Alan Halpern

DS:      You and Bomie built a new house at 113-115 Pine Street. [Bomie is Sara Halpern, Alan Halpern’s wife. She has provided a separate interview.] What year was that?        

AH:     We started in I guess 1966 and finished in 1967.

DS:      And why did you come to Society Hill?

AH:     Because that was the neighborhood of the future.

DS:      What was the condition of the land when you bought the property?

AH:     I think there was nothing there. It was just an empty lot. The neighborhood – the whole block only had about two inhabitants. One of them was an old Ukrainian pyromaniac and lots (1:00) of rats all over the neighborhood. There were empty warehouses on the east side of Front Street down toward the river.

DS:      And do you know anything about what was on the property before it became vacant?

AH:     Yes, I was told the block had been a butter-and-egg block. There was a big chicken processing plant at Front and Spruce. Our place had been a creamery of some sort. Across the street there were empty Roberts Houses that had been, I guess, part of the Dock Street market that were abandoned.

DS:      You say, “Roberts Houses?”

AH:     I think that was the name of the four houses in the 100 block of Pine on the south side. Roberts might have been the architect. I’m not sure. And I guess they were early (2:00) nineteenth-century houses.

DS:      Interesting. Did you buy the land from the Redevelopment Authority or from somebody else?

AH:     Yes. From the Redevelopment Authority. Actually, we bought three lots, 113, 15 and 17. And I guess the chap selling them to us was Ted Newbold, who worked for the Redevelopment Authority. Later, Newbold asked that we relinquish the 117 lot to the people at 119 who could use it. We decided to do that.

DS:      Had you planned to build on it, or was it going to be a garden?

AH:     Going to be a garden, tennis court and swimming pool. We didn’t know.

DS:      A tennis court?

AH:     I was very good at tennis in those days.

DS:      [Laughs] Do you remember what you paid for the land? (3:00)

AH:     Five thousand a lot. It was fifteen thousand for the three lots.

DS:      Do you remember what the taxes were on the property?

AH:     No, I don’t. I’m sure it was minimal.

DS:      What restrictions did the Redevelopment Authority put on you, if any?

AH:     It would have been a lot. The house we built had to conform with the facades of the rest of the block. It had to be brick. The windows had to be white concrete. The height had to be in keeping with the rest of the block. The houses to the east of us were, I believe, three-story, and the ones to the west were four-story. We had to build a two-story house with a roof line a little higher. Our architect was David Wallace, who was very active in urban (4:00) renewal in the neighborhood. His firm was Wallace McHarg Todd and Roberts. He took care of accommodating the plans with the restrictions of the Redevelopment Authority.

DS:      Did you have any difficulty with the Redevelopment Authority in any way? Any problems?

AH:     No.

DS:      No. Never. Any problems with – I guess Bomie’s father was the contractor?

AH:     He was the builder.

DS:      The builder. And what was his name?

AH:     Joseph Bomberger. He was a home builder in Reading. He had built hundreds of houses there, and he brought a crew of Pennsylvania Dutch workers down to build that house. They worked uninterrupted except for bear- and deer-hunting season. Everybody took off.

DS:      Bear season? [Laughs] Did he have any trouble with unions? (5:00)

AH:     Yes, the unions tried to stop him from building there. He just ignored them.

DS:      But other than that there was no trouble with construction?

AH:     No, no. Just the threats. Something. I never got details.

DS:      You never what?

AH:     I say, I never got the details of how they threatened him. He just ignored them.

DS:      But they never followed through with their threats.

AH:     No.

DS:      What was the reaction of your families when they heard what you were going to do?

AH:     My father-in-law said that he understood – he’d never get first – it was when he saw the building – it was really a wretched, decrepit neighborhood. As I say, with three tenants on the block and plenty of rats. All it had was potential. And a good price for the land. (6:00)

DS:      He was in favor of your doing this?

AH:     Oh, yes. He was interested. Once the house was under – well, he’d stay with us at our existing house. He brought his – another son-in-law, who was a carpenter, and another carpenter from Reading, the three of us. The three of them became our houseguests during the year, the building period.

