Philadelphia Information Locator Service Philadelphia Neighborhoods and Place Names

Who thinks of Philadelphia today without Manayunk, Frankford, Port Richmond, Germantown, West Oak Lane? But few know all of the nearly 200 neighborhood names currently in use and the nearly 200 used no longer in this big city of small neighborhoods.

Anyone who sets out to make a comprehensive list of neighborhoods - as we did for this almanac - soon finds that names used by official and unofficial historians, map makers, the Postal Service, the Census Bureau, the Planning Commission, and SEPTA vary widely and sometimes conflict. What, then, makes a neighborhood a candidate for this list?

We felt most comfortable when a neighborhood name appeared many times in our sources. Bridesburg, for example, first appeared on the 1839 (sic) map we consulted and then reappeared in 15 other of our sources up to the present day. Logan, which many Philadelphia-neighborhood aficionados think of as old, appeared in none of our early sources. Of course, Logan is in this list, as are truly esoteric neighborhoods from the past such as Texas, Smoky Hollow, Beggarstown, Rose of Bath, and Saw Dust Village and more recent additions such as Bentley, Fernhill, Mount Moriah, and Penn-Knox. Many neighborhood names turned up without dates of origin in textual sources; we chose to include them as well.

This gazette of 395 Philadelphia names - more than anyone has previously claimed exist in a city long known as a "city of neighborhoods" - includes bits and pieces of our forgotten past that had seemed perched on the edge of oblivion. We hope this list helps pull them back from that brink.

At the end of most entries is a date. . . . This indicates the earliest appearance of that name in the sources we consulted. For many of the names that have gone out of use, we also provide the last year they appeared.

Hills, John, Plan of the City of Philadelphia and Environs, 1808

Kennedy, D. J., A Map of the County of Philadelphia, 1843, Charles Ellet, Jr., publisher (Note: this map is usually mistakenly recited with an 1839 date.)

Sidney, J. C., Map of the City of Philadelphia, 1849, Smith & Wistar, publishers

Scott's Map of the Consolidated City of Philadelphia, 1855, Scott & Moore, publishers

Lake, D. Jackson, & Beers, Silas N., Map of the Vicinity of Philadelphia, 1861, J. E. Gillette, publishers

Lippincott's Pronouncing Gazetteer, 1862, J. B. Lippincott, publisher

Baist, George William, Baist's Atlas of the City of Philadelphia, Penna., 1888, G. W. Baist, publisher

Bromley, George Washington & Walter Scott, Atlas of the City of Philadelphia, 1895, G.W. Bromley & Company, publishers

Official Map Showing the System of Lines of the Union Traction Co. in Phila., 1899

Bromley, George Washington & Walter Scott, Atlas of the City of Philadelphia, 1910, G.W. Bromley & Company, publishers

Philadelphia Transportation Company, Street Map of Philadelphia & Vicinity, 1946

Hagtrom's Greater Philadelphia/Camden Atlas, 5th edition, 1987

SEPTA, Philadelphia Street and Transit Map,, 1990, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, publisher

Alexandria Drafting Company, ADC's Street Map of Philadelphia Vicinity and Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 12th edition, no date.



Campbell, William Bucke, "Old Towns and Districts of Philadelphia," Philadelphia History, Volume 4, No. 5 (City History Society of Philadelphia, 1942)

Daly, John, and Allen Weinberg, Genealogy of Philadelphia County Subdivisions, , Philadelphia: Philadelphia Department of Records, 2nd edition. 1966

Jackson, Joseph, Encyclopedia of Philadelphia, Harrisburg: National Historical Association, 1931

Lichstein, Isadore, editor, The Bulletin Almanac,, Philadelphia: The Evening and Sunday Bulletin, 1973

Morgan, George, Philadelphia, The City of Firsts, , Philadelphia: Historical Publication Society, 1926

Morley, Christopher, Travels in Philadelphia, David McKay, 1920

Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Census Tracts and Blocks, 1980

Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Philadelphia: City of Neighborhoods, 1976

Redevelopment Urban Renewal Areas

The Philadelphia City Archives has many of the early area redevelopment plans, certifications, and housing quality surveys of various redevelopment areas from 1948 to 1984. Many of the names of these redevelopment areas were derived from a long usage of that name within the community. Others were applied by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority which stuck as part of that neighborhood's heritage, as one can see when viewing the lists. And still others enjoyed only a brief life before being dropped in favor of other names. The boundaries of each of the redevelopment areas are included. The initials R.D.A. indicate that it was a redevelopment area on the date given in the last column.

The names and boundaries of the redevelopment areas are derived from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission's Philadelphia Redevelopment Areas, published in February 1969. The dates given for the redevelopment areas (marked as R.D.A.) are the dates of certification and, when applicable, the dates the certification was superceded.