Girard Avenue: Philadelphia’s Gilded Streetcar Boulevard — and What Tore It Down

A streetcar king built his mansion on the grandest street in Philadelphia. Then he walked away, moved to the suburbs, and let it burn. This is the story of Girard Avenue, the gilded boulevard that ran clear across Philadelphia, and the strange reason it fell apart: the same streetcar line that made it rich is the one that hollowed it out. We go back to the 1870s, when a horsecar line turned Girard Avenue into the address everyone with money wanted. The Philadelphia Zoo, America's first, opened at the western end in 1874. The enormous Girard Avenue Bridge went up the same year. The 1876 Centennial Exhibition sent ten million visitors straight down the avenue. Streetcar tycoons Peter Widener and William Elkins built matching mansions at Broad and Girard, served by the very trolleys that made them rich. Then in 1895 the line was electrified, and cheap access for everyone was exactly the thing that killed the street for the few. We follow the whole fall: the millionaires fleeing to Lynnewood Hall, Prohibition gutting the breweries of Brewerytown, the mansions carved into boarding houses and torn down one by one, and SEPTA's Route 15 trolley, which still runs the length of it today and keeps nearly dying and clawing back, just like the avenue around it. Enjoyed this one? More American history deep dives here:    / @therealpennsylvania