Between the Delaware River and Girard Avenue, which is the market street
of the future, and east of Frankfort Road, lies Kensington, a
respectable old district of the Quaker City, and occupying the same
relation to it that Kensington in England does to London. Beyond both
Kensingtons is a Richmond, but the English Richmond is a beauteous hill,
with poetical recollections of Pope and Thomson, while our Richmond is
the coal district of Philadelphia, flat to the foot and dingy to the
eye.
Kensington, however, was once no faint miniature of the staid British
suburb. The river bending to the eastward there conducts certain of the
streets crookedly away from the rectangular Quaker demon who is ever
seeking to square them. Along the water side, or near it, passes a sort
of Quay Street, between ship-yards and fish-houses on the one side, and
shops or small tenements on the other, and this street scarcely
discloses the small monument on the site of the Treaty Tree, where
William Penn in person satisfied the momentary expectations of his
Indian subjects.
Nearly parallel to the water side street is another, wider and more
aristocratic, and lined with many handsome dwellings of brick, or even
brown-stone, where the successful shipbuilders, fishtakers, coal men,
and professional classes have established themselves or their posterity.
Pages:
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161