Social Geography goes to Philadelphia and Atlantic City

December 2006

Kevin Patrick

Artadelphia:

Public Art and the Projection of Place in Philadelphia

Rain did not deter the group's enthusiasm for seeing how public art traditionally reflected the values and ideals of a larger society using classical references, as reflected in Fairmount Park's heroic Smith Memorial Arch (1897-1912). This City Beautiful-inspired Civil War monument glorifies Federal military commanders connected to Pennsylvania in the mode (if not the exact form) of an arch de triumph. General George Gordon Meade (commander at Gettysburg) and Major General John Fulton Reynolds (killed at Gettysburg) are in the dominant positions atop the columns, while Major General Winfield Scott Hancock (born in Pennsylvania), and General George B. McClellan (born in Pennsylvania) are on horseback. The arch also memorializes its benefactor, Richard Smith, and its artist/architect, James H. Windrim.

Accompanying the Smith Memorial Arch are a set of "whispering benches" that transmit whispers between each end of a long curved seat - neoclassical park fun from the turn of the 20th century.

Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

Begun as part of an anti-graffiti initiative in 1984, Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program has grown to include more than 2,000 murals scattered throughout the city -more than any other city on the planet. Unlike the top-down approach of traditional public art, which tends to reflect the values and ideals of a larger, dominant culture, the Mural Arts Program works at the neighborhood level, bringing artists and community members together to portray images that are meaningful at a more localized scale. Although some murals illustrate artistic expression over history, ethnicity, shared-experience, and other place-based themes, others reflect the social environment within which they were created. As such, they are a landscape mirror to the social statistics and historical geography that can be gathered at the neighborhood scale.

Philadelphia Stars, 44th & Parkside (above left); History and Expectation, 44 & Leidy (above right).

Celebration of Community, 45th & Market

Celebration of Community portrays the warmth and happiness of family and commitment above the bountiful harvest from a community garden. In the spirit of the setting, a local street artist (left) makes a crayon rendition of Nate's "strong, cowboy-like" features.

Peace Wall, 29th & Wharton

Mario Lanza, Broad & Reed (above left); Frank Sinatra, Broader & Wharton (above right)

South Philly Sense of Place

Artadelphia on the Parkway

Prominently located in front of the Art Museum, Philadelphia’s Washington Monument is an elaborate baroque masterpiece significant enough to have been dedicated by President William McKinley in 1897. An equestrian George Washington stands at the center and highest of three levels. Grouped figures stand at the front and rear of the pedestal; the forward arrangement shows America receiving trophies from her victorious sons, while in the rear grouping America reveals to her sons the dangers of slavery. An integral fountain represents four American rivers -the Hudson, Delaware, Potomac, and Mississippi- guarded at the lowest level by North American animals, including the elk Bobbie is heroically riding (below right).

Rocky: Icon or Eyesore?

                             Tourists....

Isaiah Zagar's Amazing Mosaics

Like all things geographic, public art has a certain scale dependency, whether it is the distillate of a national culture, the message of a neighborhood, or the works of an individual. Urban folk artist Isaiah Zagar operates from a studio at 610 South Street. His unique wall mosaics made from bits of ceramic tile, glass, mirror, bottles, and other urban flotsam and jetsam have advanced beyond the artistic interpretations of an individual to become part of the identity of South Street, “the hippist street in town.”

 Isaiah Zagar conducts a mosaic demonstration during a previous visit to the studio (below).  

Field trippers en route to the birth place of another famous South Street "artist"  -Larry Fine.

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15 to Atlantic City...the Hard Way,

Through the Pine Barrens

Morning found us in the Jersey suburbs. From a motel with a turnpike view, we rose to reorganize at the most quintessential of New Jersey places: a big, suburban diner on the rim of a traffic circle.  After daring each other to eat scrapple, we set off for Atlantic City by way of the Pine Barrens.

