Germantown Philadelphia, PA USA |
The Cityscape
Originally, Germantown (in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) was a two-mile-long (3.2km) hamlet of houses extending from Mount Airy, in the north, along the Germantown Road to an intersection called Market Square, and then southwest from the Square along Schoolhouse Lane, running a mile and a half (2.4km) to the point where the Wissahickon Creek empties through a steep gorge into the Schuylkill River. To the east of Market Square, Church Lane stretched another mile and a half (2.4km) to Lukens' Mill, where it converged with Meeting House Lane and, as Limekiln Road, curved up to meet the Skippack Road at a point some three miles (4.8km) to the north. Today, Historic Germantown includes Germantown, Mt. Airy, and Chestnut Hill in the northwest. The historical district now encompasses roughly 22 blocks along Germantown Road, centered around Market Square.
First Things First
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The Germantown seal designed by Francis Daniel Pastorius in 1691; image copyright by the Germantown Historical Society |
This area boasts a number of firsts. It is the site of the first German settlement in the “New World,” the nation's earliest "urban village," the site of the first written protest against slavery, the setting for the Battle of Germantown in 1777 (during the American Revolutionary War a battle was fought up and down the main street, with muskets firing from house windows), the nation's first commuter suburb served by one of the nation's first railroads, and then the "town within a city" served by the longest streetcar line in the nation.
Protecting the History
Although the district’s buildings and monuments are under the local administration of many different organizations, the Germantown Historical Society (founded in 1901 as the Relic Society of Germantown) is charged with preserving, protecting, and interpreting the rich and diverse history of the area. It was they who initiated the project to document some of the more prominent buildings under their care.Reference
Page Created: October 5, 2004
Page Updated: October 5, 2004
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Page Author: The Institute for the Visualization of History