Notes on the Philadelphia Scene

The Life and Death of Philadelphia's Elite Culture

Audrey Lee wrote an excellent piece at her newsletter Audrey’s America on the Philadelphia Equinox, which included the following paragraph:

Philadelphia doesn’t have a “scene” a la downtown NYC bohemians, San Fran founders events, or D.C. happy hours. You could infiltrate the network of West Philly house show venues, straight-edge hardcore matinees, disjointed poetry collectives, or other minute scenes that mostly serve themselves (of these examples, the house show circuit has produced the most visible results). Clout and business networking exists in Philadelphia, sure, but most scenes in Philly are the archaic concept of friend groups that don’t hinge as heavily on social capital. Most transplant yuppies (note: I am one of these) are here to live lives much less scene-y than our mid-Atlantic metropolitan counterparts. A resounding attitude around many young, urban, upwardly mobile Philadelphian professionals is New York is nice, but I’m happy that I live here.

Philadelphia today, I think, is a city largely bereft of “scenes” in the way that they exist in other cities, but that was not always the case. The Philadelphia Scene, as I will call it, was a loose amalgamation of Philadelphia elite culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Philadelphia elite culture in this period may strike the modern reader as being bog standard WASP culture, but this is because WASP culture was in part born in Philadelphia. Philadelphia in particular had a personal a family driven culture.

It was said “[social acceptance is determined in] Boston by how much you know, in New York by how much you’re worth, and in Philadelphia by who you are.”¹

This jab at Philadelphia was a reference to how important a person’s ancestry, associations, and personal comportment with social norms were in Philadelphia elite society compared to America’s other old cities.

This flexible, amorphous elite culture of a generation past had all the trappings of a scene, people who ostensibly had nothing to do with one another except for mutual recognition of being in the scene. Similarly, for those on the outside, there was no clear way to be a part of it.

Philadelphia’s² “ancient prejudices” can be largely traced back to its sense of its history. Ties to one of the original families who arrived with William Penn was highly prized among Philadelphia elites. Likewise, homes on or below Market Street where these original families were given plots of land were the place to live in Philadelphia.

To live north of Market Street or “uptown” was to be, if not a pariah in polite society, at risk of ostracization. “In Philadelphia” a man explained to his bride to be, a New Yorker,

“[T]o live uptown is to be unknown by the kind of people whom you are accustomed to. Fashionable society – those whom you would call ‘nice people’ – all live in a very small section of the city, the oldest part, and nothing would induce them to set foot in any part north of Market Street, much less live there. There are many charming and intelligent men and women … who live in the northern part of down, but they are as distinct from ‘society’ as though they lived in Alaska. I feel as if I had no right to marry you without laying the case truthfully before you”³

(his New York fiancé responded “[That] is the funniest thing I ever heard of”).

There are various “just so” stories or theories explaining this prejudice against living north of Market Street, but it in the end it is one of those things that is “just so”. Much like New Yorkers living in Manhattan bemoan traveling to certain parts of Brooklyn or Queens (let alone to Jersey City or Hoboken) with a vehemence that exceed the actual logistical difficulties getting there, Philadelphians of this era would not travel north except to visit the park or the country.

Not dissimilar to modern social scenes, a base amount of material wealth, and an accompanying sensibility, is necessary, but not sufficient. Members in good standing of the Philadelphia Scene, many of whom had more social capital than capital, looked down upon some “New Money” wealth being generated by industrialization and financialization of the Gilded Age.

Living⁴ in certain uptown neighborhoods (e.g. Fairmount, Spring Garden) became synonymous with “vulgar” wealth, and, more damningly, striving. Wanting to be in “it” too bad was an absolute disqualification for acceptance into the fold.

“Residence north of Market Street became synonymous with social climbing. Call the non-acceptance of pushful plutocrats snobbery or what you will, the fact remains that anyone had a perfect right – without being harshly criticized for exercising it – to decline association with those who ill-breeding renders them objectionable.”⁵

Swap a few words around you can easily imagine a similar sentiment coming from an “It” girl’s Instagram during the height of the Dime’s Square scene in New York.

As Dime’s Square had a constellation of bars, nightclubs, podcasts, newsletters, and events spaces that made it was, so to was the Philadelphia Scene made up of constellation of clubs, events, churches, cultural institutions, professional organizations, and shared interests.

Now adays we have the hunting set, the beagling set, the golf set, the bridge set, the country-club set and sundry more … [w]eddings, balls, burials and such occasional stated functions as Athenaeums luncheons or Historical Society meetings, or the Philadelphia Orchestra Concerts on Friday afternoons, are almost the only gathers where people representative of all these social subdivisions will see one another … Thanks to the disintegrating tendencies just mentioned, Philadelphia’s social life nowadays presents a number of diverse facets rather than a single readily grasped whole.⁶

From: The Philadelphians, Katharine Bingham

Like most things, this was a moment in time. The industrialization, suburbanization, and urban decline of the midcentury ultimately destroyed the Philadelphia Scene. Elite institutions in Philadelphia that were central hubs of the scene declined to an extent that would have been unbelievable to people at the time (just look at the state of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Opera).

Over time members of the Scene themselves deurbanized. Elites increasingly decamped from Market Street and lived at country homes year-round. This diffusion across the Mainline and collar counties slowly broke down social bonds.

Gone would be the days of Wistar parties, wherein a Dr. Caspar Wistar, a prominent physician and professor, would hold Sunday “office hours” at his home at Fourth and Locust where his friends would stop by for light fare and stimulating conversation with whomever else happened to stop by⁷.

Even aided by the automobile, “stopping by” becomes a different proposition traveling dozens of miles across multiacre estates verses a stroll down to Locust from Market.

The Real Story Behind Villanova’s Ardrossan and The Philadelphia Story

The classic film “The Philadelphia Story” provides wonderful (and entertaining) look into this flash of brilliance before the supernova that destroyed the Philadelphia Scene. For a brief moment the Scene was transposed out of Philadelphia into the Main Line, where they reached their most opulent. Within a generation, even many of these great homes built by Philadelphians were demolished, and within another generation or two, most Philadelphians had completely forgotten this social history of our city.

It’s the season of the vandals… The remains of Whitemarsh Hall, one of the greatest private residences of the Mainline during this time, and perhaps ever built in America. Photo from The Twilight of Splendor: Chronical of the Age of American Palaces, James T. Maher, page 18.

A note on sourcing: I am missing perhaps the most important work on this subject “Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class” by E. Digby Baltzell. That is, candidly, because I do not have a copy of it, and have not read it yet. I wanted to tap this out fairly quickly with materials I had at hand.

Check out Audrey’s piece which inspired this one:

Scene Report: Equinox Rittenhouse

And subscribe here if you want occasional notes and commentary on Philadelphia history in your inbox:

1. Philadelphia Scrapple, page iiv

2. “Philadelphia as it is cannot really be known without some knowledge of Philadelphia as it was” - Source: Our Philadelphia, Elizabeth Robins Pennell

3. The Philadelphians, Katharine Bingham, page 15

4. “They live on North Broad Street; they made their money in – I forget what, but something very common, and it is such an immense fortune that I consider is positively vulgar” Source: The Philadelphians, Katharine Bingham, page 24

5. Philadelphia Scrapple, page 8

6. Philadelphia Scrapple, page 14

7. For more see: Philadelphia Scrapple, page 137