Olga's Diner, Marlton, New Jersey

The Pine Barrens as Social Space

Civilization is an urbane concept that by its very existence invariably creates an un-civilized, or less-than civilized, or at the very least a less-sophisticated civilized “other” out on the non-urban periphery. This happens at multiple scales, such as the developed First World in comparison to the developing Third World; or the dominant culture’s core region relative to the indigenous minority of the frontier; or in something as localized and simple as city-folk versus country-folk. Even a place as urbane as New Jersey, has isolated spots of relative wilderness, the largest of which is the Pine Barrens, a great expanse of pine-oak forests and cedar swamps on the sandy coastal plain between the outermost suburbs of Philadelphia and the shore resorts along the Atlantic Ocean. Rather than being barren of vegetation, the Pine Barrens originally referred to a region that was not well suited for agriculture. The small, scattered population that eked out a living in this environment came to be known as the “Pineys,” originally a pejorative term implying backwardness, and ignorance that has since become a badge of pride, especially among recent arrivals who would be more accurately defined as “suburbanites.”

The Pine Barrens can be a very disorienting. The flat terrain is closely packed with trees and underbrush, and alternates between tangled swamps, and low sandy ridges. View sheds are limited, noteworthy landmarks are few, and roads and trails tend to be sunken in a way that makes them virtually invisible when viewed from the woods. It is easy to become lost. As an isolated and alienating wilderness historically sidestepped by the main thrust of development, the Pine Barrens is a place steeped in legend, the most famous of which is that of the Jersey Devil. Although many variants of the story exist, they all tend to begin with a poor, Leeds Point woman cursing the birth of her thirteenth child who arrives as a distorted, winged mutation that escapes into the woods soon after its birth. It is a New Jersey rite of youth to take night-time excursions into the Pine Barrens in search of the Jersey Devil, with much of the associated fear factor being delivered not by a demonic mutation, but by other altered youths searching for the Jersey Devil.

  Carranza Memorial

Uh...okay people of Mexico, thanks. I guess.

Cranberry Bogs and Pygmy Pine Forests

Agriculture does exist in the Pine Barrens, but emphasizes indigenous species that can tolerate the acidic, sandy soils, like cranberries and blueberries. Field trippers examine a cranberry bog near Chatsworth, before heading off to the mysterious pygmy pine forest. The pitch pines growing in the West Plains near Warren Grove are no different than those growing elsewhere in the Pine Barrens except their usual 40-feet mature height is stunted to about four feet. Explanations related to soil conditions, fire and wind have all been offered, but none have been accepted as the definitive answer to the anomaly. Mystery or no, the pygmy pine forest allowed even the shortest among us to feel like giants.

Atlantic City as a Monopoly Board

As social geographers, our desire to visit Atlantic City was not (much) driven by a desire to gamble, drink, swim, or eat saltwater taffy, but to determine whether the social geography of the city really reflected that of the Monopoly board.

The roots of Monopoly go back to a 1904 patent by Lizzie Magie for something called “The Landlord’s Game,” which was a real estate board game played on a square of 40 properties that ascended in value in a clockwise direction of play. The game, with a history of home rules including the labeling of originally undesignated properties after local streets, was popular on college campuses and parlor tables. In 1929, it took hold among a group of Atlantic City players led by Ruth Hoskins, who gave their version of the game the familiar names of Atlantic City streets they lived on and were familiar with. Philadelphia acquaintance Charles Darrow, was introduced to the game through this group. Recognizing its commercial potential, Darrow redesigned the board, christened the game Monopoly, and started selling homemade sets to Philadelphia department stores and New York’s FAO Swartz in 1934. Its brisk sales convinced Parker Brothers to pick up the game in 1935, buying all previous patents and providing the capital to make Monopoly one of the most popular board games in history. An inadvertent byproduct of the game’s success was the institutionalization of Atlantic City social geography. Mediterranean and Baltic avenues are widely recognized as the “cheap streets,” while a hotel on Boardwalk and Park Place is a metaphor for living large. Was this an accurate portrayal of Atlantic City at the time, or were the street values just randomly assigned?