DS:      For a whole year!

AH:     Yes. Oh, they’d go back to Reading for the weekends. Come down for three or four days.

Woman’s voice: I didn’t know you were here.

[Tape is turned off, then on again]

AH:     I think I mentioned that block of Spruce Street – it was actually Pine Street – that we were talking about [indecipherable] the Dock Street markets had been abandoned when the markets moved to South Philly [indecipherable].

DS:      Right. So, now back to Bomie’s father, Mr. Bombeck – (7:00)

AH:     Bomberger.

DS:      Bomberger. And his son-in-law, and a man called Sam, who was a contractor, all lived with you in your other residence while they were building your house.

AH:     Occasionally, we would go to Snockey’s for dinner. That was a treat. It was on Fifth Street.

DS:      On Fifth at what? Do you remember?

AH:     Probably around Fifth and Lombard.

DS:      OK.

AH:     At the corner diner [indecipherable]. They enjoyed evenings in Philadelphia. [Indecipherable].

DS:      What did Bomie’s parents think?

AH:     I have no idea.

DS:      What about your parents?

AH:     I have no idea.

DS:      You never talked to them about it?

AH:     No.

DS:      They never said anything.

AH:     No.

DS:      Good [Laughs]

AH:     I think they had confidence in us, that we would do what was good for both of us. (8:00) When the Dock Street markets moved, all these houses on Pine Street, which had been part of this food distribution center, had their first floors converted to loading platforms for trucks to back into. The houses themselves on both sides were untouched, except for that first floor, for truck loading and unloading. The street was pretty much an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century street which was partially industrializing and then abandoned. Though it wasn’t attractive, it had the bones of a nice neighborhood eventually, after the Redevelopment Authority plans eventually went through. Every property, whether there was a structure there or empty lot, went for $5,000. (9:00) People bought it. They had to promise to fix it up in conformity with the Redevelopment Authority’s plans, which included no air conditioners sticking out. Restoration of the antique houses’ façades to their original condition, with insides modernized.

DS:      How about the Newmarket area? What was that?

AH:     The Newmarket area? Probably open space.

DS:      An open field?

AH:     There were lots of open spaces where the existing properties had caved in. People would run their dogs as they moved into the neighborhood. On Delancey Street there was an open property with a fence surrounding it. Front to Second Street, Delancey to Spruce. Some neighbors on Lombard Street had a rooster who would wake us up in the morning. Pleasant sound.

DS:      Was that the Buells? [Duncan and Sal Buell restored a house at 119 Lombard Street.]

AH:     Buells. Yes.

DS:      Tell me about George. He owned 121 and 123 [Pine Street], (10:00) and he had a boarding house.

AH:     Right. He was the Ukrainian pyromaniac. Dropped lit matches into trash cans, because he didn’t want the riff raff moving into the neighborhood. He also had a gun out back. Would take a couple of shots at kids who were raiding a fruit tree he had in the back yard. I’m not sure if he [indecipherable]. He never spoke to anybody.

DS:      Did you see him?

AH:     Yes, Yes. He would walk the streets. He was out there on a summer night [indecipherable] Ukrainian [indecipherable].

DS:      Did he have boarders at that time?

AH:     I don’t know. [Indecipherable] There’s a Ukrainian church around Fourth and Pine. St. Andrew’s. I think it’s still there.

DS:      Do you have any photographs of your property before it was built on, during, (11:00) after?

AH:     Bomie might. I don’t know. There was grass there with open space with [indecipherable]. There were neighbors working on the house to the east of us, already when we moved in.

DS:      The Masons?

AH:     Yes. They had already started, had they?

AH:     Yes.

DS:      Then the Dodds came later, after you were already built. [David and Dorothy Dodd built 117-119 Pine Street.]

AH:     Yes. They were the ones who wanted that extra lot.

DS:      Yes. Did you ever go down to Water Street? Weren’t there some restaurants or –?

AH:     Yes, it seems to me. There was an Italian restaurant that was pretty good. It was there for quite a while. There were never very many people in there. It must have gone out of business.

