Wednesday Filler: Philadelphia's White Pines

Like D.C., Philadelphia is a city where one can encounter southern botanical elements such as evergreen magnolias and hardy palms next to a few northern ones like the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).

At Penrose ave. and Homestead st.

At Gloria Dei National Historic Site.

Unlike those zone pushed plants, however, the White Pine is actually native, albeit at the edge of its range, to the cities.  It found quite a bit of use as a landscape tree, often planted in more open situations to take advantage of the bold sweeps of its unrestricted form.  In the wild around these parts, it grows with a decent amount of vigor and majesty, and has enough of a winter chill and less than brutal summer heat in order to reproduce decently.  From here southwards, however, these conditions are only met in the Appalachians.

The Garden Spaces Of Philadelphia

Last year we explored the garden and green spaces of historic Charleston and found a subtropical paradise seemingly imposing itself, sometimes orderly, sometimes not, on a city.  Like downtown Charleston, downtown historic Philadelphia is a lot of stone and brickwork and various kinds of paved streets.  This was apparently not William Penn's intention, but the early settlers who came to Philadelphia for reasons other than religious freedom were merchants and tradesmen, and all of them wanted easy access to the river.  As a result, the rural flavored, open setting that was in mind for the city went by the wayside as it grew progressively denser.  To this day, people are crammed into homes side by side.  In contrast to the larger homes of Charleston, which had courtyards and exposed back gardens, much of Philadelphia is arranged more with a combined desire to be close to the water and close to the street. 

This is not to say that the modern city is lacking in greenspace, or that even the historic core is without gardens and peaceful areas:

I forget where this is, but it's pretty much in or near the big attractions of Independence National Historical Park.

That's Carpenters' Hall, home of the First Continental Congress.

 The city is, however, much more closed in than Charleston and even New York was in the same era.  Washington might have been developed according to a more open plan under possible direction from politicians used to having the seat of government in both cities.  As noted in the last post, many politicians ducked in and out of the city whenever possible, feeling it somewhat cramped.  This was probably in large part due to the fact that some of them were less than democratic and did not enjoy proximity to the average citizen, and/or the fact that many of them were used to a more open and rural existence, especially the gentlemen of the South.  Cramped or not, the city certainly has its fair share of things paved and bricked, and the side streets off the historic core are certainly more restrictive of viewpoints than colonial Georgian or Regency era surviving cores like Charleston, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Cooperstown, and especially Williamsburg. 

But as you can see, the streets are not devoid of life.  In fact, Philadelphia does individual specimen trees remarkably well!

This is a very old American Sycamore (Platanus Occidentalis) growing in the cemetery of Gloria Dei National Historic Park.  The guide told me it was either there already, or that it had been planted during the building of the church.  Considering as how, either way, that was 1700, this is a very old tree.  The church is on an ecotone bordering the bottomland of the Delaware River, so a natural origin is not out of the question.  Come to the site just to see this beauty!

Two lovely Sweetgum (Liquidambar Styraciflua).

In short, Philadelphia is all about trying to fit life back into whatever available spots there are.  In contrast to Charleston, which I keep comparing to as it was indeed the competing botanical export center, Philadelphia is less a city seemingly overtaken by the wild as it is a city containing or built around and over top of it.  This is in part due to climate; Charleston gets a lot more rain and heat.  Still, there are the odd spaces where nature looks like it explodes.

The next three photos were taken along a little side alley off of Elfreth's Alley, a very scenic little part of the old town that has remained largely unchanged since colonial times.

But there are also many places where it is bricked and potted in. 

This should not be seen as a reflection of the attitudes of a citizenry who wished to dominate nature so much as find a place for it in a place where space was at a premium.  Cities like Chicago and New York took time to become as dense as they are, but Philadelphia started out that way, if much smaller in vertical scale.  Like Charleston, however, the surrounding environment never became as much of a secondary feature but got slowly reabsorbed into the setting.  There are many gardens, some restored, some surviving, that attempt to capture the changing face of the populace and its relationship with its environs.  The best way to see them, or any city, really, is to walk around and take in the sights. 

The Magnolias Of Philadelphia

When I was first learning about various trees of the continent back in my idealistic youth, I was blessed to come across a free copy of Audubon's Field Guide to North American Trees (Eastern Region).  This was a marvelous book full of fun things like maps, pictures, and even illustrations of trees in silhouette, with the evergreens being nice and full, and the deciduous trees shown in their bare winter glory.  Now and then, I came across a remarkable leafy tree... with leaves on it!  I knew about them before, of course, being a traveled veteran of Southern Florida, but what really impressed me was the fact that some of them could be found very north, namely the American Holly (Ilex Opaca) and above all else, the majestic Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora).  In specific, the guide noted that the beauty is noted for hardiness "north to Philadelphia".

