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Roxborough | |
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Neighborhood | |
Coordinates: 40°03′14″N75°14′31″W / 40.054°N 75.242°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Pennsylvania |
County | Philadelphia |
City | Philadelphia |
Population | 30,940 |
ZIP Code | 19128 |
Area code(s) | 215, 267 and 445 |
Roxborough is a neighborhood in Northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is bordered to the southwest, along the Schuylkill River, by the neighborhood of Manayunk, along the northeast by the Wissahickon Creek section of Fairmount Park, and to the southeast by the neighborhood of East Falls. Beyond Roxborough to the northwest is Montgomery County. Roxborough's ZIP Code is 19128. Most of Roxborough is in Philadelphia's 21st Ward. [1]
Roxborough Township | |
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Coordinates: 40°02′49″N75°14′28″W / 40.04694°N 75.24111°W |
The Native American trail called the Manatawny, now Ridge Avenue, was central to the well-organized development of farms and plantations within the area then known as Manatawna. The Court of Upland in England appointed local Swedish settler Peter Rambo to be the maintainer of the Manatawny road. In 1690, the road was renamed Ridge Road (it follows the crest of the ridge between the Wissahickon valley and the Schuylkill valley), and the area was renamed Roxburgh, likely named for Roxburghshire, Scotland, the ancestral home of Andrew Robeson, one of the earliest settlers of the area. By 1707, the name had been changed to Roxborough. Roxborough is first mentioned as a township in QS Road Docket II: 31 in 1706. In 1840, Manayunk was erected as a borough within the township, and on March 31, 1847, Manayunk was declared separate from the township.
Most of modern-day Roxborough was once part of Roxborough Township, which was incorporated into the City of Philadelphia following the passage of the Act of Consolidation, 1854. At this time, Roxborough was the home of the area's wealthiest, the owners of the Manayunk mills. These textile mills produced revenue that was spent building schools, parks, and a large Victorian manor built for the area's elderly women, The Roxborough Home for Women.
Since the 1950s, most of Philadelphia's major television and FM radio stations have located their transmission towers in Roxborough because of its hilly terrain and high elevation.[ citation needed ] The tallest of these towers, the American Tower, stands approximately 1,250 feet (381m) tall. [2] Public television station "MiND", once called "WYBE", was also formerly located in Upper Roxborough, close to neighboring Andorra.
The Upper Roxborough Historic District and William Levering School are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. [3]
Roxborough is well-connected to Center City Philadelphia with multiple bus routes and bike lanes reaching the river and downtown area of Philadelphia. SEPTA's Manayunk/Norristown Regional Rail line stops in the Wissahickon section of Roxborough, continues through Manayunk, and stops again at the Ivy Ridge station in Roxborough.
Philadelphia University and St. Joseph's University are nearby.
Henry Avenue runs parallel to Ridge Avenue from the border of East Falls and North Philadelphia to Andorra, where it merges into Ridge Avenue. Constructed in the 1930s, it was extended in 1959 from Roxborough Avenue to Andorra, and includes several concrete arch bridges. One of these bridges, the Wissahickon Memorial Bridge, which crosses over the Wissahickon Creek and Lincoln Drive, includes a pair of box tunnels under the roadway designed to carry a never built extension of the Broad Street Subway into Roxborough.[ citation needed ]
Because of the Wissahickon Creek and the park that protects much of its watershed, Roxborough and Manayunk are physically separated from the rest of the city. Much of lower Roxborough, consisting of "row homes" and homes dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries, has a historic, urban character.
Roxborough abuts the Wissahickon Valley Park portion of the Fairmount Park system. The park's numerous trails are used by cyclists, runners, walkers, dog owners, and mountain bikers.
The northwest section of Roxborough is often considered a separate neighborhood called Upper Roxborough. Much of the development in this area occurred after 1950, and has a suburban character: larger front lawns, garages, and shopping centers.
The area of Roxborough was likely named for Roxburghshire, Scotland, the original home of Andrew Robeson, one of the first settlers of the area. [4]
In 1676, Andrew Robeson, his wife Elizabeth, and his nephew Andrew Jr. came to America from Scotland, where Andrew Sr. became Surveyor General for 300,000 acres of land in southern New Jersey, where he presided as Judge in Gloucester County.[ citation needed ] In 1690, Andrew Sr. moved to Philadelphia and purchased an estate located in the area that is known today as Roxborough, roughly where the on and off ramps for City Line Avenue and Lincoln Drive are.
Andrew Jr. became Chief of Justice in Pennsylvania from 1693 until 1699. He was responsible for making Roxborough a township in 1690.[ citation needed ]
The Robeson family is known to have originally come from Kelso, Roxburghshire, Scotland. Roxburgh (pronounced Rocs-burr-ah) was a small region in the southeast of Scotland until it was changed to the region of "The Borders" in 1975; the town of Kelso still remains as a historic Scottish village.
