Fairmount, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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Fairmount is a neighborhood in the North Philadelphia area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The name "Fairmount" itself derives from the prominent hill on which the Philadelphia Museum of Art now sits, and where William Penn originally intended to build his own manor house. Later, the name was applied to the street originally called Hickory Lane that runs from the foot of Fairmount hill through the heart of the neighborhood. Real estate agents and tourists sometimes refer it to as the "Art Museum Area," for its proximity and association with to the Art Museum.

Definitions of the boundaries of Fairmount vary. The broadest definition of the boundaries of the neighborhood place it roughly between Vine Street to the south, Girard Avenue to the north, the Schuylkill River to the west, and Broad Street to the east. This definition places the neighborhood in both the North and Center City sections of Philadelphia, encompassing the neighborhoods of Spring Garden, Franklintown, and Francisville. A more intimate definition of the neighborhood places the boundaries at Fairmount Avenue to the south, Girard Avenue to the north, the Schuylkill River to the west, and Corinthian or 19th Streets to the east. Various other definitions place the eastern and southern boundaries at different points, with the northern and western boundaries nearly always constant. Some definitions also include the area of Girard College, which lies north of Girard Avenue.

[edit] History

A handful of European settlers farmed the area in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, when Fairmount still lay outside Philadelphia's city limits. Prominent city families established countryseats there as well, including Bush Hill, White Hall, and Lemon Hill, the last of which still stands overlooking the Schuylkill. Fairmount originally lay in Penn Township, which was subsequently divided, putting the future neighborhood in the newly created Spring Garden District until 1854 when it was incorporated into the City of Philadelphia.

During the American Revolution, British soldiers occupying Philadelphia built defensive works starting on the hill of Fairmount and continuing several miles along a line just south of present day Fairmount Avenue to the Delaware River. Their purpose was to prevent American troops under George Washington from attacking them from the north - the only side of the city not protected by water.

Early signs of urban expansion appeared in the early 1800s, when three large, innovative, and internationally recognized institutions were located in the district. The first of these was the Fairmount Dam and Water Works at the foot of Fairmount hill. Beginning in 1822, the Water Works used waterpower to pump water from the Schuylkill River into reservoirs on the top of Fairmount hill, from where it flowed by gravity into city homes and businesses.

An engineering wonder, it was also an architectural and scenic attraction. Its buildings, which included a restaurant, are among the earliest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the United States. Protection of the municipal drinking water that the Water Works pumped was the impetus for the purchase of lands along the Schuylkill that later became Fairmount Park, one of the world's largest municipal park systems. Charles Dickens listed the Water Works as one of the two things he particularly wanted to see while in Philadelphia.

The other was Eastern State Penitentiary, less than half a mile away on Fairmount Avenue. The prison opened in 1829, the first prison in the country built specifically with the intention of reforming rather than simply punishing criminals. The prison's hub-and-spoke layout was also a first, and became the model for hundreds of prisons around the world (it was often called the "Pennsylvania Model"). Its unique system of solitary confinement for all prisoners did not, however. Intended to provide prisoners relief from the overcrowding and squalor of other prisons and give them time to reflect on their crimes, it led instead to intense despair and sometimes insanity among the inmates and was roundly condemned by Dickens when he visited.

In 1831, these two innovative institutions were joined by a third: Girard College. This school was founded in accordance with the will of Stephen Girard, possibly the wealthiest man in America at the time of his death. Himself an orphan, he wanted to create a model institution for educating poor orphaned white boys at a time when universal public education did not yet exist.

The executor of Girard's estate was another prominent and wealthy Philadelphian, Nicholas Biddle, former US Secretary of the Treasury, who commissioned the building of Founders Hall in honor of Girard. The Hall is the first example of true Greek Revival architecture in the United States and is, like both the Water Works and Eastern State Penitentiary, a National Historic Landmark. In the 1968 Girard College entered the nation's awareness again when the United States Supreme Court altered Girard's will by striking the words "poor, male, white, orphan" and set a major precedent for equal access to education for all Americans.

