Jackson
@64streetcar
He/him/his. Infrastructure/transit/built environment/music/covered bridge/lighthouse/Brian Wilson enthusiast based in Philly!
This very bus (renumbered 042, its original number when delivered) still survives as part of the Market Street Railway's heritage fleet, and I've heard it can sometimes be found running on the 39! That fact alone MIGHT just persuade me to come to Heritage Weekend this year 👀
I emerged from my San Francisco visit last week with a new favorite bus - the 39 Coit, which navigates steep hills and hairpin turns en route to the hilltop art deco Coit Tower! Even better, check out these adorable Cleveland-manufactured White-brand buses that served the 39 from 1938 to 1975!!
My favorite covered bridge website has a "today in covered bridge history" feature and today's is sure a doozy
We've all seen that one pic from a 1980 charter of a Kawasaki trolley running on the 50 under a PATCO train, but here's another one from 1982 that I don't recall having seen before! Courtesy Blaine Minor on Facebook
Oh yeah I think you're right!! There's some great 40s retail terrazzo in the little entranceway (and also interesting evidence of a former different front door location - check out that ramp!)
Oooh good detective work!!! I thought at first that that sign later became Pearl Art Supplies (between 4th and 5th - the sign existed until about 2018!), but the locations didn't quite line up!! Thanks for figuring that out :)
Those cobra-head streetlights sure make for interesting long-distance sight lines! Also neat to see these classic color images of Philadelphia street scenes when neon signage still reigned! (These particular images didn't come with locations but they could plausibly be South Street, right?)
Diving deeper into Denise Scott Brown's photos, we find this picture of a White Tower Hamburgers once located at Broad and South (the chain once bragged that they had a location at every single BSL stop!). The building survives today as a Crown Chicken, shorn of its eponymous tower!
A really neat photo at 8th and South Streets in the 1960s, taken by Denise Scott Brown, a pioneering postmodern architect who helped give rise to appreciation of mid-century modern buildings! All the buildings shown here were replaced by modern townhomes in the 80s!
I won't post TOO much of this book out of respect for my friend's private collection, but check out the heavenly amount of detail this book goes into!! (These maps show early iterations of today's 12 bus and a now-defunct route that traversed the River Wards!) (Also wtf is "Manderson Street"😂)
It's neat how much of SEPTA's current bus network relies on decisions made a century and a half ago! For instance, here's a streetcar line opened in 1866 that used Cedar and Memphis Streets in Olde Richmond... the very routing the 25 bus takes today (despite more efficient routes being available)!
@rogerdupuis2.bsky.social has very kindly scanned for me a 1982 publication that goes into incredible depth about the specific horsecar and electric streetcar routes that once lined Philadelphia's streets! Check out this route that traversed East Passyunk Ave in South Philly beginning in 1875!!
Houses from 523-527 Arch Street, taken in 1959 by Jack Boucher shortly before the houses were demolished to make the abominable Independence Mall. (The Constitution Center sits on this site today, but these houses were initially just razed to build a parking lot, all of which feels pretty heinous!)
This time with the picture actually attached (hopefully)!! This is Kuhn's Pub at Cedar/Norris/Susquehanna in 1900, the year electricity was first installed! This pub is now Loco Pez :)
The intersection of Frankford and Norris is pretty emblematic of the increasing density of the Frankford corridor in the last 15 years - here are two pairs of Google Street Views each taken from the same spot!
Courtesy of u/davidtoc on Reddit, some amazing 2010 photos of the former Rocket Cat Cafe in Fishtown! The cafe closed in 2019 when the building was demolished - this is what Kensington looked like before gentrification (check out how desolate Frankford Ave is in that last pic!)
This came to light a few years ago, but I just came across it again on Reddit and remembered it exists - the earliest picture of the Beach Boys, from Dec 1961!! This is the only known pic before Al Jardine quit to go to dental school and was replaced by David Marks! (Al rejoined in 1964, of course!)
Another of my favorite Fishtown intersection glow-ups: Frankford and Master in 2007 (billboards, concrete and an unused gas station) vs. 2025 (Indego bikes, mixed-use development, and density)! The ornate 19th-century firehouse now serves as the centerpiece of a newly bustling main street :)
The block of Frankford Ave between York and Cumberland has changed drastically in the past 2 decades (bc of the ever-northward extension of the "Fishtown" mindset) and, while you can make plenty of valid points about gentrification, I'm just here to say the changing buildings are pretty fascinating
One reason I find the 1966 photo (in the quote tweet) fascinating is that the building on the left was still an appliance store as late as 2017, and this streetview from 2009 still shows washing machines on the sidewalk!! The building itself was torn down around 2021; there's now a 5-over-1 there!!
This car at Berks and Sepviva (shown in the 80s) is in a conundrum!! The row of houses in the background still stand today - Facebook comments say that in the 80s, squatters lived in that white house on the corner, but I'm not sure if that's just sensationalism lol
Yet another picture of the Trenton Ave viaduct, looking south from Sergeant St! That church on the left is St. Michael's at Cumberland Street, which still stands today!
Here's two other pictures along Trenton Ave from the 80s! The first one shows the Philadelphia & Trenton viaduct still resplendent, while the second one (taken after the viaduct was torn down - not sure what year that was) shows the Trenton Ave Arts Festival, precursor to today's Kensington Derby!
Came upon some interesting vintage Fishtown pictures on Facebook that show the neighborhood pre-gentrification! In this one from 1966, we're looking south along Frankford Ave; that railroad viaduct is the old Philadelphia & Trenton Railroad on Trenton Ave! There's a roundabout here today 🌪️
Not the only unconventional place the Beach Boys played in the 60s! Here they are in 1969 playing for sick kids at a hospital (part of Carl Wilson's community service after getting CO status when he was called up for military service in Vietnam!) and in 1963 playing in a high school gym!!
Newly surfaced pic of the Beach Boys singing at a wedding on June 21, 1968!!