DS:      Do you remember the name of it?

AH:     Not at the moment. Maybe it will come back. (12:00)

DS:      So you would walk down Pine Street to Front. And then there was a hill, right, that went down to the water’s edge?

AH:     Yes. Streets were on it, like Water Street. Also Commerce Street [indecipherable].

DS:      And Pine would continue down to the water?

AH:     Yes.

DS:      Before the expressway, I-95, you could go right east down to the river.

AH:     I’m not sure if the expressway wasn’t there when we started building, Sixty-five. [Indecipherable]. Because that was one of my concerns, the noise from the expressway, what it would be like.

DS:      Any other interesting stories that you can remember from those days? Other neighbors, or the rooster that the Buells had. Why did they have a rooster? Just for a pet?

AH:     Yes. They had a rooster and about three cats. And they all seemed to get along.

DS:      Did you get together with these people – these other new people in the (13:00)

            neighborhood?

 

AH:     No, we couldn’t entertain, because we had no house, but we had to go to others with my wife’s soup.

DS:      Excuse me?

AH:     She made potato and leek soup. It was delicious. [Indecipherable.] Potage parmentier, in France. [Indecipherable.] There were a few stores and restaurants on Second Street. On the west side of Second Street there was a restaurant called Jeanine and Jeanine’s. There was a paint store, a bar on the corner. And Pat Tancredi had a pharmacy there, and also, interestingly, another tavern. Owned by the pharmacist. Continued to have drinking places in the neighborhood that did very well. And then he eventually moved onto the block. Had a big house and fixed it up, next to the Dodd house.

DS:      Going west.

AH:     Yes.

DS:      Did you belong to the Civic Association? Or was there a Civic Association at that time?

AH:     I think so. [Indecipherable] there was a Civic Association, and I was (14:00) on the Board. And I was the publisher of a newsletter for that at the time. Paul Putney had been a president, the late Paul Putney. Harry Schwartz was a member. Incidentally, we just heard from Harry. Do you know the Schwartzes are coming back to Philadelphia? They’re taking a look at the Towers. They were here Wednesday. They didn’t have a car when they lived here. We didn’t have a car, either. A few people had a car. There was a garage on Second Street below Pine [at Lombard]. Most of the people who moved in had one or two cars.

DS:      But you never had a car, right?

AH:     No, I never had a car. Did too much world traveling to have a car.

DS:      So how would you get around?

AH:     By foot or by cab. Bus. There was a very nice 90 bus that ran down Pine Street on a timetable like a Swiss railroad [indecipherable]. That was the way we would get to Center City. Like all good things, it came to an end. (15:00)

DS:      What else?

AH:     When you walked through the neighborhood, you could see signs of houses being started that didn’t exist the day before. This made us confident we made the right decision. Occasionally, you would see Mayor Dilworth walking his poodles through the neighborhood. He was also competent. That was when we had an honest government in Philadelphia. That has disappeared since. Now we’re the most corrupt city in [indecipherable,] with a mayor who should be in jail.

DS:      Georgeann and Bill Mears?

AH:     Yes, they started building on Delancey Street. [Indecipherable] Bill Mears was famous for – oh, what was the drink with tomato juice?

DS:      Bloody Mary?

AH:     It was a very meticulous Bloody Mary. We often had Bloody Marys [indecipherable]. And the people we knew from west Center City bought the land in back of us and started developing a house there. (16:00)

DS:      And their names?

AH:     Zebooker. An architect – was it Vincent Giurgola? A modern house [indecipherable] with a dental office in the basement of a three-story house with a wrought-iron stairway.

DS:      Did they come because you where there?

AH:     No, it was just a coincidence.

DS:      A coincidence, because they were from the same neighborhood that you were from.

AH:     Yes. Without telling us – we telling them – they bought two lots in back of us. We shared a [indecipherable]. It was a very congenial neighborhood. We became friendly with everybody who was moving in. It was like the Wild West. It was much more congenial a neighborhood than west Center City where we lived before, as we didn’t know the neighbors as well.

