Northeast Philadelphia
Northeast Philadelphia, nicknamed Northeast Philly, the Great Northeast, and known colloquially as simply "the Northeast", is a section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to the 2000 census, Northeast Philadelphia has a population of between 300,000 and 450,000, depending on how the area is defined. The Northeast is known as being home to a large and diverse working class population, including Polish, German, Jewish, Russian, African American, Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Guatemalan, Ukrainian, Indian, Chinese, Irish, and Vietnamese neighborhoods.
Geography
Because of the large size of the Northeast, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission divides it into two regions called Lower Northeast and Far Northeast, the names being derived from their distance from Center City. The term Near Northeast is not widely used colloquially; Lower Northeast is more commonly used, but the term Far Northeast is in widespread use. The demarcation line between the two sections is typically given as Pennypack Creek.Northeast Philadelphia is bounded by the Delaware River on the east, Bucks County on the north, and Montgomery County on the west. The southern limit is given as Frankford/Tacony Creek or Adams Avenue.
Lower Northeast
- Burholme
- Castor Garden
- Crescentville
- Fox Chase
- Frankford
- Holmesburg
- Juniata
- Lawncrest
- Lawndale
- Lexington Park
- Mayfair
- Northwood
- Oxford Circle
- Rhawnhurst
- Ryers
- Tacony
- Wissinoming
- Bridesburg
Far Northeast
- Academy Gardens
- Ashton-Woodenbridge
- Bustleton
- Byberry
- Crestmont Farms
- Holme Circle
- Krewstown
- Millbrook
- Modena Park
- Morrell Park
- Normandy
- Parkwood
- Pennypack
- Pine Valley
- Somerton
- Torresdale
- Upper Holmesburg
- Winchester Park
History
Early European settlement
The first European settlement in the Northeast was by Swedish farmers, who emigrated there when the area was a part of the New Sweden colony. They were followed by English Quakers, including Thomas Holme, who came to begin the settlement of William Penn's Pennsylvania colony in the late 1680s. In the years to follow, Northeast Philadelphia developed as a scattering of small towns and farms that were a part of Philadelphia County, but not the City of Philadelphia. Before consolidation with the City, what is now the Northeast consisted of the townships of Byberry, Delaware, Lower Dublin, Moreland, and Oxford, ; and the boroughs of Bridesburg, Frankford, and White Hall, which were more urbanized.Growth in industry and farming
While most of the land in what is now the Northeast was dedicated to farming, the presence of many creeks, along with proximity to Philadelphia proper, made the towns of the Northeast suitable for industrial development. The Northeast's first factory was the Rowland Shovel Works on the Pennypack Creek. In 1802, it produced the first shovel made in the United States. More mills and factories followed along the Pennypack and Frankford Creeks, and traces of the mill races and dams remain to this day. The most famous of these factories was the Disston Saw Works in Tacony, founded by English industrialist Henry Disston, whose saw blades were world-renowned.Consolidation and population increase
By 1854, Philadelphia County was incorporated into the city. In spite of the political incorporation, the Northeast retained its old development patterns for a time, and the dense populations and urban style of housing that marked older, more traditional sections of the city had not yet found their way there. In the first three decades of the 20th century, rapid industrialization led to the growth of industrial sections of the northeast and the neighborhoods surrounding them. These demographic changes, along with the building of the Market-Frankford Line train and new arterial highways, such as the Roosevelt Boulevard, brought new middle class populations to the lower half of the Northeast. Vast tracts of row homes were built in that section of the Northeast for new arrivals in the 1920s and 1930s, typically with small, but valued front lawns, which impart a "garden suburb" quality to much of the Northeast, reducing the sense of physical density felt elsewhere in the city. Much of this development occurred east of Roosevelt Boulevard and in Oxford Circle.Post-war growth
After World War II, newer arrivals, armed with the mortgage benefits of the GI Bill, brought the baby boom to the Northeast. This newer population was heavily Jewish or ethnic Catholic and completed the development of the region, filling in undeveloped areas of Rhawnhurst and Bell's Corner and developing the previously rural Far Northeast. As older sections of the city lost populations of young families, the Northeast's school-age population swelled, requiring rapid expansion of schools, libraries, cinemas, shopping, transportation, restaurants and other needed amenities.The period from 1945 through the 1970s was marked in many American cities by urban decline in older, more industrial areas. This was especially true in Philadelphia, in which much of the city's North, West and South sections lost population, factories, jobs and commerce. During the postwar period, the Northeast experienced a heavy influx of growing middle-class families, and had become an almost exclusively white community. This aroused controversy in the 1960s and 1970s, as passions for and against school busing were focused on the Northeast, to address racial imbalances, especially in the city's public schools. That racial imbalance was ultimately addressed by the upward mobility enjoyed by many of the graduates of the Northeast's excellent public and parochial school systems, who made their way out of the Northeast and into the suburbs from the 1980s onward, making room for new arrivals from the city's Latino, African American and Asian populations.
A separate identity
In the 1980s, the Northeast developed along a separate path from much of the rest of the city. In addition to the racial differences mentioned above, the political climate in the Northeast was balanced evenly between Republicans and Democrats, while the rest of the city almost uniformly voted for the latter party. As a result, many Northeasters became more and more discontented with the high city taxes and a perceived imbalance in the services they received for them. This discontent grew to give rise to a secessionist movement, led by State Senator Frank "Hank" Salvatore, among others. Salvatore introduced a bill in the State Senate to allow the Northeast to become a separate county called Liberty County, but the bill failed to progress beyond this stage. As the Philadelphia economy grew stronger, and most discontented people fled to the suburbs, and a new, more popular mayor, Ed Rendell, was elected, the call for secession waned, and the section settled back into life as a part of the city.Today, the Northeast enjoys greater racial balance and relative stability. The region is uniformly developed, but like many American urban communities, it has witnessed the loss of manufacturing, factory conversions to marginal retail "outlets," and growing vacancies along shopping avenues, especially in the southern part of the region. During the housing boom of the first decade of the 21st century, property tax advantages granted to new construction within the city limits led to a growth in residential units and an escalation of existing home prices in the Northeast.
Demographics
According to the 2010 census, 432,073 people live in the Northeast section of Philadelphia.By 2018 immigration and ethnic diversity had increased in the region.
Racial demographics
- Non-Hispanic White: 252,022
- Non-Hispanic Black: 77,681
- Hispanic or Latino of any race: 60,020
- Asian: 31,658
- Mixed or Other: 10,692
- Native American: 7,777
Irish Americans
Today, the Irish in Philadelphia make up 14.2% of the city's population, the largest ethnicity in the city. Although there are Irish in almost every area of the city, they still are predominantly located within Northeast Philadelphia, especially in neighborhoods such as Kensington, Fishtown, and Mayfair.