Baptismal Records Greek Philadelphia

The Greek American Heritage Society of Philadelphia possesses a rare collection of parish records from the establishment of Philadelphia's Greek community in 1906. The records consist of hard-bound log books on membership, marriages, baptisms, and funerals. In summer 2016, my students digitized some of the logs, but the project slowed down because of the difficulty in transcribing the Greek and the large number of entries. I've been doing a little bit at a time over the last three years and have vowed to complete one project, the record of baptisms this year. I'm excited to announce a half-way point in transcription. Between 1907 and 1920 about 700 baptisms took place in the Greek Orthodox Church of Philadelphia. Most are infant baptisms, but there are a few adult baptisms. Having just entered birth number 296 in my database, I pause to make some general observations.

Greek American parish records surely exist, but none have been systematically transcribed, published, or shared. For this reason, making Philadelphia's records available to the general public wishes to set a precedent and a paradigm to be followed by others. Baptism records present to us a list of a each community's hyphenated Americans. Although surely many Greek offsprings did not get baptized in the Orthodox church, most did in the period under consideration. The sacraments of baptism, marriage, and funeral are, in fact, one of the practical motivations for organizing Orthodox churches to begin with. The great mobility of immigrants, both between the US and Greece and within the US makes them demographically invisible. In the first mapping of immigrants by the Hull House co-operative in Chicago (1895), the volunteers note that individual inhabitants were so mobile that the constitution of each house changed constantly from week-to-week. What can the list of the 700 first Greek Philadelphians tell us? Here is what the database looks like and some research objectives.

• Each baptismal entry lists the village from which the father originates. This patrimonial connection to place allows us to reconstruct the regional profile of the American community. Oral traditions privilege the Peloponnese and Macedonia, but the data might prove more diverse. The first thing I want to do with the data is to create a geographical database of all the places of origin. This is a hard undertaking because Greece underwent a major renaming campaign in the 1920s. Once the original name is transcribed, one has to decode the village's modern name, and then find its location. The total village distribution will provide a regional profile of a Greek-American community and trace chronological trends over the course of 13 years.
• The log gives ample evidence of the national diversity of the early community. Baptisms are not limited to Greeks but include Syrians, Serbians, and other Orthodox immigrants.
• Greek American historiography has stressed the role of men in the community and focused on women mostly as picture brides. This may be the case in the large centers of Chicago and New York, but it does not seem entirely accurate. David Pettegrew and I have been doing a comparative sample of Philadelphia, Lancaster, and Harrisburg (for an upcoming essay in Pennsylvania History) and have concluded that the gender distribution in smaller towns is close to 50-50. Since baptism requires childbirth by a female, the Greeks baptized in the U.S. are all offsprings of a family unit. Greek American males fathered many offsprings back in Greece, but the baptismal records give a unique insight in the balanced mother-father family units.
• The baptismal records show intensive intermarriage between Greek men and native women. Intermarriage is a phenomenon difficult to study through other sources. The records provide a glimpse of the scenario where the father's religious tradition (Orthodox) dominates over the mother's (Protestant or Catholic). Surely, many Greek offsprings entered the faith traditions of the non-Greek mother, but this would show up in the parish records of the other denomination.
• The baptismal records also list the godparent. This should allow the reconstruction of some family networks between parents and godparents.
• Finally, the baptismal records could be integrated with other digitized database, such as the list of all Greeks in the 1920 US Federal Census. There are 1,777 of them, so it will take me a little longer to complete that. This is when I'm envious of colleagues who have grad students to help them data crunch.

Wish me luck. In order to expedite the laboriously translation and transcription process, I think I will now focus on the place of origin. If I also manage to complete the map of all the Greek residences in Philadelphia in 1920, one should have a geographically expansive view of distribution within the city and distribution of origin within Greece. That should make two powerful maps. More importantly, it should stage all kinds of additional studies of place. 

Philadelphia: The Birthplace of Rembetiko

Rembetiko is Greece's urban blues. Like the tango in Argentina, rembetiko was considered criminal, low-class, and unworthy of recording creating a typical paradox. One of Greece's national music genres was practical illegal in Greece. In comes immigration. The first rembetiko songs were recorded in the United States under the growing industry of ethnic music. The economic equation is simple. The 78 RPM vinyl industry was beginning to collapse as radio disrupted record sales. Providing free music (supported by advertisements) and reaching every corner of electrified America, radio was the internet of the 1920s. There is one population, however, that the English-dominated radio could not reach, the millions of immigrants that had landed on American shores. Record companies swiftly recognized the diversified audience, and rushed to capture each ethnic corner of the market. That's how American record executives aggressively sought out the Greek rembetiko players in the U.S., and eventually, establishing recording studios in Greece. The dominance of Greek music in this ethnic market is interesting. Although the twelfth largest immigrant population, Greek recordings made up for a fifth of the total recording output by 1940.

The history of Greek rembetiko is the history of Greek immigrant musicians in the U.S. According to music historians, the first rembetiko song recorded in the U.S. was by Marika Papagika, the first female superstar of Greek music. She and her husband Kostas (Gus) Papagikas (who played santouri) had immigrated to the U.S. in 1914. By 1925, they also established the first Greek music nightclub, called Marika's, in New York, on 34th Street and 8th Avenue. Papagika made the first rembetiko recording in American record history in 1918 for RCA Victor, and released in 1918. The song, "Minore from Smyrna," is perhaps the most amazing three minutes in Greek music history. RCA Victor was located in Camden, N.J., across the river from Philadelphia. Along with Columbia Records (in New York) it dominated Greek recording history. RCA Victor did not only produce the vinyl records but also the hardware on which to play it, the Victrola phonograph. So, imagine being in Greece ca. 1920, where your only recorded Greek music was not only recorded in Camden, but it was played on a Victrola platform brought by a Greek immigrant.

In spite of the international popularity of rembetiko or its dominant place in the national narrative of Greek music, there is relatively little scholarship on the particulars of its creation. I offer a small discovery on the primacy of Philadelphia in rembetiko history due to its proximity to RCA Victor recording studios. The Nipper Building, where rembetiko history was made, still survives. Its iconic stained glass windows can still be seen (see photo above). Most enticing is the fact that RCA Victor's vault of masters was dumped into the Delaware River and incorporated into a concrete dock in the 1960s. Theoretically, they could be archaeologically rescued (see a community-based heritage group that would like to accomplish that here).

My research on Philadelphia's Greektown has made a slight turn on the archaeology of rembetiko. If Papagika recorded the first rembetiko, then George Katsaros is a close second. Katsaros is additionally interesting for his adaptation of the guitar into a hybridized fingerpicking style that reflects African-American blues that he encountered in his itinerant performances throughout the U.S. His love affair with Mexican movie star Riorita orients him outside an ethnic bubble. Like Papagika, Katsaros's recorded his first song "Greek Pleasure" at Victor RCA in 1919. 