DS:      Did you interact with the people who were already there? The old – the old originals?

AH:     As they moved in.

DS:      But I mean, the people –

AH:     The old originals. Oh, no. There were very few old originals, or aboriginals. They (17:00) didn’t interact with us. Aside from George, I can’t remember any of them.

DS:      You didn’t have any bad feelings about them. You just didn’t know them.

AH:     Yes.

DS:      Yes. And you worked in Center City, right?

AH:     Yes. I could walk to work or take a bus.

DS:      And what did you do, Alan?

AH:     I was editor of Philadelphia magazine until l989, I guess. After that, I was a magazine consultant and traveled around the United States by plane. I’d be in New York for two days and San Francisco for two days, and back to Philly. I never needed a car. I’d bounce around the country.

DS:      It was very convenient living in the city?

AH:     Yes.

[Telephone rings. Tape is turned off, then on again]

AH:     One interesting guy was a Lippincott, who had houses on an alley on I guess it was the 200 block of Delancey. Drinker’s Court was it called? And then we knew a woman I used to do some writing with who lived in there. I used to visit her.

DS:      What was her name?

AH:     Barbara Rough [?], at the time. And Bertha von Moschzisker moved into that (18:00) block of Delancey [the 300 block of Delancey Street, across from Three Bears Park], and she and Bomie became very good friends. They played weekly Bridge games. Bertha was one of the old originals. It’s a shame that you can’t interview her, because she was a very early resident of Society Hill. She bought this old eighteen-century house on Delancey Street and fixed it up very quickly. Had a dog that she walked in Three Bears Park, opposite her house, where that became a center for the young mothers who [indecipherable].

DS:      Bertha was – her brother was very involved?

AL:      Yes, he was Assistant District Attorney at one point and a columnist in the Evening Bulletin, Michael von Moschzisker. Later went on to become an actor. [Indecipherable] good films.

DS:      Didn’t he also do something with the Redevelopment Authority?

AL:      Probably. Say you have all sorts of people from every economic and social and (19:00) commercial background turning up in America, and [indecipherable]. More and more restaurants opened on South Street. The Theater of the Living Arts theater. A producer of very high-quality theater. Andre Gregory was artistic director. Actors from Hollywood and Broadway. You’d see the name in the paper from time to time. Also, some restaurants like Lickety Split opened on South Street. Franco’s Pizza. Black Banana. We did a lot of eating out in those first few years. The house was finished in 1967, probably August when we moved in. But the kitchen wasn’t completed right away; by necessity we did a lot of eating out.

DS:      What was South Street like in the very beginning when you were here?

AH:     South Street was sort of a [indecipherable] street.

DS:      A what?

AH:     [Indecipherable] street. It was a mixture of – it was originally a [indecipherable] Jewish neighborhood at one point. A lot of Jewish shopkeepers who were still left. A lot of them moved out. Artists moved in because the rents were so low. Theatre of the Living Arts (20:00) had been a movie theater at one time. It was converted into a drama [indecipherable]. Plays, some of the best plays, by Saul Bellow and a lot of modern playwrights – [indecipherable] Berthold Brecht. It became – a lot of society people join in the plays in top roles. A play about the French Revolution. It was sort of a –. And then afterward we’d have a – opening nights we’d have parties in restaurants, a different one each time. It was sort of social and fun. And the artists [were] very high quality.

DS:      South Street would have been the place you did your grocery shopping? I mean because the Fifth Street Superfresh wasn’t there yet.

AH:     Well, there was a grocer, Sam I guess his name was, at Second and South. And he had a rotisserie, and he’d cook chicken. And there was a bakery. I’m trying to think of the name, now; it began with a T [Teitelbaum’s]. They did a terrific strudel, a real European bakery. And it seems to me there was a place that had dried fish. And we would do a lot of our food shopping on South (21:00) Street. Gradually South Street began to get more restaurants and Japanese restaurants and a high-class French restaurant [indecipherable] and an Italian restaurant, Primavera.

DS:      That happened after –

AH:     That was in the early 70s.

