Haddington, revisited

Normally, I would not revisit a prior post, unless I had made a horrendous error (possible), needed to apologize (always possible, but most of this stuff is innocuous), or learned something new (an everyday thing, so it better be good). Well in https://thisgameisovercom.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1374&action=edit (Called 66th and Haverford), I went over some childhood ground, trying to figure out what was where I lived in West Philly before I lived in West Philly (before 1951 CE). My faithful readers may recall I grew up in a neighborhood technically called Haddington, on Haverford Avenue, which, as a kid, I assumed had been there forever, sort of like a Roman Road. Well, obviously it hadn’t been, but I was still stumbling around trying to get a fix on exactly where I was when I wasn’t. Now, thinks to the miracles of serendipity, persistence, and the University of Pennsylvania (seriously), I think I have a much firmer idea. So who cares? Well, I care.

Ok. Now isn’t that a beautiful map? It dates from 1911, more or less. You’re gonna say what’s so beautiful about it? It’s mostly empty. BINGO. It is indeed mostly empty. And that’s where the story begins. It’s also wrong, from what I can tell. OK, I won’t swear to it, but I’m gonna let you play historian with me for a bit to get a feel for what it’s like to try to tease something out of primary sources like maps, newspapers, censuses, and maybe even an archive or two if the City of Philadelphia helps me out. I’m not holding my breath, but hey, even the Phillies can surprise. The bigger point, friend, is why I melt down so often when some politician–of any stripe–tosses off some cliche as an explanation for an extremely complex set of outcomes. These days, it’s a daily occurence and, yes, it really irritates me. Because it is hard to establish a fact. Some enthusiastic positivists will say you can’t really prove anything–only falsify. That’s for another time.

Quick review. In West Philly, my first home was at 66th and Haverford (6613, to be exact). When you’re a kid, you’re surroundings are, uh, exogenous. In plain English, they are there, so are you, and that’s that. You do little or nothing to shape them. So I figured my beloved West Philly neighborhood had been there since time immemorial. Of course, it hadn’t. Silly Kid.

This is the block that was my world in the 1950s. It looked a bit different (photo is from 2009). The house dead center with the blue SUV sitting in front was my home. You see the gray, fake brick facade on the second floor. My grandparents put that up in about 1956 or 1957. I was there. But there was no dogwood tree in the front to obscure our view. And the yard looked nicer because Grandpop had planted rose bushes (rosabushels, in Joe Villari- speak) at the top, yellow, red, and pink. They were lovely because he could grow almost anything. Otherwise, aside from the “awning” over the front door, it more or less looked the same. So did the block, without trees and retaining walls. There were PTC trolley lines there until about 1956 or 1957, when GM brought us the miracle of busses. That line, called the 31 in my time, had actually been there since about 1876–first horse drawn, and then electrified. It was called, naturally enough, Haddington.

Before 1854, this area, and a whole lot more was called Blockley Township https://westphillyhistory.archives.upenn.edu/maps/1849-map-rea-miller. After that, it was pulled into the City of Philadelphia. I lived about here, about dead center, give or take a few acres. Before that, as far back as the 1750s, the land had been the estate of a certain Edward Williams, assuming I found the right spot on UPenn’s map of landowners. If I turn up anything about the gentleman, I’ll let you know, but I’m really more interested in getting back to the early 20th century now. Too bad I’m not in Philadelphia, because I have the feeling if you’re willing to get your hands dirty in the archives, there’s a lot more to say.

The feeling I always had as a kid was that there was a lot of green around me, and there was. It was urban, but in measure, you know. I really didn’t realize I was still feeling the rural roots of the place, which in 1950, was much less than a century removed. Only now do I realize that the area under went the same kind of development that I saw in Drexel Hill, Broomall, Springfield and a lot of Delaware Country dotted by real estate signs that said “Spano” “Facciolo” or “Yentis”. Except the postwar development was really replicating something that had gone on in West Philly from the 1890s through the 1920s. Today I see it as all part of the same process. I had no perspective as a kid. Who does? It took a lot of years for Philadelphia to grow West past the Schuyllkill River, but one it did cross, the rest was sort of inevitable, and continues even now. I look at development in Chester or Delaware County and think it’s hideous. I wonder what the old-timers–the people who had been farming in West Philly since the 1700s thought when the saw the Italians coming for their lovely fields and streams. I can guess.

I’ve pointed out the my Mom’s family started on Tree Street in South Philadelphia in a modest row house. But thinking it over and looking a little more closely, I realize how much stuff has changed here in the late century. In the 1930s, my Grandmother and Grandfather earned today what would be the equivalent of $70,000–she as a seamstress and he working as a cabinet maker at RCA Camden. They raised three girls there and moved to West Philly and Haddington, sort of, in 1941, I think. The place on Haverford Avenue was a distinct upgrade.