The circumstances of Greek recording history are murky. Historians and the Greek community has paid disproportionately little attention in creating the historical archives that shepherd their musical tradition. Since rembetiko music in the U.S. flourished during Prohibition, the Greek performance venues were typically speak-easies and shrouded in secrecy, very much like the censorship that criminalized the performance of rembetiko music in Greece during the 1930s. As a community, Greek Americans have been more comfortable to highlight food and commercial success over drug addiction, persecution, poverty, or sexual oppression, the themes of rembetiko music. Thanks to the devoted obsession of a small group of record collectors, we have at least saved some of the vinyl documents. Amanda Petrusich reports on the culture of collecting in her excellent book Don't Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records (2014). The centrality of Greek musicians is evident in many of the other wonderful pieces that Petrusich has written for the New York Times and the New Yorker.

George Katsaros is an exception to the historiographic oblivion that shrouds most of his contemporaries. He retired at Tarpon Spring, where a couple of Greek-American folklorists and historians collected his stories. I thank Tina Bucuvalas, curator of arts for the city of Tarpon Spring, for all her insights on Katsaros, see her recent The Greeks of Tarpon Springs (2016) and an interview on the new journal Ergon. I also thank ethnomusicologist Panayotis League, whose deep insights on Katsaros are not only musical; he got to meet him at his grandmother's house as a kid in Tarpon Springs. Katsaros was rediscovered by a Greek audience in 1995, when he was invited to perform two important concerts in Athens and Thessaloniki, just two years before he passed away at the age of 109. The most important scholar on Katsaros is Steve Frangos, who conducted an extensive oral history project that lead into a Master's Thesis at Indiana University, "Yiorgos Katsaros: Last of the Greek-American Cafè-Aman Singers," (1992) and an article, “The Last Café-Aman Performer,” Journal of Modern Hellenism 12-13 (1995-96), pp. 239-256. Katsaros's guitar playing has received more recent interest in a CD re-recording of his songs by Greece's premier guitarist Demetris Mystakidis, who has reconstructed Katsaros's weird string tunings (listen here.) Clips from Katsaros's oral history were recently featured in the BBC documentary Music of our Times, see "America's Ottoman Diaspora" (2017).

During the last year or so, I have been studying Philadelphia's Greektown with my students. We have reconstructed its spaces digitally by repopulating the old buildings with its original occupants, based on the US Census and historical maps. The core of Greektown was demolished by urban renewal and the expansion of Jefferson Hospital in the 1960s. For the lost buildings, we have analyzed some 700 old photographs from the City of Philadelphia archives. This includes a 1917 photograph of a Greek establishment on 1018 Locust Street marked by the Greek letters on the window shop "Greek Kaffeneion." Image at beginning of post. While reading Frangos's thesis, I was shocked to discover the significance of this corner.


Katsaros travelled widely through the U.S. and performed at countless Greek venues. As he noted in his interview, every city with Greek immigrants had a dozen performance spaces. Philadelphia was not special. In fact it ranked as seventh most populous with Greeks, far below New York, Chicago, and Lowell. But Philadelphia had the recording studios across the river at Camden. And it was in Philadelphia that Katsaros was discovered by the agent of RCA Victor in 1919 and was invited to record the second oldest rembetiko, "Greek Pleasure." In his interview, Katsaros is explicit about the Philadelphia detail. He names the two venues where he played, Culture Restaurant and Kentron Restaurant. He even gives the address "1018 Locust Street" and notes that it was across from the Stephano Brothers tobacco factory (the largest Greek employer in Philadelphia). The kaffeneion that our study of Greektown had identified in the photo (top) shows Kentron Restaurant two years before Katsaros performed there. The contemporary Sanborn Fire Insurance map from 1919 (left) plots 1018 Locust on the southeast corner of Warnock and Locust. North, along Warnock Street, we see the seven-story Stephano Brothers factory at 1014-16 Walnut Street built in 1908 and marked yellow to signify concrete frame. Parenthetically, both the RCA Victor and Stephano Brother buildings were designed by the prominent architectural firm Ballinger.

The 1920 US Census, moreover, lists two tenants in the upstairs floors of this address, a George Skapavos restaurant cook, and a Gregores Boulous dishwasher. These two tenants were most likely the working staff that managed the venue downstairs. Although Katsaros identifies 1018 Locust as the Kentron Restaurant, he does not give an address for the Central Restaurant. However, he notes that his music group was moving from to another. Looking at the business directories from 1912, we learn that this block of Locust Street had no less than four Greek restaurants. What is a business directory? Beginning in 1904, Greek publishers in New York published a guidebook that was distributed to potential Greek emigrants. These guides gave an introduction to life in the U.S. but also contained a directory of Greek establishments in every city to help the immigrant navigate the new country. The map below plots the 1911 Philadelphia directory published by Serapheim Canoutas.

A cluster of four dots on the 1000 block of Locust locates the epicenter of Greek restaurants in Philadelphia and names their proprietors.

1012 Locust St, B. Sirios
1015 Locust St, John Parbos
1018 Locust St, Geo. Thomakos
1031 Locust St, N. Kromidas

The objective of our Greektown study has been to reveal the archaeology of Greek immigration in one city. We combined diverse sources in a geospatial database as the groundwork for a physical, archaeological investigation of the remains. Unfortunately, no further work can be done on the 1000 block of Locust Street because it was demolished in 1967. The Greek establishments were rembetiko was first performed lie buried below Jefferson's Alumni Hall, which takes up half of a city block. With the excavation for the foundations and basement of this building, there will be no physical remains. The green space of Lubert Plaza, in front of Alumni Hall, most likely retains the basements of the north side of the block. As would be typical in demolition practices of the 1960s, these basements are backfilled by the debris of the brick buildings above.


Other Greektown properties, however, survive. Their backyards could be explored. For the birthplace of rembetiko, digital archaeology must suffice, as we populate the individuals listed in the census (below) into a digital reconstruction of the city where Katsaros lived and recorded the second oldest rembetiko.

One final note about dates. The reason why Katsaros has not been considered "the first" like Papagika has to do with a clerical ambiguity. Although he claimed the song was recorded in 1919, the official historian of Ethnic Records did not find any written testimony in Victor's archives for a recording until 1927 (Spottwood 1990). Steve Frangos' oral history settles that problem, as Katsaros confirms the original date. Although Katsaros is explicit about the Philadelphia venues, he tells another story where  RCA Victor representatives approached him while performing in New York. 

Much work remains to be done in the archaeology of rembetiko. Consider the most important performance space in 1920s Greek history, the high-end "Marika's" on 34th Street, New York. We know so little about it, although, we do have a photo of its exterior by Stieglitz (I haven't found it yet). Does this mean that our Philadelphia Greektown project needs some comparative work from New York? For the time being, I am thrilled that we have put Philadelphia on the rembetiko map; more importantly, we have  narrowed it down to an actual building with a visible materiality (through the photos), a cartographic context (through GIS), and a human specificity (the census).

I thanks Panayiotis League, Giorgos Anagnostou, and Tina Bucavalas for their advice. I also want to thank my students Lizzy Wood and Cassie Garison who walked every corner of Alumni Hall looking for clues and practically lost their minds digitizing data. I am only an amateur music historian. I have tried Katsaros's crazy guitar plucking style and would love to take a guitar out to Jefferson Hospital's green lawn and relive a 1919 moment.

REFERENCES

Bucuvalas, Tina. 2016. Greeks in Tarpon Springs, Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia.

Canoutas, Seraphim G. 1911. Greek-American Guide, Ελληνο-αμερικανικός οδηγός, 4th Year, New York: Helmis Press

Frangos, Steve. 1995-1996. “The Last Café-Aman Performer,” Journal of Modern Hellenism 12-13, pp. 239-256.

