Home > Your Personal Side > City Guides > Philadelphia > Neighborhoods > North Philadelphia

North Philadelphia

Photo Credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art

North Philadelphia is an expansive area of the city north of Center City and south of Olney-Oak Lane. Home to numerous educational, cultural and community organizations, North Philadelphia is perhaps best known as the location of Temple University and the Uptown Cultural District.

North Philadelphia consists of many different neighborhoods with names like Fairmount, Hunting Park, Ludlow, Nicetown, Northern Liberties, Spring Garden, Strawberry Mansion, Temple University, Tioga and West Kensington.

Fairmount
Fairmount is situated just Northwest of Center City. Along with the surrounding neighborhoods of Brewerytown, Francisville and Spring Garden, Fairmount is part of the city's beautiful Art Museum Area.

Robert Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence and financier of the American Revolution, bought the lands along the Schuylkill just north of the city in 1770. He called the area "The Hills" and Faire Mount was renamed Morris Hill. Morris built several greenhouses and grew the first lemon trees in America. This is why the "The Hills" eventually were called Lemon Hill. Morris went bankrupt and was thrown into debtors’ prison. His real estate was sold at auction in 1799.

Morris Hill was given its old name of Fairmount (with a small change in spelling) in the 1820's. Today Fairmount is just north of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It borders the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philly's version of the Champs Elysées and Fairmount Park, the largest urban park in the world.

Northern Liberties
Northern Liberties lies between Spring Garden Street and Girard Avenue, from Delaware Avenue to 6th Street. Tempered with the realities of attracting settlers and investors with the skills and resources necessary to establish his “Holy Experiment” in the 1680s, while carefully preserving his city planning ideals, William Penn apportioned 80-acre lots in the Northern Liberties as an incentive to purchasers of 5000-acre lots of country land. These lots were divvied up around the earlier-settled “hutted Indians,” Swedes and Quakers, and were further sub-divided to recognize the higher value of lots near the Delaware River

Exempt from the regulations that governed Philadelphia until consolidation in 1854, Northern Liberties was self governing and was sub-divided to become “a center for artisans and small businessmen who lived along the unpaved muddy streets in some crowded houses and in little courts and alleys.” Churches of many denominations emerged along with schools and civic organizations set up by successive waves of immigrants. Famous early residents include the mill-wright Oliver Evans, the steamboat inventor John Fitch, the locomotive builder Joseph Harrison, the gun manufacturer John Derringer the “father of American industrial chemistry” John Harrison, the tool maker Henry Disston, the beer brewers John Wagner, Henry Ortlieb, Christian Schmidt and even the architect Louis Kahn.

Northern Liberties today is a neighborhood of diversity, creativity, and commerce, bonded together by a unique sense of community—a tribute to the legacy of its past. In the ’70s, while still divided from old city by a new border of low rise, reasonably priced rough space began attracting new artists, artisans, and businesses back to Northern Liberties as owners and renters.

In the thirty years of progress since then, the neighborhood has gained quite an assortment of eclectic attractions that combine an “artists approach to detail” with the practicality of development. A walk through Northern Liberties today takes you past the creative remodeling and adaptations of this progress; such as a turret added to a trinity on Olive Street (near 4th), a log cabin on Lawrence Street, or a pasture for horses near the carriage company stables on George Street. In keeping with the ideals of William Penn, Northern Liberties owns its own park “Liberty Lands.”

Strawberry Mansion
In 1788-1789, Judge William Lewis, a well-known Philadelphia lawyer, built a simple country home on the east bank of the Schuylkill River, which he called Summerville. The original house embraced the delicate scale and proportions of Neoclassicism and included finely carved woodwork and classical niches in the entry hall. Many of the earlier furnishings now installed in the house reflect the tastes of the Lewis family during the years of residence in the house.

After judge Lewis’s death in 1819, the house was sold to Judge Joseph Hemphill. Hemphill led a colorful social life and was a member of many Philadelphia civic organizations. He was responsible for the addition of two large Greek Revival wings, which flank the original structure.

After its purchase in 1871 by the city of Philadelphia in the creation of Fairmount Park, Strawberry Mansion was the site of an important steamboat landing. During the 19th century, excursion boats transported passengers to points of interest along the river. Commanding “a magnificent perspective of the river and the surrounding county,” the house soon became a popular restaurant, featuring strawberries and cream, and was renamed “Strawberry Mansion.”

Temple University
Russell H. Conwell founded Temple University in 1884. It all began one evening in 1884, at the Berks and Mervine Streets Church; a young man went to Conwell in his study and expressed a desire to prepare for the Christian ministry. Conwell offered to teach the youth one night a week, but on the agreed-upon evening seven earnest young men appeared. Thus was the beginning of a school called "Temple."

Conwell's class grew in numbers, and within a short time, the services of other teachers were enlisted and it was necessary to rent a room, then a building, then two. Within a few years the studious group had grown from seven to several hundred students, and a charter for "The Temple College" was issued in 1888. Of course, Conwell already had been elected its president, a position he held for the next 38 years.

Today, Temple University is the 35th largest university in the United States. It also has the third largest professional (law, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy, and podiatric medicine) program in the country. Temple University has over 33,000 students. And Temple's Main Campus covers 114 acres in North Philadelphia.