Philadelphia 1963

Philadelphia 1963 – 1991

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Although I had been to Chicago a couple of times on family trips, and once to Detroit, Philadelphia was the first big city I saw after I was out on my own. In 1963 I was assigned to Dover AFB, Delaware. I drove there from Indiana in my 1956 Ford, taking the scenic route through Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River. I wish now that I had taken more photos, because there were so many things that I took for granted that are now gone.

Soon after entering Philadelphia, I saw a streetcar and took a picture from my car window:

A little farther along, and I met a fire truck coming from the opposite direction with its siren going; another car-window shot:

I made many trips to Philadelphia during the next two years. It was the closest big city to Dover, and I could get darkroom supplies there.

Admiral Dewey's USS Olympia, Spanish-American War-era cruiser

Note from October 4, 2005: A viewer from the UK pointed out that the marching units shown represent the Orange Lodge, a Protestant group. The Hibernians are Catholic Irish-Americans. I distinctly remember that some units were carrying Hibernian banners, but they're not among these photographs. At that time, I was pretty unaware of the whole Green-versus-Orange situation in Ireland, or of the persecution of the Catholics by the Protestants in the 18th and 19th centuries. My apologies for the oversight. I don't know what the occasion was that the two groups would have been in the same parade. Is it reasonable to think it might have been St. Patrick's Day? -->

I flew out of Philadelphia a couple of times, to go home on leave or to go to another base for temporary duty. I could catch a Trailways Bus from Dover that went past the airport, and if I was traveling in uniform the driver would go off-route to drop me right in front of the terminal, so I didn't have to ride all the way downtown and then take a cab or transit bus.

Lockheed Electra turboprop planes like the one in the first photo were involved in a series of disastrous crashes in late '61 or early '62, and there was talk of grounding them until an investigation was carried out, but I don't recall that it happened. I flew on them a couple of times, and didn't like it. They were about as comfortable as an old dump truck; they were noisy and they vibrated badly.

The propeller plane on the left in the second photo is a Vickers Viscount. United acquired these in a merger with Capital Airways. The Viscount was faster than any other propeller plane in commercial passenger service except the DC-7, and with its Rolls-Royce turboprop engines, was unsurpassed for its smooth, vibration-free ride.
The jets on the right in the second photo are French-built Caravelles. They were the first commercial passenger jets that I remember with fuselage-mounted engines, and their cabins were much quieter than those of the big jets with wing-mounted engines. I liked them a lot.

Views from the Art Museum

My first visit to Philadelphia as a civilian was in 1979 ...

30th Street Station

In 1991 I took Amtrak to Florida to visit my parents. The Floridian had been cancelled by then, and I went to Florida from Indiana by way of Washington, D.C. and returned by way of Philadelphia. I purposely scheduled my travel to give me most of the day as layovers in those cities, so I could do some sightseeing.

Here's the interior of 30th Street Station in 1991, undergoing renovation …

... and the exterior. Approaching the building from the street, you'd never guess that it and the post office next door sit on a huge platform over a cavernous rail facility. The structure is supported on trunnions to allow for expansion and contraction caused by temperature changes.

SEPTA facilities at 30th Street Station

One of the finest Art Deco facades anywhere, IMHO. George I had just launched attacks on Iraqi forces in the first Gulf War, and the guy with the cart in front of the entrance was selling Desert Storm stuff.

This building had burned just a couple of days before I took the picture. I had seen it on TV news while I was at my parents' place. I think six firefighters died in it.

Reading Terminal didn't look so nice, back then.

Some streetcar action

Back Home Again in Indiana - Garrett, to be exact. I rode the bus back to the Amtrak ticket office on the north side of Fort Wayne, and then walked across the highway and caught a transit bus to within a few blocks of my house.