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dichroicI have a brand new (to me) volume by A. Edward Newton, bibliomane, waiting for me, and it got me thinking.... I wish I could go visit Philadelphia in about 1920. There might have been men and women still living who had heard tales of the Continental Congress directly from their grandparents' childhood memories. The First World War was over and the Depression was still a while off.
Women had just gotten the vote and reasonable people could still believe their vote might finally clean up politics. The University of Pennsylvania had their first female member of the standing faculty. A.S.W. Rosenbach was selling antique books to the likes of Newton and Christoper Morley, and one block of Sansom Street held a whole row of less elite booksellers. Philadelphia's neighborhoods were distinct and full of character. In one of them, I could go buy candy in my great-grandfather's store on 3rd and South Streets. I could visit the amusement park that stood in place of the mall where my father sells electronics. On the city streets I could get soft pretzels and water ice very little different from those sold today.
I wouldn't want to stay. I like being able to get antibiotics when I need them, and being able to vote or work as a matter of routine, not a curiosity. I have no desire to to stay at one great-grandmother's house just down the block from a slaughterhouse, or with the other great-grandmother, still mourning a husband dead the previous year in the 'flu epidemic. But I would like to visit, to browse "Rosy" Rosenbach's shop, to visit my university and see how it had settled in after 50 years at the present location, watch a Rowbottom there (from a safe distance), and mostly, to walk the streets with Morley and get the feel of that earlier incarnation of my city. Maybe we could meet at 'the Eagle'.
Is there a certain place, at a certain time, that you'd like to visit? Where and when?
Women had just gotten the vote and reasonable people could still believe their vote might finally clean up politics. The University of Pennsylvania had their first female member of the standing faculty. A.S.W. Rosenbach was selling antique books to the likes of Newton and Christoper Morley, and one block of Sansom Street held a whole row of less elite booksellers. Philadelphia's neighborhoods were distinct and full of character. In one of them, I could go buy candy in my great-grandfather's store on 3rd and South Streets. I could visit the amusement park that stood in place of the mall where my father sells electronics. On the city streets I could get soft pretzels and water ice very little different from those sold today.
I wouldn't want to stay. I like being able to get antibiotics when I need them, and being able to vote or work as a matter of routine, not a curiosity. I have no desire to to stay at one great-grandmother's house just down the block from a slaughterhouse, or with the other great-grandmother, still mourning a husband dead the previous year in the 'flu epidemic. But I would like to visit, to browse "Rosy" Rosenbach's shop, to visit my university and see how it had settled in after 50 years at the present location, watch a Rowbottom there (from a safe distance), and mostly, to walk the streets with Morley and get the feel of that earlier incarnation of my city. Maybe we could meet at 'the Eagle'.
Is there a certain place, at a certain time, that you'd like to visit? Where and when?
