[PRCo] Re: Suburban shopping areas

[Fred Schneider]

Thanks old buddy for taking the time to add something from the east  
end of the state.

  I'm going to pass this on to some of the people at PTM by blind  
carbon so that they can read about where our 66, 78, 10, 14 and 24 ran.

To Ed Lybarger:   I'm sending it to Bernie, Jeff, Scott, Dave, Larry,  
Justin, Tim and Barb.   If you can think of anyone else who might  
want to read Rich's memories of life on the Red Arrow West Chester  
Division a half century and more ago, feel free to forward.  Same  
applies to the others at PTM who get it.   I'm also passing this on  
to Bruce Bente, who also knows Rich and who met both of us about 50  
years ago when he was a student at Villanova University.   Bruce has  
his memories too.   While most people enjoyed days off in snow  
storms ... he got part time jobs with PST shoveling the white stuff  
off car stops whenever it was deep enough to cancel classes.  And he  
carried his camera with him on snow duty!

I might add that anyone who likes Korean food is welcome to initiate  
a trip to 69th Street Terminal with me and probably we can easily  
talk Rich into going along too.   The Korean place Rich mentions on  
West Garrett Road is a favorite of both of us.

Fred Schneider

On Apr 11, 2007, at 6:38 PM, Richard Allman wrote:

