Reading Terminal, built in 1893 by the ever ambitious but often bankrupt Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, is a wonderful example of a middle-class portal to and from the bourgeois city. Usually the structure is seen as a reflection of both the grand dreams and the harsh realities of the Reading’s always unsuccessful attempts to best its crosstown rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad. Reading Terminal was neither as busy nor as palatial as the Pennsylvania’s Broad Street Station three blocks to the west, and the two depots immediately defined the relative importance of two corporations. But Reading Terminal and the other late nineteenth-century stations in Philadelphia indicated far more than just the relative business acumen of their owners. From the very respectable dining room on the second floor (see figure 8 for a view of this facility when new) to the more hectic farmers’ market under the train shed, Reading Terminal mirrored middle-class culture in Victorian Philadelphia. It and the other depots quickly became important parts of everyday life for the bourgeois women and men of the region. For many observers, the buildings themselves took on a middle-class tone. By the early twentieth century, Reading Terminal had become, in the eyes of the novelist (and ex-Philadelphian) Christopher Morley, a “well-behaved train station.”3
Before we enter Reading Terminal, we should step back and consider the evolving relationship between the railway stations and the main commercial district during the nineteenth century. In Philadelphia, this relationship can be divided into three distinct phases. First, during the 1830s and 1840s the small, independent railroads attempted to locate their passenger facilities on the fringes of downtown. Later, in the 1850s, the railways moved their now larger depots farther from the business district and began to rely on the then new horse-drawn streetcars for the final delivery of their passengers. The last phase began in 1881, when the now consolidated lines started to move their facilities back into Center City. The map in figure 9 shows the placement of the railroad termini in relation to the central business district in 1876. Not one of the stations stood within the commercial core. Few were convenient to each other; note the nearly four mile gap between the Kensington depot in Northeast Philadelphia (marked as 7 on the map in figure 9) and the Prime Street station in South Philadelphia (1). The railroads had located their stations to these outlying points in the 1850s for a number of legal and economic reasons, including the cost of land and municipal ordinances and agreements that effectively banned steam locomotives from most of the streets of the original city (from river to river between South and Vine Streets). Because of the distance between the terminals and downtown, almost every passenger had to begin or end his or her railway journey by omnibus or streetcar.4
The streetcars were the key to station location in Philadelphia from mid century on as they allowed the steam railroads to end the expensive and inefficient practice of using horses to propel their trains within the limits of the pre-1854 city. Prior to the introduction of the streetcars, most steam railroads placed their facilities at the fringe of downtown, even though this meant that the last few miles of the journey had to be made on rails laid in the city streets and the trains had to be pulled by horses. After the coming of the streetcars in 1858, the steam railroads withdrew to operationally more efficient terminals that ended this switch from steam to horse power. In 1866, for example, the West Chester & Philadelphia Railroad moved its passenger station from Eighteenth and Market Streets to West Philadelphia (shown at 2 on the map in figure 9) to save the time and expense of the transfer. An 1869 guide to the raihoad makes explicit the importance of the street railways in this process when it notes that the “passenger depot, at Thirty-second and Chestnut Streets, [was] accessible every three to five minutes by Chestnut and Walnut Street cars, and within one square [a city block to Victorian Philadelphians] of those on Market Street.”5
Figure 8. The dining room at Reading Terminal when new in 1893. Courtesy of the Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.
Figure 9. Philadelphia’s central railroad passenger terminals in 1876. Based on an 1876 John L. Smith map of Center City in collection of author.
| Key: | ||
| 1 | Prime Street depot | Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore |
| 2 | West Chester depot | West Chester & Philadelphia |
| 3 | West Philadelphia station | Pennsylvania |
| 4 | Main Line depot | Philadelphia & Reading |
| 5 | Ninth and Green station | Philadelphia & Reading |
| 6 | North Pennsylvania depot | Philadelphia & Reading |
| 7 | Kensington depot | Pennsylvania |
| A | Old State House | |
| B | Centre Square | |
| C | Vine Street ferry | |
| D | Market Street ferry | |
| E | South Street ferry |
This movement away from the commercial core at mid century had a significant effect on railroad passengers: it shifted the risk of delay on the busy streets of the city from the railroad companies to the travelers. In the 1840s, once an outbound passenger boarded a horse-drawn car in or near Center City, he or she was on their railway journey. By 1876, passengers had to carefully calculate their travel times to the outlying passenger facilities or risk missing their train. Some passengers—John L. Smith was one example—consistently had trouble getting their timing right and often missed their trains.6
The travel time between these mid-century railroad passenger facilities and the central business district varied greatly, from under ten minutes for some of the ferry terminals to nearly an hour for the stations located in Northeast Philadelphia. For most passengers bound to or from the old State House (Independence Hall to non-Philadelphians), a ride or walk of twenty to thirty minutes was typical. The old State House, located at Fifth and Chestnut Streets, was in the center of the commercial district and serves as a good surrogate for typical middle-class business and shopping destinations of the period.7
The location of these passenger facilities influenced the development of middle-class housing in the region. Although the majority of commuters continued to live within the city limits throughout the nineteenth century, suburbanization began on a small scale for the elite and upper-middle class a little after mid century. Haddonfield, in Camden County, New Jersey, developed as an early bedroom community in part because of the quickness of the commute to Center City via train and ferry. One reason that the progress of Philadelphia’s famous “Main Line” suburbs lagged a few decades behind that of Haddonfield