East Center City Commercial Historic District (Boundary Increase and Decrease)

Commercial blocks west of Independence Square in Philadelphia form a dense district of banks, hotels, shops, offices and department stores built between the early 1800s and the 1930s. Its centre of gravity is the corner of Eighth and Market Streets, where Wanamaker, Strawbridge and Clothier, Lit Brothers and Gimbels established retail stores in the late nineteenth century. Publishing houses including the Curtis Publishing Company and the Public Ledger built large offices facing Independence Square. Smaller buildings on the 700 blocks of Chestnut, Sansom and Walnut Streets show the townhouse scale of the earliest buildings, while lofts and factories once made clothing and jewelry on upper floors. The district holds works by John Haviland, William Strickland, Frank Furness, Willis Hale, Horace Trumbauer and Paul Cret, and it documents how commerce, production and everyday city life shared the same blocks.