USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Annals of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania in the olden time; being a collection of the memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents of the earliest settlements of the inland part of Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 41
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The Drawbridge and Dock Creek.
I am much indebted to the intelligence and observation of the late Samuel Richards, a long resident of " Budd's row," for his ac- curate knowledge of facts and occurrences in his neighbourhood. He was a silversmith-of the Society of Friends-died in Septem- ber, 1827, in his 59th year. I connect his communications with the following facts, to wit :
Budd's row was formerly ten houses in all. Five houses on the west side of Front street nearest to the Drawbridge, on the north end, were built first; then five more in continuation and further north. They were the first built houses in Philadelphia-(that is, the first five; and the "sixth house," was the house, now down, the second door north of Wal- nut street, on the west side of Front street.) The houses of Budd's row were all two stories, were first framed of heavy timber and filled with bricks; the wood, however, was concealed, and only showed the lintels or plate pieces over the windows and doors, which were covered with mouldings ; the uprights for windows and doors were grooved into that cross timber, and looked like ordinary door and window-frames. The whole buildings were founded under ground on a layer of sap slab- boards, and yet, strange to tell, when some of them were taken up, twenty-two years ago, by Richards, to build his present three-story brick house, No. 136, they were all hard and sound, but after a week's expo- sure to the sun and air, crumbled into dust!
This "row" of houses was so much lower than the present Front street, that for many years (I remember it) the paved carriage-street was from three to four feet higher towards the Drawbridge than the foot-pave- ment along the row, and, therefore, there was at the gutter-way a wall of defence, to keep the pebble-pavement from falling in on the foot-pave- ment, and a line of post and handrail also protected it. At the south end of the foot-pavement, to ascend up into Dock street, there was a flight of four steps and a handrail-this was before the old tavern, then called the Boatswain and Call, but which was originally Guest's " Blue Anchor," the first built house in Philadelphia, and where William Penn first landed from Chester.
The houses numbered 126 and 128, were the only houses lately remaining of the original row, and they were of the second row. They had heavy girders exposed along the ceiling overhead, and have had their lower floors raised, and they are still below the street; they were very respectable looking houses, now modernised with large bulk win- dows. The whole row of ten houses went up to the "stone house" of Andrew Doe, now plastered over. All the houses once had leaden framed windows, of diagonal squares, and all the cellars were paved, and used to have water in them occasionally.
The houses on the east side of Front street, too, of the first day, were all lower than the street, and had also a wall of defence; the descent of Front street began at the " stone house" on the west; and on the east side as high up as the present high observatory house-(probably the tenth house from the present south end.) Morris' malthouse was there, and his brewhouse was on the east side of Water street. In one of these the Baptists, in 1700, kept their Meeting.
Dock street was left open, forming a square (oblong) at the Draw
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The Drawbridge and Dock Creek.
bridge, so as to be dug out, down to Spruce street, for ships; but while it was in a state of whortleberry swamp (or unchanged from that, its original state,) old Benjamin Loxley, who died in 1801, at the age of 82. filled it up, when a young man, for his board-yard. Old John Lownes 'who lived in Budd's row) told Richards that he often gathered whortle- berries in the swamp, on the north side of Spruce street. He and others told Richards too, that Dock creek, before directed out under the present bridge, used more naturally, or at least equally so, to go out to the river across Spruce, west of Front street, and then traversed Water street, north of Sims' house.
Samuel Richards, when digging down the old cellar to lay a deeper foundation to build his present house, (No. 136,) at the depth of ten feet, came to the root or stump of a tree, eighteen inches in diameter, and in its roots, at their junction with the stump, he found a six-pound cannon ball, of which he made me a present; it was not imbedded, but appeared to have been shot into the cluster of roots.
At the house, No. 132, Front street, where John Crowley lately lived, which was built up in 1800, and Budd's house taken down, for Judge Mark Wilcox, near the first cellar wall, and deeper than the first founda- tion, (below the slabs,) they came to an entire box of white pipes ! Richards saw them.
