The Middle-Class City. John Henry Hepp, IV
to these inconveniently placed mid-nineteenth-century railroad facilities were passengers or people accompanying or meeting train riders. The largest portion of the structure consisted of the dark wooden train shed that covered the three tracks and the “platforms” that were little more than walkways between the tracks. Four other interior spaces are shown on the plan in figure 12 as being used by the public: two waiting rooms, a package room, and a baggage room. The larger waiting room likely contained both the ticket office and the newsstand (the only non-railroad service in the building). The smaller waiting room was probably the Ladies’ Waiting Room, a feature provided at most major urban terminals by mid century. There was no restaurant; nor did the Reading provide a place within the building for its passengers to smoke, as it officially designated both waiting rooms as non-smoking. All in all, its interior was simple and its amenities spartan.13
Simplicity in interior layout, however, did not guarantee safety at stations like Ninth and Green Streets. The location of both the tracks and the platforms at street level meant there was no clear division between the areas meant for trains and those for passengers. People walked across the running lines within the station to reach their trains or the street. Railroads could do little to stop this practice, other than having their employees attempt to discourage it. For example, on a Sunday in 1881, John L. Smith left his mother’s house in North Philadelphia to spend the day with friends in Germantown. After dinner, he returned home via the Ninth and Green depot. His day came to a dramatic, and nearly fatal, conclusion when he “made a narrow escape” from a locomotive as it backed into the station while he was crossing the tracks. Smith leapt out of its way, prompted by the shouted warnings of nearly “40 train Hands.” Accidents like this were not uncommon in the United States, as a guidebook for English travelers warned: “A special word of caution may be given to the frequent necessity for crossing the tracks, as the rails are frequently flush with the floor of the station and foot-bridges or tunnels are rarely provided” as was then the practice in Europe.14
Conditions were particularly bad at this depot. In addition to the many passenger switching movements (like the one that nearly felled Smith), the Reading operated a busy freight line down the center of Ninth Street. The ground-level tracks also created numerous grade crossings of streets for trains using the station. This both slowed the trains and disrupted life in the surrounding neighborhoods. This mix of railroad and street traffic also led to many accidents.15
Figure 11. A classic mid-century depot: the Philadelphia & Reading depot at Ninth and Green Streets circa 1895. Courtesy of the Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.
Figure 12. The simple interior layout of the Ninth and Green Streets depot. Courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.
In addition to these problems, the lighting was poor both within the train shed and on Ninth Street. By the mid-188os these issues had become serious enough for Reading operating officials to express concern over passenger safety at the aging depot. One manager proposed locking most of the entrances to the station, posting additional watchmen, and petitioning the city to close Ninth Street as a public thoroughfare in order “to reduce the high number of accidents … as locomotives and cars are being constantly moved.” In other words, the railroad would begin to define more clearly the boundary between trains and people. Another supervisor was concerned with the “many narrow escapes [the railroad has had] while unloading our passengers at night.…” Although the Reading installed additional electric lights in 1883 and did close some entrances, the cramped, dark, and busy station at Ninth and Green remained a relatively unsafe place until its abandonment in 1893.16
The movement away from buildings like the one at Ninth and Green began in 1876 when the Pennsylvania Railroad built a new passenger station in West Philadelphia and the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore substantially reconstructed its facility in South Philadelphia. These two depots were important transitional structures, built largely on the scale of the mid-century terminals but with far more complex interior designs presaging the elaborate facilities of Broad Street Station and Reading Terminal. Because they were essentially the same size as the earlier stations, these Centennial depots affirm that the Victorian redefinition of space was not developed in reaction to physical expansion.
The Prime Street station had been one of Philadelphia’s most impressive railroad depots since it was built by the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore in 1851–52. Although similar in appearance to the Reading facility at Green Street, it was larger and more elaborately decorated. Its train shed held seven tracks and three “platforms.” When built, the railroad claimed that the head house contained “every convenience known or believed to be essential to a station of such prominent importance.” It was probably the first depot in Philadelphia to contain a dining room in addition to the standard waiting room, ticket office, and baggage facilities supplied at the other stations. But the terminal also had many of the same problems as the Green Street facility. The Prime Street train shed was low and dark. Its tracks and the platforms were placed at street level, allowing passengers to enter the station through the train shed. In addition, until the 1876 renovation, freight trains shared the facility with their passenger counterparts.17
If space was not well defined in and around the mid-century Prime Street, the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore station was a masterpiece of planning when compared to the jumble of tracks and structures that made up the Pennsylvania Railroad’s first depot in West Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania had moved its main Philadelphia terminal to a small structure at Thirty-first and Market Streets from an even smaller building at Eleventh and Market in 1864. By the early 1870s, the Pennsylvania’s passenger facilities at West Philadelphia had grown to two separate stations with three sets of platforms sprawling over two city blocks, with a group of freight depots and tracks intermixed (see figure 13 for a map showing this conglomeration of tracks and platforms taken from a city atlas). The original 1864 terminal (“A” in figure 13) had two tracks under a train shed and was used by trains to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. A short distance to the west was the separate “New York” station, built in 1867, with its own two-track train shed for service to Trenton and Jersey City (“B”). Finally, still farther to the west, a wooden walkway led from the New York depot to a platform located on a low-level connecting line that was used by through Washington to Jersey City trains (“C”). With the large number of freight trains running on the tracks adjacent to these passenger facilities, this complex of buildings and platforms was neither safe nor terribly easy for the first-time passenger to navigate. Not only was their little separation between freight and passenger space, there was effectively none between the railroad and the community.18
At the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore depots in 1876 space became noticeably better defined both in and around the facilities. Perhaps the single most important change resulting from these improvements was the clear separation of passenger traffic from freight traffic at the new or renovated termini. In South Philadelphia, the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore built a new freight facility adjoining its Prime Street station. This allowed the existing structure to be used exclusively for passenger purposes. In West Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania finally built a depot at Thirty-second and Market Streets large enough to house all its passenger services in one building. Like the renovated facility at Prime Street, the new Pennsylvania terminal was for passenger trains only. Also like its counterpart in South Philadelphia, the West Philadelphia depot’s head house had a complex interior that consisted of “gentlemen’s” and “ladies’ “ waiting rooms, separate ticketing and baggage offices, a restaurant, and company offices. 19
Figure 13. Complex and confusing: the Pennsylvania Railroad’s West Philadelphia stations