> My parents moved to Westgate Hills, a trolley suburb on the PSTCo.  
> West
> Chester line, in 1940. Single brick home, two story colonial, 3 br- 
> $5000, $5
> down-3% 20 year mortgage. Those houses now sell for $250,000- 
> they're 67
> years old. Westgate Hills was marketed as a trolley suburb. The  
> same builder
> developed almost identical tracts further out WC Pike in Broomall,  
> though I
> think those houses are some bit larger.My father often, and my  
> mother and I
> always rode the car line to 69th. St. to either connect w/ the El  
> to go
> sowntown or to my grandmother's in Kensington or to shop or do  
> movies @ 69th
> St., a vibrant retail hub. There were 3 movies, including one in the
> terminal. That's where the super markets were: a Penn Fruit up on  
> the hill @
> south end of McClatchy's 69th St. shopping complex and an A&P up  
> the hill
> from the PTC parking lot on Market St. on the border of the   
> Borrough of
> Millbourne. I preferred the latter-I could sit in the car and until  
> I was 5
> years old in 1949, watch the P&W and Liberty Bell cars come into the
> station. EVERYTHING was @ 69th St, including the first suburban  
> branch of a
> downtown department store in our , Frank and Sedar Company (weren't  
> they in
> Pittsburgh as well?) It later became Lit Brothers. They had a lending
> library my mother used. Her hairdresser was on 69th St. Our dentist  
> was a
> short walk up Long Lane from the Terminal. our doctor had an office  
> in the
> McClatchy Building @ 69th & Market two evenings a week.When my  
> father would
> leave the car for my sister to drive after she got her license in  
> 1951, he
> would take the trolley  and there was a shoe repair place in the  
> Terminal
> where he would drop off shoes in the am and pick them up in the pm.  
> What a
> parade of trolleys out WC Pike-he usually caught a 2-car Center Door
> Westgate Hills Local, though he could take the West Chester or  
> Larchmont
> Express, since Westgate Hills was the first stop. I got to ride the  
> St.
> Louis cars on the first day they entered service in June 1949. We  
> always got
> our Christmas Tree and saw Santa @ the 69th St. Penn Fruit. There  
> may have
> been an outdoor train ride there as well @ Christmas. 69th St had  
> evening
> shopping hours on Monday and Friday, a real innovation. Westgate  
> Hills, like
> all of Haverford Township, is now a mature inner suburb with a  
> relatively
> stable population. To the extent that it is prosperous, it is as a  
> starter
> home destination for first or second generation Asian Americans.  
> 69th Street
> is to be politically correct, a scary place. The old retail outlets  
> are gone
> and replaced by what is distinctly downscale, including check cashing
> places, tattoo parlors, cheap electronics venues, a couple fast  
> food joints,
> chain pharmacies, etc. The only remaining movie house is the old  
> Tower at
> 69th and Ludlow. It's used for occasional Rock shows. The terminal  
> has a
> coffee shop which is fitfully open, a SEPTA store, some "community  
> living
> homeless" aka schizophrenics whom the state hospitals have dumped  
> onto the
> streets. A visit to 69th St. is sad for the nostalgic, and scary  
> for the
> general public. The Terminal once had a couple decent restaurants,  
> but long
> gone. The area has a few glimmers of hope with a SLOWLY budding  
> Asia Town,
> including an outstanding Korean restaurant, a very nice Vietnamese
> restaurant, and a vibrant all-Asian supermarket. When I was  kid  
> there was a
> great record store, a nice book store, two hobby shops, all of the  
> shoe
> store chains, a Woolworths, and a Kresge's (ancestor of KMart)and  
> JC Penny.I
> would venture that a substantial chunk of the ridership on the old  
> Red Arrow
> is now counterdirectional, for low skills entry-level people  
> heading for
> jobs in the 'burbs. The P&W(alright-Route 100) carries a lot of  
> city people
> to jobs @ Bryn Mawr Hospital and to Gulph Mills to catch busses to   
> King of
> Prussia Mall. SEPTA has on the drawing boards a short extension  
> from Hughes
> Park to King of Prussia, involving minimal new site acquisition, no  
> NIMBY
> issues, no need to acquire new rolling stock(enough N-5's were  
> purchased to
> roster this service, since they have more cars and many more seats  
> than they
> had in 1946, their peak year of service on 2 lines!) As usually  
> happens w/
> SEPTA,  unlike some of the pipe dreams with gargantuan price tags,  
> this low
> budget project, with an instant market will almost certainly never  
> be built!
> Thanks a lot Fred for winding me up! RICH
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Cc: "Dennis Lamont" <ge13031 at yahoo.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 11:13 AM
> Subject: [PRCo] Suburban shopping areas
>
>
>> My wife gets on me because my definition of suburban and hers do not
>> match.   I refer to suburban as anything beyond the original and then
>> existing core ... there were foot suburbs, then horsecar suburbs,
>> then trolley suburbs, then bus suburbs, and eventually automobile
>> suburbs, and then we got to acre building lot suburbs made possible
>> by expressways into the city.   Her idea of a suburb is what she
>> called suburbs in her lifetime.
>>
>> If you become adept at identifying the ages when buildings were
>> erected you can play a neat little game of recognizing how houses
>> were built when or just before the trolleys came to an area.   In
>> Lancaster County it's astonishing how many homes alongside the major
>> rural highways were built in the teens and twenties because the
>> trolley was there, often even before the road was paved.   If you are
>> lucky you might find a program in your local historical society that
>> will teach you how to recognize the ages of buildings.   It can be a
>> lot of fun.
>>
>> So go back and think of those earlier suburbs in our cities.  Each of
>> them had their own shopping districts.   Mount Lebanon, Carson
>> Street, McKees Rocks, Wilkinsburg, Homestead, Allegheny, Dormant
>> (ooops, Dormont), Mt. Lebanon, Squirrel Hill, etc.
>>
>> If Rich Allman is still reading, he'll remember when 69th St.
>> Terminal in Upper Darby vibrant ... and Lancaster Avenue and
>> Frankford and we could find other neighborhoods all over Philadelpha.
>>
>> Most of them also had neighborhood theaters.   I think East Liberty
>> had seven of them at one time.
>>
>> As much as I don't like chain merchandising, we can probably all
>> remember some early chains ... F. W. Woolworth (instead of Woolco),
>> S. S. Kresge (instead of K-Mart), G. C. Murphy (instead of
>> Murphymart), Sears Roebuck (before the malls there used to be one on
>> the North Side and one in East Liberty and probably quite a few
>> others scattered around Pittsburgh).   Remember Fanny Farmer candy
>> stores.   And all those bakeries that served wonderful granulated
>> sugar donuts?   Thy were everywhere.   Every neighborhood had them.
>> And Isalys was everywhere purveying chipped ham and milkshakes and
>> Klondikes.
>>
>> As I pointed out before, my Pittsburgh grandparents lived off
>> Perrysville Avenue ... 3462 Delaware Avenue to be precise ... one
>> block up Chemung Street from the car stop.   It was a streetcar
>> suburb.   They moved there from an earlier home on Veteran Street
>> just off the north end of the Fineview line.    Grandma patronized a
>> little corner grocery store down at Perrysville and Chemung; it was
>> still there a couple of years ago.  But she was in between two
>> neighborhood shopping districts.   One was Perrysville and Charles
>> Streets.   I remember being asked to take a hike down there to a
>> hardware store once when she needed a toilet plunger.  I also
>> remember a small store with a black sign across the front emblazoned
>> with gold letters with read THE GREAT ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC TEA
>> COMPANY.   Long before A&P had supermarkets, they were the champion
>> of the chain corner grocery store.   This one was on the west side of
>> Perrysville Avenue just south of Charles Street.
>>
>> The other neighborhood shopping center that she could use was at
>> Perrysville Avenue and East Streets.  My mother went to high school
>> at Perry High School (now Perry Academy) out there and she even
>> remembered a girl friend who came in on the interurban from
>> Warrendale (PHB&NC).   Why, because cities had high schools and most
>> rural areas did not.   Oh yes, Perrysville and East had a movie
>> theater.   Wasn't it called the East Street Theater?   I remember
>> that before I learned how to do, I at least knew how to watch.   Went
>> there once when I was 14 or 15 to watch Marilyn Monroe in the movie
>> Niagara.   As the neighborhoods turned, the shopping district at
>> Charles Street faltered.  I'm not sure what is out at East Street any
>> longer.
>>
>> Even the little city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where we moved in
>> 1949, population 65,000 in 1950 and 55,000 today, once had at least
>> one neighborhood shopping districts.   The Laurel and Filbert street
>> car served the intersection of Old Dorwart Street and Manor Street,
>> not even 3/4s of a mile from the main shopping district.   Yet this
>> little neighborhood then nicknamed Cabbage Hill because of all the
>> Germans cooking sauerkraut had its own supermarket, the Manor five
>> and dime, a hardware store, and the Manor Theater.   They're all
>> closed today.   The highlight of the neighborhood today is a couple
>> that made the mistake of standing up during a wedding reception on
>> Old Dorwart Street last spring and got nailed by a hail of
>> bullets ... the court room replay was going on in the paper last
>> night.   The wedding reception just happened to get in the way of a
>> drug deal gone sour.   Oh yes, the Germans are  gone.   Columbians
>> moved in.
>>
>> Hope it brought back a few memories.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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