In gardening circles, people are lately growing fonder of the art of "zone pushing", which is to say that they, ahem, we, like to grow things far north of where they are considered hardy.  Gardeners in Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, and Cleveland (and associated friendly cities) have long since considered anything that retains leaves in the winter to be of high prestige and a reminder that life goes on during otherwise snowy and cold dark months between November and March.  Alright, so October and April...  Anyway, its a hard thing to take even a cold hardy palm or broadleaved evergreen and expect it to dance for you while the blizzard rages, at least this far inland.  Philadelphia, on the other hand, is perhaps in one of the perfect situations for attending to a variety of cultivation.

While it has far more in common with the ocean than the Appalachians, it has elements of both; pine species form extensive barrens in nearby rural areas in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as more mountain species like rhododendrons in surviving woodlands.  It's not too hot, it's not too cold, and due to an atmosphere of tolerance, it was the American city that got the most brains to boot.  Massachusetts was all about religious agenda/freedom, New York was all about commerce, Charleston and Williamsburg were all about slave-powered farming, but Philadelphia was about letting you pray how you wanted, letting you argue with people over politics, and, surprisingly, letting you talk about what academic subjects were currently in vogue.  Alexander Hamilton of the spice islands by way of New York tried to get finance to set up a crown here too, but ultimately the city is still best remembered as more of a home to the Benjamin Franklin type.  This is a city of books, trees, and people who still like to read newspapers on a park bench.

One such popular academic interest was plants.  Aristocrats in Europe went crazy over trying to acquire New World vegetation for their estates, especially in England.  Various botanists made quite the name for themselves detecting and acquiring such treasures, and Philadelphia's own John Bartram earned the respectable but low paying title of the "King's botanist".  While Charleston, under Michaux, served as a secondary port for the thriving plant and seed trade, the varieties of climate and plant life meeting here, as well as the royal connection, ensured that Philadelphia would remain the chief point of departure for the finest trees finding their way to the finest clients.  Unlike Charleston, however, Philadelphia grew up much more snug and dense, seemingly paved over, much to the distaste of the founders and succeeding generations of planners in the city who wanted everyone to have a growing space.  Thomas Jefferson disliked the environment, and like many other politicians, wanted to try to escape to greener pastures when possible, which usually meant taking a trip to Bartram's house (which I regret upon regret not stopping at).  There they talked about plants.  No, really.  Jefferson and Washington were plant geeks.

Philadelphia has since greened rather nicely, even if the concrete which has replaced the brick is still the dominant feature everywhere.  The riverbanks are lush, there are parks and green spaces never far away, and the city is home to the United States' first urban national wildlife refuge.  Out of all this, however, what caught my eye was, well, the magnolias.  My little guide book did not disappoint.  I can't remember where half of them were taken at, with the exception of the line of tall ones at Betsy Ross House.  They are not hard to find, though.  Just wander through the historic core and you will find quite a few, some very impressive in size.

Yeah, that's a Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum) intruding on the top left.  Pretty cool seeing them together!

These last fellows were at the Betsy Ross House.

There is also a garden consisting almost entirely of imported magnolias which, while not the majestic Southern Magnolia, do put on quite the show in spring.  I ran into some volunteers at the garden who gave me the unofficial history of magnolias in the city, as well as the intent behind the creators of this garden.  They explained that Washington, plant geek, wanted to green up the city he had to spend so much time in as president.  He was particularly fond of magnolias, which the ladies and I deduced to probably be his proud Southern Magnolias, arboreal symbols of American robustness.  As a symbolic tree, Magnolia Grandiflora is much more associated with the deeper South and with Andrew Jackson, who planted them at the White House as they were his wife's favorite tree.  Nevertheless, Washington probably would have run into plenty of them in his boyhood tidewater stomping grounds, as the tree was already making quite the impression in the trans-Atlantic trade and was already being cultivated as an ornamental in the southern lowcountry.  He probably enjoyed seeing a tree as robust as this in remaining green even in colder winters, and as a horticulturalist probably thought about bringing them further north with him into his presidential exile from Mt. Vernon.  The creators of the garden, acting 150 years later, apparently did not have the same design in mind, which the volunteers and I grumbled about.  The Asiatic magnolias, they said, are nice, but they only flower in the spring, and, well, are not very American.  At the risk of sounding like an ecological imperialist, considering the intent of the design of the garden, I have to agree.

