Fairmount is a neighborhood within Lower North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.[1] Its boundaries are north of Fairmount Avenue, west of Corinthian Avenue, south of Girard Avenue and east of The Schuylkill River.[2][3] While this may be the most accurate demarcation, the area's boundaries fluctuate depending how the neighborhood is defined. Several other neighborhoods near Fairmount are sometimes also collectively called Fairmount, including: Spring Garden, Franklintown and Francisville.[2][4] Fairmount and neighboring Spring Garden are commonly referred to as the "Art Museum Area," for their proximity to and association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fairmount is also the location of the Eastern State Penitentiary.
The name "Fairmount" derives from the prominent hill on which the Philadelphia Museum of Art now sits and where William Penn intended to build his 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.
A handful of European settlers farmed the area in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th century, when Fairmount was still outside Philadelphia's city limits. Prominent city families established country seats there as well, including Bush Hill, White Hall, and Lemon Hill, the last of which still stands overlooking the Schuylkill River. Fairmount was originally 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.
Signs of urban expansion appeared in the early 19th century, 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,[5] 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.[6]
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 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.
Fairmount's homes were generally smaller row or town houses and the residents were generally working class. Row houses were interspersed with lumber yards, coal yards, lime yards, iron foundries, bakeries, dry goods stores, as well as several wagon works and stables. Many of these were built in the second half of the 19th century to support factories and breweries in the area. Fairmount has many large houses built for the managers of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, other professionals, and brewery owners which date back to the 1840s.[7]
Fairmount is near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, its famous “Rocky Steps” (immortalized in the 1976 Academy Award film, Rocky and its new Perelman Annex). Fairmount is located at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a broad 1.5-mile tree- and flag-lined avenue that connects City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This stretch is known as the “Museum District” since most of the city’s cultural attractions and museums are located here. Along the Parkway are the Rodin Museum, Philadelphia’s Central Library, the Franklin Institute of Science, the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Barnes Museum. Based upon the famous Champs-Élysées in Paris in its design and owing to its ability to hold vast numbers of people, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway is also where most of Philadelphia’s large outdoor events, parades, concerts, and races are held.
Eastern State Penitentiary, located on Fairmount Avenue, has become another main draw for the neighborhood. Tours of this historic 1829 facility, now abandoned, are offered. It is also annually converted into a haunted house during the Halloween season and, because of its resemblance to the Bastille, it is part of Philadelphia’s Bastille Day celebration.
Fairmount is a predominantly white section of North Philadelphia. The neighborhood has become increasingly gentrified over the years, with newcomers to Philadelphia settling in the area for its proximity to Center City.
Parents in the Fairmount neighborhood no longer have the opportunity to send children to the Albert M. Greenfield School,[16] as the school no longer accepts applications from outside the catchment.
The neighborhood Catholic elementary school is St. Francis Xavier School.[17]
Philadelphia, commonly referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the second-most populous city in the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Philadelphia is known for its extensive contributions to United States history, especially the American Revolution, and served as the nation's capital until 1800. It maintains contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. Philadelphia is the nation's sixth-most populous city, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census and is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of the world's largest metropolitan regions consisting of 6.245 million residents in the metropolitan statistical area and 7.366 million residents in its combined statistical area.
Fairmount Park is the largest municipal park in Philadelphia and the historic name for a group of parks located throughout the city. Fairmount Park consists of two park sections named East Park and West Park, divided by the Schuylkill River, with the two sections together totalling 2,052 acres (830 ha). Management of Fairmount Park and the entire citywide park system is overseen by Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, a city department created in 2010 from the merger of the Fairmount Park Commission and the Department of Recreation.
Northern Liberties is a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is north of Center City along the Delaware River. Prior to its incorporation into Philadelphia in 1854, it was among the top 10 largest cities in the U.S. in every census from 1790 to 1850. It was a major manufacturing area that attracted many European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the early 21st century, it has attracted many young professionals and new commercial and residential development
West Philadelphia, nicknamed West Philly, is a section of the city of Philadelphia. Although there are no officially defined boundaries, it is generally considered to reach from the western shore of the Schuylkill River, to City Avenue to the northwest, Cobbs Creek to the southwest, and the SEPTA Media/Wawa Line to the south. An alternate definition includes all city land west of the Schuylkill; this would also include Southwest Philadelphia and its neighborhoods. The eastern side of West Philadelphia is also known as University City.
