Studio 34: Yoga | Healing | Arts, a wellness center in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

the eponymous trolley

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[Image: Route 34 trolleys: A PCC trolley leads an 8000-series streetcar along Baltimore Avenue.]

Serving the community: A PCC trolley leads an 8000-series streetcar along Baltimore Avenue. Photo by Rob Hutchinson. Used with permission.

Or, A Short History of Route 34

We named Studio 34: Yoga | Healing | Arts after the streetcars that run past it: Route 34 of SEPTA's Subway-Surface Lines.

The Green Line trolleys connect our neighborhood along one of its main thoroughfares: Baltimore Avenue. They provide environmentally sound transportation to downtown Philadelphia and are a living link to the founding of West Philadelphia as an early suburb.*

[Image: A horsecar, an early form of transit in Philadelphia.]

Early transit: Horsecars arrived in Philadelphia in 1831. Photo from SEPTA history page.

When William Penn laid out the plans for his new city, he left the land to the west of the Schuykill River for farms and what small settlements might develop. Light industry rose up around Mill Creek, a fast-flowing river whose traces remain as the bowl in present-day Clark Park. By the 1860s, the mills had mostly disappeared, but residential development had picked up speed, thanks to a new form of public transit that connected the newly annexed city district to downtown: streetcars drawn by horses along tracks. (A city ordinance soon fixed the width between the rails at 5 feet, 2 1/4 inches, the standard that prevails to this day.*) The horsecar lines stopped at 43rd Street, and therefore, so did most development.*

In the next few decades, horsecars were joined by steam-powered, financially unprofitable "dummies," then streetcars pulled by cables. But the big boom arrived with electrically powered trolleys in 1892.* Fast and clean, the trolleys were immediately popular, and within five years, all lines were electrified.* Tracks quickly spread, connecting existing neighborhoods and fostering new ones to the west and southwest. By 1906, every West Philly resident lived within four blocks of a trolley line.

Trolleys on Baltimore Avenue predated electrification. The first service began in 1890, with tracks running from 20th and South Streets to 40th and Baltimore via Lancaster Avenue.* Electric-powered streetcars began operating on 13 January 1895 under the flag of the Delaware County and Philadelphia Electric Railway Company.* The next year, service ended on Lancaster, and tracks were laid westward along Baltimore to 61st Street in the then-distant community of Angora. Service along Baltimore became known as the Angora Line.*

Initially, the eastern end of the route took trolleys on a loop around 40th, Locust, and 36th Streets, and sent them back westward on Spruce and then Woodland to Baltimore. But the traction companies quickly noted the demand for a line that connected West Philadelphia with the Delaware River waterfront, and in February 1895, the route was extended to run east along Lombard to Front Street, returning westward on South Street.*

For a few months in 1896, the route from West Philly terminated in the depot at 25th and South Streets. It was reextended in September to Front Street via Chestnut (eastbound) and Walnut (westbound). The West Philly path was altered as well; instead of using 40th and 38th streets to get from Baltimore to Spruce, trolleys began using 42nd Street for their brief north-and-south legs.*

[Image: An 8000-series car at 42nd and Baltimore in the 1920s.]

In the 1920s: An 8000-series car at 42nd Street and Baltimore Avenue. (See this corner in 2007.) Photo from the Henry Adamcik Collection of the Electric City Trolley Museum Association. Used with permission.

As the number of "traction companies" proliferated, the tracks became clogged with competing streetcars. Less than a decade after the arrival of electric lines over Baltimore Avenue, four companies were operating on the Angora Line. The Delaware Cty & Philadelphia Elec. Ry. Co. had been quickly joined in January 1895 by the Electric Traction Company, followed by The Union Traction Company in July 1896 and the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company in July 1902.* City leaders decided that the solution to this transit traffic-jam was a colossal merger, and in 1903, 33 transit firms were consolidated into the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company.*

The supersized PRTC quickly built a subway tunnel to link West Philly's trolleys to City Hall in 1906, and opened the elevated Market Street line in 1907. It also slashed the number of free passes issued annually to local politicians.*

In 1911, the city's streetcar population hit its all-time high: 4,000 cars. The year also welcomed the first of 1,500 Nearside cars, so named because their front-end passenger doors required a stop on the "near side" of intersections instead of the far-side stops made by rear-door trolleys.*

[Image: PTC 8114 - 30th and Market WB]

"Pepsi-Cola: the light refreshment": PTC 8114 stops at 30th and Market. This was one of the "single-end" cars built by J.G. Brill from 1923 to 1926. Photo from "Single End 1923-26 Cars," Henry Adamcik Collection, Electric City Trolley Museum Association. Used with permission.

