Cobbs Creek

The southwest-corner house at 62nd St. and Walton Ave., showing the original wooden cornice of the roof and a decorative (finial-like) extension that rises above the roof-line. 

This photo of 6134 Cedar Ave. shows the original stone façade of the structure’s east side. The distinctive architectural element here is the A-frame roof line that forms an arrow with the house’s foundation; this element marks the house as turn of the twentieth century. It begs comparison with the red brick arrow of the building’s east side. 

This photo of 6134 Cedar Ave. shows the original red brick of the structure’s east side. The distinctive architectural element here is the A-frame roof line that forms an arrow with the house’s foundation; this element marks the house as turn of the twentieth century. 

This photo of 6134 Cedar Ave. shows the elegant stone façade of a house likely built at the turn of the last century. Today the building is owned by Church of Christian Compassion, whose headquarters building is 6121 Cedar Ave.

This close-up of the roofline of 6120 Cedar Ave., an abandoned house, shows original architectural elements—wooden roof cornice and ornamental supports—that mark it as structure built at the turn of the twentieth century. 

This close-up of the top of 6114 Cedar Ave. shows the roof (likely the original wood) cornice and ornamental redbrick below it; turn-of-the-last-century West End design elements. 

This renovated stand-alone house at 6114 Cedar Ave. retains some distinctive elements of its original West End architecture: redbrick façade, roof cornice, and ornamental brick below the cornice. 

In 1900, this house was the home of Charles and Rosa (Breisch) Alber (ages 30 and 32). They immigrated from Germany about 1890 and married in Philadelphia in 1892. They had six children although two died at a very early age. Charles was a butcher who had been in business with his brother at 826 Race St.  It appears that the business ran into trouble as Charles advertised for a job in 1904.  At the time, he was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and died in 1906. To cover the rent and feed her family, Rosa started taking in washing. Seventeen-year-old Charles, Jr. started working as a cloth cutter in a factory and his sister Helen, 14, worked as a sewer in the same factory. During World War I, Charles served overseas in Co. D 1st Telegraph Battalion. After the war, he worked as a wireman for the telephone company.  In 1920, their younger daughter, Bertha, was making records for a “talking machine” company and son Erwin was working as an electrician’s helper. In 1930, Rosa was living at 2652 70th Street in Southwest Philadelphia. Erwin was working as a machinist for the electric company. Bertha had apparently married but was not living with her husband.

The meadow in which stood West End Mill. Today the site is in Cobbs Creek Park in the basin below the intersection of Catherine & 63rd Street (Cobbs Creek Parkway). There is no historical marker. 

West End Mill Interior Diagram

West End Mill as shown on an 1886 West Philadelphia property map.

Note: South Street appears on this map in a place that may surprise readers familiar with the famous street that connects the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers. South Street’s westward extension along the city grid devised by William Penn was interrupted by the Schuylkill, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Woodlands Cemetery. Around the turn of the 20th century, city planners revived Penn’s original name for South Street (Cedar Street) and applied it to the street’s extension from 45th (at the latter’s diagonal intersection with Baltimore Avenue) and 63rd streets. See “South Street (Philadelphia),” Wikipedia.org. A similar logic appears to explain the renaming of South Philadelphia’s Fitzwater Street as Walton Avenue in West Philadelphia.