Inventory of Historic Religious Properties in Philadelphia

Inventory of Historic Religious

Properties in Philadelphia:

An Assessment of Significant and At-Risk Houses of Worship

A Report Prepared for: The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia

1616 Walnut Street, Suite 1620 Philadelphia, PA 19103

August 2011

By: Molly Lester M.S., Historic Preservation Candidate 2012 University of Pennsylvania, School of Design

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Project Overview.................................................................................2 Background Scope Administration

Methodology.......................................................................................2 Sources................................................................................................4 Data Categories...................................................................................8 Inventory of Historic Religious Properties........................................12

Summary of Results At-Risk Indicators Indicators of Architectural Modifications or Integrity Indicators of Architectural Significance Status of Designation Preservation Planning Opportunities

Cover Photographs (Source: Philadelphia Architects and Buildings) Top: Germantown Mennonite Meetinghouse, Germantown Avenue Center: North Muchmore Presbyterian Church, North Broad Street Bottom: North Tenth Street Church, Girard Avenue

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Background Founded as William Penn's "Holy Experiment," Philadelphia has a centuries-long history of fostering and constructing prominent houses of worship throughout the city. In recent decades, as congregations face declining membership and shifting neighborhood demographics, their historically- and architecturally-significant properties have often suffered from deferred maintenance, insensitive alterations, and partial or complete demolition.

Advocacy organizations such as Partners for Sacred Places and the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia have focused on this issue for years, highlighting the threats to Philadelphia's neighborhoods and communities if these structures continue to be abandoned or lost. In order to fully understand and address this issue, the Preservation Alliance established this project to gather and develop data on the significance and status of the city's religious properties.

Scope This phase of research focused on the identification of all of Philadelphia's historic religious properties--a degree of comprehensiveness not captured in previous inventories or data sets. It emphasized historical and architectural information on properties, as well as external data sets such as real estate information and demolition permits that had never been linked with congregational inventories. The project therefore seeks to strengthen the data of concerned advocacy groups and address the issue of declining religious properties with research from two angles: the identification of architecturally and historically significant properties that are not listed on historic registers, and the use of external indicators to identify properties that are particularly at risk of deterioration and demolition.

The scope of this summer's research precluded on-site documentation and fieldwork (beyond the author's previous experience with several dozen of the city's historic religious congregations). Information on building condition and integrity is therefore dependent on earlier site visits by Partners for Sacred Places and on (undated) exterior conditions assessments included in the data provided by the Department of Licenses and Inspections.

Administration This database and report were prepared over the course of the summer of 2011 for the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, under the supervision of Executive Director John Andrew Gallery and Advocacy Director Benjamin Leech. Additional supervision and research support was provided by the staffs of the Philadelphia Historical Commission and Partners for Sacred Places.

METHODOLOGY

This inventory of historic religious properties was populated by data from several resources, agencies, and research collections, including: the Philadelphia Historical Commission; Partners for Sacred Places; the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia; the City of Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment (formerly the Bureau of Revision of Taxes); the City of Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections; the Philadelphia City Planning Commission; the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Greater Philadelphia Geohistory Network; Google

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Maps, Google Earth and Google Street View; the Philadelphia Historical and Museum Commission; the National Register for Historic Places; the Historic American Buildings Survey; the Philly Church Project; the University of Pennsylvania's Historic Preservation Department; and others. With the exception of Partners' for Sacred Places' existing inventory (see below), none of these data sets focused exclusively on historic religious properties. All of these resources, therefore, needed to be culled and cross-referenced to identify all of the buildings that meet the following parameters:

Located within the City of Philadelphia Currently standing Constructed before 19601 Constructed as a religious house of worship (this excludes rowhouses and other storefront

congregations)2

1 Because historic preservation policies typically define "historic" in terms of 50 years or older, the year 1960 was used as a benchmark date for inclusion in the main inventory. In cases of buildings constructed in the 10 or so years after 1960, a separate list of modern religious properties that emerged during research is included. This list is incomplete, however, and should be consulted but not considered comprehensive. 2 In some cases, the original function of a building was unclear. This includes properties that may have originally served as parochial schools or other parish properties (rather than places of worship), as well as buildings that were constructed with no religious function at all (e.g. factories or commercial buildings). Again, a separate list of non-purpose-built properties (as well as those properties whose original purpose is undetermined) is included for reference, but does not capture all of the buildings currently occupied by congregations that were built to serve non-religious functions.

