Turns about Town

by Robert Cortes Holliday

The modish scene I apprehended was, to an eye accustomed steadily for some time to the natty abbreviations of Fifth Avenue, a refreshing, a charming spectacle. I seemed suddenly to have left my "orchestra seat." And to have returned again to a view of, so to put it, ladies in private life.

Though, indeed, occasionally in the distance I caught a flashing glimpse of, according to Paris decree, the obsolete skirt length.

Come to think of it, isn't this so, too: that there are in Philadelphia more rose-cheeked damsels of hearty figure and athletic-heel swing than you usually come across in other cities?

At any rate, there are quite a number of very unusual things about "Phila," as I believe intimate friends of the city affectionately call the place. Things which it may be you have not noticed lately—perhaps because you haven't been there recently, or maybe because you live there, and so see them every day.

One of the unusual things about Philadelphia is that so many ladies and "gem'men" who do light housekeeping on and around Manhattan Island (in other words "New Yorkers") apparently find it easier frequently to get to Chicago, or Palm Beach, or London, or Santa Barbara than to journey to Philadelphia. I suppose the reason for this state of mind is the same as the cause of my sometimes feeling that it would be about as simple for me to undertake a trip from the Grand Central to Buffalo as to get from Times Square down to Fulton Street for a luncheon appointment. A place which is only half an hour, or two hours away, is a place, you think, that you can run down to any time. And—well, just at the moment with everything so pressing and all that. To become keyed up about taking a "real" trip is another matter.

And when I myself do get there I always feel that it is an unusual thing that I have allowed so long a time to lapse since I came before. Because it is so unusually pleasant and restful a ride that it makes me sore to think what an unusually deuce of a thing I am put to every night going home in the rush hour to Dyckman Street on the subway.

It is an unusual thing (or, at least, so it seems to me) that in Philadelphia cards in windows advertising rooms to let should be (as they are) labelled "Vacancies."

It is an unusual thing that here so many undertakers' shops should be conducted in what appear to be private residences. It is an unusual thing that there should be so many ways of paying your fare on the street cars—in some you pay when you get on, in others when you get off. It is an unusual thing that in Philadelphia there are more different kinds of street lamps than (I suspect) there are in any other city in the world. There are powerful arc lamps, high on tall poles, cold white in their light. There are lower down, particularly pleasant in the twinkle of their numbers in Washington Square, gas lamps glowing a mellow yellow through their mantles. Various other kinds of lamps, too. But the ones I like best are those squat fellows throughout Independence Square. Octagonal iron-bound boxes of glass, small at the base, wide at the top, with a kind of ecclesiastical derby hat of iron as a lid. They somehow suggest to me the lamps which I fancy before Will Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Here golden Diana with her bow does not poise high on her slender Spanish tower. But from far above the "Public Buildings" Brother Penn looks down on more banks, United States Mints, trust companies, firms dealing in securities, places handling investments, and such-like business concerns than (one has a feeling) can be found in any other city in Christendom. There are too, I should guess, in Philadelphia about as many different styles and periods of architecture as in any other municipality between the two great seas: Georgian, Colonial, bay-window, London brick row, ramshackle frame, modern mansion, skyscraper, etc., etc., etc. And certainly I don't know where one could go to count more different kinds of porches. Nor where one could find so many such pleasant oddities of today as hitching-blocks, doorway foot-scrapers, and those old friends of our childhood the front yard stone storks.

And where, Oh, where! (not even in London) can one find so many alleys to the square inch? Many of them, lanes of but a few blocks in length, highly respectable, even aristocratic, quarters of the town. Such as Camac Street, tucked away between Thirteenth and Twelfth Streets, one block of it either side of Locust, and the home or haunt of those of artistic persuasion. Here the famous Franklin Inn Club, the charming Poor Richard Club, and divers other clubs of kindred spirit. Unusual this quaint street of art in this: in fixing it up for its present purpose its quaintness and its "artiness" have not been overdone. Far, far finer in effect than New York's over eccentric alley of painters, Washington Mews, its original loveliness has simply been restored. It is as jolly to look upon as London's artist nook, Cheyne Row. Perhaps even jollier.