16th and Callowhill
Northeast Corner
The northeast corner of 16th and Callowhill Streets has been a surface parking lot for fifty years. Let's look at its history.
The northeast corner of 16th and Callowhill Streets in September 2025. The police parking garage is on the right, the Hamilton apartments in the yellow-trimmed towers, and CBS/KYW TV studios at the left edge.
The corner parking lot is now public parking. Until about a year ago it was used as employee and business truck parking for CBS TV and KYW radio. The adjacent surface parking lot to its north is still CBS parking only. The sign on the fence calls the lot FranklinTown Parking. This is wrong on three counts: the 1971 project was called Franklin Town, not Franklintown; this corner was not within the footprint of the Franklin Town project; no one in the neighborhood calls it the Franklin Town neighborhood. It's the Baldwin Park neighborhood. The Friends group worked to get the park name changed from Franklin Town Park to Matthias Baldwin Park, as discussed here.
It will be interesting to see if a development of million-dollar homes will tolerate having Rosa's Photo and Fingerprinting parked opposite their driveway entrance (see below).
​​A quick summary of the pre-19th century history:
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The Lenni Lenape and their ancestors occupied the lower Delaware valley for millennia before the Europeans arrived. From 1682 to 1787 William Penn and his family owned the land just north of Vine Street extending from 19th Street to Lemon Hill. In 1737 his son Thomas Penn built Springettsbury Manor near the location of today's City View Condominiums. Penn's estate was sold to Robert Morris in 1787 and the manor burned down in 1794. Morris went bankrupt and his land was sold off in parcels. The equivalent of today's Center City did not extend much further west than Independence Hall at that time, but when Matthias Baldwin moved his factory to Broad and Hamilton Street in 1835, housing for his expanding workforce gradually followed. By 1859 the 1600 block of Callowhill Street was completely built out, mostly with three-story single-family houses accommodating first-floor retail.
Portion of the Hopkins map of 1875 with north at the top, Callowhill Street on the bottom, and 15th Street on the right edge.
The railroad tracks at this time were surface tracks down Pennsylvania Avenue (the Callowhill Cut would be dug in 1898). On the website there are articles on the Sellers machine shops, Asa Whitney’s wheel works, Baldwin Locomotives, and the Cresson Shafting Work. The houses seen along Callowhill and 16th Streets were built in the 1850s.
Everything in this 1875 map would be demolished.
All of these houses, only 20-30 years old, were removed in the early 1880s. These addresses may be reborn in the next year or so.
Portion of an 1888 Baist map showing the houses at the corner being replaced by a coal yard.
1885 lithograph showing the Pennsylvania Warehousing and Safe Deposit Company in what had been the First Bank of the United States. The company engages in the ownership and operation of warehouses.
The company was founded in 1872 and still exists with its headquarters in Lower Gwynedd, Pennsylvania.
The building still exists and is being remodeled as a museum of finance.
Detail from 1895 Bromley map here.
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Pennsylvania Warehouse Company, 1894, NE corner 16th and Callowhill.
SE corner 16th and Callowhill, 1894.
The building on the far right bears the name Continental Market at its top, but this building's days are numbered. That site is now occupied by 1600 Callowhill Apartments in a building on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.
The north side of the warehouse in 1912. A ramp brought goods up to the warehouse from the below-grade freight yard.
Portion of a 1922 Bromley map showing the warehouse surrounded by railroad tracks and coal supplies. The Baldwin Locomotive Works is at top right. It will be moved completely out of the neighborhood by 1928. The diagonal bridge over the Callowhill Cut into the Sellers plant can be seen on the left. That is the only extant structure north of Callowhill Street on the map.
Aerial view in 1928 of the warehouse just west of the parking garage for the Inquirer Building. West of the warehouse is the below grade freight yard.
Baldwin Locomotive Works is seen north of the warehouse ten years before its demolition.
1600 Callowhill is seen at far right middle with water tower on the roof. The coal pockets are just left (north) of what is now The Lofts at Logan Square. These open bins will later be made into cylindrical silos.
The angled bridge over the Callowhill Cut between 16th and 17th Streets, to the left of the coal bins, still exists and is the last remnant of William Sellers' machine shop. (credit)
Pennsylvania Warehousing at 23rd and Arch in 1931, looking north. These warehouses were concentrated near the docks and near railroad freight yards and were basically 19th century self-storage units.
The site is now home to an apartment tower with a Giant Market on the lower floor.
Portion of a 1942 land use map showing the corner occupied by a boiler maker.
The John Wood Manufacturing Company, started in Valley Forge in 1867, is a national firm that still exists. In 1918 it had been at 1223 Hamilton Street before moving into this larger building.
Even though the warehouse was just outside the footprint of the Franklin Town development announced in 1971, it was demolished in the late 1970s like most of the buildings within the footprint.
2025 proposal for new townhouse development from Colliers.
North is at top. There are ten houses each on both Callowhill Street (along the bottom) and 16th Street (vertically on the left), all of which have one-car parking. There are two homes with two-car parking, five with one-car parking, and one without parking within the development. They are accessible by the two-way driveway.