Frangos, Steve. 1992. “Yiorgos Katsaros: Last of the Greek-American Cafè-Aman Singers,” Master’s Thesis, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Petrusich, Amanda. 2015. Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records, New York: Scribner.

Spottswood, Richard K. 1990. Ethnic Music on Records: A Discography of Ethnic Recordings Produced in the U.S. 1893-1942, vol. 3, pp. 1133-1234.

Greek Philadelphia Business Directories 1904 and 1911

While my students map Greek residences in Philadelphia from the 1920 US census, I tackle the business directories. Beginning in 1904, entrepreneurial Greeks in New York began publishing almanacs to direct new immigrants navigate the new land. In addition to general information, they included business directories of Greek establishments in cities throughout the U.S. The directories provide previously untapped spatial information about Greek communities. 

The best known almanac is the Greek American Guide published every year by Serapheim Canoutas from 1908 to 1914. See my translation here of a fascinating report on the living conditions of Greek laborers in the West in Canoutas's 2nd edition of 1909.


I have taken two Greek American Guides, the first one published in 1904 by newspaper Thermopylae and the second published in 1911 by Canoutas. I have mapped the Greek business addresses below.

1904 Philadelphia Greek American Business Directory

1911 Philadelphia Greek American Business Directory

What we can see from the maps is the development of the Greek business presence in the city as confectioneries, florists, groceries, and restaurants. Focused around the cluster of Greektown, the Greek establishments developed along the main commercial corridors and expanded to the north and west. The two maps allow us to compare continuity and change in real estate, as well as proprietors.  

We can then take the particular locations and investigate their architectural character. The great majority of addresses do not exist anymore; they have fallen victim to urban redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s, which ultimately lead to the end of Greektown. This makes it difficult to reconstruct the materialities of experience in the city of a century ago. Having particular spatial information, however, we can examine other archival depositories to reconstruct the materialities of some establishments. Consider the case study of 904 Walnut Street. 

The 1904 Guide gives the following summary of the Greek community of Philadelphia.

The Greek community of Philadelphia does not include a large number of members like the community of New York, Chicago, Lowell or San Francisco. Greeks began to arrive to this city in 1882. In the beginning, they worked as elsewhere in selling fruits from baskets and handcarts in central streets, and later they excelled in the foundation of confectionaries, fruit stores, and floral shops. In this city, there exist today successful and well-respected Greek confectionaries where many work. There are about 400 Greeks from which 100 work in the cigarette factory of the Stephano Brothers. A Greek Orthodox church in this city was founded about a year ago, with a priest Nathanael Sideris. (p. 146)

By 1911, the industrial epicenter of the Greek community, the Stephano Brothers cigarette factory with its 100 employees, had built its own factory on 1014 Walnut St. In 1904, the manufacturer was located on 904 Walnut Street. An additional five businesses were located in this address, making it a Greek-American business hub. This entire block has been taken over by a modern building (see here), but a search through Philadelphia's photographic archives (PhillyHistory.org) provides visual testimony of the block before the block was demolished, in a photo taken by the Historic Commission in 1971.

The building in question is the third on the right. From its architectural style, we can date it to the 1890s. It had decorative stone arches and a Mansard roof (already covered in 1971) and five floors. The first floor had a large shop window made possible by iron beams and columns. The entrance vestibule opened to the commercial establishment on the first floor and a second entrance to a staircase and the additional four stories above. 

With the physical structure in mind, we can start to repopulate the building with its six Greek tenants: Stephano Bros (cigarette factory), A. Demotsis (confectionary), Em. Stergiou, P. Voloumvasis, Papavasileiou Bros, and I. Asimakopoulos. The building to its west, which had already been torn down by 1971, also housed a Greek establishment. It's also interesting to note the lack of continuity in both real estate and people. 904 Walnut St did not remain in Greek hands in 1911. With the exception of the Stephano Bros., none of its occupants are listed in the 1911 directory, suggesting that they either left Philadelphia or switched to other professions that did not make it into the directories.

How a Quaker Metropolis Became an Orthodox Village

I was invited to give a paper at a conference at Yale this October, which will be the first in a series of papers from the fieldwork that I did with my students in Philadelphia's Greek town. The conference is about liturgical arts and material culture. I will be talking about the 18th/early-19th-century houses, churches, and public spaces left behind by white flight (to West of Broad Street, the Main Line, etc.) and occupied by Greeks, African Americans (to the south), and Russian Jews (to the east). The photo above is from the Greek American Heritage Society of Philadelphia archives. It is the annual Easter festival hosted by the Stephano Brothers at their house in Elkins Park. Here is my abstract

How a Quaker Metropolis Became an Orthodox Village
Material Christianity in Philadelphia’s Greektown, 1900-1930

The modern American city witnessed a great influx of immigrants whose religious traditions differed greatly from the Protestant or Irish Catholic mainstream. Fleeing economic or political hardship, the ethnic migrants did not bring to the U.S. the artistic materiel of their ancient liturgical traditions, but sustained the ecclesiastical needs of their homes by sending remittances to their impoverished villages. How did art and architecture materialize liturgical experiences in the melting pot of the American city? The archaeology of Philadelphia’s Greektown offers insights on how a historically Quaker city became materially Orthodox by a migrant minority. As Philadelphians abandoned their colonial city for the affluent suburbs, the new Greeks shared spatial and artistic experiences with two equally marginal newcomers, Russian Jews and African Americans (studied in great detail by W. E. B. Du Bois). On the opposite side of the transnational story, the archaeology of Greek villages reveals material transformations of Orthodox Christianity back home.

Undocumented Greek Migrants

European ethnic groups in the U.S. have not been uniformly supportive of the 11 million (mostly Hispanic and Latino) illegal immigrants, since most of them arrived when more liberal immigration policies were in place. Greek Americans see their story as a narrative of legal migration. But is this entirely true? Alexander Kitroeff raised that question in his editorial "Greek-American History and Unauthorized Immigration" in The National Herald (Oct. 15, 2015, p. 15). He notes that if you scratch the surface below the official story, you will find evidence for Greeks arriving to the US illegally, primarily by jumping ship. This is well-known among the Greek community but rarely stated in public or in the official histories.

Over the summer, I spent some time at Temple University's Urban Archives that includes the records of the Nationalities Service Center (NSC), an NGO founded in 1923 to assist new immigrants in Philadelphia. Among the Greek papers, I found the very evidence alluded to by Kitroeff. It is a type-written report of a meeting that took place on June 20, 1942, called "Greek Seamen."

The NSC had a meeting with members of Philadelphia's Greek community to discuss the crisis of Greek asylum seeker in the ports of Philadelphia, Boston and New York. The NSC wanted to discuss the crisis and see what the Greek community was doing about it. At that point 200 Greeks had been interned at the port of New York, and another 110 at the port of Boston. The report presented solutions to the Greek refugee crisis, as well as a report on the causes of the defections. I reprint the first page above, courtesy of Special Collections, Temple University Libraries (Record Group 625, Box 58, Folder 41) and Kitroeff's (hard to find online) editorial below.

