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Center City East Convention Center Market East | |
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![]() PSFS Building | |
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Country | ![]() |
State | Pennsylvania |
County | Philadelphia County |
City | Philadelphia |
Area code(s) | 215, 267, and 445 |
Center City East is part of the downtown district known as Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The area is generally bounded by Arch Street to the north, Chestnut Street to the south, Juniper Street to the west, and 6th Street (Independence Mall West) to the east. The area serves as one of the major retail centers in the city as well as the home of the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
Today Market East is a major shopping district and transportation hub for the city, as well as serving the convention district.
The area remained relatively stable until the late 1940s and early 1950s, when shifts in demographics caused a decline in the area's business, due to increased suburbanization and the trend in the retail sector away from the inner city and more towards the suburban malls and shopping centers. Along with the decline, a sizeable amount of land on the western side of Center City, in the neighborhood now known as Penn Center, became available for development; it was previously held by the Pennsylvanian Railroad as part of their Broad Street Station and associated yards, including the infamous Chinese Wall. Under the leadership of then Philadelphia mayor Richardson Dilworth and planning head Edmund Bacon, a massive redevelopment effort was made, with the Market East area falling under the auspices of the Market Street East Redevelopment Area section of the Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia.
Over the next three decades the redevelopment authority significantly changed the face of Market East, with many older buildings being demolished. The major part of the redevelopment took place in the form of four major projects: the construction of The Gallery at Market East [a 2 phased project, which included a JC Penney's (now a Burlington Coat Factory)]; the relocation of the Regional Rail lines from the above ground Reading Terminal to the underground Jefferson Station and the corresponding Center City Commuter Connection and One Reading Center (now Aramark Tower); the new United States Courthouse and Detention Facility; and the construction of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the corresponding new Marriott Hotel, renovation of Reading Terminal and related facilities. Several other projects were also conducted concurrently, including the renovation of the Wanamaker’s department store (now a Macy's), and PSFS Building, (now a Loews Hotel).
Though many of these projects have proven successful, there have been several exceptions, the most notable being the city's failed attempt to redevelop the parcel at the southwest corner of 8th and Market. These failures have also called into question the area's long term viability as a major shopping district, especially concerning the major department stores. None of those now located on Market Street are based in Philadelphia, all having been sold to out-of-town interests, and several have closed, though they have been replaced. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The Gallery is now Fashion District Philadelphia.
The Center City East area has served as one of Philadelphia’s retail hubs since at least the early 19th century, when groups of merchants, farmers, and fisherman set up shops and stalls along Market Street, then known as High Street, west of the Independence Hall area. Many of these merchants, driven by profitseeking or city regulations, began to seek more permanent facilities. Among these were Philadelphia's flagship department stores: John Wanamaker's Wanamaker's and Justus Clayton Strawbridge and Isaac Hallowell Clothier's Strawbridge and Clothier, both opened in the earliest days of the American Civil War. Along with Lit Brothers, Snellenburg's, Gimbels and Frank & Seder, the six block corridor was once home to six major department stores. Other merchants set up shop along Market Street, and Chestnut street, one block parallel to the south. Many grocers moved their stalls from the median of Market Street to the two main markets at 12th and Market Streets, known as the Farmers' Market and the Franklin Market.
The area also served as a transportation hub for Philadelphia’s two largest rail operators, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania moved in first, building a freight depot at 13th and Market Streets. But the company abandoned the site by 1875 for locations at Broad Street Station and part of the western bank of the Schuylkill River, leaving the site to become the home of Wanamaker’s.
In 1889, the Reading moved its headquarters and main Philadelphia train depot to a new facility, Reading Terminal, at 12th and Market Streets. The railroad bought out the Farmers' Market and Franklin Market and built a new facility for the markets underneath the trainshed called the Reading Terminal Market.
Several trolley lines and the Market Street Subway also served the area.
