The “Philadelphia Law Library,” first in the United States, was established in 1821, under the auspices of “The Society for the Promotion of Legal Knowledge and Forensic Eloquence.”
The “Philadelphia College of Pharmacy” was the first institution of its kind in the world. The organization meeting was held in Carpenters’ Hall, February 23, 1821. Instruction was begun in the fall of the same year, with Charles Marshall as president of the institution. The charter was granted March 30, 1822.
The first engraved cylinders for calico printing made in the United States were made in Philadelphia, in 1822, by David H. Mason and Matthew W. Baldwin.
In 1827, William Ellis Tucker, of Philadelphia, was the first in America to manufacture porcelain and chinaware. In 1831 he started the first American queensware factory.
The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the first of its kind in America, was organized at a meeting held in the hall of the Franklin Institute, Seventh Street below Market, November 24, 1827. It was incorporated March 23, 1831.
The first one-cent newspaper in the country was The Cent, published in 1830, by Dr. Christopher Columbus Conwell, at Second and Dock Streets, Philadelphia.
The first building and loan association in the United States was the “Oxford Provident and Building Association,” organized in Frankford in 1831. The officers were Isaac Whitelock, president; Isaac Shallcross, secretary; and Samuel Pilling, treasurer.
In 1832, George D. Rosengarten made the first morphine in the United States.
The first public high school in the United States was established in Philadelphia in 1836. The first building was erected in 1837-38 on Juniper Street fronting on Penn Square, now occupied by the Wanamaker Store. The school was opened October 26, 1838, when a class of sixty-three pupils was admitted.
The first daguerreotype portrait in America was made in Philadelphia by Robert Cornelius, November, 1839, at 710 Chestnut. (Portrait of himself.)