Cobbs Creek

This undated photo taken for the City Parks Association of Philadelphia shows remains of West End Mill in their alignment with Catherine Avenue. The top of the S-curve access road aligns with Cedar Avenue. 

Girls from the William Cullen Bryant School show off cloths they made in the lastest schoolgirl fashions.  Note the black shoes worn by most of the girls (see girl on the left).  They are high-topped shoes that buttoned up using a special button hook.

Employment of Girls from Households of Cotton and Woolen Mill Workers, West End Mill Area

Employment of Girls from Households of Cotton and Woolen Mill Workers 1880

Employment of Boys from Households of Cotton and Woolen Mill Workers, 1880

Two generations of Boothroyd and Goodyear children attended the West End elementary school at 60th and Cedar. West End School No. 2, which opened in 1903, supplemented an older school building next to the site. Archival photos suggest that the two buildings were joined in 1913, the year the school was enlarged and renamed William Cullen Bryant School.

As shown in this contemporary photo, the house Lydia Boothroyd Goodyear owned at 6147 Walton Ave. retains its original wooden roof cornice and ornamental supports. 

The 1940 Census shows Lydia Boothroyd Goodyear, Napolean Goodyear’s widow, living in this house at 6147 Walton Ave. with two of her children. The house was built ca. 1869.  In 1905, it was purchased by Napolean and Lydia. Napolean died in 1917. Lydia died in 1941 at age 84. In 1946, the house was put up for sale by the City for failure to pay taxes. Lydia’s children, however, were apparently able to save the house. Her daughter Myrtle Goodyear died there in 1969 at about age 72. She had no children and the house was escheat by the Commonwealth in 1883. It was sold in 1984.