Greek Philadelphia 1908-1919: Baptismal Records

Over the summer, I had the privilege of working with my students at the Greek American Heritage Society of Philadelphia as part of our exploratory research on the city's Greektown around the year 1920. It was a season of great labor and discovery. Among other things, we digitized the entire 1920 US census of a sixteen-block area, catalogued archival photos, studied the architectural fabric of the houses, and transcribed interviews.

The Greek American Society of Philadelphia is a communal archival project that has been collecting visual and textual sources. Its collections vary and include historical photographs, books, records, and all kinds of publications. The most artifacts in the collection are a dozen ledger books that contain the records of the early community. Those books include the community's charter, minutes from its early meetings, lists of subscriptions and donations, and records of birth, marriage, and funeral services. The books are fragile and we hope will find a home that will guarantee their conservation and survival. 

The records are handwritten and in Greek and impossible for the students to transcribe. So, we photographed some of the books, and I am now evaluating their research potential. During the last week, I have started reading the ledgers. I have decided that I will start transcribing the birth/baptism records (Ληξιαρχικόν Βιβλίον Βαπτίσεων). For the period 1908-1919, we have some 750 records. The transcription cannot be streamlined because the writing is hard to decipher. It requires a working knowledge of Greek but also some sense of Greek topography. Although time consuming, I feel a great sense of scholarly responsibility to get this done, as it will for the first time make available primary demographic material.

Our research project this summer targeted the spatial transformation from Greek village house to American city rowhouse. We collected as much information as possible to start a study of Philadelphia's domestic material fabric. The birth records of the ledgers provide information that the US census or Ellis Island do not contain. They note the village of origin of the parents and godparents. By the end of the transcription, we should have a complete geographical network of the points of origin (at village specificity) for the first 750 American-born Greeks of the Philadelphia area (births include distant towns in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to which the Orthodox priest of Philadelphia ministered to)

Even after the slow process of transcription, I am also faced by the perennial problems of Greek toponyms. As I've already discussed back in 2008, working with Greek village toponyms is a nightmare. In order to purify the countryside from foreign-sounding influence, the central government carried out a campaign of renaming all villages with Slavic or Turkish toponyms. This was most aggressive after the ethnic cleansing of the Balkan Wars. This was received by great resistance from some places, which guaranteed that the new names never take root. We have encountered this already in the Lidoriki Project, as we traced the Greek emigres who built the now-deserted houses of Aigition. Consider this interesting scenario. Greeks of village called "X" migrate to the US in 1908 and create the national society of "Xans" to maintain links throughout their new country and to support their compatriots back home. The central government renames village "X" into "Y" in 1920. But this does not affect the "Xans" of the US. Do they all of a sudden become "Yans"? This will be interesting to quantify.

Rather than quickly plowing through the 750 birth records into a database of places and names, I have decided to carefully transcribe the entire textual entry. This will make the work ten times more laborious, but I feel that this is the most responsible scholarly thing to do. I have only completed the first dozen births, which cover the first year, 1908. I have not yet decided how I will make this data available at the end, but I wanted to give a taste of the transcription. See below what the records look like. Each entry contains the following information.

• Date of birth
• Date of baptism
• Name of individual
• Name and origin of father
• Name and origin of godparent

For the non-Greek reader, I provide a translation of the first entry. It would be great if we could crowdsource the transcription, but I understand how difficult this would be given the necessary skills. At any rate, it is exciting to present here the first Greek newborns following the legal establishment of the community in 1906.

1. Athanasia. Pan. D. Loume. (Born Sept., 3, 1907). Baptized by the parish priest of the Community, Demetrios Petrides, on March 22, 1908, serving witness [godparent] Michael Theophilas from Argos. The father of the baptized is from the Island of Spetses. Record Number 1.

1. Αθανασιά Παν. Δ. Λούμη. (Γέννησις 3 Σεπτ. 1907.) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του Εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Δήμ. Πετρίδου, τη 22α Μαρτίου του έτους 1908, παραστάντος Αναδόχου, του εξ Άργους καταγομένου κ. Μιχαήλ Θεοφιλά. Ο πατήρ της βαπτισθήσης κατάγεται εκ Σπετσών. Αριθ. πίστοποιητικού (1) [p. 113]

2. Βασιλική Χρήστου Ζαβάκου. (Γ. 27 Ιουνίου 1907 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του Εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου τη 5η Απριλίου 1908, παραστάντος ως Αναδόχου, του εκ Τριπόλεως καταγομένου κ. Θεοδώρου Αγγελετοπουλού. Ο πατήρ της βαπτισθήσης κατάγεται από το Χατίπη της Λακωνίας. Αριθ. πίστοποιητικού (2) [p. 113]

3. Γεώργιος Νικολάου Κεφαλοπούλου. (7 Ιανουαρ. 1908 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου εν τη πόλει Cotsvile, Pa, τη 6η Μαΐου 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου, του εκ του χωριού Λελέτου δήμου Σπάρτης καταγομένου κ. Παναγιώτου Γ. Ηλιοπούλου. Ο πατήρ του βαπτισθέντος κατάγεται εκ Σπάρτης. Αριθ. πίστοποιητικού (3) [p. 113]

4. Ελένη Αθανασίου Δαμάσκου. (1 Φεβρουαρ. 1908 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου, εν Holly Mount N.J. (Νέας Υερσέης), τη 11η Μαΐου 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου, του εκ Τζιτζίνα [Πολύδροσο] της Σπάρτης καταγομένου κ. Παναγιώτου Ν. Βουρνάκη. Ο πατήρ του βαπτισθήσης κατάγεται εκ της νήσου Σκιάθου. Αριθ. πίστοποιητικού (4) [p. 113]

5. ´Αννα Δημητρίου Ασιμοπούλου. (6η Μαρτίου 1908 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου, εν Φιλαδελφεία, τη 1η Αυγούστου 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου, του κυρίου Πέτρου Χ. Χαρίση, καταγομένου εκ Βελβενδού της Μακεδονίας. Ο πατήρ του βαπτισθήσης κατάγεται επίσης εκ Βελβενδού της Μακεδονίας. Αριθ. πίστοποιητικού (5) [p. 113]

6. Καλλιόπη Νικολάους Ζαβάκα. (Γ. 26 Φεβρουαρίου 1908 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου, εν Φιλαδελφεία, τη 9η Αυγού. 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου, του εκ Χατίπι της Λακωνίας καταγόμενου κ. Ανδρέα Ζαβάνου. Ο πατήρ της βαπτισθήσης κατάγεται επίσης εκ του αυτού μέρους. Αριθμός πίστοποιητικού (6). [p. 113] Ο γραμματέυς της Κοινότητας Ιωάννης Κρητικός [p. 113]

7. Σταμάτα Γεωργίου Μαράκη. (Γ. 6 Μαΐου 1908 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου, εν Φιλαδελφεία, τη 9η Αυγούστου 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου, του εκ Σπάρτης καταγομένου κ. Νιλολάου Ζαβάκα. Ο πατήρ του παιδιού εδήλωσε πατρίδα την Πελοπόννησον. Αριθ. πίστοποιητικού (7). Ο Γραμ. Ι. Κρητικός. [p. 114]