Late in the year, Philadelphia began to redesignate its electric railway routings with route numbers, becoming the first American city to adopt the practice, which was already widespread in Europe. Initially, routes were numbered in the order in which they were equipped with Nearside cars. The following year, a citywide plan was drawn up assigning lines 2 through 78. (No. 1 was assigned to the Market Street subway-elevated line.) In March 1913, the list was changed once again to reflect the planned consolidation or elimination of several lines; this list ran from 2 to 65.* The Angora Line became Route 34.*

The next decade brought tighter management to the city's streetcar lines. In 1920, the PTRC noted that the average speed of a streetcar had risen to 9.33 mph, up 1.3 mph.* The firm halved accident costs through its "Miss Safety-First" program, which sent motormen to local schools to preach the virtues of looking both ways. A two-cent rate hike brought the price of single ride to 7 cents, or four fares for a quarter.*

[Image: Miss Safety-First, a 1910s-era trolley-safety program in Philadelphia]

"Before Miss Safety-First": Children rush across in front of a streetcar in this image from a 1920 brochure by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company. Image from "Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company; Stotesbury - Mitten Management; Results of Ten Years Operation, 1911-1920," phillytrolley.org.

But the arrival of the automobile had increasingly drained transit ridership and fomented sprawl, and in 1939, Philadelphia's trolley company declared bankruptcy. It reemerged as the Philadelphia Transportation Company. By 1953, the PTC was running 49 trolley routes,* making it the world's largest urban transit company still in private hands.*

[Image: PCC Car 2799 at 40 Street Station]

Designed in 1945 and delivered to Philadelphia between 1946 and 1948, the 198 PCC all-electrics were the "classic Philly trolley" for much of the postwar generation. The slanted windshield was for the motorman's benefit; it was intended to reduce distracting glare from the well-lit interior.*


Here, PCC Car 2799 enjoys a brief post-retirement jaunt at the 40th Street Station on 2 February 2002. This car is now preserved at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. Photo by BIll Monaghan. Used with permission.

But the forces that had changed its larger cousins would not be denied, and in 1965, the PTC was absorbed by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, established two years earlier to help area railroads keep running unprofitable commuter rail service.

In 1981, the first of SEPTA's 112 Kawasaki LRV trolleys began arriving. PCCs were phased out of service on Route 34 (although 15 rebuilt PCCs were returned to service on Route 15, bringing trolleys back to Girard Street after more than a dozen years of bus service).*

[Image: A Kawasaki Route 34 trolley at Baltimore and 43rd in 2008.]

Today's trolleys: A Kawasaki streetcar runs along Route 34 at Baltimore and 43rd in 2008. (See this corner in 2007.) Photo by Studio 34.

Today, SEPTA's Route 34 stretches 10.1 miles from downtown's Juniper Station to the Angora Loop at 61st Street and Baltimore Ave., the shortest of the remaining Subway-Surface lines*

The area that trolleys helped foster is recognized as the West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District (map).

Route 34: Route map, Schedule.

Notes

Sources

  1. "West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District," University City Historical Society.
  2. "Statement of Significance," Spruce Hill Historic District.
  3. "No Pass For Penrose," New York Times, 2 July 1906.
  4. Cox, Harold. Philadelphia Car Routes; Horse Cable Electric, self-published, Forty Fort, Penn., 1982. Still the definitive listing of streetcar routes through the ages. The introduction reads, in part, "All available company and city records have been used, as well as every day's newspaper from 1858 to 1896."
  5. "Trolley Lines History," SEPTA.
  6. 1974 SEPTA brochure on trolleys, via phillytrolley.org.
  7. Nearside Cars, part of the Henry Adamcik Collection of the Electric City Trolley Museum Association.
  8. Trolley routes in 1953, phillytrolley.org.
  9. The Philadelphia Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.
  10. "Philadelphia's PCC Streetcars", phillytrolley.org.
  11. "Philadelphia Trolley Routes: By The Numbers," phillytrolley.org.
  12. "Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company; Stotesbury - Mitten Management; Results of Ten Years Operation, 1911 - 1920," phillytrolley.org.
[Image: Route 34 trolleys meet on University City Trolley Day, held on May 14, 2005.]

Old meets new: Two generations of trolleys pause on Route 34's western terminus, the loop at 61st Street and Baltimore Avenue, on University City Trolley Day, May 14, 2005. But which one is old and which is new? The Kawasaki LRV, left, was built in the 1980s, but the 1947 PCC-II was almost wholly rebuilt in the 21st century for the reopened Girard Avenue line. Photo by Bill Monaghan. Used with permission.

[Image: Route 34 trolley on the 4500 block of Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia in 2008.]

Near Our Studio: A trolley rolls through the 4500 block of Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia, the day after Fun-a-Day 4 in February 2008. Photo by Studio 34.