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SOURCES

Pre-2007 Religious Properties Database (Philadelphia Historic Properties Corporation; Partners for Sacred Places) Partners for Sacred Places' database--inherited and adapted from the former Philadelphia Historic Properties Corporation--included 622 entries for historic religious properties in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties. This inventory included architectural information for many (but not all) properties, including construction dates and original architects.

For the purposes of this new inventory, which focuses only on properties within the City and County of Philadelphia, data had to be filtered based on zip code to identify only those properties that are located within the county lines. The existing PSP database also included several duplicate entries for properties, as well as out-of-date information on congregations and records for properties that have since been demolished.

Tax Parcel Listings and Data (City of Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment) Data from the City of Philadelphia's Office of Property Assessment (formerly the Bureau of Property Taxes) offered information related to property ownership, real estate transfers, and limited information on building condition--all of which can help identify at-risk historic religious properties.

Although the OPA's spreadsheet includes some information on building construction dates, this data is limited and, in many cases, unreliable. The data also codes its building use, including a category ("W" codes ) for religious functions, but it does not distinguish between purpose-built religious properties and rowhouse or storefront churches (or other buildings that have been adaptively reused as religious properties). Google Maps and Street View (see below) and other resources were therefore consulted for each of the 1,338 W-coded properties (that were not in the Partners for Sacred Places database) to cull the buildings that were both historic and purpose-built as religious properties.

Partial and Complete Demolition Permits (Since May 2006) (City of Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections) The Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections provided information on all demolition permits (for partial and complete demolition) that were filed since May 2006. It is worth noting that the filing (and approval) of a permit does not signify that the demolition was completed; the status of the buildings with "complete demolition" permits could not be confirmed, however.

Current Unsafe and Imminently Dangerous Citations (as of July 2011) (City of Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections) As part of its inspection responsibilities, the Department of Licenses and Inspections issues citations for properties that are deemed "unsafe" or "imminently dangerous," proving hazardous to the health or safety of the building occupants or the public. This inventory of historic religious properties denotes all of the properties that have unresolved citations, although the contributing factors for the citation were not defined by the Department's data.

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Philadelphia Register of Historic Places and other Historic Property Files (Philadelphia Historical Commission) The Historical Commission's files and research library provided extensive historical information and-- where applicable--building permit information on several of the database's properties, particularly those already listed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.

Historic Maps (Fire Insurance and Land Use) (The Greater Philadelphia Geohistory Network) The Network's website () includes several digitized historic fire insurance and land use maps dating from the mid-19th century.

Because many of these maps do not denote the footprint of a building--rather, just the presence of a building--it is not always possible to confirm the reconstruction or replacement of buildings. This resource nevertheless was often valuable when other resources conflicted over construction dates, or when the name and faith tradition of the original congregation was unknown. In some cases, these maps proved that a building originally served a non-religious function.

Philly History (City of Philadelphia Department of Records) The Department of Records has digitized its collection of historic photographs, which are available at . These photographs were frequently consulted to confirm that the original building is consistent with the building that stands on the site today.

Google Maps, Earth, and Street View (Google) The maps, aerial photography, and street-level photography of (respectively) Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Street View were constant resources in confirming that certain properties had been demolished, and in identifying properties that were not included in earlier inventories (e.g. PSP database). The Street View images are not time-stamped, but the Street View cars are currently operating and updating their images in Philadelphia.3

Historic District Inventories (National Register of Historic Places; Philadelphia Register of Historic Places) For those properties that are listed as contributing structures in historic districts on the local or National Registers, the district nominations and inventories often included information on properties' construction dates, materials, and/or architects.

