bruhinb | Feb. 5th, 2014

URBAN PHOTOGRAPHY BY BOB BRUHIN LIVE AT THE HIGH POINT CAFE

2831 W. GIRARD AVE – NOW THROUGH MARCH 31 ARTIST MEET AND GREET SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 2014 2 PM In a time when the City Branch just west of Broad Street is attracting local and national attention as part of the next new rail park, it is easy to forget that the entire length of this historical right of way between where it crosses Girard Avenue — mere blocks from the Brewerytown High Point — all the way through the Pennsylvania Avenue tunnel to where it appears again at 21st and Hamilton Streets, represents a serious local treasure.

Taking his cue from the Side Tours led by ViaductGreene advocate Paul vanMeter, Bob Bruhin set out to document this unsung corridor. Come see images of the site as it now stands, before inevatible change transforms this space forever. The vibrant desolation of this site is difficult to imagine until you have seen these images.

According to Hidden City Philadelphia:

“The City Branch is an abandoned stretch of submerged track from Broad Street to 27th Street in the Art Museum neighborhood. The rail line is open to the sky as it runs parallel to Callowhill Street, then becomes a covered tunnel at 22nd Street, where it angles northwest along Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Unlike the nearby Reading Viaduct, which carried passenger trains on an elevated track, the City Branch was industrial and initially built at ground level. It serviced industries such as the Knickerbocker Ice Co., the Philadelphia Grain Elevator Co., Bement-Pond, Rush & Muhlenberg, Wm. Sellers, A. Whitney & Sons Car Wheel, and the massive Baldwin Locomotive Works. In 1900, Reading completed the depression of the City Branch, eliminating a number of dangerous grade crossings. The City Branch was used to transport freight until 1992, when its last customer, the Philadelphia Inquirer, stopped printing the newspaper at Broad and Callowhill and no longer needed carloads of paper.

“The rails were removed, and nature returned to the uncovered parts of the line. Several sections have been cleared for parking in recent years, however the tunnel remains vacant and empty aside from a few piles of railroad ties. While the possibility of turning the Reading Viaduct into a “park in the sky” has received a great deal of attention, scant thought has been given to finding new uses for the City Branch.”

According to vanMeter:

“To understand the 9th Street & City Branches of the Philadelphia & Reading Railway is to understand the very origins of the city’s modern transportation networks, out of which grew a new metropolis stretching from the far western suburbs of Philadelphia to the Jersey shore — all of it carefully and regularly connected via the bourgeois corridors of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad and its provincial nemesis, the P&R.”