8. Νικόλαος Αντωνίου Μαρίνου. (Γ. 3 Φεβρουαρίου 1908 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου, εν Wilkes Barre Pa τη 12η Αυγούστου 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου του εκ Ξυροκάμπου Σπάρτης καταγομένου κ. Ηλία Κομνηνού. Ο πατήρ του παιδιού, κατάγεται εκ Γεράνου της Σπάρτης. Αριθ. Πίστοποιητικού (8). Ο Γραμματεύς Ι. Κρητικός [p. 114]

9. Βασιλική Παναγιώτου Αργύρη. (Γ. 17 Ιουνίου1908 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου εν Φιλαδελφεία τη 24η Αυγούστου 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου, του εκ Αγίας Παρασκευής της Μακεδονίας καταγμένου κ. Εμμανουήλ Γεώρ. Καλαμπάκα. Ο πατήρ του παιδιού εδήλωσε πατρίδα την Μακεδονίαν. Αριθ. πίστοποιητικού (9). Ο Γραμματεύς Ι. Κρητικός. [p. 114] [cross in front suggests that she might have died]

10. Χρηστίτσα Γεώρ. Ζαγκάκη. (Γ. 24 Αυγούστου 1908 ) Εβαπτίσθη υπό του Εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου εν Φιλαδελφεία τη 25η Οκτωβρίου 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου του εκ του δήμου Σπάρτης καταγομένου κ. Παν. Γ. Ηλιοπούλου. Ο πατήρ του παιδιού κατάγεται εκ της νήσου Κώου. Αριθ. Πίστοποιητικού (10). Ο Γραμμ. Ι. Κρητικός [p. 114]

11. Αγγελική Ι. Α. Γεωργίτσα. Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερία της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου εν Φιλαδελφεία τη 30 του μηνός Αυγούστου 1908, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου εκ Σπάρτης καταγομένης κ. Ευαγγελίας Ι. Κωτσοβίτου. Ο πατήρ του παιδιού κατάγεται εκ Τζιτζίνα [Πολύδροσο]. (Αριθ. πίστ. 14). [p. 114]

12. Ελένη Ευαγγέλου Μαυρομμάτη. (Γεν. 8 Ιανουαρίου 1909). Εβαπτίσθη υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου το παιδίον του έξ Ιωαννίνων της Ηπείρου καταγομένου Ευαγγέλου Μαυρομμάτη, ονομασθέν Ελένη, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου του Σταύρου Κατσούρη εξ Ηπειρωτικού καταγομένου τη 21 Φεβρουαρίου 1909. (Αριθ. πίστ. 15). [p. 114]

13. Σταύρος Γεωργίου Σταύρος. (Γ. 6 Μαρτίου 1909). Εβαπτίσθη εν Φιλαδελφεία υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου το παιδίον του έξ Νεγοβάνης [Φλάμπουρο] της Μακεδονίας καταγομένου παραστάντος ως αναδόχου εκ Νεγοβάνης Καζά-Φλωρίνης της Μακεδονίας καταγομένου Δημητρίου Ν. Κέλλη ονομασθέν Σταύρος τη 21 Φεβρουαρίου 1909. (Αριθ. πίστ. 16). [p. 116]

14. Δημήτριος Εμμανουήλ Χαραλάμπους. (Γενν. 6 Μαρτίου 1909). Εβαπτίσθη εν Φιλαδελφεία τη 12 Απριλίου 1909 υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημητρίου Πετρίδου το τέκνον του έκ Βελβινίου της Μακεδονίας καταγομένου Εμ. Χαραλάμπους ονομασθέν Δημήτριος, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου του εκ Βελβινίου καταγομένου Δημητρίου Ασμοπούλου (Αριθ. πίστ. 18). [p. 116]

15. Γεώργιος Αναστασίου Κυριάκου. (Γενν. 14 Ιουνίου 1909). Εβαπτίσθη εν Φιλαδελφεία τη 13 Απριλίου 1909 υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος Αιδ. Δημ. Πετρίδου, το τέκνον του εξ Αθηνών καταγομένου Αναστασίου Κυριάκου και ονομάσθει Γεώργιος, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου του εκ Ρεβίδους Σπάρτης καταγομένου Παναγιώτη Νικολατσιου (Αριθ. πίστ. 18). [p. 116]

15. Γεώργιος Αθαν. Ηλ. Σπυροπούλου. (Γεν. 4 Ιανουαρίου 1909). Εβαπτίσθη εν Πότσβιλ Ρα, υπό του εφημερίου της Κοινότητος ταύτης Αιδ. Δημ. Πετρίδου, το τέκνον του εκ Τριπόλεως καταγομένου Αθανασίου Ηλ. Σπυροπούλου και ονομάσθει Γεώργιος, παραστάντος ως αναδόχου του εκ Σπάρτης καταγομένου Γεωργίου Μινακάκη Απριλίου 18, 1909 (Αριθ. πίστ. 20). [p. 116]

Philadelphia Greektown

Greektown is an interesting term. It seems to have come into usage when Greeks were beginning to abandon their urban neighborhoods on their way out to the suburbs. A few Greektowns--most notably Chicago and Toronto--used the designation to create a marketable commercial area promoting a Greek experience (culinary, etc.) If you ask anyone in Philadelphia were was its Greektown, they will look at you like you're crazy. Urban redevelopment wiped out Philadelphia's Greektown in the 1960s. White flight coupled by the expansion of medical centers encouraged Greeks to leave their original neighborhood and found new communities at Elkins Park, Broomall, and Cherry Hill. Saint George, one of the two original churches, remained in its original location mostly because it served as the Cathedral of the Bishop of New Jersey. A Greek retirement home right behind the church also guaranteed the maintenance of an elderly community. 

What were the limits of Greektown in the 1920s? Well, that's one of the things we hope to establish in our research this summer. We begin with a provisional demarcation of Greektown as it was defined by oral histories in the 1960s, an area between Walnut and Lombard and Twelfth and Eighth streets. 

Greek Philadelphia. Stephano Residence

If you have ever seen a pack of Camel cigarettes, you would have undoubtedly noticed the Egyptian iconography. Egyptian tobacco was considered most elite and coveted as superior to Virginia tobacco. Few appreciate that Egyptian cigarettes were actually manufactured by the Greeks of Egypt who brought the product to the United States. Stephano Brothers was one of the best known manufacturers of Egyptian cigarettes and major players in the Greek community of Philadelphia. The company's Rameses II cigarette brand was so successful that they built a grand Beaux Arts factory on 1014-16 Walnut Street, designed by Ballinger. The photo below shows Stephano Bros (demolished in the 1960s), courtesy of Temple University Urban Archives. More photos of the building can be found at the Athenaeum in the Ballinger Archives (see here).

The Stephano family is one of the subjects of this summer's Hackman research that I am conducting with two undergraduate students. We will be studying the materialities of ethnic communities, particularly through buildings, spaces, and objects. Preliminary archival research has lead me to Constantine Stephano's naturalization papers of 1904, ten years after his arrival from Greece. He lists 317 S 12th Street as his residence. 