In 1706, a German philosopher named Johannes Kelpius, who lived in the woods not far from the Robesons, wrote about "foxes burrowing in rocks" in the area.[ citation needed ] A correlation between the phonetic spelling "Rocksburrow" that many resident Germans applied to the Township, and Kelpius's "where foxes burrow" letter of 1706, convinced many that the township's origins related to foxes.
Kelpius popularized his spelling of the township[ citation needed ], but not long afterward the spelling was changed to its current form.[ citation needed ]
The Township could have retained the names "Manatawna" or "Leverington", as they were popular names the area was referred to as in the 1690s[ citation needed ] and early 1700s, but thanks to the popular writings of Johannes Kelpius, the name remained as Roxborough. Other spellings have also been noted in early writings as Roxbury and Roxboro.
The School District of Philadelphia operates public schools. Its zoned schools include Shawmont Elementary, Cook Wissahickon, and Roxborough High School.[ citation needed ]
The Walter Biddle Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences [5] and Lankenau Environmental Magnet High School are in upper Roxborough.
William Levering School, founded in 1748, closed its doors in June 2012. [6] The Academy for the Middle Years (AMY) Northwest Middle School, a special admissions middle school (6–8), now occupies the building. [7] AMY used to be located in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, in a rented church building.
The area has been one of the main feeder regions for Roman Catholic and J.W. Hallahan High Schools.
The Free Library of Philadelphia operates the Roxborough Branch at 6245 Ridge Avenue at Hermitage Street. [8] The "Roxborough - Manayunk - Wissahickon - East Falls - Andorra Historical Society" also has an archive room in the Roxborough Branch. It is maintained by one of the Historical Societies' top members and one of the area's community leaders, Sylvia Myers.[ citation needed ]
One of the main and oldest thoroughfares through Roxborough is Ridge Avenue. Previously a Native American trail called the Manatawny, by the 18th century the trail was known as "Ridge Road," and by the 1730s, Ridge Road was popularized as “The Great Road from Philadelphia to Reading.” [9] [10] Passenger stagecoaches frequently traveled on the road, and many inns were built along it. [9] Ridge Road even played a part during the American Revolution as various sections of the road were travelled by soldiers in 1777 during the lead-up to the Battle of Germantown. [11]
The other main thoroughfare through Roxborough is Henry Avenue, which was laid out in the late 1950s as a four-lane road running the length of the neighborhood and parallel to Ridge Avenue. [12]
One SEPTA Regional Rail line connects the neighborhood to Center City: the Manayunk/Norristown Line stops at the Ivy Ridge station, Manayunk station, and Wissahickon station. SEPTA closed the historic Shawmont station in 1996. [13]
The neighborhood is also served by SEPTA bus routes 1, 9, 27, 32, 35, and 65.
Whitemarsh Township is a home rule municipality in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. It retains its former classification of "Township" in its official name despite being a home rule municipality. The population was 19,707 at the 2020 census. Whitemarsh is adjacent to the neighborhood of Andorra in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, and is bordered in Montgomery County by Springfield, Upper Dublin, Whitpain, and Plymouth townships, Conshohocken, and the Schuylkill River, which separates it from Lower Merion Township.
Chestnut Hill is a neighborhood in the Northwest Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is known for the high incomes of its residents and high real estate values, as well as its private schools.
Wissahickon Creek is a tributary of the Schuylkill River in Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties, Pennsylvania.
Bala Cynwyd is a community and census-designated place in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located on the Philadelphia Main Line in Southeastern Pennsylvania and borders the western edge of Philadelphia at U.S. Route 1. The present-day community was originally two separate towns, Bala and Cynwyd, but was united as a singular community largely because the U.S. Post Office, the Bala Cynwyd branch, served both towns using ZIP Code 19004. The combining of the communities gives a total population of 9,285 as of the 2020 census. The community was long known as hyphenated Bala-Cynwyd. Bala and Cynwyd are currently served by separate stations on SEPTA's Cynwyd Line of Regional Rail.
Manayunk is a neighborhood in the section of Lower Northwest Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania. Located adjacent to the neighborhoods of Roxborough and Wissahickon and also on the banks of the Schuylkill River, Manayunk contains the first canal begun in the United States.
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.
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.
Northwest Philadelphia is a section of the city of Philadelphia. The official boundary is Stenton Avenue to the north, the Schuylkill River to the southwest, Northwestern Avenue to the northwest, Roosevelt Boulevard to the south, and Wister Street and Stenton Avenue to the east. Conventionally, the area east of Wissahickon Creek, which comprises Germantown, Mount Airy, Chestnut Hill, and Cedarbrook, is termed the 'Upper Northwest', and the area west of the creek, which comprises Roxborough, Wissahickon, East Falls, and Manayunk, is termed the 'Lower Northwest'. The area of Philadelphia west of the Schuylkill River is known as West Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Police Department patrols two districts located within Northwest Philadelphia. The two patrol districts serving Northwest Philadelphia are the 5th and 14th districts.
Manayunk station is a station located along the SEPTA Manayunk/Norristown rail line. It is located at Cresson and Carson Streets in the Manayunk neighborhood of northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In FY 2013, Manayunk station had a weekday average of 654 boardings and 563 alightings.
