The Personality of American CitiesHungerford, Edward
History
The Personality of American Cities
Hungerford, Edward
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
To give more than a glimpse of the concrete Philadelphia within these
limits is quite out of the question. It would mean incidentally the
telling of her great charities, her wonderful museum of art whose winter
show is an annual pilgrimage for the painters from all the eastern
portion of the land, of her vast educational projects. Two of these
last deserve a passing mention, however. One might never write of
Philadelphia and forget her university--that great institution upon the
west bank of the Schuylkill which awoke almost overnight to find itself
man-size, a man-sized opportunity awaiting. And one should not speak of
the University of Pennsylvania and forget the college that Stephen
Girard founded. Of course Girard College is not a college at all but a
great charity school for boys, but it is none the less interesting
because of that.
The story of Stephen Girard is the story of the man who was not alone
the richest man in Philadelphia but the richest man in America as well.
But among all his assets he did not have happiness. His beautiful young
wife was sent to a madhouse early in her life, and Girard shut himself
off from the companionship of men, save the necessity of business
dealings with them. He was known as a stern, irascible, hard screw of a
man--immensely just but seemingly hardly human. Only once did
Philadelphia ever see him as anything else--and that was in the yellow
fever panic at the end of the eighteenth century when Stephen Girard,
its great merchant and banker, went out and with his own purse and his
own hands took his part in alleviating the disaster. It was many years
afterward that Girard College came into being; its center structure a
Greek temple, probably the most beautiful of its sort in the land, and
its stern provision against the admission of clergymen even to the
grounds of the institution, a reflection of its founder's hard mind
coming down through the years. Today it is a great charity school,
taking boys at eight years of age and keeping them, if need be, until
they are eighteen, and in all those years not only schooling but housing
them and feeding them as well as the finest private-school in all this
land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account