GRANT’S TOMB, RIVERSIDE DRIVE, NEW YORK
Philadelphia (fĭl-ȧ-del´fĭ-ȧ), Pa. [The “Quaker City”; named from two Greek words meaning “loved or friendly,” and “brother,” applied as “brotherly love.” The Indian name of the locality was Coaquannok, “grove of tall pine trees.”]
The chief city of Pennsylvania and the third city in population and importance of the United States, it is situated on the Delaware River, about one hundred miles by ship-channel (via Delaware Bay) from the Atlantic Ocean, ninety miles by railroad southwest of New York City, and one hundred and thirty-six miles northeast of Washington.
The city occupies mainly a broad plain between the Delaware and the Schuylkill Rivers. It is twenty-two miles long from north to south and five to ten miles wide, covering one hundred and thirty square miles, and is laid out with chessboard regularity. The characteristic Philadelphia house is a two-storied or three-storied structure of red pressed brick, with white marble steps. The two rivers give it about thirty miles of water-front for docks and wharfage, and it is the headquarters of two of the greatest American railways—the Pennsylvania and the Reading.
The great wholesale business thoroughfare is Market Street, running east and west between the two rivers, while Chestnut Street, parallel with it on the south, contains the finest shops, many of the newspaper offices, etc. Broad Street is the chief street running north and south. Among the most fashionable residence quarters are Rittenhouse Square and the west parts of Walnut, Locust, Spruce, and Pine Streets. Eighth Street is the great district for shops and amusements.
The City Hall (or Public Buildings) is in the center of the city at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets. The structure is the largest exclusively municipal building in the world. It is built of white marble upon a granite base, in French Renaissance style, and covers an area of four hundred and eighty-six by four hundred and seventy feet. The height of the tower and dome is five hundred and thirty-seven feet four and one-half inches; or five hundred and seventy-three feet four and one-half inches with the colossal figure of Penn (thirty-six feet), to surmount the whole. The entire cost, when completely furnished for occupancy, was estimated at twenty-five million dollars.
The broad pavement round the City Hall is adorned with statues of General Reynolds, General McClellan, Stephen Girard, John C. Bullitt, President McKinley, and Joseph Leidy, the naturalist, and with the “Pilgrim” by Saint-Gaudens.
On the west side of City Hall Square, opposite the City Hall, is the enormous Broad Street Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The waiting-room contains a large allegorical relief, while one wall is covered with a mammoth railway map of the United States. On the north side of the square, at the corner of Broad Street and Filbert Street, is the Masonic Temple, a huge granite structure with a tower two hundred and fifty feet high and an elaborately carved Norman porch.
On the east side of the square, occupying the block bounded by the square, Market Street, Thirteenth Street, and Chestnut Street, is Wanamaker’s Store, one of the largest in the United States. On the south side of the square is the Betz Building, with heads of the Presidents of the United States in the bronze cornice above the third-story windows.
Chestnut Street is the chief street of Philadelphia, containing many of the handsomest and most interesting buildings. To the left, at the corner of Broad Street and adjoining the Betz Building, is the Franklin National Bank, while to the right rises the fine office of the Real Estate Trust Co. At the corner of Twelfth Street is the tall Commonwealth Trust Building, and at the corner of Tenth Street, on the same side, is the New York Mutual Life Insurance Co.