According to oral tradition, the Stephano Brothers began their cigarette empire at the basement of their house. If this is correct, we have established a locus of domestic manufacturing. We have written to the owners of the property and hope to gain access inside. The house belongs to a development stretching from 309 to 323 S 12th and sandwiched between older townhouses. The block is best known by two 1970s landmarks of gay life, Giovanni's Room to the south and the Alexander Inn to the north. With some further research, we will establish the construction date of this house and add it to the architectural narrative of Greektown. Although this part of the research might not be possible, I would like to compare this post-immigration residence in Philadelphia with the pre-emigration residence in village Dikorfo, Epirus, where the Stephanos originated.

The Stephano Bros. introduced their most successful brand, Rameses II, in 1895. Its early packaging (see here) featured images of Ramses II and Amenhotep. In the 1910s, the company highlighted aristocracy; this 1918 print ad deploys Washington's Mount Vernon residence up on a hill. By connecting the architectural dots, we hope to articulate an important modality of trans-nationalism in the early 20th century mitigated by the Greek diaspora. There has been little scholarship on the Stephano Brothers cigarette empire. But I suspect that their source of tobacco might have been Thrace and Macedonia. In Kavala, for instance, the American Tobacco Company had established an outpost in 1901.

From Greek Village to the American City: Archaeology of Immigration

Franklin and Marshall College has a generous policy for faculty and student collaborative research. Every summer, I bring 1-3 students to do archaeological fieldwork with me in Greece, Philadelphia, Lancaster, or North Dakota. Building on such work with students, I propose the following plan of research for this summer. Here is my Hackman Faculty Grant application. See my report from two years ago, last time I applied for funds [here]

The image [R] is the inscription on a 1908 house in Leontio, Peloponnese, marking the American journey that its proprietor took to build the house.

From Greek Village to the American City
The Archaeology of Immigration

The Deserted Greek Village Project is an archaeological survey of late medieval and early modern villages whose abandonment began in 1893, after Greece's first major economic collapse. Between the 1890s and the 1920s, one in every four Greek men of working age migrated to the United States as a result of this economic crisis. These immigrants created new “Greek towns” in American cities, while also sustaining the villages back home through remittances. The study of material culture (objects, buildings, urbanism) of this phenomenon is by necessity a transnational project. This summer, we will turn our research to the study of both deserted Greek villages and the American Greek towns of the early 20th century. The fieldwork is divided into two parts: Two weeks of fieldwork in Greece, and four weeks of fieldwork in Pennsylvania. The team will include two F&M students, Elizabeth Wood (’17) who participated in last year’s field season and Cassandra Garison (’19). Wood will investigate domestic objects and Garison will investigate the houses of the project. Although working together, the two students will diverge in primary sources and methodology, a digital museum exhibition for Wood’s objects and a GIS database for Garison’s buildings. Both students were in my House Archaeology (ART 279) seminar last semester and have demonstrated both excellence and the desire to collaborate.

All three of us will travel to Greece and work collectively for two weeks. We will continue our documentation of the Lidoriki region with drone aerial survey, 3D modeling, GIS mapping, oral histories, and museum curation. Last summer we targeted the deserted village of Aigition and its objects and presented the results of this research at the Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America in San Francsicso. Our student Lizzy Wood ('17) presented a separate co-authored poster session at that meeting. This summer, we will submit an article for review in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology. While in Greece, we will also discuss contemporary migration by visiting refugee camps established for Syrian asylum seekers.

The Pennsylvania component of our research will take place at the Balch Institute of Ethnic Studies in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Greek American Heritage Society of Philadelphia, and the Digital Harrisburg project at Messiah College. We will target three Greek towns in southeastern Pennsylvania: Harrisburg, Lancaster, and Philadelphia. With the assistance of Digital Harrisburg (that has already mapped its Greek town), we will map the Greek towns of Lancaster and Philadelphia by linking census data from 1900-1940 to individual properties. While identifying the buildings into which Greek migrated, we will also catalog contemporary objects and records from the Philadelphia diaspora (housed at the Greek American Heritage Society museum and the Balch Institute of Ethnic Studies). The questions we will ask are how did rural Greeks from mountainous villages transition into row houses of eastern Pennsylvania? What kind of material culture did they bring from Greece, and what kind of material culture did they send to Greece? Most ethnic groups migrating to the United States did not leave extensive textual sources. The first generation of immigrants, even if literate, spent its resources as laborers rather than intellectuals. Material culture, thus, offers a unique window into a transnational experience.

I initiated the Deserted Greek Village Project in 2014 with the support of a Hackman Research Fellowship and the assistance of students Joel Naiman ('15) Hackman Fellow and Joanna Radov ('16) Summer Research Fellow. Elizabeth Wood joined the research as a Summer Research Fellow in 2016. Based on those experiences, Naiman is currently pursuing a Master’s in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, and Radov is exploring graduate studies and scholarships post-graduation. Wood’s co-authored poster at the Archaeological Institute of America was the first time an F&M presents research on this national forum. This semester, Wood is taking an Independent Study, where she will design an online exhibition for the 136 objects that she recorded in the Lidoriki Folklore Museum last summer. Garison has already done demographic mapping of Lancaster census data for my House Archaeology seminar and will be learning GIS this semester.

Bibliography:

Biermann, Shelby, Todd Brenningmeyer, Sara Loynd, Miltiadis Katsaros, Kostis Kourelis, Austin Nash, Nicole Thompson, Elizabeth Wood. 2016. “Artists at Aigition: Documentation, Design, and the Investigation of Rural Greek Villages,” Poster Session, 117th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, San Francisco, January 7, 2016.

Brenningmeyer, Todd, Kostis Kourelis, and Miltiadis Katsaros. 2013. “The Lidoriki Project: A Historical Topography,” Sixth Annual Congress, Science and Technology for the Safeguard of Cultural Heritage in the Mediterranean Basin, Athens, Greece, Oct. 25, 2013.

Brenningmeyer, Todd, Kostis Kourelis, and Miltiadis Katsaros. 2015. “The Lidoriki Project - Low Altitude Aerial Photography, GIS, and Traditional Survey in Rural Greece,” Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) Annual Conference, Sienna, Italy, Mar. 30, 2015.

Brenningmeyer, Todd, Kostis Kourelis, and Miltiadis Katsaros. 2016. “Drones and Stones: Mapping Deserted Villages in Lidoriki, Greece,” 117th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, San Francisco, January 8, 2016.

Kourelis, Kostis. 2008. “The Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek-American Material Culture, 1873-1924,” in Archaeology and History in Roman, Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece: Studies on Method and Meaning in Honor of Timothy E. Gregory, ed. Linda J. Hall, William R. Caraher, and R. Scott Moore (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 411-453.

Kourelis, Kostis. 2008. “From Greek Revival to Greek America: Archaeology and Transformation in Saint George Orthodox Cathedral of Philadelphia,” New Griffon 10, pp. 28-36.

Kourelis, Kostis and William R. Caraher eds. 2010. The Abandoned Countryside: (Re)Settlement in the Archaeological Narrative of Post-Classical Greece, special issue of The International Journal of Historical Archaeology 14:2 (June 2010)

Kourelis, Kostis and Vasileios Marinis. 2012. “The Immigrant Liturgy: Greek Orthodox Worship and Architecture in America,” in Liturgy in Migration: Cultural Contexts from the Upper Room to Cyberspace, ed. Teresa Berger, pp. 155-75, (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press), pp. 155-175.