Still, it's a nice garden (with a fountain, which I did not take a picture of), a quiet space of reflection surrounded by quiet streets (Locust between 4th and 5th streets) and various quiet places of worship.  There are thirteen flowering trees and shrubs which represent the thirteen colonies, but most of them are imports, and ironically, two of the species are iconic of England!  I'm a proud subject of the Commonwealth myself, but the concept seemed rather nutty to me.  If I had to guess, I would think that the creators wanted to put on an incredible burst of spring and early summer color, and to be fair, the garden was set up long after the colonial era passion for natives had faded and the Victorian and Imperial passion for exotics had become the rage.  Remember what I said about zone-pushing?  That's something fairly new, the current emerging vogue.  People maybe just weren't planting southern trees here back in the day, just as they weren't planting palms in Vancouver or London until fairly recently.

The worm has since turned, and the National Park Service tends toward at least the homegrown and preferably native ecological restoration as much as possible (and to be fair, as much as they work here and are not too distantly native, Magnolia Grandiflora is native no further north than the central Chesapeake, if I am allowed to make such a bold statement).  In the garden we get to see shifting trends in horticulture presented as a history lesson about a history lesson.  I have to admit, regardless of my angst, I stopped and enjoyed the patch of green for a while.  Washington probably would have done the same.  Jefferson would have turned cross, purchased nearby land, and started over on a superior garden.  Bartram would have sold him the plants.  All of them probably would have been in awe of the many Southern Magnolias found through the rest of the city.  I have to admit, seeing them together with so many other trees, including my favorite Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus) gave the city a pretty interesting arboreal landscape.  You can do that in DC too, but then you have to pay for it with hot, muggy summers that do not get nearly as bad here.

What's the rest of that city treescape look like?  Come on by next post for a tour. 

Wednesday Filler: Philadelphia's Environmentalist River

The Schuykill River was, like the Juniata spoken of yesterday, a major conduit for colonial expansion deeper into Pennsylvania.  The Lenape people, re-named the Delaware by later Pennsylvanians, formed part of the central portion of their nation around the banks of this and the Delaware River.  Unlike the Haudenosaunee who lived further west in the mountains, the Lenape spoke an Algonquian language, like many other nations along the Atlantic coast from Virginia to Maine.  The Lenape were pretty knowledgeable farmers, and readily understood the ecological importance of fire; the local pine barrens naturally renewed with periodic fires.  The banks of the river itself were, and are, largely lush, owing to the humid and mild climate of this part of Pennsylvania.

Looking north off of the bridge carrying US 30.  As one can tell from the exposed banks, the tide is low (this lower part of the river is influenced by oceanic tides, like the lower Delaware which it flows into).  A weir runs across the length of the river beyond the next bridges.  That classical looking building on the right is the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where Rocky the steps.

The river has seen not so natural history, of course, being torn apart and polluted by some of the earliest activity of the Industrial Revolution in North America.  The river was of immense fascination for naturalists such as both Bartrams and Audubon, and was later the focus of one of attempts to ensure cleaning drinking water for Philadelphia.  In the last century, it has been largely cleaned up, and much of its banks are incredibly natural, rather than developed right to the water's edge.  Today the river retains its traveler focus, thanks to such environmentalist foundations and concern, and serves as an incredible place to canoe or kayak while taking in scenes of nature in the midst of a cosmopolitan, yet very American, city.

Wednesday Filler: The Capture Of Philadelphia

One of the nicest features about a tourist side trip to Pat's King of Steaks, which we featured two days ago in a post, is that one gets impressive views of the city skyline from that location.

Right next to Pat's is a large park dominated by a baseball diamond.  Since a fence was in the day, I tried to zoom through the links the best that I could.  The end result was almost artistic, a look at a city that has had as many historic ties to dominating financial structures and Federalism as it has to religious liberty and progressive democracy.  Here we look from the working class neighborhood around Pat's, through a fence, higher up into intermediate businesses, all past floodlights meant to illuminate a baseball diamond, and finally resting in a city above all that, one of corporate finance and upper management.  Meanwhile, next to the fence, all members from all layers were chowing down on the same steak sandwiches. 

