Photo Credit: Photo Courtesey of Historic Bartram's Garden
The area of the city known as Southwest Philadelphia is one
of the more racially diverse areas of the city. With over 80,000 residents,
southwest Philadelphia is 36% white and 60% black.
Southwest Philadelphia includes the areas of Bartram,
Eastwick, Elmwood Park, Hedgerow, Kingsessing <anchor
to article below>, Penrose Park, Schuylkill and the industrial areas near
the Philadelphia airport.
Much of southwest Philadelphia continues to suffer from difficult economic
times.
Bartram
This neighborhood is famous for its Bartram Gardens. The homestead of John
Bartram (1699-1777), America's first botanist, co-founder of the American
Philosophical Society, and a towering figure in colonial Philadelphia's scientific
community, today is America's oldest living botanical garden. The 45-acre
site on the Schuylkill River in Southwest Philadelphia features Bartram's
18th century home and farm buildings, historic botanical garden, wildflower
meadow, water garden, freshwater wetland, parkland, river trail and a museum
shop. The house was named a National Historic Landmark in 1963.
Kingsessing
Kingsessing has an ancient and distinguished history going back to 1646 when
it is recorded that Governor Print, the ruler of New Sweden, had a grist mill
on the Karakung (Cobb's Creek) in "Kingsesse." Indeed St. James
Church of Kingsessing (still standing at 6828 Woodland Avenue) is the oldest
church west of the Schuylkill River and the sixth oldest in Philadelphia.
The land was purchased from Andrew Justus "to remain for time eternal
for the use of a Lutheran Church thereafter to be erected" (in 1844 St.
James became a member of the Episcopal diocese). The cornerstone was laid
on August 2, 1762 (last year the congregation celebrated its bicentennial)
and was built under the direction of James Coultas, of Whitby Hall, sometime
operator of the Middle (Market Street) Ferry and onetime sheriff (1755-58)
of Philadelphia County. (He was killed by a fall from his horse in 1768 while
riding to church.)
Kingsessing seems to be credited with the famous Satterlee Heights, site
of the Satterlee United States General Hospital during the Civil War, although
most of it lay within the Township of Blockley. One of the largest army hospitals
in the country at that time, it extended on a hill from a point below Baltimore
Avenue in what is now Clarence Clark Park in a rectangle to a point northwest
of 45th and Pine Streets. Osage Avenue (then Sheridan Street) cut across the
grounds to a central point where the administration building stood flanked
by 34 ward buildings.
