PHILADELPHIA · c. 1850

3D Black Metropolis City Center

The City Center of Philadelphia Black Metropolis – circa 1850

About this reconstruction

Footprints and wall heights for 477 buildings are traced from the 1860 Hexamer & Locher atlas of Philadelphia. The setting is around 1850, when this district between Pine and South Streets was the center of Black Philadelphia.

Façades follow surviving houses photographed on South 7th and Lombard around 1900: Flemish-bond brick, arched doorways with fanlights, marble steps, shuttered windows, dormered gable roofs. Storefronts take their cue from Henrietta Duterte's undertaking establishment at 634 Lombard. Churches and public buildings are study forms pending building-specific references.

Cobblestone streets, brick sidewalks, stone curbs and gas lamps are interpretive. Street numbers follow the atlas's post-1854 numbering, interpolated along each block face from the legible corner numbers, so individual addresses may be off by a lot or two. Street widths and the existence of individual buildings in 1850 have not been verified house by house.

Atlas plate 4 · Atlas plate 5

Preparing the neighborhood…