Richards' father, and others, often told him that tidewaters used to go as high up Little Dock street water as to St. Peter's church. The tunnel now goes there in the old bed, and under the lot which was Parson Duché's house. They also told Richards, that when Penn first came to the city, he came in a boat from Chester, and landed at Guest's Blue Anchor tavern-this was an undoubted tradition, and was then, no doubt, the easiest means of transportation or travelling. [Guest was a Friend, and was in the first Assembly.] When Richards was a boy (and before his time) the Blue Anchor was kept by three Friends in succession-say, Rees Price, Peter Howard, and Benjamin Humphreys-they told of Penn's landing there.
In rebuilding Garrett's house, on the site of the Blue Anchor inn, they had to drive piles thirty to forty feet deep to get a solid foundation ; they cost $800. [Does not this indicate a much deeper original creek in Dock street than is generally remembered !]
A foot-bridge used to cross Dock creek, from the west end of Garrett's stores, (on the south end of Dock street,) over to near Hollingworth's stone house. It was a bridge with handrails, and was very high to permit vessels to pass under it.
In the cellar door area of Levi Hollingsworth's stone house, there was formerly a very celebrated spring, which was much resorted to; and John Townsend, when aged 78, an uncle of Richards, told me he often drank excellent water from it-it still exists, and is covered over in Hollings- worth's cellar. Formerly there was a frame house directly in front of the stone house-both were owned by William Brown, a noted public Friend.
A little north of this spring stood a high mast-pole, surmounted at the top with what was called "the nine-gun battery," being a triangle, on each angle of which were three wooden guns, with their tomkins in, &c.
..
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The Drawbridge and Dock Creek
Isaac Vannost was a pumpmaker, and this was his sign ; before his yard lay many pine logs floating in the dock.
The lots appertaining to Budd's row all run out to Dock street, and now one of the ancient houses remain there, a two-story brick ; which is three feet below the pavement.
Mr. Menzies, a watchmaker, at the south-west corner of Spruce and Front streets, and Paul Freno, a neighbour, told me that Loxley told them, that about thirty years ago, at digging the pump-well in Spruce street, before B. Graves' door, the diggers dug into something like the stern part of a vessel, and that the blue earth which came up, when dried and put to the fire, inflamed like gunpowder, which he be- lieved it was. Menzies seemed to discredit this; but Freno believed, and so did the sisters of Loxley, (son of the old Captain Loxley,) whom I consulted, and who said they saw the blue earth, and heard it said that it would inflame.
These stories, being somewhat current, induced a belief that when Graves, some sixteen years ago, took down the old buildings along Spruce street there, to rebuild his present three houses, that he should probably find some remains of a vessel, and also that it would prove a boggy foundation. He, therefore, prepared large flat stones to found his foundation upon ; but, to his surprise, it was not necessary, and he found at a proper depth good sand. But as the imagination was active, some of the workmen, whom I saw, told me they had actually come to the deck of a vessel ! But I am satisfied it was merely the remains of a kind of tanyard, which had sunk hogsheads and such slender vats for lime- pits, as Mr. Graves assured me he was satisfied they were. Some of the boards there they took for a deck !
There is direct evidence that the river came, in some early day, up Spruce street, probably to Little Dock street, because all the houses on the south side of Spruce street have now to have very shallow cellars, and as high up as P. Freno's house, No. 28, (three doors west of Graves') water still occasionally overflows his shallow cellar. Graves' cellars are all very shallow. The houses on both sides of Front street, below Spruce street, to the fifth house on the west, and to the sixth house on the east, have all water in their cellars, and some have sink wells, and others have wells and pumps in them. The bakehouse, No. 146, (an old house on the west side,) is now emptied every morning of some water, and the house at the south-east corner of Spruce and Front streets is pumped out every day. None of these houses on the east side of Front street have any privies in their cellars, because of the inability to dig them there. The house on the east side of Water street, No. 135, at the corner of the first alley below Spruce street, has a drain, running down that alley (Waln's) to the river. It was discovered by Mr. P. Freno, thirty years ago, while he lived there; he told me he found the pebble pavement to cave in just in front of the sill of his cellar door, and he had the curiosity to dig down to it : at two feet below the cellar level, he found a wooden trunk of two and a half feet square, somewhat decayed; before he came to it, he could distinctly hear the flapping of fish in it from the river; he believed it traversed Water street, and was an original drain from the dock water in Front street, &c. Others persons tell me that that alley has since several times caved in and been filled up, but with VOL. I. - 2 T
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The Drawbridge and Dock Creek.
out digging down to examine the cause. I expect the wharf has now cut off the drain.