Atlantic City, 1894 (left; click for larger view); Atlantic City, 1900 (right; click for larger view)

Although not a perfect statistical match of median incomes, Darrow’s Monopoly board nonetheless reflects an intimate knowledge of Atlantic City street-level social landscapes as they had emerged by the early 20^th century, especially related to the idea of rental properties in the seaside resort. Atlantic City was founded in 1854 after the Camden & Atlantic Railroad drove a line from Camden, New Jersey, (with ferry service to Philadelphia) straight across the Pine Barrens to an otherwise deserted, windswept barrier island on the Atlantic Ocean for the expressed purpose of creating a seaside resort. The venture was spectacularly successful, and a competing line, the Philadelphia & Atlantic City Railroad, entered the city in 1877. The Pennsylvania Railroad took over the former line, and the Reading Railroad acquired the latter. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad never had a line to Atlantic City, but connected with Reading trains to A.C. in Philadelphia. There was no such thing as the Short Line, but the similarly named Shore Fast Line operated as an electric interurban that ran to Ocean City from an A.C. terminus at Virginia Avenue and the Boardwalk.

Atlantic City's Union Station (and bus depot) opened at Arctic & Arkansas in 1934, one year after the Depression-strapped Pennsylvania and Reading railroads merged their Jersey shore lines into the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines. The building was demolished in 2001 (above). A Shore Fast Line interurban car in the Beach Thoroughfare back bay after a 1906 draw bridge wreck (above right).

Arriving at last on the Jersey shore in Atlantic City.

Supper at Bill's on the Boardwalk, showing all the money that didn't make it into the casinos (above)...and some that did (below).

Looking toward Park Place and the 1930 Claridge Hotel (above left). Midtown Boardwalk at Illinois Avenue (above right).

A 1940s view up the Boardwalk past Brighton Park toward the now demolished Traymore Hotel (above left). The exclusive Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel once stood at the high rent corner of Boardwalk & Park Place. Ballys Casino-Hotel stands there now.

East on Baltic Avenue from Kentucky Avenue showing the old Liberty Hotel, which catered to black tourists into the 1950s (above left). A row of recently restored gable-front houses on Mediterranean Avenue east of Connecticut Avenue.

The Absecon Lighthouse is the icon of Monopoly's light blue, Uptown properties. Separated by about a century, the views are remarkably similar; the older (above left) depicts a thin neighborhood at an early stage of development, and the newer -taken on Connecticut Avenue- (above right) shows a thinned-out neighborhood resulting from post-Casino demolition.

Built by the Camden & Atlantic Railroad, the United States Hotel was Atlantic City's first large seaside resort. It stood on Atlantic Avenue, and was connected to the beach by a mule-drawn tram, the right-of-way of which eventually became States Avenue (shortened from United States). Although popular in the early days, the United States Hotel was remote from where the fulcrum of the city would eventually end up, closer to the main railroad stations in Midtown. After the hotel was leveled, States Avenue became a short, but broad, boulevard lined with large summer homes.

St. Charles Place, States and Virginia avenues lie between Trump's Taj Mahal, and the Showboat Casino. The lower part of Virginia Avenue is now Taj Mahal Way. Only a nub of States Avenue has survived as a short connector between a large surface lot and the Showboat, and another Showboat parking lot is where St. Charles Place once was.

Steel Pier when it was the "Showplace of the World" (above left). Steel Pier now (above right), a tawdry shadow of its former self.

A sense of vintage, Monopoly-era Atlantic City can still be experience on Tennessee Avenue between Pacific Avenue and the Boardwalk (above); around St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church at Tennessee & Pacific (below); and on nearby St. James Place (bottom).

Older hotels on St. James Place (above), including the Elwood Hotel, which has been converted into the Irish Pub, a popular nightspot and compliment to the neighborhood.

Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois avenues are the red zone gateway to the wealthier half of the Monopoly board. Their real life positions are in the center of the city between New York Avenue and Park Place, closest to the action and home to some of the city’s largest and most prestigious hotels and night clubs. The Harlem Club, famed for its African American performers (many of whom lodged on Baltic Avenue), stood at 32 Kentucky Avenue, around the corner from Atlantic Avenue, the first of the adjacent yellow properties.