Besides the transportation and retail business, the East Market Street area also attracted business, one of the most notable being the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society (PSFS), who opened their signature headquarters on the southwest corner of 12th and Market Streets, the PSFS Building, in 1932. The federal government also established a presence on the parcel bounded by 9th, Market, Chestnut, and 10th Streets, with a Federal Reserve regional headquarters, United States Courthouse, and postal facilities, as well as other government agencies, all mainly built during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The building is called the Nix Federal Building. [5]
King of Prussia is the third-largest shopping mall in the United States in terms of gross leasable area. It is an upscale mall with numerous retailers. The anchor stores are Dick's Sporting Goods, Nordstrom, Lord & Taylor, Neiman Marcus, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, DSW, and Primark. There is 1 vacant anchor store that was once JCPenney.
John Wanamaker Department Store was one of the first department stores in the United States. Founded by John Wanamaker in Philadelphia, it was influential in the development of the retail industry including as the first store to use price tags. At its zenith in the early 20th century, Wanamaker's also had a store in New York City at Broadway and Ninth Street. Both employed extremely large staffs. By the end of the 20th century, there were 16 Wanamaker's outlets, but after years of change the chain was bought by Albert Taubman, and added to his previous purchase of Woodward & Lothrop, the Washington, D.C., department store. In 1994, Woodies, as it was known, filed for bankruptcy. The assets of Woodies were purchased by the May Company Department Stores and JCPenney. In 1995, Wanamaker's transitioned to Hecht's, one of the May Company brands. In 2006, Macy's Center City became the occupant of the former Philadelphia Wanamaker's Department Store, which is now a National Historic Landmark.
Washington Square West is a neighborhood in downtown, or Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The neighborhood roughly corresponds to the area between 7th and Broad Streets and between Chestnut and South Streets, bordering on the Independence Mall tourist area directly northeast, Market East to the northwest, Old City and Society Hill to the East, Bella Vista directly south, Hawthorne to the southwest, and mid-town Philadelphia and Rittenhouse Square to the west. In addition to being a desirable residential community, it is considered a hip, trendy neighborhood that offers a diverse array of shops, restaurants, and coffee houses. Washington Square West contains many gay-friendly establishments and hosts annual events celebrating LGBT culture in Philadelphia including OutFest. The area takes its name from Washington Square, a historic urban park in the northeastern corner of the neighborhood.
CoreStates Financial Corporation, previously known as Philadelphia National Bank (PNB), was a United States bank holding company in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area.
Suburban Station is an art deco office building and underground commuter rail station in Penn Center, Philadelphia. Its official SEPTA address is 16th Street and JFK Boulevard. The station is owned and operated by SEPTA and is one of the three core Center City stations on SEPTA Regional Rail. The station was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad to replace the original Broad Street Station and opened on September 28, 1930.
The Center City Commuter Connection, (CCCC) commonly referred to as "the commuter tunnel", is a passenger railroad tunnel in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, built to connect the stub ends of the two separate regional commuter rail systems, originally operated by two rival railroad companies: the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Company. All of the SEPTA Regional Rail lines except for the Cynwyd Line pass completely through the four-track tunnel, which contains two underground stations, Suburban Station and Jefferson Station, and the above-ground upper-level concourse for the east-west commuter lines serving 30th Street Station.
Strawbridge's, formerly Strawbridge & Clothier, was a department store in the northeastern United States, with stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. In its day a gracious urban emporium, the Center City Philadelphia flagship store added branch stores starting in the 1930s, and together they enjoyed annual sales of over a billion dollars by their zenith in the 1980s. By the 1990s Strawbridge's found itself part of May Department Stores until that company's August 30, 2005, acquisition by Macy's Inc. May had operated it under its Arlington County, Virginia-based Hecht's division. Macy's announced March 10, 2006, that the store would be closed on June 1, but it actually shut its doors on May 23, 2006.
Fashion District Philadelphia is a shopping mall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, located in Center City along Market Street. It opened in 2019 on the site of a previous mall known as the Gallery at Market East. The area was originally planned to be an outlet mall to be called "Fashion Outlets of Philadelphia", but the plans were later changed to be a new "retail district" consisting of clothing stores and a movie theater. The new mall opened on September 19, 2019. Planners envisioned that Philadelphia, as the sixth largest city, did not have a major retail center when even compared with Kansas City, the 37th largest city. The mall was envisioned to fill that "void" that even smaller cities have, to sell items to the Center City market that had previously only been available elsewhere. Many of the new retailers planning to open have never had a presence in Center City before. The Fashion District Philadelphia currently has Burlington, Century 21, AMC Theatres, and Round One Entertainment as anchors.
