In Your Neighborhood: Powelton Village
Hannah Kent Schoff, a resident of Powelton for some 60 years, is known for her leadership of the campaign to establish a juvenile court system in Philadelphia; and for her leadership role in establishing the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) as a national organization with state affiliates.
Hannah Kent Schoff, a resident of Powelton, was a progressive advocate for the health and wellbeing of the nation’s children.
Thomas E. Miller was notable as a member of the South Carolina legislature and senate during the Reconstruction era; later, at the onset of the Jim Crow era, he served a short-term in the U.S. House of Representatives; he and his family arrived in Powelton in or around 1921.
Thomas E. Miller made his mark in history in South Carolina, where he bravely served as a four-time black legislator and one-time representative to the U.S. House between the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. Miller spent at least a decade of his later life in the Powelton neighborhood.
From 1973 to 1978, members of MOVE adopted a radically alternative, anti-technology lifestyle and displayed a political militancy that provoked a devastating assault by the Philadelphia police on the organization’s Powelton Village headquarters.
Following World War II, urban renewal provided the resources for city officials and developers to create dramatic changes to the physical and social landscape of West Philadelphia.
Drexel’s campus expansion, funded by federal and city urban renewal dollars in the decades following World War II, brought the University into conflict, first with Penn and then with Drexel’s neighbors in Powelton Village.
Under President John Fry, Drexel adopted a two-prong approach to neighborhood community development—creating a university-assisted middle school and a neighborhood center to connect community partners with Drexel resources.
Drexel University, founded by West Philadelphian Anthony J. Drexel, has a rich history spanning over 125 years.
Though the MOVE organization is notoriously famous by dint of the tragic 1985 MOVE fire, an event that shook the city to its core and ramifies even today, their history in West Philadelphia spans more than forty years, from the mid-1970s to the late-2010s.