Mr. Freno told me, that in laying the water pipes they found in Spruce street, near Graves', small brick tunnels, as if intended for drains origi- nally from the houses; and at the corner of Spruce and Front streets there appear two or three drains of flat stones, inclining towards the river. At about the sixth house in Front below Spruce street, the gravel hill of Society Hill begins to show itself in digging to lay the water pipes.
Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Reese, daughters of old Captain Benjamin Loxley, who died in 1801, at 82 years of age, related to me that they were told by their father, that when he built the row of three three- story brick houses in which they dwell, called Loxley's Court, (pro- bably one hundred and thirty feet back from the south side of Spruce street) he built it near the margin of Society Hill, and there were then no houses in advance of him on Spruce street, as there are now. His court yard, now of thirty feet depth, in which used to be a fine green bank and beautiful fruit trees, (which the British cut down,) went to the extreme margin of the original swamp ground. His houses were cut into the hill, for the garden of his house in the rear is full five feet higher than the front lot yard.
He told his daughters that all the open square on the north side of Spruce street, from Front up to Little Dock street, he had filled up at great expense, and with many thousand loads of earth, for the use of the area for a term of years for a lumber yard. (I find he advertises lumber there for sale in 1755.) He told them it was all a whortleberry swamp before he began to fill it up.
He told them he had gone in a boat up the south-west branch of the dock water, in high tides, up as high as Union and Third streets.
He told them he had heard Whitfield preach from the balcony of his house, No. 177 south Second street, at the corner of Little Dock street, and that there was a spring open then opposite, at the foot of a rising ground, on the lot where Captain Cadwallader lived, and where Girard has since built four large houses. He had to drive piles to make the foundation over the spring. Samuel Coates confirmed this same fact to me of the spring, and Whitfield's preaching there.
Some amusing traits of old Captain Loxley's usefulness as an artillery man, to defend the city against the Paxtang boys, is told by Graydon in his memoirs. He was made a lieutenant of artillery, in 1756, on the alarm of Braddock's defeat the year before.
Mr Thomas Wood told me he remembered Dock street water- the sides of the water passage were all of hewn stone, and had seve- ral steps occasionally down to the water. He remembered several tanyards on the western side, near to the southern end, viz : Morris', Rutherford's, Snowden's; and next to these was Isaac Vannost's pump and block shop, having many pine logs laying before it in the water.
At Thomas Shield's house, No. 13 Dock street, in digging for a foundation, they came to a regular hearth and chimney ; the hearth
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The Drawbridge and Dock Creek.
.ay one and a half feet below spring tide mark. It might be ques- tioned whether tides rose so high formerly as before.
The streets verging to Dock street had formerly a very considera- ble descent-thus down Walnut street from Third street, was once a hill, and the same could be said of its going down hill from Walnut street towards Girard's Bank. Where little Dock street joins to Second street some of the houses, still there, show that the street has been raised above them fully four feet ; there was originally a hollow there.
Mr. Samuel Richards told me he saw the laying of the first tunnel (in 1784) along the line of Dock creek-it is laid on logs framed together and then planked, and thus the semicircular arch rests upon that base. He thinks nothing remarkable was seen or dug out, as they did not go deeper than the loose mire required. He said boys were often drowned there before it was filled up. Much of the earth used in filling it up was drawn from Pear street hill, and from Society Hill-from that part of it which lay on the west side of Front street, between Lombard and South streets. It was there ten feet higher than the present street. While digging there the bank fell in and smothered four boys in their play.
An old bakehouse, at the south-west corner of Dock and Second streets, of large size, was occupied by Middleton in war times; and there a friend of mine has seen shallops bring flour-they had falling masts to pass under the Second street bridge. Another bakehouse was just below Second street, on the east side, and is mentioned, be- cause it was celebrated then for baking family dishes. The dock was then bare at low tide.