The Pennsylvania Convention Center is a multi-use public facility in the Market East section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, designed to accommodate conventions, exhibitions, conferences and other events. The "L"-shaped complex occupies four city blocks.
Center City includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It comprises the area that made up the City of Philadelphia prior to the Act of Consolidation, 1854 which extended the city borders to be coterminous with Philadelphia County. Greater Center City has grown into the second-most densely populated downtown area in the United States, after Midtown Manhattan in New York City, with an estimated 173,284 residents in 2010.
Broad Street Station at Broad & Market streets was the primary passenger terminal for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in Philadelphia from early December 1881 to the 1950s. Located directly west of Philadelphia City Hall—15th Street went underneath the station—the site is now occupied by the northwest section of Dilworth Park and the office towers of Penn Center.
The Reading Terminal is a complex of buildings that includes the former Reading Company main station located in the Market East section of Center City in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is composed of the Reading Terminal Headhouse, Trainshed, and Market.
The Harrisburg Transportation Center is a large railway station and transportation hub in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It is located on the eastern edge of Downtown Harrisburg between the intersections of Aberdeen and Market Streets and 4th and Chestnut Streets. The well-situated station is the primary hub for passenger rail and intercity bus services in the Harrisburg metropolitan area and South Central Pennsylvania.
Market Street, originally known as High Street, is a major east–west street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is signed as Pennsylvania Route 3 between 38th Street and 15th Street. A short portion of the road continues west from Cobbs Creek Parkway to Delaware County.
The Christiana Mall is a super-regional shopping mall located between the cities of Newark and Wilmington, Delaware, United States. The mall is situated at the intersection of Interstate 95 and Delaware Route 1/Delaware Route 7, near the Cavaliers Country Club, and close to the center of the Northeast megalopolis.
The Plymouth Meeting Mall is a 952,200 square feet (88,460 m2) shopping mall in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, approximately 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Center City, Philadelphia. It is located at Germantown Pike and Hickory Road, near the Mid-County Interchange where the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-276) crosses the Northeast Extension/Blue Route (I-476). The mall was built by The Rouse Company in 1966. The mall features a fountain and a carousel.
Lit Brothers was a moderately-priced department store based in Philadelphia. Samuel and Jacob Lit opened the first store at North 8th and Market Streets in 1891. Lits positioned itself well as a more affordable alternate to its upscale competitors Strawbridge and Clothier, John Wanamaker, and Gimbels. The store's slogan was "A Great Store in A Great City," and it was noted for its millinery department.
Wilson Brothers & Company was a prominent Victorian-era architecture and engineering firm established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that was especially noted for its structural expertise. The brothers designed or contributed engineering work to hundreds of bridges, railroad stations and industrial buildings, including the principal buildings at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. They also designed churches, hospitals, schools, hotels and private residences. Among their surviving major works are the Pennsylvania Railroad, Connecting Railway Bridge over the Schuylkill River (1866–67), the main building of Drexel University (1888–91), and the train shed of Reading Terminal (1891–93), all in Philadelphia.
Suburban Square is a community shopping center in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, United States, in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia. it has 355,000-square-foot (33,000 m2) of gross leasable area. The center opened in 1928, and is notable as one of the earliest planned suburban shopping centers in the United States. It has also been generally credited as being the first suburban shopping center to include a true department store, when Strawbridge & Clothier opened a four-story, 50,000 sq ft (4,600 m2) branch there on May 12, 1930. The site has grown from its original 7 acres (28,000 m2) to 18 acres (73,000 m2) since its launch. The complex currently includes Suburban Square, Times Building, and the adjacent Ardmore Farmers Market and features more than sixty retail and dining establishments.
Philadelphia is the center of economic activity in Pennsylvania with the headquarters of five Fortune 1000 companies located within city limits. As of 2019, the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $490 billion, an increase from the $445 billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the eighth largest U.S. metropolitan economy. Philadelphia was rated by the GaWC as a 'Beta' city in its 2016 ranking of world cities.