Joe Villari and Frances were not the first owners of the home. In 1940, a gentleman named Balzano was listed as the head of household, but he apparently married or remarried the following year and–I assume–left the home. In June of 1941, my grandfather, Joseph Villari, was recorded as having gotten a $4000 loan (oddly, from the FDIC, which didn’t make mortgage loans, as far as I know) for 6613 Haverford. In terms of wealth (the proper way to value a home loan), that is about $351,000 today (I use the Measuring Value website, which conceptually is a good deal better than the usual divide by the CPI stuff) which I find staggering. So forgive me, if you will, while I chew this over in print.

For one thing, I’m not sure I could qualify for a similarly sized loan today, let alone see a factory worker and a seamstress qualify. I’m pretty sure they got a loan from the FHA, not the FDIC. The FHA had something called Title II, Section 203 home mortgages. So guess what I have to figure out next. The loans started in 1935, as nearly as I can make out. Was this part of the New Deal? I’m guessing it was, but I have to look into it.

How the Hell did they do it? With three children too. Part of the answer is that the structure of the immigrant family made a lot of things possible, including child care for a working couple. My Great Grandmother and Grandfather (Mom’s side) lived on Cross Street above Ninth. That was probably, tops, a walk of half an hour, maybe less. Very doable for kids and adolescents, especially when you didn’t worry much about random acts of terror against children in that neighborhood. Believe me, they took care of business. I know my Mom always talked about the place on Cross Street like a second home, and the Delias–Johnny, Connie, Pete were the young ones –more like siblings than cousins. And even when they moved to West Philly, South Philly was our home away from home. Boy I spent a lot of time there as a kid, right up until high school, when my life really began to change. But I could almost tell you the ride we took on public transportation: trollies, two subways, a short walk. And back home the same way. I was sort of bi-neighborhood in those days. So you figure the Villari kids hung with the Delia family on Cross Street. And they did. I have the pictures, man. My wife, Linda, guessed that you’d spend $5,000 a month today on that kind of child care for 3 children,assuming you could even find it. Guess what? Life in the ghetto was better than you thought. Privileged, even.

I don’t want to start with all that good old days stuff, because I know it was plenty tough. I know where the bodies are buried. I know who got hurt. Who carried crosses. Who jumped out windows. Who got rejected by their birth parents. How many ways the Church made life hard for people with failed marriages. The problem in America is that in the 1960s, we pretty much figured out all the costs of the kind of lives that my grandparents and parents lived. And they were real enough. But, here’s the problem: there were benefits too, and those we simply ignored. And they were substantial: think of the Cross Street–Tree Street–Haverford Avenue extended kin network. Who’s to say if the average American didn’t lose more than he or she gained? Doesn’t the answer depend on a lot of things: race, class, ethnicity? And even those aren’t terribly simple. You really going to tell me that calling our Black citizens “equal” makes up for abandoning urban public education, which is what clearly happened in Philadelphia? That’s cheap social justice, to put it nicely. And rank hypocrisy, to be blunt. And then we bitch that Tyrone can’t read or do math. Tell me about it. “Benign neglect” is still neglect, brother. It was in 1970, and it is now.

When I think about growing up in those circumstances, I have to tell you, I never felt deprived. We weren’t in clover, by any means, but by today’s income standards, whatever any smart-ass academic says, we were comfortable. You could be union, blue collar, and ok, something that always baffled my teachers at Fancy Ass U, aka, Princeton. It was also obviously a consequential issue at Berkeley, where you think some of them might have figured it out, sage observers of the American scene they are. No chance. “What do those young people want?” I don’t know. Matching BMWs, I guess.

I do not do American economic history, obviously, but when I look at my lifetime, I’m afraid I understand all too well how some menace like Donald Trump can be on the verge of becoming President again. Horrifying, yes. Incomprehensible. Sadly, no. When I read Deaton and Case( Philly is the New Ciudad Juárez), a light when on. Well, you can’t do what the working class–the white working class, at least–did what it did in 1940 today. The social capital is gone. The family structure is gone. The Churches are gone. And I don’t intend this in some reactionary way. But anyone who tells me that Haddington 1940 and Haddington 2024 aren’t two very different sets of possibilities and life chances has got to be kidding. Yeah, we worked hard. All of us. But we had help too, and not all of it came from the government, although at least some of it did. You think the New Deal didn’t make difference? As Brandon says, malarkey. Unions made a huge difference, and it wasn’t all just about rent-seeking. Some of it, of course, but all of it? Uh uh. I saw how it affected people in my family. For some of them, the union was family too. These guys socialized, intermarried, did favors for each other, and kept an eye on each other. It mattered. It wasn’t all good, but what is? Costs and benefits, huh? The Econ are fond of measuring costs. They aren’t as keen on talking about benefits.

I now see Haddington, my family, the Church, the Italian-American stuff in a very different way. Some of it was, yes, not so hot. But on balance, I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to that world. If there is a Heaven, I’ll wake up back in West Philly, ca. 1955. That’s me. Your mileage (and preferences) may vary.

Peace