Joe Menkevich has found us a prize this time. For me, this beats the very cool Google Map overlay of old Frankford maps I posted a while back. Frankford – Direction of a Greater Philadelphia(be patient it’s a big pdf) tells the tale of Frankford in 1922 when the El was new. It’s subtitle says it all: Souvenir Booklet and Program published to commemorate the opening of the Frankford Elevated Railway. Inside it’s pages, besides the story of how the el came to be, are the ads for banks, printers, news papers, factories, stores etc. The story in these pages is so hard for me to imagine. It’s a story where Frankford(and Philadelphia) is filled with promise and the arguments among its citizens speak to how they want to spend their bright future, not how to defend a battered city. Check out the story on how the El came into being. It reads as a soap opera.
Browse through the pages, if you see anything noteworthy, leave us a comment pointing it out.
And check out page 31.
Although we are the Frankford Gazette, we are not THE Frankford Gazette. We think some corporate entity has rights to it , we’re just cyber squatting on the name. We’re just keeping the fire lit so to speak. And look at that slogan, “For a New Frankford and a Greater Northeast”. DAAAAMMN. I think I’m gonna have to steal that slogan.
[PDF] Frankford – Direction of a Greater Philadelphia (6.78 MB)
