Walking in the neighborhood
where the Lenape used to run...
I live in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia. The neighborhood was named by the 17th century Welsh settlers who built their homes over one of the small streams that runs through this part of the world. Nangenesy Creek, as the Lenape Indians called it. If I walk out my front door, I see two long lines of row homes, fifty houses on each side of this one-way street. One hundred houses in all.
When on foot, I can, of course, go in either direction, right or left, up or down. The rules of the road don’t quite apply, do they? I like that. I can go where I go. I like being outside, not always cooped up indoors, and I like walking. So I do. Every day that I am able, in the heat or the rain or the cold, like a mailman without the loaded down bag of letters and packages. I walk to Mass and to the chapel to pray. I walk to the park to sit on a bench and read my book in fine weather and to the grocery to pick up a few things. I used to walk to the two closest library branches, one that seemed to smell always of Pine-Sol, and another in a not quite so good neighborhood, where if the light was fading, I'd pick up my pace and head quickly towards home. They’re both closed now because of COVID, I think. I haven’t even bothered trying to go to either.
My neighborhood is a quietly historic one, with lots of landmarks and exquisite architecture. But, it’s also in West Philly, so most people think it’s scary (and sometimes it is), not a good investment. What they think is, “why would you live there?” What they say is, “oh, you live in one of those big mansions.” Nope, I live in a row home. When I first moved here, I knew nothing about the neighborhood. It was just a place to live, in a house I could afford, with friends nearby.
If I walk up the road to 64th Street, I see The Overbrook School for the Blind. Originally founded by Julius Friedlander in 1832, The Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, as it was called then, began in a rented building downtown. Friedlander and a group of influential leaders from Philadelphia wanted to bring advanced European methods for teaching the blind to America. The school moved from the rented building to a larger facility at 20th and Race Streets, until finally finding its permanent home in Overbrook.
The school printed and published the first embossed book for the blind in the United States: The Gospel of Mark. The oldest buildings on campus are some of the rarest and most exceptional examples of Spanish Renaissance Architecture on the east coast. The first time I stood on my street, late afternoon on a June day, I looked up and saw the school’s rounded dome and bell tower. The blue sky formed a backdrop and sunlight filtered through the street’s many trees. The school reminded me of pictures I’d seen of monasteries, glorious in the Spanish sun, buildings that seemed lit from within. Behind the school’s walled courtyard, students live and learn, sometimes walking out onto city streets, their white canes click, clicking against the sidewalk and street lights and parked cars. When I see these students, I marvel at their bravery, going out into the wild world with only a white cane and faith in their other senses.
If I walk up Woodbine Avenue, I see the bigger homes of Overbrook Farms, twins and singles, with wide lawns and luxurious porches. Here, and on Lancaster Ave, the traffic picks up, cars speeding to and from center city or the expressway, drivers rushing to work or dinner or the Jersey shore. You have to be careful when you step out between cars to cross the street.
Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church, on the corner of Woodbine and Lancaster Avenues, was built in the 1890’s for the household help serving in the big homes and mansions of the burgeoning neighborhood. Further up on Lancaster Avenue sit two more churches, St Thomas'African Episcopal Church, the first black episcopal church in the US, and Overbrook Presbyterian Church, dreamed of by Wistar Morris in 1888 as a place for the Scotch-Irish farmers working his land to worship. Before Morris and the other Welsh Quakers came and turned the area into farmland, the place was called Coappqwannock, The Grove of Tall Pines, and was a hunting ground for the Lenape, who took Indian trails from Metopcum to come here. In the time of the Lenape, this land was all rivers and woodlands and wild plums.
The Presbyterian Church is on the corner at City Avenue, the border between city and suburb, and an even busier street than Lancaster Avenue. City Line is gridlock, horns, exhaust fumes, noise, speed and machines, and the stress that drives them. I have a lot of negative feelings about City Line Ave, as you may have noticed.
When taking this route, I usually walk north up City Ave and then turn left at the end of the bridge and cross over four lanes of traffic into the suburbs of Lower Merion Township, leaving Philadelphia behind. My destination is Merion Road. Once over that threshold, the space around me opens up, the air clears, the noise hushes and I can see a bit of what drew the Lenape to this place. I’ll tel you more about walking on Merion Road tomorrow.