History Lessons

By unveiling its past, Arthur Ross Gallery gives West Philly new presence.

by Shaun Brady

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Published: Jul 8, 2009

[ visual art ]

Historical Society of Pennsylvania West Philadelphia History Lessons Market Street and Darby Road

Think of it as a 19th-century Google Street View: watercolors depicting Market Street from the Schuylkill through West Philly; a white lead factory and a brewery along the riverbank; mansions, churches, a house where George Washington may or may not have slept after the Battle of Brandywine.

For decades after his arrival in 1836, Scottish immigrant David J. Kennedy drew and painted views of the Philadelphia streets that now serve as a document of the city's industrial expansion. Roughly 2,000 images were recently rediscovered in the archives of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where they'd languished, unseen and unpublished, for years.

In its new exhibition, "West Philadelphia: Building a Community," the Arthur Ross Gallery at Penn will bring some of the Kennedy watercolors out of hiding to examine the evolution of a neighborhood over the past century and a half.

"Kennedy did many views of downtown Philadelphia, and it's really developed and very much an urban city by the mid-1900s," says Lynn Marsden-Atlass, the gallery's director. "And what you see of West Philadelphia is initially rural or suburban in nature. There's a lovely view of Lipp's Brewery surrounded by green space, or a simple house on a hill being isolated by the opening of 44th Street between Walnut and Locust. So it's really the transformation from a totally rural environment to an area of enormous growth and development and eventually an urban environment."

The show contrasts the past and present through both historical and contemporary images as well as technologies. Where West Philly's heritage is depicted in Kennedy's views, which span 1836 to 1898, and in the city land maps, early photographs and postcards that complement them, its present is depicted via Web sites and documentaries on television screens.

The title of the exhibit can be taken in two ways. In the literal sense, "Building a Community" explains the evolution of the neighborhood depicted in the Kennedy watercolors. But the name also captures the hope that Marsden-Atlass, who became head of the gallery in March of 2008, has for the future of the space.

"My hope is to engage the Penn community, the West Philadelphia community and the whole city," she says. "We have a gallery that's free, open six days a week and available to the public. We'd like to make it not the best-kept secret in Philadelphia."

In order to make that hope a reality, the gallery will expand on the exhibition throughout the fall, with family-friendly events, tours and lectures. "I have an intimate gallery space, so I can't tell the whole story of two centuries," Marsden-Atlass says. "But one of the things I wanted to address was how we build community today. That sense of community is the aspect that I'm trying to talk about in terms of the 21st century. Not so much what's happened to the architecture, but what's happened through the amazing multicultural and multiethnic diversity of West Philadelphia today."

Marsden-Atlass hopes that the exhibit will inspire viewers to recognize history in the present even after they leave the gallery. "I hope that it inspires people to have a sense of pride and a sense of place about West Philadelphia or Philadelphia in general. Maybe they'll look at the city with new eyes."

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

"West Philadelphia: Building a Community," through Oct. 11, free, Arthur Ross Gallery, 220 S. 34th St., 215-898-2083, upenn.edu/ARG.

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