DS:      And after the Crosstown Expressway was –

AH:     Dropped.

DS:      Dropped. Right. Then what happened to South Street?

AH:     I guess a lot of craftsmen moved in. Woodworkers and –

DS:      Leather.

AH:     Leather and a Mexican shop, Zagar’s, and it became an interesting place to shop as well as to eat and stroll. So far it hadn’t been discovered by the rest of Philadelphia. It was still pretty much the neighborhood. You’d go to a restaurant and see your neighbors. And often share a table with whoever was there. It was a lot of trust with the neighborhood.

DS:      And then that eventually began to change as the rest of the city discovered it?

AH:     Yes, I guess yes. And more and more places like The Gap moved in. And the local (22:00) shoe stores and dry cleaners moved out. It never became elegant, always funky. It still is, I guess. [Indecipherable] funkiness of the neighborhood, funkiness of the city. Next question.

[Tape is turned off, then on again]

AH:     Why did we come? I guess it was the 5,000 [dollars] per lot that we paid. We paid my father-in-law the going rate that he would charge for home building plus a fifteen percent markup for the inconvenience of coming to Philly. The house, which is 1,400 square feet, two floors plus a finished basement, cost about $58,000. Eventually, we sold it 30 years later for over 500,000 [dollars]. If we’d kept it another year we would have gotten two million for it. By the time we moved out we were anxious to get out of attending to a house – to clean the gutters and shoveling the snow and fixing roofs and all that stuff. We were ready for a high-rise apartment (23:00) where all those things are taken care of by somebody else. We moved into the [Society Hill] Towers, converted two one-bedrooms into a single apartment which my wife designed. It’s much more enjoyable than even having our own house.

            The house itself we had on Pine Street was unique. It had a circular stairway with a skylight [indecipherable] natural light in the house. It had a dining room-living room which faced a large garden. Ian McHarg, a landscape architect with the architectural firm, did the original plan for the garden. And then Al Vick, who was an expert in wildflowers, did the planting. We put a little pond in. We would often eat outdoors. We had tables out there; we had a patio and had a woodsy section with a lot of woodsy plants like Solomon seal. The trees got quite big.

DS:      Turtles?

AH:     Turtles. Lured the cats that came to visit. Some we adopted.

DS:      You had a dog, didn’t you, when you first moved in?

AH:     Yes, we had a dog. Liked to sit out front and look at visitors as they – looked at strollers as they came by. Eventually got killed [indecipherable]. (24:00) It was a very – in that house we did a lot of entertaining, entertaining indoors and outdoors. Friends got married there.

DS:      What about the film group?

AH:     Oh, Yes. The next-door neighbor was an invalid of sorts and couldn’t travel very much. We owned a [movie] projector and would show films in the basement. We had a real theater we built down there with about 25 seats, which we would try to watch the films. We would get the films at the library. Mostly documentaries. We had a small film collection including films like Sunset Boulevard and – I forget the others. That was the French version. Anyway, it became a social gathering place. Neighbors used to come over every Thursday night, I guess it was, and see a film. Were you there?

DS:      Yes, and ours was during the morning. I guess it was –

AH:     Oh, yes, Bomie would have –

DS:      – a weekday morning.

AH:     – special screenings [indecipherable] the neighborhood [indecipherable] mornings [indecipherable].

DS:      And you even had a birthday party for one of my sons in your basement. We showed a film.

AH:     We set up tables, café tables, and –

DS:      It was a wonderful house. Still is, I guess. (25:00)

AH:     Yes, it had a large living room and a separate dining room. All sorts of birds in the back yard.

DS:      Lots of light.

AH:     Cardinals and blue jays and finches and catbirds would congregate in the back yard. We’d watch them while we were having dinner inside. We had a fireplace in the living room which we used less and less. But still, it was very cheerful. And we had a small door that led into the house where a cat could enter by [itself] and not have to be let in. We’d train them to do that.

DS:      And this would be a neighborhood cat called Beans.

AH:     Yes. Then we had a red cat called Noname, that originally belonged to the Raviolas and then became our cat. All in all, it was a wonderful urban experience. I’m sorry that the people listening [indecipherable] [coughs].

