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Neighborhood grew from industrial roots

Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, Northern Liberties was abuzz with industrial activity. Tanneries, breweries, mills, cigar factories, pharmaceutical and chemical businesses, sugar refineries, gunmaking shops, ironworks, a loom factory and a large saw manufacturer dominated the landscape.

Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, Northern Liberties was abuzz with industrial activity.

Tanneries, breweries, mills, cigar factories, pharmaceutical and chemical businesses, sugar refineries, gunmaking shops, ironworks, a loom factory and a large saw manufacturer dominated the landscape.

There were "waves of immigration pouring in to take advantage of the jobs," said Torben Jenk, a local historian.

Many Eastern Europeans poured into the neighborhood. "These people lived in tiny houses," said Jenk. It was "really packed, dense housing."

Residents could walk to their jobs at factories in the neighborhood. And factory owners could order whatever they needed, right in the same neighborhood.

"One hundred years ago, you could order the tool you needed in your factory and it's custom-made," Jenk said. And "the workforce was right there."

Russian Orthodox churches, which still anchor the neighborhood, were built to serve the immigrants who flocked to the area.

After World War II, new, bigger and more modern housing and the availability of mortgages in places like Levittown and Northeast Philadelphia drew residents from Northern Liberties and other parts of the city, depopulating those locales, Jenk said.

In some cases, people moved out to follow their houses of worship to Cheltenham, Abington, or Northeast Philly, he said.

Residents also moved out as jobs dried up when industries, lacking room to expand in the crowded neighborhood, moved away, or when family-run businesses withered as a new generation took over or were no longer serving the needs of customers.

Roy E. Goodman, curator of printed materials at the American Philosophical Society, co-authored the Northern Liberties entry in the 1990 version of "Workshop of the World," a historical survey of industrial sites in Philadelphia. Jenk updated the entry in 2007 and runs the website.

Goodman, 62, who has lived in Northern Liberties since 1976, said that when he first moved in, he used to joke, in a positive way, that it was "Warsaw-San Juan" because of its diversity in Eastern European and Latino immigrants.

Artists moved into the neighborhood in the 1970s and '80s, replacing the factory workers, mill workers and artisans, he said.

"As [other] people realized this was a hip neighborhood, they started to move in, too," he said.

With the influx of younger residents in recent years, there has been somewhat of a generation gap or "schism," Goodman said, lamenting that some newcomers "don't really care about the past."