History
The neighborhood was originally part of the Northern Liberties, a township to the north of the city (which at that time was distinct from the other townships and municipalities within the County of Philadelphia). It was originally part of a manor (named Spingettsbury Farm) established by William Penn. During the late 1700s, the manor was split into two estates---"Bush Hill" (located to the east of 19th Street) and "The Hills" (located to the west of 19th Street). In the early 1800s, the estates were subdivided, and from 1850 to 1876, housing was developed in alignment with the city grid that had originally been established by William Penn.
The neighborhood name is quite old, going back many decades before Philadelphia's Act of Consolidation, when the area was part of the Spring Garden District of Philadelphia County, not yet part of the city. Finkel gives 1808 as the year it first appears in the written sources that he and his contributors consulted. The Philadelphia Information Locator Service list (augmented from the Finkel 1995 list), while repeating Finkel's definition of the neighborhood's boundaries, gives 1813 as the earliest year of use.
Read more about this topic: Spring Garden, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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