Posters on this site have left comments about idyllic days spent in pre-redevelopment Eastwick. These are some concrete remains of this anomalously interracial community: a church known recently as the St. Paul AME and a two story single-family home on the opposite sides of now-defunct 86th St. and Bartram Ave. Much of the grid system of pre-1950s Eastwick has been obliterated, the untended roads end abruptly or continue into abandoned lowland fields as rutted paths.

Both are located here:

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[St. Paul AME Church -- in 1942 known as the Eastwick Church, built in 1928 by S.J. Jones]

[Builder's stone, St. Paul's AME]

[8608 Bartram Ave.]

More to come.

PGW_From_Passyunk_Ave_Bridge

Taken with a Nikon L35 AF and developed via GIMP.

See this earlier post for more on the Philadelphia Gas Works at Point Breeze.

Follow the jump to see more pictures.

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[H.P.F.S. PUMPING STATION -- DELAWARE AVE. AND RACE ST.]

On March 17, 1900 Philadelphia’s center city business elites balked at the news that two New York fire insurance companies, the Home Insurance Company of New York and the Williamsburg City Insurance Company were instructing their underwriters to stop issuing fire insurance policies to Philadelphia businesses situated in an ominously named “conflagration district”: the area from Broad to the Delaware, Arch to Chestnut Sts. It was usual for late nineteenth century fire insurance companies trying to limit unnecessary exposure and most firms acted collaboratively and shared information about known risk while setting rigid rates which were seldom undersold. Thus, the Home Insurance and Williamsburg City Insurance companies were emboldened by the Weed and Kennedy Company’s attempt to discontinue policies in the “conflagration district.” But its Philadelphia agents mutinied, refused to cut off its clients, and severed ties to the New York office.

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