Philly Hammett addresses in his Shadow Man: 2942 Poplar Street and 419 N. 60th Street. (Layman's source was Philadelphia city directories from 1900 and 1901.) At first, when I did a Google map search and a PhillyHistory.org search, I was hopeful... could the Hammett homes still be there?
January 1, 1909: the Day the Aliens Landed on South Broad Street.
The view up South Broad Street, New Year's Day 1909. What's amazing is not how different everything looks... but how much of this area looks the same today.
Her name was Ruth Malcomson, and she would go on to win the title of Miss America in Atlantic City later that year. I wonder if the "Miss Philadelphia" title brings the trophy, or that weird shell thing, or both. (via Shorpy)
The corner of 15th and Walnut.
