Philadelphia City Council voted unanimously to formally restore the name Black Bottom to a stretch of West Philadelphia that was wiped off the map in the 1960s, when the city declared the predominantly Black neighborhood blighted and bulldozed it for institutional development. The community once stood between roughly 32nd and 40th streets, bounded by University and Lancaster avenues, and its erasure displaced residents by the thousands to make way for projects including the University City Science Center and University City High School.
According to the Philadelphia Tribune, the resolution formally recognizes Black Bottom as the first and official name of the community and calls for future city communications and actions to acknowledge its place in Philadelphia's history. Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the district and introduced the legislation, said the resolution marks an important milestone in repairing harm inflicted by the city and others, even as more work remains, the Inquirer reports.
Gauthier was direct about the resolution's limits. “Renaming the neighborhood doesn't do anything legally for the community,” she said, according to PhillyVoice, though she suggested it could begin work toward reparations and compensation for descendants. Per the Inquirer's reporting, the resolution itself provides no compensation or formal way for displaced families to return.
A Neighborhood Born of the Great Migration
Black Bottom emerged during the Great Migration, as Black southerners moved to Philadelphia in search of work and opportunity, per the Inquirer. The area became a landing place for migrants arriving from Southern states in the 1910s and 1920s, according to WHYY. By 1950, the neighborhood included homes, businesses, theaters, and clubs, the Inquirer notes, and university planners by the 1950s had come to view the struggling neighborhood as a threat to their institution, according to a University of Pennsylvania account of the period.
That shift in perception had consequences once the federal government gave cities new tools for clearance. The Housing Act of 1949 allowed local governments to purchase areas considered blighted, and Philadelphia used those urban-renewal funds through the 1960s to acquire and demolish homes in Black Bottom, the same Penn account explains. The city's Redevelopment Authority condemned Unit 3 properties for urban renewal in 1966, displacing residents through eminent domain to clear the ground for the University City Science Center and its proposed affiliate, University City High School.
How Many Were Displaced Remains Disputed
Just how many people lost their homes is not settled. Penn's own historical account puts the Redevelopment Authority's displacement in Unit 3 at 2,653 people. WHYY reports that outside experts estimate around 5,000 were displaced in total. Gauthier, for her part, has said an estimated 15,000 Black residents were displaced during the community's destruction and redevelopment, according to the Philadelphia Tribune. The Inquirer, citing the scale of the demolition, describes the toll simply as thousands of Black residents forced to resettle in new parts of the city, excluded from the prosperity the new development eventually created.
The University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University both backed projects built on the former neighborhood's footprint, the Inquirer reports, and Penn's own historical materials acknowledge the university's role in creating the Science Center severely damaged its community relations for decades afterward. More recently, a Penn archaeology project called Heritage West, now in its third year, has uncovered thousands of artifacts tied to the vanished neighborhood, according to CBS News Philadelphia.
Walter Palmer and a Street Renaming Ceremony
Former residents and their descendants have kept the community's memory alive, holding annual reunions since 1974, per the Inquirer. Attorney Walter Palmer has been the most visible spokesperson for Black Bottom since the 1970s, documenting its history and organizing efforts to preserve it, according to Penn's historical archive.
Palmer's decades of work will be honored directly this week. A historical renaming and celebration ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 11 a.m. at the northwest corner of 36th and Market streets, the Philadelphia Tribune reports. As part of the event, 3600 Market will be renamed Dr. Walter Palmer Way, according to a University City Science Center announcement, with a historical marker also planned, per PhillyVoice.
A Broader Pattern of Erasure and Redress
The displacement of Black Bottom fits a pattern that has played out elsewhere in the city as development pressure mounted. Between 2001 and 2011, the area's Black population decreased by half, WHYY reports, even as University City saw a building boom; roughly 10 million square feet of real-estate projects were developed in the neighborhood over a five-year span representing a $4.5 billion investment, according to Billy Penn. The Black Bottom Tribe, a group of former residents and descendants, has continued pushing for historical markers and a cultural center to mark what was lost, per WHYY's reporting.
Philadelphia has moved to protect other historically Black neighborhoods from similar fates. The city's Christian Street corridor, known as Black Doctors Row, was designated the city's first Black historic district, a move that prevents demolitions across its six blocks and requires review of proposed exterior changes, according to NBC News. Residents and activists pursued that designation in response to gentrification and what critics called indiscriminate demolition of homes for luxury condos and larger rentals, NBC News reported. Black Bottom's renaming carries no such legal protections, but for Gauthier and the families who still gather each year to remember what stood there, restoring the name is a starting point.
