and the West Virginia border. West Philadelphia High School was one of the biggest and most diverse schools in state when it was opened in 1911. West Philadelphia's streets are laid out in a modified grid. Population by Neighborhood in Philadelphia There are 158 neighborhoods that are fully or partially contained within Philadelphia (144 fully and 14 partially). We apologize for the inconvenience. Starting with the first wave of Irish immigrants in the early 19th century, West Philadelphia was home to large numbers of European immigrants and their descendants. After a slow start, the Science Center eventually prospered. In . The Airport Line serves University City at University City Station in the University of Pennsylvania, going on to southernmost Southwest Philadelphia and the airport. Hampton Demographics. Finally the decision was made by Philadelphia Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor to drop an incendiary device on the bunkerlike structure to weaken MOVEs position. Small communities began to spring up to support these businesses, like Hamiltonville in 1804. With the exception of Market Street, these streets can be regarded as being "named after" the streets in West Philadelphia, not continuations, as they are cut off by the park. Since the dawn of rail transportation, Philadelphia has been home to a number of grand railroad stations. Total Population by Neighborhood#5 From designs evoking Greek temples built at the dawn of the automobile age to the ubiquitous utilitarian structures of the twenty-first century, gas stations have become a fixture of the Philadelphia area's landscape. Date(s) & Update Frequency: This photograph shows two clusters of houses on an otherwise vacant street, awaiting the relocation of residents before demolition. The main thoroughfare, Market Street, runs East and West, paralleled to the north and south by smaller streets named for tree species. Commuter trains have helped to shape and define Philadelphia and its region since their introduction in 1832. West Philadelphia was among the early streetcar suburbs, and a portion of it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District. The topography of West Philadelphia is composed of rolling hills rising slowly from the Schuylkill River toward Cobbs Creek in the west and toward Belmont Plateau in the northwest. Data Tool U.S. and World Population Clock See U.S. population by date, region, age and sex, and the top 10 areas by people and density. An alternate definition includes all city land west of the Schuylkill; this would also include Southwest Philadelphia and its neighborhoods. In the 1960s and 1970s, illuminated signs announced what speed to drive to travel 4.3 miles into Center City without stopping for a red light. 30 Years Later, I'm Still Trying To Make Sense Of The MOVE Bombing (National Public Radio), PhilaPlace: Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (AICP) An Interview with Linda Hauber (Historical Society of Pennsylvania). Thus, it is sometimes, but not always, possible to track changes over time. A bustling light industrial sector continued to grow south of Market Street on land adjacent to the river, relying on the Pennsylvania Railroads infrastructure around 30th Street Station to convey the sectors goods efficiently. Estimates are not comparable to other geographic levels due to methodology differences that may exist between different data sources. 2 (April 1980), pp. Households with a computer, percent, 2017-2021. In 1872 the university moved to a new campus near Spruce and Thirty-Fourth Streets in West Philadelphia. Miller, Rogerand Joseph Siry. Instead, it provided unarmed security services to patrol the area and exercised soft power to provide incentives to staff, from professors to janitors, to buy and repair homes in a catchment area around the university. ofGreaterPhiladelphia. After 1880 the larger houses closer to the river and the university, which dated to earlier in the century, began to be carved into smaller units. The upgrades to campus were impressive. 1 Baths Ba; 320 S. 10th Street. Unveiled at the University of Pennsylvanias Moore School of Electrical Engineering in 1946, the world's first nontechnical computer, the ENIAC, consisted of 40 nine-foot-high cabinets containing 18,000 vacuum tubes, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches, and 1,500 relays. 77th and 86th Streets run just a few blocks before they leave the city for surrounding jurisdictions. On the far side of the Schuylkill, the new housing developments were mostly marketed for the middle and upper classes, whose westward movement was further enabled by the replacement of the omnibus by horse cars in 1858. Second, the questions asked by census takers usually vary from one census year to the next. Like the rest of the citys manufacturing sector, West Philadelphias industry enjoyed great diversity. One of the first homes built in West Philadelphia, in an area that was then Blockley Township, was William Hamiltons country estate, the Woodlands. Under the guidance of university president Judith Rodin (b. [8], The area gained some fame through the DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince song "Yo Home to Bel-Air", which became the theme song to the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in which Wynnefield native Will Smith raps, "In West Philadelphia, born and raised.". These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. More than half the world's population . The 36 trolley leaves the 40th Street transit tunnel running along Woodland Avenue until 49th Street where it turns south to continue along Lindbergh Boulevard turning at Elmwood Avenue starting at 55th Street. The Darby Road also ran up to this point, granting access to communities like Chester farther down the Delaware River. 