philadelphia rowhouses, the irish and the savings and loan

i'm reading a great little book called 'The Irish in Philadelphia,' by Dennis Clark, loaned to me by a friend who is a fellow-Philadelphian ex-pat living in Berkeley, California.  Of course, there were loads of Irish-Americans in my life growing up in Philadelphia. My mother's mother was supposed to be part-irish, but I wonder now how much of it was Irish by marriage.  Her grandmother's sister definitely married an Irishman, so perhaps that was the connection.  Or maybe, just because they'd lived up in the mountains for so long, they'd lost some of their connection to the Irish, and didn't feel quite in the same league with the more recent Irish immigrants we lived around in Philadelphia.  I don't know, but our own Irish heritage seemed to be under-emphasized, even though so many of the people around us - including one of my mother's best friends - were Irish.

Perhaps the neatest thing about this book for me is that I am learning more about the working-class people of Philadelphia.  For example, there is a whole section on the row-house.  Philadelphia was and is a veritable warren of row-houses.  The kids who lived in them used to make fun of them, but the truth is they did provide affordable housing for working-class people.  Instead of being always in the power of the landlord, something the Irish in particular despised, the Irish working poor - and other working class people too - in Philadelphia could experience pride-of-ownership.  I feel certain it did endow all of us with a certain self-esteem we might not otherwise have had.  True, these little, somewhat windowless dwellings crowded up against one another may have all looked alike on the outside, but inside each one was unique.  I think it was a wonderful alternative to tenement buildings and apartment-living, especially for families.  It makes me feel proud of Philadelphia to realize how unique our housing situation was for working-class people.

"Laborers in Newburyport, Massachusetts, were paying between $60 and $100 a year in rent in 1850.  This surpasses the average Philadelphia rent of $53-$68.  Rentals in the Fort Hill area in Boston (were) $1.50 per room per week, and (there were) equally exorbitant rents for attics and cellars.  While unskilled immigrants to Philadelphia no doubt faced similar gouging, the fact that the city was able to expand its housing supply and make more working-class houses available was some relief.  Rental housing simply was not as large a portion of the Philadelphia housing market as it was in Boston and New York.  As early is 1851 Patrick McKeown was writing home to his sisters in Ireland that 'almost every family has a house to themselves let it be large or small and a great many working people own the houses they live in."  The opportunity for a workingman to obtain a home of his own was really there.  Whereas a two-story house in Ireland was a mark of notable affluence, in Philadelphia such a structure could be had by a thrifty workingman.  An examination of bequests of Philadelphia Irishmen of the 1850's indeicates that it was not uncommon for members of the city's Irish community to own houses and real property.  True, some of the property was in slum areas, but some was in other areas as well." p. 54

The book makes many unfavorable comparisons between Boston's Irish poor and Philadelphia's.  Even New York City's economics do not compare favorably with Philadelphia's when it came to the Irish working-class. 

Another key to the success of the working Irish in Philadelphia was the building and loan associations, sometimes called Savings & Loan - our family banked at the local Savings and Loan until I moved my parents out to join us in Berkeley - which were "a sort of people's bank.  Sincle it was difficult for ordinary working people without collateral to obtain credit, groups of them began to develop their own credit systems.  Each person deposited a small sum, usually weekly, until enough equity was established to warrant an extension of credit.  If a man could pay the nominal ground rent on a lot, he could after a time borrow perhaps $1,400 from his local building and loan association, have a house built, and repay the loan over a period of years.  This original mortgage system in the city grew spontaneously and extensively.  The first such associations were begun in the late 1840's, and by 1875 there were 600 disbursing a half-million dollars a month.  The depositors were the only stockholders.  The overhead was low, since usually only the secretary of the association drew a salary.  These building associations became one of the vehicles for improvement for Irish families intent upon achieving better housing and a modest respectability.  With some of that dogged thrift that could often be found among the extraordinarily penurious Irish cottiers in the old country, the Philadelphia Irish took to the building and loan associations." pp 56-57

I remember my mother had no time for banks and only wanted to deal with the savings and loan associations in Philadelphia.  I got the impression that banks were kinda 'the enemy' and the savings and loan was your friend.  Knowing what I now know about my family, it makes sense that, for my family, banks existed for 'another class' of people.  Maybe those people were 'better' but we were quite all right too.

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