[The tape is turned off, then on again]

AH:     One attraction to the house we could see from our breakfast nook was the [Delaware] River, cargo ships going up and down the river.

DS:      From your house on Pine Street?

AH:     Yes.

DS:      You could sit in your kitchen and see the river?

AH:     Right. We had a little breakfast nook at the side of the kitchen. The kitchen was wonderful. It was built by Pennsylvania Dutch craftsmen in walnut. And it was my wife’s pride and joy, and when we sold the house the new tenants threw it all out and put in plastic cabinets. (26:00) Anyway, one of the joys was the river and during the late ‘70s or ‘80s, the city built a walkway along the river. At night, you could hear the piles being driven. It was for boats to dock. And a lot of benches and greenery and statuary. And we would go down there. After the winter, in the evening if we were free we would bring sandwiches for lunch or have dinner on a bench and watch the ships go by and birds flying the river.

DS:      That would have been in the ‘70s?

AH:     Seventies or ‘80s, I’m not sure. It’s called Penn’s Landing. Eventually plans to build some low-rise buildings along it. Of course, we were betrayed by sleazy Ed Rendell, who gave permission to build a high-rise hotel. As a matter of fact, Spruce Street [indecipherable] blocked the view of the river.

DS:      But did you ever go down to the river early on? When you were building the house or shortly after?

AH:     Yes, I did. One of my hobbies was painting and sketching. I had a pastel set, and I’d go down by the river and do pastels of the water and the ships and the dock there – the flagship of the –

DS:      The Olympia?

AH:     The Olympia from the battle of Manila Bay and the submarine called the Becuna (27:00) from World War II. Eventually, one of our neighbors across the street turned out to be a skipper during that war; he was a retired Admiral [George Steele]. Another neighbor was Bill Hollenbeck, who was a very – a socialite, who had put tents next to his early eighteenth-century house and had parties in it. I think Jack Kelly got engaged there. [Indecipherable] Roberts’ house got restored by some redevelopers called Van Arkel & Moss. And the first floor has the original marble steps and wrought iron railings, and I think one is still standing there as a model. He said you could walk down Pine Street from one end to the other and see the building styles evolved in the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, by the time you got from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill River. Every neighborhood gradually got some tourists, but not very many. This was before the horses and wagons. Tourists were in buses. (28:00)

[Tape is turned off, then on again]

AH:     The neighborhood was mostly white. I was told by some black friends when blacks were looking for new homes that they didn’t want them to be in the older part of the city. They were interested in suburban orientation. I would say that probably one hundred percent of the people living in the neighborhood were white, and people in the street were white. [Indecipherable] South Street, on the eastern end, the Jewish section wasn’t mostly black like the rest of South Street.

DS:      And this would have been in the ‘60s?

AH:     Yes, in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Street traffic, the theater was all white. These were white liberals who didn’t object to blacks. They just didn’t seem to be interested in the neighborhood. Of course, in the ‘80s, they were very interested because of the funky nature of South Street, and South Street became 50-50 white and black. There was a very low crime rate compared to western Center City where we lived before. I’m grateful for that.

DS:      Yes, again in the ‘60s.

AH:     Yes.

[Tape is turned off, then on again]

AH:     I spoke about moving in here. I heard Dilworth was moving in and it piqued my (29:00) interest. And also Holmes Perkins was the Dean of Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania, and he was very red hot on the neighborhood and bought property here. And that also was an inducement to come in. I wanted to be near the river. We came in. And I ran into a chap by accident who had these three lots, was just about ready to give them up. And it was on the last block before the river. I hopped on the opportunity and purchased them from Ted Newbold, who I knew and respected.

DS:      And Ted also lived here.

AH:     Yes.

DS:      Up on Third Street.

AH:     And he was married to Dilworth’s daughter at the time.

DS:      Deborah.

AH:     Yes.

[Tape is turned off, then on again]

DS:      This has been an interview with Alan Halpern on December 5, 2005. He died on December 13, 2005.

[End of interview]