Jawnts: N. Phila. on the big screen

Temple University hosts a trove of photos, film, and other archival material about Philadelphia history in its Urban Archives. It's an incredible resource for academicians, journalists, students, and others interested in studying the city's ever-changing neighborhoods.

This week, the Wagner Free Institute of Science (just north of the university library), is screening footage about North Philadelphia from Girard Avenue to Lehigh Avenue, an area that encompasses Temple, the remnants of the Richard Allen Homes, and the little suburbia in the city that is Yorktown.

It's a stitched-together film of sorts, weaving together heavily produced material from television shows and documentaries, along with raw footage taken by TV crews collecting B-roll. Historical moments are featured: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visiting Grace Baptist Temple, Richard Nixon meeting with the Rev. Leon Sullivan in Progress Plaza, the 1970 Black Panther conference at Temple that prompted Frank Rizzo's infamous raids. Mundane street views are included, along with glimpses of neighborhood gangs and the old clubs such as the Uptown Theater. Local residents are featured, including Willie Mae Bullock, who assiduously gardened perennials amid the asphalt and cement of North Philly for most of the latter half of the 20th century.

Unedited North Philadelphia: Girard to Lehigh covers the period from the 1960s, including the Columbia (now Cecil B. Moore) Avenue riots that destroyed the commercial heart of the neighborhood, to the early 1990s. Most of the film was shot within a mile of the Wagner Institute's impressive Victorian-era museum, which has been virtually unaltered since 1892.

"It further impressed upon me just how many truly dynamic events and people were contained within a few blocks," says John Pettit, a Temple archivist. "Just to see it edited together on a timeline is really striking. We actually have more footage than I even thought we'd have of North Philadelphia."

This is Temple's fifth screening of archival film, but the first at the Wagner. A community forum for residents will be held after the screening.

Wagner Free Institute of Science, 1700 W. Montgomery Ave., Philadelphia

6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday

Admittance is free.

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