Powelton Historic District

Powelton is a neighborhood of tree-lined streets west of central Philadelphia, developed in three stages from the 1840s to the early twentieth century. Charles Ellet's suspension bridge across the Schuylkill at Spring Garden Street, completed in the 1840s, opened the area to development, and horsecar lines in the 1850s brought in upper-income industrialists. Their houses ranged from stone-fronted mansarded houses of the 1870s to Queen Anne and Romanesque residences by architects such as T. P. Chandler, Bruce Price and the Wilson Brothers. The district also holds churches, including Northminster Presbyterian Church of 1875, and institutions such as the Industrial Home for the Working Blind on Lancaster Avenue, designed by John Ord. Its streetscapes and wide range of building types are regarded as a clear record of late nineteenth-century Philadelphia life.