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% Count White 1 Hispanic 2 Black Asian Mixed 1 Other 1 4.4% 629 2.8% 400 87.3% 12.4k 2.8% 395 2.2% 312 0.5% 71. But during the early decades of majority-Black West Philadelphia, these challenges were attenuated by the growth of African American political power and the slowly declining, but still available, unionized industrial jobs. Photo: Lexey Swall/GRAIN for The Pew Charitable Trusts Route 36 terminates in Southwest Philadelphia at Island Avenue west and 73rd Street, near the Philadelphia International Airport. In 1850, it was destroyed by fire. Beginning in the 1990s, the University of Pennsylvania began a process of community engagement to help rebuild the surrounding neighborhoods by providing an unarmed security force in University City and establishing the university-affiliated Sadie Alexander School. Two other trolley lines originally ran through West Philly. This situation was counterpoised by the rise of University City, which was quickly becoming a rival for Center City in term of jobs and investment. The cemetery is open daily to visitors and still allows up to one hundred burials per year; the mansion is open seasonally for tours. Arrivals from East Asia and Latin America, mainly Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans, have given the area small Hispanic and Asian American populations. Farther west, African American neighborhoods tended to be more stable, with larger populations of public sector workers and private sector white collar workers, but that was little comfort to the displaced residents of Black Bottom. The law profession in Philadelphia dates back to the days of William Penn. West Philadelphia's population expanded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thanks in large part to horsecars, then streetcars, and Schuylkill River bridges that allowed middle-class breadwinners to commute into the Central Business District a few miles to the east. Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries. But farther from the university in other West Philadelphia neighborhoods, like Kingsessing and Cobbs Creek on the Delaware County line, conditions stagnated or worsened as the Great Recession eliminated many public sector jobs. For more information, please visit the 2021 5-year ACS Comparison Guidance page. For the first time in West Philadelphia, houses had garages. After generating area maps from Google Maps,they added census boundaries and census tract labels as needed. By the 1840s developers in Philadelphia, which was the second-largest city in the United States at the time, were already looking beyond the Schuylkill for fresh land. Community opposition fell on deaf ears and the city demolished vacant houses, declared Black Bottom a blighted neighborhood, and purchased it through eminent domain. The Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (now USciences) was the nation's first pharmacy college. The new bridge spurred growth, prompting a network of industries, including stockyards, lumber mills, slaughterhouses, coal yards, foundries, and glass factories to serve the city across the river. It remained to be seen whether the ascendancy of the eastern section of West Philadelphia, where old industries and worker housing were giving way to new investment, would be enough to buoy the fortunes of the outlying, formerly middle class areas. . American Community Survey, U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Education, 50 state departments of education, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 18,000+ local law enforcement agencies, Federal Housing Finance Agency, U.S. Geological Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service. Residents complained of a bullhorn broadcasting political messages all day and accused the group of stockpiling weapons. During a confrontation at the fortified compound of the anarcho-primitivist group MOVE in 1985, the police attempted to drop a high explosive on a bunker atop the radicals home. Unlike the omnibuses, the streetcars were on rails that provided faster and more efficient travel. Much of the vacancy and crime that blighted West Philadelphia could be found in these areas, which were still cut off from legitimate employment and capital markets. on the 200 block of West Queen Lane, in Philadelphia's . This photograph is from a street festival on Baltimore Avenue in the Cedar Park section of University City. In two of West Philadelphias most infamous turns of events, a conflict between the urban black liberation organization MOVE and the Philadelphia Police Department left people dead and many other West Philadelphia residents without homes. Over twenty-five hundred residents were displaced and the neighborhood was razed. Housing was at a premium, and due to the desirability of the area, the newspaper of record noted that more than any other section of the city, West Philadelphia encouraged the construction of apartment buildings and the subdivision of old mansions to accommodate the boom.