Keat's Fancy Mantel

The Anglo-American fireplace is tightly intertwined with literature. It locates the act of reading while dislocating the domestic belonging. A collegiate fireplace at the University of Pennsylvania inscribes that tension in stone. Two youngsters William C. Hays and Milton Medary designed the oldest American student union with their professor Frank Miles Day. Houston Hall is a Tudor Revival building (modeled on the 17th-century Peacock Inn, Rowley). Its main hall is flanked by two large fireplaces carved in limestone. A band runs over the eastern fireplace that contains a running stanza from Keats 1820 poem Fancy.

"Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night"

The heavy mantel becomes a didactic device for escaping the home through fancy. "Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home" is the poem's central message. Stuffy as this collegiate gesture may seem today, it contains an element of dislocation. The meaning of faggot has greatly changed over the last century from its original medieval French import into the English language. A bundle of sticks burns below a bundle of ripples. The blazing reality around which the readers bundle generates a conversation or an exit strategy.

The inglenook (literary "a corner of fire") became an obsession in British domestic architecture. Is it possible that the British hearth imaginaire could be transported to Greece? This blog, remember, explores the vernacular associations of Greek villages. If not directly, British domestic ideals would have passed to Greece through Germany, specifically through Hermann Multhesius. Published by Wasmuth press in Berlin in 1904, Multhesius's monograph The English House put British vernacular at the center of modernism. Just five years later, Wasmuth would publish Frank Lloyd Wright's famous folio that made him an instant celebrity among modernists (while still hated by Americans). While admiring the English house immensely, Multhesius cannot help himself but make fun of the British for insisting on fireplaces even as they all understand how totally inefficient they are.

I could not resist making a quick sketch of this literary marriage in stone at Houston Hall, a space that I have passed a thousand times. For more information on the building, see George Thomas and David Brownlee, Building America's First University (Philadelphia, 2000), p. 171.

Holman Bible Iron

Steel Beam Vernacular has been generally interested in the incorporation of metal into vernacular architecture. With Frank Furness as a pioneering figure, Philadelphia is well endowed. But I think I have ran into the grandest iron installation. It carries the masonry load of the whole facade (four stories) and opens up the first story in order to reveal the merchandise to the viewer. In this case, the merchandise is .... bibles. Philadelphia used to be the publishing capital of the U.S. before New York took over in the 20th century. The most profitable best seller was naturally the Bible, and Andrew J. Holman was one of its manufacturers. The Holman Bible Factory was designed by the Wilson Brothers in 1881 and located at 1222-26 Arch St (see here for details). The cast iron piers incorporate decorative elements from the brick facade (rosettes, mouldings, rustication, etc.) and dramatically express the pneumatic forces (notice Furness's trick of double-piled columns that refer to steam machinery). The iron facade is unique also in that they taper in at the base, making the building tilt towards the street. I had to stop for and take stock of the piers' complex elements.

Andy Upright & Ann Klicka

At GO WEST! Craft Fest, I met two incredible craftsmen, the master Andy Upright and his apprentice Ann Klicka, who were illustrating the production of metalworks. The rhythmic beating of the molten iron on the anvil and a most interesting conversation made me realize the uniqueness of metalwork in the general spectrum of DIY craft revivals. It dawned on me that today's popular crafts, whether it be knitting, food, or vaudeville, exist in a zone of individual self-actualization. They fit comfortably into the edges of non-offensive and isolated social activities and they are rather shy of tackling the architectural environment. The art of the metalsmith, on the other hand, links other crafts together, it communicates and creates a material continuum. It has to bind stone (building structures) to wood (human softness), it intercedes between the mason and the carpenter. Stone is too hard and wood is too soft, making it extremely difficult to set wood into stone without a metal hinge. 

Andy Upright and Ann Klicka are excellent metal artists on their own right. Although raised in Minnesota and Massachusetts, respectively, their work made me celebrate the continuity of a Philadelphia tradition that goes back to Samuel Yellin. I remember the impact Yellin's workshop had on me when I visited it with my high school class. And Ann tells me that the Yellin Workshop is still managed by Clare Yellin, Samuel's grand-daughter but is not going as strong as it did during my high-school days.

When I picked up Andy's and Ann's cards, I thought of contacting them with ideas of historian-craftsman partnerships, like documenting Philadelphia's architectural iron. But first, I needed to do something appropriate with their actual cards. What you see above was my intuitive reaction to the magic they shared with an adoring audience at Go WEST! Craft Fest (including the undivided attention of two five-year old ones). Later that day, a craft beer specialist at The Local 44 Bottle Shop recommended a Gose, a crazily medieval beer that takes like salt and lemon and is still made in Leipzig. So, I had to remove the label from the bottle and paste it next to the metalwork Andy's and Ann's cards. Both experiences made me incredibly humbled to be living in a neighborhood where craft conversations are exerting a force of resistance.

Louis Kahn's African-American Vernacular

Also posted on Society of Architectural Historians blog, March 26, 2014

When the telephone rang in my office at Franklin & Marshall College, I was surprised to learn that the caller on the other line was a resident of a Louis Kahn house and, most strikingly, a Louis Kahn house that has been largely forgotten. In 1942, Kahn, Oscar Storonov, and George Howe reconfigured the traditional row house to serve a community of African-American steel workers returning from World War II. Known to just a handful of architectural historians, Carver Court in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, had receded from public attention. And for that very reason, the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia had placed it on its 2012 Endangered Properties List. Thanks to the stewardship of Ben Leech and the research of Allee Berger, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission determined Carver Court eligible for listing in the National Register of HIstoric Places in March 2013.

As the local architectural historian, I was invited to meet with civic and community leaders of Caln Township to brainstorm on the future of this housing complex and to strategize on celebrating its unique role in the history of African-American labor. Although I am not a Kahn expert, I had worked in Louis Kahn's archives as a student, and wanted to seize the moment that William Whitaker and Ben Marcus have set into motion with their spectacular new book, The Houses of Louis Kahn, and accompanying exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives.

Carver Court is no ordinary house by virtue of its users, some of which are the original African-American steelworkers. Most of the better-known Kahn houses were commissioned by Philadelphia’s professional class and are located in the suburbs, while Carver Court engages Kahn’s early commitment to social and economic justice. If it were up to Kahn, Carver Court would not have been segregated. Race politics at this Pennsylvania mill town necessitated the residential division between black and white workers, even though both groups worked for the same Lukens Steel factory. The lynching of Zachariah Walker in 1911 underscored such ethnic tensions. Caln Township was initially settled by William Penn in 1714. Ironically, the white and black housing projects were separated by the Gardner-Beale farm, which had strong Quaker roots and served in the Underground Railroad. A farmhouse from 1811 survives and is now surrounded by Coatesville High School completed in 1968.

Louis Kahn was a housing activist as early as 1931, when he founded the Architecture Research Group. His partner, Oscar Storonov (and Alfred Kastner), had designed the first Modernist housing project in America, the Carl Mackley Houses for the hosiery workers union (1932). Kahn’s activism helped fight Philadelphia’s resistance to public housing and led into the foundation of the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Carver Court is the greatest physical manifestation of Kahn’s labor union vernacular.