Comparing old-Atlantic City's orange street hotels with its larger, up-scaled red street hotels, illustrates the difference in the Monopoly rents. View from Kentucky Avenue toward Illinois Avenue's Madison Hotel (above left). The now-closed Sands stands on the site of the exclusive Brighton Hotel between Illinois and Indiana avenues (above right), and across from the Claridge Hotel, Frank Sinatra's favored home away from home whenever he played Atlantic City.

The Brighton Hotel (above left) screened all of its guests to make sure they were the right kind of clientele. Even guests of guests were scrutinized, and rejected if they were staying at any hotel other than the Marlborough-Blenheim or Traymore. The first part of the Traymore Hotel opened at Illinois & the Boardwalk in 1906. It expanded to become the nation's largest hotel in 1914, and was finally imploded in 1972, long after classic Atlantic City's party was over, but before the casino gambling began.

Atlantic City's casinos could not spare the retail district along Atlantic Avenue from suffering the fate of so many other downtown's in urban America; loss of business, shrinking markets, competition from suburban shopping centers, and insensitive demolitions, yet much of the historic built environment remains, and awaits renovation. Meanwhile, life is still good in suburban Marven Gardens (below).

Beyond the yellow suburbs are Monopoly’s green streets. Although closer to the Boardwalk, Pacific Avenue was actually laid out well after Atlantic Avenue on land deposited by an advancing shoreline. Many of the city’s largest churches staked out a Pacific Avenue address, rising among the homes of the well-to-do, who also lived on the intersecting North Carolina and Pennsylvania Avenues (actually located between light purple Virginia Avenue, and orange Tennessee Avenue). This was Ruth Hoskins’ comfortable neighborhood, which likely played a role in its position on the Monopoly board. The social landscape nonetheless fit its esteemed location on the board’s fourth side. Her circle of pre-Monopoly playing friends included other Quakers like herself, some of whom owned hotels and worshipped at the Friends Meeting House on Pacific and South Carolina avenues.

Pacific Avenue, showing St. Nicholas, and the now demolished Olivet Presbyterian church (above left). After their merger, the second generation Chalfonte (1904) and Haddon (1929) hotels (above right) were connected by a pedestrian walkway across North Carolina Avenue.

Churches still line Pacific Avenue (above left), even if much of the street's elegance has been rubbed off in its conversion to accommodate cheap off-Boardwalk hotels, restaurants and casino parking lots. Although the Chalfonte was lost, Haddon Hall was rehabilitated by Resorts International to become the first A.C. gambling casino to open in 1978 (above right). North Carolina Avenue from a new pedestrian bridge that connects Resorts to a large surface lot where the Chalfonte once stood (below).

Somewhere between GO and Mediterranean Avenue.

The IUP Social Geography class takes in a high-roller's breakfast at Atlantic City institution, White House Subs (above left); and then makes a brief stop at the Patrick family homestead in Deptford, New Jersey (above right).

A.C. Sunset

Field Trip Participants

Dr. Kevin Patrick

Adam Conner

Steveo Davis

Amee Gatto

Gibbo

Jordan Haines

Lindy K

Aaron K

Shanna Murphy

Nate-O

Mark Rice

Nicole Sharkey

Alesha Shumar

Kristen Tremblay

Bobbie Z

Special guest appearances by,

Mary Ryder

Pat and Gloria Patrick

Some Philadelphia street artist

Those guys in A.C.

That dude from Australia

Sources

Bach, Penny Balkin. Public Art in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992.

Golden, Jane, Robin Rice, Monica Yant Kinney, David Graham and Jack Ramsdale. Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002.

Kennedy, Rod Jr., and Jim Waltzer in association with the Atlantic City Historical Museum. Monopoly: The Story Behind the World's Best Selling Game, Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2004.

Levi, Vicki Gold, and Lee Eisenberg. Atlantic City: 125 Years of Ocean Madness, Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1979.

Simon, Bryant. Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.