The Schuylkill Expressway, locally known as "the Schuylkill", is a freeway through southern Montgomery County and Philadelphia. It is the easternmost segment of Interstate 76 (I-76) in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It extends from the Valley Forge interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in King of Prussia, paralleling its namesake Schuylkill River for most of the route, southeast to the Walt Whitman Bridge over the Delaware River in South Philadelphia. It serves as the primary corridor into Philadelphia from points west. Maintenance and planning for most of the highway are administered through Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) District 6, with the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) maintaining the approach to the Walt Whitman Bridge.
Center City includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. 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.
Brewerytown is a neighborhood in the North Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. An unofficial region, Brewerytown runs approximately between the Schuylkill River's eastern bank and 25th Street, bounded by Montgomery Avenue to the north and Parrish Street to the south. Brewerytown derived its name from the numerous breweries that were located along the Schuylkill during the late 19th century and early 20th century. It is now primarily a residential neighborhood, with a growing and active commercial sector along Girard Avenue.
Benjamin Franklin Parkway, commonly abbreviated to Ben Franklin Parkway and colloquially called the Parkway, is a boulevard that runs through the cultural heart of Philadelphia, the nation's sixth-largest city as of 2020.
The Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was Philadelphia's second municipal waterworks. Designed in 1812 by Frederick Graff and built between 1812 and 1872, it operated until 1909, winning praise for its design and becoming a popular tourist attraction. It now houses a restaurant and an interpretive center that explains the waterworks' purpose and local watershed history. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 for its architecture and its engineering innovations. It was the nation's first water supply to use paddle wheels to move water.
East Falls is a neighborhood in Lower Northwest, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It lies on the east bank of the "Falls of the Schuylkill," cataracts submerged in 1822 by the Schuylkill Canal and Fairmount Water Works projects. East Falls sits next to the Germantown, Roxborough, Allegheny West, and the Nicetown-Tioga neighborhoods. Wissahickon Valley Park separates it from Manayunk, Philadelphia.
Francisville is a neighborhood in North Philadelphia, a section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Its boundaries are Fairmount Avenue to the south, Girard Avenue to the north, Broad Street to the east, and Corinthian Avenue to the west. In 2000, it had a population of about 4,500. It is sometimes considered to be a part of the Fairmount neighborhood, but Fairmount more specifically lies to Francisville's west. To its south is the Spring Garden neighborhood.
Eakins Oval is a traffic circle in Philadelphia. It forms the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway just in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with a central array of fountains and monuments, and a network of pedestrian walkways.
The Cliffs is a historic country house located near 33rd and Oxford Streets in East Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. It is a Registered Historic Place.
Spring Garden is a neighborhood in central Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, bordering Center City on the north. Spring Garden is a neighborhood that combines diverse residential neighborhoods and significant cultural attractions.
SEPTA Route 38 is a bus and former Subway-Surface streetcar route operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Poplar is a neighborhood in Lower North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located north of Callowhill, between Spring Garden/Fairmount and Northern Liberties, bounded roughly by Girard Avenue to the north, North Broad Street to the west, Spring Garden Street to the south, and 5th Street to the east. The neighborhood is predominantly residential, with commercial frontage on Broad Street and Girard Avenue and some industrial facilities to the west of the railroad tracks along Percy St. and 9th St.
Girard Avenue is a major commercial and residential street in Philadelphia. For most of its length it runs east–west, but at Frankford Avenue it makes a 135-degree turn north. Parts of the road are signed as U.S. Route 13 and U.S. Route 30.
Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (PPR) is the municipal department responsible for managing parks, recreation centers, playgrounds, trails, community gardens, and historic properties in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its inventory includes more than 150 parks and 170 recreation centers and playgrounds. It became the successor to the Fairmount Park Commission and the City of Philadelphia Department of Recreation in 2010.
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