These three institutions were built when Fairmount was still a rural suburban district of Philadelphia. Beginning in the 1830s, the city itself began to grow beyond its original boundaries, and a mixture of homes and factories sprang up on the district's southern fringes. The Baldwin Locomotive Works, the nation's largest maker of locomotive engines, was located on the southeastern edge of the future Fairmount neighborhood and was a major factor in development of the neighborhood south of Fairmount Avenue in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s. This part of the neighborhood, now also known as Spring Garden, was developed as housing for the middle managers of the Baldwin factory complex. The row houses were relatively large and comfortable in the conservative Philadelphia row house style of the time, although the homes at the western end of Green Street were particularly large and owned by wealthier city professionals.

North of Fairmount Avenue, homes were generally smaller, both two- and three-story working class row homes with small factories and stables mixed into neighborhood. These were built later, many in the second half of the 19th century, some as late as the 1890s when electricity came to the neighborhood. Factories in the northern end of the neighborhood included wagon works and breweries, some of which have been converted into loft-style apartments and condominiums. Irish and German immigrants and their descendents made up the most significant part of the population north of the Fairmount, and over time south of Fairmount as well. In 1839, St. Francis Xavier Church (and its elementary school in 1922) was built to serve Catholics in the community, while a variety of Protestant churches, particularly on the eastern end of the neighborhood, served a variety of denominations. During the anti-Catholic/anti-Irish riots of 1844, the church was closed, as rioting spread from Kensington westward.

Early in the 20th century, Polish and Ukrainian immigrants moved into the neighborhood where they became a significant presence in its northernmost sections. St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church, a Russian Orthodox Church, each serves those communities today. St. Hedwigs, a Roman Catholic church for Polish Catholics closed in 2005 and was demolished in February 2007.

In the 1960s and 70s, Fairmount was affected by the larger trends in Philadelphia and similar rustbelt cities. Factories closed, and poverty and crime increased during these years, as white residents moved to suburban areas, and parts of the neighborhood became predominantly African-American or Hispanic. The western end of Fairmount remained more stable than many Philadelphia neighborhoods, retaining its largely white and working class population until the real estate booms of the 1980s and 1990s, when a large number of younger professional families and singles - including many gay and lesbian households - began to move into the neighborhood, attracted by its location adjacent to Center City (downtown), the Art Museum, and Fairmount Park.

Gentrification continues in the early 21st century in both the western end of the neighborhood as well as in its now mostly African-American and Hispanic east end south of Fairmount Avenue. Long-time families make up an important but shrinking part of the neighborhoods population, and the tone of the neighborhood is increasingly that of a more cosmopolitan, downtown district. While the demographic profile of the neighborhood remains very diverse, it remains largely segregated along racial lines and by economic status.

The western end of Fairmount Avenue has seen village scale shopping and popular bars and restaurants succeed in the last 30 years, and the Penitentiary is the site each year for a Bastille Day Celebration sponsored by local businesses, in which a woman dressed as Marie Antoinette is led to the guillotine while she cries "Let them eat Tastykake!," a local Philadelphia brand of cupcake. Housing prices have increased to the point where new market-rate housing is being built for the first time in decades wherever space is available.

Neighbors have combined to beautify parts of the area, successfully converting a parcel adjacent to Eastern State into a small park and dog run. A large neighborhood community garden, the Spring Gardens, occupies the site of a former open-air drug market.

Early Fairmount incorporates the Spring Garden community, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway museum district on its periphery and borders Fairmount Park.

In 2005, service resumed on SEPTA's long-delayed Girard Avenue trolley at the northern boundary of the neighborhood. Many hope that the historic trolley will help bring more investment to the Girard Avenue corridor and the Fairmount neighborhood.

[edit] Demographics

Fairmount enjoys a multiethnic mix from all socioeconomic strata. Its southern half has become increasingly gentrified in recent years, with newcomers to the city settling in the neighborhood for its proximity to Center City.

As of the census^GR2 of 2000, the racial makeup of Fairmount, Spring Garden, and Francisville is 65.23% White, 24.24% African American, 3.93% Asian, and 4.09% from other races. 7.63% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.

The population of Fairmount grew by 3% between the 1990 and 2000 censuses.