Philadelphia neighborhood mourns loss of old home
PHILADELPHIA — By the time the funeral started on a Philadelphia street, all the folding seats were full and a standing room-only crowd had begun to gather.
Many mourners wore black, and there were tears and a eulogy. But this was not a funeral for a person.
It was a funeral for a home, 3711 Mellon St., in the Mantua section of Philadelphia. It survived 142 years, and outlived many of its neighbors, and mourners came to pay their respects to its history and to a once vibrant neighborhood that has experienced decades of decline.
Philadelphia, like many older cities, has seen a revival in many areas. But neighborhoods such as Mantua, which saw vicious gang wars in the 1960s and 1970s, are still littered with vacant and abandoned housing.
“By arranging our focus on one modest, vacant row house, we’ll commemorate the lives and the stories contained within it. Think of your own homes,” Pastor Henry Moore, of the nearby Mt. Olive Baptist Church, told the audience.
The event, organized in part by Philadelphia’s Temple University, mixed art and public history to honor the lives of ordinary residents.
The house in its early years was home to large families from Ireland, or eastern and southern Europe, holding a family of nine in its two bedrooms in 1910.
But in 1946, it was purchased by Leona Richardson, an African-American single mother from Louisiana who moved north as part of the Second Great Migration of blacks leaving the South. The single mother used $200 as a down payment and paid the $1,600 mortgage over 10 years while working as a seamstress. The purchase came at a time when it was difficult for African-Americans to obtain loans.
Many residents of Mantua hope a revitalization will come. But the neighborhood is close to two major universities, and they worry that an influx of students could increase rent and property taxes, driving out neighbors.