Lots of potential social commentary in one convenience-oriented photo... 

Anyway, you decide what it means.  I was thoughtful at the time, but still largely conquered by lunch.  This is south of the city center looking north; colonial Philadelphia, including the original banks and exchanges which steered the city in this landscape direction, would be to the right of those tall buildings. 

Philadelphia: City Of Brotherly Sandwich

Part of the fun experience of traveling is to find lodging and food that is local flavor.  Its nice to see the mundane as an evolution from ages of cultural development, and how particular regions and even cities and towns have produced both high and low culture with their own touches as a result.  Sometimes it can be hard to find something that is not overly "tourist", but sometimes you have to sit back, laugh at the kitsch, and dive right in.

Philadelphia, like any destination city, is full of things drawing tourists into the bright, sparkling lights.  It manages to do this in a way that very much blends in with the normal reality of the city, however, and even though some places feel like a museum packed into a modern mess of skyscrapers and freeways, she does so out of concern for the past while moving on with the future.  "Out with the old, in with the new" does not apply here.  That's a tangent for a different time, but the lesson holds strong in the living example of finding a place to eat the local flavor.  When I was last there in 2014, I had a choice between going to some re-invented gastro pub that was a recreation of some colonial era tavern, or... Pat's King of Steaks.

This was not a hard decision to make.  What might have been hard was choosing to go there, or to Geno's, right across the street.

But, being a traditionalist, as Pat's claims they started the whole thing, and far more attracted to the particular smells coming out of Pat's (not to mention the faster moving line), I went for it.

Despite what some reviews might say, Pat's gives you a pretty impressive sandwich.  That, some fries, and a coke (9-10 bucks total) was more than enough to sate me for some time, and it was a pretty active day walking around much of the historic core of the city.  The steak was definitely better than what is offered for the sandwich in most other places, the cheese was pretty delightful (but honestly, as much as it sounds gross, traditionally I would have been better off going with cheese-whiz than with American, at least according to my traveling companion, as it melts and fills the thing so much better), and the bread was pretty good.  The most refreshing feature, however, was seeing the options in a nice grill from which one could self serve.  There were peppers, more onions, etc. piled together with condiments.  You can see one of the wee green peppers behind my sandwich.  Normally I'm not much of a pepper guy, but... amazing little things.  Grilled to perfection.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable experience, with a caveat: Know what you want (use the website for instruction) when you order, or else they kick you to the back of the line.  They serve people fast, and don't like to mess it up.  Seating is somewhat limited, but the tables were moving pretty fast, like the service.  In terms of accessibility, the steak shops are off the beaten path, decently south of the historic core.  Some people have said that the neighborhoods are scary, which I suppose is true if you have lived in a cave outside of some no name town in North Dakota your whole life.  As a reward for braving the non-tourist actual city, you get to see a small slice of how the normal folk live.  My take?  Pretty clean, pretty open and airy, fairly laid-back compared to New York or Washington. 

Passyunk ave and Wharton st., looking south, right across from Pat's.

Really, the neighborhood is one of families and working people, ethnically diverse and with typical urban east coast atmosphere.  We went at lunch time and the place had quite a few suits milling about.  Multiple bus lines are in the area, and if you drive, you just need to sneak a few blocks away and find a parallel parking spot.  Tip: try it off of the main eating hours for easier access.  Otherwise, be prepared to find a space in this:

South along 10th street, beside Capitolo Park/Playground, a block walk from Pat's.

Now, as for the sandwich itself, I would say that the Philly is a pretty average street food for something from an east coast city.  You get the sandwich, something European if not downright traditionally English, then you get the American spin on it turning it into something huge and more than just a snack, and then you get really good meat, lots of it, and on a superior bun, representing the Italian blessing on most east coast street and deli cuisine.  It's a democratic sandwich that has evolved in a city born of liberty, that has survived total transformation by government and high finance, and ended up as a place where you can get relatively greasy, cooked with gusto, here-enjoy-this eating.  You had suits next to tourists next to construction workers, and no one gave off any attitude or got in anyone's way. 

Next: Greek food... in the desert?!