Cynwyd station is a SEPTA Regional Rail station in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Located at Conshohocken State Road and Bala Avenue, it is the last station along the Cynwyd Line. The station includes a 41-space parking lot.
Andorra is a neighborhood in Northwest Philadelphia, which is a section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Andorra is a part of Roxborough, being within the borders of the original Roxborough Township and having the same zip code (19128). At some point during the 19th or 20th century, Andorra developed a cultural identity as a neighborhood within Roxborough. Andorra was named "Andorra" after a fancied resemblance to the small country of the same name which sits astride the Pyrenees between France and Spain.
The Schuylkill River Trail is a multi-use trail along the banks of the Schuylkill River in southeastern Pennsylvania. Partially complete as of 2018, the trail is ultimately planned to run about 140 miles (230 km) from the river's headwaters in Schuylkill County to Fort Mifflin in Philadelphia.
The Schuylkill Branch was a rail line owned and operated by the former Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in Pennsylvania. The line ran from the Philadelphia to Harrisburg Main Line at 52nd Street in Philadelphia north via Norristown, Reading, and Pottsville to Delano Junction, about 2.5 mi (4.0 km) northeast of Delano. From Delano Junction, the PRR had trackage rights over the Lehigh Valley Railroad's Hazleton Branch and Tomhicken Branch to Tomhicken, where the PRR's Catawissa Branch began.
U.S. Route 1 (US 1) is a major north–south U.S. Route, extending from Key West, Florida, in the south to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canada–United States border in the north. In the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, US 1 runs for 81 miles (130 km) from the Maryland state line near Nottingham northeast to the New Jersey state line at the Delaware River in Morrisville, through the southeastern portion of the state. The route runs southwest to northeast and serves as a major arterial road through the city of Philadelphia and for many of the suburbs in the Delaware Valley metropolitan area. South of Philadelphia, the road mostly follows the alignment of the Baltimore Pike. Within Philadelphia, it mostly follows Roosevelt Boulevard. North of Philadelphia, US 1 parallels the route of the Lincoln Highway. Several portions of US 1 in Pennsylvania are freeways, including from near the Maryland state line to Kennett Square, the bypass of Media, the concurrency with Interstate 76 and the Roosevelt Expressway in Philadelphia, and between Bensalem Township and the New Jersey state line.
U.S. Route 13 (US 13) is a United States Numbered Highway running from Fayetteville, North Carolina, north to Morrisville, Pennsylvania. The route runs for 49.359 miles (79.436 km) through the Delaware Valley in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The route enters the state from Delaware in Marcus Hook, Delaware County. It continues northeast through Delaware County, passing through the city of Chester before heading through suburban areas along Chester Pike to Darby. US 13 enters the city of Philadelphia on Baltimore Avenue and runs through West Philadelphia to University City, where it turns north along several city streets before heading east across the Schuylkill River along Girard Avenue. The route turns north and heads to North Philadelphia, where it runs northeast along Hunting Park Avenue. US 13 becomes concurrent with US 1 on Roosevelt Boulevard, continuing into Northeast Philadelphia. US 13 splits southeast on a one-way pair of streets before heading northeast out of the city on Frankford Avenue. The route continues into Bucks County as Bristol Pike, heading northeast to Bristol, where it becomes a divided highway. US 13 becomes a freeway in Tullytown and continues north to its terminus at US 1 in Falls Township, near Morrisville. US 13 roughly parallels Interstate 95 (I-95) through its course in Pennsylvania.
Wissahickon is a neighborhood in the section of Lower Northwest Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Wissahickon is located adjacent to the neighborhoods of Roxborough and Manayunk, and it is bounded by the Wissahickon Valley Park, Ridge Avenue, Hermit Street, and Henry Avenue. The name of the neighborhood is derived from the Lenni Lenape word wisameckham, for "catfish creek", a reference to the fish that were once plentiful in the Wissahickon Creek.
Shawmont is a former train station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located on Nixon Street in the Roxborough section of Lower Northwest Philadelphia. Built by the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad, it later became part of the Reading Railroad and ultimately SEPTA Regional Rail's R6 Norristown Line. SEPTA made the station a whistle stop and closed its waiting room in 1991. SEPTA later closed the station in 1996. In 2018, $1 million was set aside for repairs and rehabilitation.
Route 35 is a bus route operated by the SEPTA in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Ridge Pike is a major historic road in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania that opened in 1706 that originally connected Wissahickon Creek to Perkiomen Creek. Inside Philadelphia, it is called Ridge Avenue. Going westward, it traverses many eastern Pennsylvania neighborhoods in Montgomery County including Conshohocken and beyond, connecting with Germantown Pike near Collegeville and continuing to Pottstown. In Montgomery County, Ridge Pike is called Main Street in the Norristown area and again in Collegeville and Trappe, and is called High Street in the Pottstown area.
Manatawny Road philadelphia.
History of Philadelphia By T. Scharf.