North Broad Street Mansion District

North Broad Street and the adjoining 1400 and 1500 blocks of North 15th and 16th Streets were built up after the streetcar lines reached the area in the 1870s and 1880s. The district holds mansions, townhouses, clubs and churches erected for industrialists, merchants and professionals who made their fortunes after the Civil War. The mansion at 1530 North 16th Street, designed by John MacArthur, Jr., for Edward H. Ogden, is a Second Empire house with a marble facade, and its interior retains decorative ceiling paintings and trompe l'oeil work. The Charles Ellis Residence of 1890 by William Decker has an asymmetrical brownstone facade and a multi-story central stair hall. Many Broad Street mansions were lost to commercial and academic development, but the core of the district survives on largely intact streetscapes. Its significance lies in showing how an affluent industrial class built and lived in this parallel-to-Broad layout around the turn of the century.