Floods at the corner of Fourth and High streets were frequent. Houses near the corner had cellar drains, and guard walls before cellar windows two or three feet high ; even the doors had a sliding board to fit tight to exclude floods. All this was indispensable before the tunnel was made, and proves the natural rush of waters along "the deep valley," once there, and along the Dock creek, down to Chestnut and Third streets. On the 1st July, 1842, a sud- den and heavy rain, which could not find sufficient passage in the culvert, there flooded all the basement stores of the buildings at the north-west corner of Fourth and High streets.
An elderly gentleman has given me his recollections and opinions of Dock creek, and what he deems sufficient reason for filling it up and leaving only a tunnel there. He says, " few people at the time regretted the dock being arched over; a dredge would have had constant employ. It was bare at half tide; at high water great patches of green mud floated on it. The fish kept out of it, except suckers, and they soon floated belly up, gasping. Several privies are still emptied into it. Raynal's " European Settlement" gives a. description of the dock as " a beautiful stream, bordered with rows of trees, and between the trees benches." As early as he could remem- bet, it was a nuisance from Walnut street to the river. A few refugee
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The Drawbridge and Dock Creek.
whale boats (prizes) used to be in it, which were used by the boys I have been in one of them under the arch from Walnut street towards Third street, covered over before my time. Towards the end of the war, a large number of the boys embodied and had regu- lar parades on Saturdays. They formed a kind of fortification in the dock, near the end of Pear street, by raising the mud so as to be above the usual high water, mounted with cannon, of which many an old fashioned pewter dish and plate formed the metal. When the dock was arched over from Walnut street to the drawbridge, there were several openings left in different places. One, I well remem- ber, thirty or forty feet from the north-east corner of Dock and Second. It was four or five feet square, and had a strong plank cover on hinges. The raising this door, and letting it suddenly fall was a great amusement to the boys, and became an annoyance to the neighbourhood. It sounded loud as a cannon ; they were closed when Dock street was paved over. For making the arch, two large logs were bedded in the mud, and on them a stone wall was built two or three feet, and then the arch of brick. The floor was of thick pine plank, or sleepers of the same, and made dishing. The old arch, from Walnut to Third street, was not, I think, disturbed. From Third it was continued to Fourth street, and then brought down from High street to join it, and another branch went up to the jail wall, passing under a house near Fifth, afterwards built by B. W. Morris. In the middle of Dock street, nearly in a range with the alley on the south side of the Bank of Pennsylvania, was a sink hole fenced round. It was there Governeur Morris met with the accident which cost him his leg. He was driving in his phaeton, and ran against the posts of the sink and upset, and broke his leg. He was carried to a house close by, and had his leg amputated with great courage and composure, holding his own leg with both hands, and saying, 'make haste, gentlemen.' The arch gave way not long after it was finished, between Second and Walnut streets, but was soon repaired. I believe that was the only place in the new arch." [In 1830 it required to be repaired twice near there, say ex- actly in the centre of Walnut and Dock streets.]
The Merchants' Exchange being now an edifice of grandeur, and of general public interest, I have set down some special facts con- cerning it.
In digging for the foundation of the new Exchange, to build which they took down several brick houses, they came beneath their foundations to the remains of numerous tan vats, in sound condition ; saw the traces of a run or brook leading into Dock creek. The ve- getable remains in it had formed a kind of peat, which was capable of burning. An old stone was found with an inscription of a name and date, which has been worked into the wall in the cellar of the Exchange, and may be seen.
In the time of my youth its site was wholly occupied, except for necessary yards, by newly built three storied brick houses, at the
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The Drawbridge and Dock Creek.
triangular corner formed at the south-easternmost end, with bulk windows, and showy, for stores and dwellings, (never in much repute as stands,) and about four houses on Walnut street, finished as mer- chants' warehouses, with hoisting tackle, &c., outside. The houses from thence along Walnut to Third street were good creditable brick three-storied houses, built before my observation. The corner house, at the north-east corner of Third and Walnut streets, was a very good looking house. The buildings along Third street, up to Dock street, were small two-storied frames, very old; when originally built, were on a descending hill, or inclined plane, down to the original Dock creek, except that at the north-west corner of Third and Dock streets, where now stands M'Gowan's three-storied brick wine store, there was before, an old brick house, pretty good, of two stories. Along Dock street there was a yard and fence from that corner house to the next house, a three-storied brick tavern, by Gebler, and then again a yard and fence, being the rear yards of two houses on Walnut street, from it to the next six houses in the aforesaid line of new houses on Dock street to the south-easternmost corner.