The Historical Importance Of An Invisible Creek

The brief summer of 2014 which followed the brutal winter of 2013-14 gave your author every reason in the world to be out enjoying the bounty of nature and not wanting to stare at a screen or gather hordes of photos together in an attempt to make sense out of the North American experience.  Well, winter is upon us once again and he finds himself indoors a lot more, even while he takes in the chilly air with confidence that he lives in Michigan and not northern Manitoba.  I've been doing a lot of reading lately, as well as a lot of listening.  The United States is currently in the midst of some of the most bitterly divided political warfare that it has seen in some time, Mexico is busy trying to deal with the fact that perhaps helping PRI regain entrenchment has done little to support growth in the country, to say nothing of stem the tide of violence from the drug cartels, and Canada sleeps above all this in some false sense of superiority.  Some jump into the fray completely ignorant of history and reason and foretell of the apocalypse; others claim they are on intimate terms with both the past and the cause of righteousness and yet present to the public rather obvious revisionist viewpoints of who said what in some document, religious or otherwise, made by a court hundreds of years ago, perhaps not even from our shores. 

Life goes on.  Freedom is maintained enough that most in North America, and yes, including Mexico, individuals can choose to tear away the veil of ignorance and find out the facts behind the truths in our larger story.  That's what this blog is about, my own journey to discovery about our story here in North America, and not just about great people or events or even transitory concepts.  Instead, I take a look at even the small things.  My latest read seems to be taking me for a ride down that particular path; Sarah Vowell has been entertaining and informing me about how taking a look at the small things can help one understand how the bigger picture fits together.  Better put by a really good friend, she takes a look a reality through the perspective of one within the fishbowl.  After all, this is why those who study history and geography even bother to look at details even when the facts are largely laid out in plain sight for them; happenings like revolutions are a bit more complex than the slogans which ignite the passions which drive them.  Sometimes we need to tear down the sacred statues and become iconoclasts in order to prevent such revolutions from turning away from said passions and into the realm of pure legalistic precedent.  Alright, so maybe I have also been reading some of that iconoclast Gore Vidal.  The thing is, I'm back to share some more of what I have found.

And what better little thing to then bring to attention than this charming little discovery:

Does not look like much, does it?  I am sure that most people would never recognize it as anything other than a slight depression in the ground which for some reason was bridged rather than filled and paved like the rest of the surrounding city.  In reality, this is what remains of Dock creek, a small tidal creek that perhaps served as the mark for where William Penn decided to center his capital city of Philadelphia.  The "dry water feature" rests buried in a lovely park behind Carpenters Hall, meeting place of the first Continental Congress ,and, as such, another relic of the city's past that gets largely ignored by the visiting public in favor of bigger, grander things like Independence Hall.  Today, aside from the depression in the ground, the only thing that lets the walker know that anything different was ever here is a plaque set up by the National Park Service.  The plaque lets people know that this center of the famous seat of American political birth was full of not only the gassy overtures of politicians, but also plain, simple swamp gas.  Much like inheritor Washington and predecessor London, this first capital of the United States was a rather wet and marshy affair that has otherwise transformed and been paved over.

Of course, the modern face of Philadelphia tends to look a lot more like this:

Chestnut street at 4th, looking west.

And, as expected, this:

Passyunk and 10th, turning south onto 10th.

She started out as the last grasp of the Atlantic's dominance against the fall line.  This is what makes this little creek so interesting, really.  Philadelphia, you see, is unlike many other cities in that it falls not soundly with the "North", is definitely not part of the "South" either, and while hardly on the ocean and farther away from salt water than even Washington, is definitely more coastal than inland.  Many houses here have gardens that feature a magnolia alongside a spruce, fitting for a city that can be buried by snow in the odd winter and yet experience a summer every bit as unpalatable as any given city further south.  In essence, we have a city that had a noticeably longer growing season than what could be offered by New England and the Hudson valley, thus suitable for plantations, yet not idealistically part of a colony founded otherwise for the sake of individual liberty (in contrast to Jamestown) in which the good land could be used for families of farmer-workers.  We thus have a city founded not in consideration to proximity to the coast and thus the broader market, and yet not so far removed from it as to be deaf to the siren song of international commerce. 

Here we have a city founded on the principles of religious tolerance and a degree of personal liberty that also had an increasing number of African slaves imported into it in the mid-eighteenth century.  Proudest son of the city, Benjamin Franklin, otherwise later noted to be something of an abolitionist, did not actually free his slaves until after the Revolution.  As the creek was covered over, so too was slavery, and the city and her history were simultaneously whitewashed; the colonial federal style look was abandoned for a lot of marble even as Pennsylvania passed the first abolition act in the United States in 1780.  The creek gives us two lessons: not everything is as simple as it seems, and nothing on this earth is immutable.  So, let's take a stroll further up the creek...