Coatesville is located half way between Philadelphia and Lancaster at the intersection of the Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line and the Brandywine River. Coatesville’s steel mills, that produced the beams for the World Trade Center, are of great historical significance and, like Kahn’s housing, continue to operate (under new global management). Carver Court’s remoteness from Philadelphia and the general economic decline of manufacturing have contributed in a slow forgetting of both Pennsylvania’s labor movement and Philadelphia’s architectural engagement. Six decades after its original completion, Carver Court asks some important questions. It is only one of five housing projects designed by Kahn, Storonov, and Howe, and it the single specimen of their African-American architecture. Carver Court has slipped the radar of preservationists and historians because it looks nondescript and lacks the telltale signs of high modernist distinction. Its ordinariness, however, is what makes it exemplary. Taking cues from Le Corbusier’s elevated piloti, Kahn invented a scheme of adoptive design that reinterpreted the traditional row house. His “ground-freed” housing form elevated living quarters to the second floor and left the first floor open to the owner’s specific interpretation. Rather than limiting what the owners did with their allotted housing unit, Kahn wanted the occupants to exercise some freedom in how to use the first floor. It could function as a garage, a workshop, or added living space. The architect’s agency could be supplemented by the occupant’s agency, giving the community a sense of ownership and design engagement. Thus, the very indeterminacy of Carver Court that makes it a specimen of democratic design has also caused its progressive neglect by scholarship.

The phone call from Carver Court and the meeting with Caln Township precipitated a series of questions on both the original significance of the monument as well as the pedagogical opportunities in its rediscovery. A call from a grassroots community generates a research opportunity beyond the obvious scholarly needs. Involving undergraduate students in the documentation of Carver Court’s story seems one of those rare opportunities to engage students with artifacts. First, it is astounding how much work remains to be done even on America’s most important modernist architect. Understanding the afterlife of Carver Court is one immediate challenge, but one of great potential in teaching what Delores Hayden called “the power of place.”

Leonora Herman, Camac Street, 1924

The city is the big theme at the Phillips Museum this academic semester. Complementing the traveling show Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art, Art History major Ali Tufano has curated Art for Life's Sake: Perceptions of American Realities in the 20th Century. Tufano has brought out of the Phillips Museum's vaults a set of paintings, drawings, and photographs that have never been seen. The show includes a couple of relatively obscure female Impressionists that deserve our attention, Caroline Peart (1870-1962) and Leonora Herman (1888-1966). The latter is especially important for Franklin and Marshall College, as our studio building is named after her relative, Jacob Leon Herman (Class of 1916)

Featured in the exhibit is Leonora Herman's Camac Street, Philadelphia (1924), which opened the viewer into a remarkable historical street, as well as, to a series of questions regarding the role of the female artist in the city. This is the question that my colleague Linda Aleci raised in her lecture that compared Theresa Bernstein to Marguerite Zorach (recently curated at the Phillips Museum). For Aleci, Zorach had to leave New York City in order to create a more primordial and equitable domestic reality. It is much more difficult to answer that question for Leonora Herman since so little has been written about her life and works. In this scholarly vacuum, I try to re-inhabit Herman's painting in order to understand its contemporary urban context. I do this by a combination of observation and light research, using the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps that Penn State has recently digitized for the entire state of Pennsylvania. The relevant map is Philadelphia, vol. 2, (1916), sheet 143.

Camac Street is a North-South alleyway between 12th and 13th Streets in Center City Philadelphia. Like many such alleyways in the city, its prohibitive width has spared it from major automobile traffic and helped it retain its 19th-century charm. The block that Herman painted stretches between Spruce and Locust Streets and its best known for the innovative private clubs that it housed (and continues to house). Herman's painting focuses on the East side of the block. Built in 1825, a group of 12 row houses here were consolidated during the later 19th century into six private clubs, giving the block the name "The Little Street of Clubs." It is relevant for the artistic career of Herman because the block housed the Plastic Club, a women's fine arts club founded in 1897, to which Herman no doubt belonged. A little further down the blog, we find the oldest art club in the U.S., the Philadelphia Sketch Club, founded in 1860, but with membership limited to men. Both institutions continue to function today on the same spot. Herman's painting, therefore, should be seen as a celebration of artistic comradery and the new social roles offered to women, who would meet every Wednesday, attend a morning workshop, paint, and given the opportunity to exhibit works on a monthly show. At the Plastic Club, Herman would have interacted with leading women artists, such as Violet Oakley, who completed the murals of the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg at the same time as Herman's Camac Street was painted. And we can also presume that the painting of Camac Street was once displayed at the Plastic Club on Camac Street. The hanging textiles that Herman painted across the alley way may also refer to the spirit of exhibition that was sanctioned here.

Using the 1916 Sanborn maps, we can get a little closer to the urban environment that forms Herman's subject matter. I have extracted the relevant information on the sketch (left). The centerpiece of Herman's painting in a distinctive white stucco building with round windows, illuminated by the afternoon light shining from the west on Manning Street. Originally a stable, 255 S. Camac Street is marked in the 1916 map as "Office." Soon after the end of World War I, in 1919, it was converted into a popular tea room, The Venture Inn, run by Blanche L. James. As the photo from the Free Library of Philadelphia shows (below), this cosy tea room also functioned as an art shop. Although I am not sure if this information was known when Herman painted Camac Street in 1924, the stable had been connected to the the underground railroad. In later years, urban myth developed that the stable was originally owned by the Barrymore family of actors, but that seems to have been fabricated. Today, the Venture Inn is a centerpiece of gay pride, housing Philadelphia's oldest operating gay bar and restaurant.

The second prominent building shown in Herman's painting is the two-story red brick at 252 S Camak St, that was restored in the 2000s into the Acanthus Office Building. When Herman painted it, the structure housed Le Coin d'Or, a private club devoted to French cuisine. The space once housed a leading French restaurant, Deux Cheminees that moved one block away, and ultimately closed in 2006. Next in line, in 247 S Camac, which continues to house the Plastic Club. Rising beyond it is 239 S Camac, which housed the Charlotte Cushman Club, named after a famous actress, and first female director of the Walnut Street Theater around the corner. Cushman's Lesbian history makes this an appropriate member of today's Gayborhood. The function of the Cushman Club was to offer residence to traveling female actresses passing through Philadelphia. Although not visible in Herman's painting, two more clubs continue northwards. The Poor Richard Club (241 S Camac) was founded in 1906 by members of the advertising industry. And finally the Sketch Club (235 S Camac) provided a meeting place for artists like Thomas Eakins and W. C. Wyeth.

Having performed this archaeological review of the spaces within the painting, the work begins to take up some additional significance. Some elements need further clarification. For instance, what are those fabrics hanging between the Coin d'Or club and the garage across the street? Do they resemble flags? Might this be a reference to armistice celebrations? Furthermore, we see a finial or sculpture rising out of the corner of the corner of a distant building. What exactly is that? It is not there today.

Herman's Camac Street is more than a recording of contemporary social realities. It has an artistic value of its own that needs to be brought into alignment with the depicted subject. The interplay of light and shadow, the bright post-Impressionist colors, even the modernistic shapes of the stucco'ed Venture Tea Room command our attention. With the archaeological information in place, we might be able to unpack this work further and evaluate the work of this female artist in the cultural practices of Philadelphia.

The image of the painting, courtesy of the Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin and Marshall College. For more historical images of Camac Street, see here.