The new exchange was estimated to cost 160,000 dollars for its building. The area of its ground cost 75,000 dollars by the pur- chase of the stockholders, and subject to 1375 dollars a year in ground rents, (the probable first value of the ground, when first taken up for original buildings.) Now, it is estimated to produce in rents 15,000 dollars a year.
The whole of the Dock street side of the area was originally taken up, and used for numerous years, as a collection of tanyards ; and considerable of their remains, (such as posts, rail fence, &c.,) could be traced in the yards, when digging down for the foundations and cellars of the Exchange. There is some entertainment to the mind, when, in contemplating the present marble edifice, to consider its former state and character; and also, to contemplate, in compa- rison, the smallness now of the once big " Old London Coffee House," at the south-west corner of Front and High streets.
Some of the houses built along Dock street, about the time of the revolution, as then seen by my informant, were constructed of logs at the bottom, and the frame work filled in with stone and mortar to prevent their sinking more than ten or twelve inches afterwards.
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The old Court House and Friends' Meeting.
THE OLD COURT HOUSE AND FRIENDS' MEETING.
THE old Court House, long divested of its original honours by being appropriated during the years of the present generation to the humble purposes of offices and lumber rooms for city watchmen and clerks of the markets, &c., had long been regarded by many as a rude and undistinguished edifice.
But this structure, diminutive and ignoble as it may have appeared to our modern conceptions, was the chef-d'œuvre and largest en- deavour of our pilgrim fathers. Assessments, gifts and fines, were all combined to give it the amplitude of the " Great Towne House," or "Guild Hall," as it was occasionally at first called. In the then general surrounding waste, (having a duck pond on its northern aspect,) it was deemed no ill-graced intrusion to place it in the middle of the intended unencumbered and wide street ;- an excep tion, however, to which it became in early days exposed, by pam- phlets, pasquinades, &c., eliciting on one occasion "the second (angry) address of Andrew Marvell," &c.
Before its erection, in 1707, its place was the honoured site of the great town bell, erected upon a mast, whence royal and provincial proclamations, &c., were announced. That bell, the centenary in- cumbent of the cupola, could it rehearse its former doings, might, to our ears, "a tale unfold" of times and incidents by-gone, which might wonder-strike our citizens !-
'Twould tell of things so old, "that history's pages Contain no records of its early ages !"
Among the relics which I have preserved of this building, is a picturesque view, as it stood in primitive times, having a pillory, prison cage, &c. on its eastern side, and the " Great Meeting house" of Friends on the south, secluded within its brick wall-enclosure, on ground bestowed by the Founder " for truth's and Friends' sake." I have, too, an original MS. paper giving in detail the whole ex- penses of the structure, and the payments, " by the penny tax," re- ceived for the same, and showing, in that day, a loss of " old cur rency" of one-third, to reduce it to new,-and withal, presenting a curious exhibit of the prices of materials and labour in that early day-such as bricks at 29s. 6d. per m., and bricklaying at 14s. per nı., making, in all, an expense of £616. Samuel Powell, who ac- quired so much wealth by city property, was the carpenter.
The window casements were originally constructed with little panes set in leaden frames-and the basement story, set on arches, had one corner for an auction room, and the remainder was occupied
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THE OLD COURT HOUSE AND FRIENDS' MEETING HOUSE .- Page 350.
HIGH STREET PRISON AND MARKET SHAMBLES .- Page 356.
MUMFORD SEL
WALNUT STREET PRISON .- Page 350.
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The old Court House and Friends' Meeting.
by the millers and their meal, and by the linen and stocking makers from Germantown. Without the walls on the western side stood some moveable shambles, until superseded, in 1720, by a short brick market house.
The meal market was kept afterwards at the end next Thira street. It was built something like the under part of the old court house. It was pulled down and made uniform with the other part of the market.
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