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Great Old Aerial Pic of North Catholic

I came across this pic from a friend on Facebook.  I never really thought about how much that area around the Erie/Torresdale El stop has changed over the years.

You can see North Catholic before they built the annex.  For the life of me, nowhere online can I find the date that the expansion building was built.   And across the street where the 7-Eleven is now is [what I’m told] Harbison Dairy, apparently that’s a giant milk bottle on top.  And look, there’s no Dunkin Donuts!  At least the Frankford Creek still looks like a sewer.

9 thoughts on “Great Old Aerial Pic of North Catholic

  1. I seem to recall the annex being built in the late 50s or early 60s. By recall, I mean seeing the cornerstone date. Not sure, but that’s when they would have needed the extra space.

  2. I couldn’t even find the date in the school’s own history page:

    http://www.northcatholic.com/?pid=135

    am I just missing it?

  3. I don’t see it either. Odd.

  4. I was in my sophomore year when construction was started on the annex. The windows of my geometry classroom looked out on the building site. We could not hold geometry class for a while because the noise of pile drivers prevented us from hearing Fr. Thomas Rush’s lecture so we worked on geometry problems from the textbook until the pile driving was completed. I was a sophomore in academic year Sept 1962 – June 1963. The annex building was complete and ready for use by the second semester of my junior year. I started junior year with physics lab in the original building and we were moved to the new labs in the annex for second semester. Some of my classes were in the annex while others were in the original building. In my senior year, all my classes and Chemistry lab were in the annex and the cafeteria was relocated to the ground floor of the annex as well. Mike Finn, Class of ’65

  5. Ok so my next question is, when did they tear down Harbison Dairy?

  6. The old Harbison Dairy milk bottle is still standing. It’s located at Coral & Abigail Sts. in Kensington. You can still see it if you ride on the El. I only rememberr one Harbison milk bottle and that’s the one located in Kensington which closed in 1960.

  7. The Harbison’s Dairy was torn down during my junior year at North,,,1984. I remember it vividly because my Algebra II class was on the Torresdale Ave. side and our teacher, Mr. Atkinson, had a lot of trouble keeping all of us in the classroom from watching the demolition. When exam time came, Mr. Atkinson shut and taped all of the shades in the classroom and placed the following extra credit question on the exam: “What is the name of the company currently demolishing Harbison’s”? All along Torresdale Ave. were large sheets of metal, used to keep people out and also block debris from traffic, with the company’s name on the side in HUGE letters. Only about 35% of the class got the question right. The company was named “Geppert”. A photo of the giant milk bottle toppling over is included in the 1985 yearbook.

    Shawn Mc.
    Class of ’85

  8. Shawno22 beat me to it. I got out of North in 1982 and it was still there. I remember riding the EL to college a couple of years later, watching the progress each day. After the demolition, it gave that block a whole new look.

    The wild thing about the above picture is that it is before the fence was built, and the trees are all so small.

  9. Lorraine, there were three locations for Harbison Dairy, and three milk bottles. Kensington and Erie, York Road and Ontario, and the still standing building at Kensington and Coral, with it’s milk bottle [kind-of] intact. Plan Philly talks about it:

    http://planphilly.com/harbison-dairy-tower

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