Overbrook Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Overbrook Park is a neighborhood behind the West Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded around the 1940s on the site of a former farm. For a long time, it had a large Jewish population. It used to have one Orthodox synagogue and one Conservative synagogue. Most of the Jews have moved across City Line Avenue (US-1) into neighboring Penn Wynne in Lower Merion Township. The Jewish community of both sides of the border are considered to be one unit and are connected by an eruv, a wire attached to the telephone and electric poles which allows religious Jews to carry things on Shabbat. The Orthodox Congregation Beth Hamedrosh was founded in 1958 as a branch of Beth Hamedrosh HaGadol in West Philadelphia by Jews fleeing from West Philadelphia. It was first housed in a storefront on Haverford Avenue until they moved into their building of 47 years in 1960 at 7505 Brookhaven Road. In 2000, they purchased a new site in Penn Wynne. Following the sale of their property, they started to use the funds for the construction of a new building on the new site which was completed in the end of May, 2007. In the mean time, they were renting the old building from the new owner, a "Black Hebrew" congregation. On March 11, 2007, they moved to a temporary site in a former kosher restaurant site on Haverford Avenue where they remained until they moved into the new site in Penn Wynne on May 31, 2007. The Conservative Congregation Beth T'fillah, founded in 1948, closed down in the Fall of 2006 and merged with Adath Israel in Merion, Lower Merion Township due a lack of sufficient membership. The building that housed Beth T'fillah is now a black church. The only organized Jewish establishments in Overbrook Park that remain are a kosher pizza store, a kosher bakery, a kosher fish and produce store, and a kosher bagel store, all centered around City Line Avenue and Haverford Avenue in a shopping center and across the street. The demographic transformation in Overbrook Park over the past few decades has been astounding. In 1990, figures showed the population to be over 90% Caucasian. In the mid 1990s, the neighborhood started to become majority black. By 2000, the neighborhood's population had become nearly 60% black, with anecdotal accounts pointing towards an even greater and ever-increasing percentage of blacks inhabiting the area as of 2006.
Overbrook Park is bounded by Overbrook on one side, Penn Wynne on another side, Indian Creek (a tributary of Cobbs Creek) and park land on a third side, and a golf course on the fourth side. The main artery is Haverford Avenue which goes into Penn Wynne across City Line Avenue where it become Haverford Road. Haverford Avenue and 75th Street connect it to Lansdowne Avenue on the Overbrook side. Haverford Avenue, 76th Street, and 77th Street connect it to City Line Avenue on the Penn Wynne side. The neighborhood spans for approximately four city blocks west to east along City Avenue, and approximately ten smaller blocks north to south on either side of 76th Street. There is a K-12 public school named after Robert Eneas Lamberton, former mayor of Philadelphia. It is located at 75th and Woodbine.
Overbrook Park is the birthplace of Seth Green.
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