3 The City of Philadelphia is well documented by Google Street View, including high-definition imaging in many areas of the city. 25 properties in outlying areas of the city were not visible in Google Street View, however, and their building footprints were not outlined on Google Maps. The presumption--based on their geographic location and cursory congregational research--is that these buildings were constructed after 1960 and/or are storefront churches or synagogues. These W-coded entries are, however, included for reference as a separate table in the database.

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"Inventory of African-American Church Resources, 1787-1949, City of Philadelphia" (Emily T. Cooperman, Ph.D., ARCH Historic Preservation Consulting) In 2008, Emily Cooperman, Ph.D., compiled an inventory of historic African-American associated churches and sites in Philadelphia. This survey included extant properties as well as others that are no longer standing. Dr. Cooperman's research on 85 historic African-American congregations helped to populate and corroborate the architectural information in those entries.

Pennsylvania Cultural Resources Geographic Information System (GIS) (Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission) PHMC's historic resource surveys (on file at the Philadelphia Historical Commission) and its online

database () include architectural information and data on historic register designations.

Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Database (Various Contributors) The Philadelphia Architects and Buildings database incorporates data from several of the sources that are listed here separately. Its depth of references and historic publication citations, however, helped to populate much of the architectural information in this database.

Congregation Websites (Various Contributors) A limited number of congregations (usually those in mainline denominations) include congregational or building histories on their websites. Where possible, these dates were corroborated using other sources.

"Historic Sacred Places of Philadelphia" (Roger Moss) Roger Moss' book was a foundational text for the research of several of the city's well-established, extant religious properties, including investigation of their original construction as well as subsequent alterations and additions.

Real Estate Listings (Various Websites) Without a singular, comprehensive listing of properties that are on the market, data on properties that are for sale or for lease relied on individual brokers' websites and aggregate real estate listing websites (e.g. ). Colliers International Senior Vice President Cathryn Coate also contributed listings from the subscription service CoStar database.

Historic American Buildings Survey (National Park Service)

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In the course of its decades-long documentation program, the Historic American Buildings Survey has documented 57 historic religious properties that still exist today. The depth of documentation ranges from site photographs to thorough architectural histories, and can serve as a baseline for further archival research and conditions or integrity analysis.

Philadelphia Church Project Developed by an architectural amateur and enthusiast, this website project has visited over 70 churches in the Philadelphia area (with an emphasis on Roman Catholic churches). This encyclopedia of historic religious properties offered information on congregational histories and, in some cases, architectural information.

Archival Research and Documentation (University of Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Department) Several departmental papers from the University of Pennsylvania's graduate program in historic preservation have focused on religious properties in the City of Philadelphia. This archival research and documentation of sites such as Bryant Baptist Church (originally the First Reformed Presbyterian Church) and First Church of Christ, Scientist (originally Christ Church Chapel) supported the architectural research of this new inventory.

Other Websites "Manayunk/Roxborough Churches," ,

freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.~dynamo53/Manayunk/ManayunkChurche s.html (Accessed August 18, 2011).

"The Architecture of George T. Pearson," Bryn Mawr College, brynmawr.edu/cities/archx/gtp/index.html (Accessed August 20, 2011).

Other Books Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Our Faith-Filled Heritage: the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, 1808--2008.

Philadelphia: Editions du Signe, 2007.

Gallery, John Andrew. Sacred Sites of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2007.

Preisler, Julian H. Historic Synagogues of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2009.

White, William Prescott and William H. Scott. The Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia: A Camera and Pen Sketch of Each Presbyterian Church and Institution in the City. Philadelphia: Allen, Lane & Scott, 1895.

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