Philadelphia at the Shore
When
planning a vacation near the Atlantic Ocean, a resident of Philadelphia says,
"I'm going to the beach."
Someone from New Jersey says, "I'll be down the shore." I'm from Philly but now live in the Garden State,
so I use the latter expression these days.
However, my first trip through the shore towns of Ventnor City and
Margate, along the Jersey coastline last year, had me scratching my head wondering
where I was and which way to express my location.
As
we drove, I asked my husband, "Why do these shore towns feel so
familiar?" It was as if I was back
in Philadelphia where I grew up, and still loved to visit.
"The
buildings here are designed like the ones in Philadelphia." Joe began rattling off examples as we
traveled along Ventnor Ave. His specific
recall clicked more keen than my foggy memory.
Hardly
a building expert, I was floored that I not only noticed the similarities in
these small communities to the big city, but could also feel the affinity to
them that I had to the urban neighborhoods.
It amazed me how architecture reaches out in its essence as well as art
form.
The
house we rented in Ventnor wasn't a row home, like the Philadelphia ones I had
lived in, but had that aura as I sat on the open front porch looking across the
tiny car lined street at other houses. I
realized after Joe's information, that these houses didn't have to connect for
me to get the same Philly feel.
Reading
the street names from the truck window as we drove, we had also noticed many of the same
ones we remembered from familiar areas of the great city: Wissahickson, Wyoming,
Oxford, Jasper.
Joe
pointed out true row houses we passed in Ventnor that resembled those in the
Somerdale area of the city. Ventnor's
two story homes with a balcony on the second floor mirrored Philly's Mayfair
and Northeast sections of the city.
My
childhood neighborhood of Kensington's sister greeted us with its storefronts,
each also topped with an apartment dwelling.
The delicatessens and pizza joints made me want to get out at a red
light and stroll these reproductions of my youth. The stores also mimicked ones Joe'd seen in
Port Richmond and Fishtown. "You're
right," I cried, as the originals focused from my past. I almost heard the neurons firing in my head.
Margate's
colonial flare ballooned in its city hall, designed after Independence Hall in
Old City Philadelphia. Similar to the
Mayfair brick homes in the city, these shore ones only told me I wasn't on the
other side of the Delaware River because they clearly were more recently built.
The
Tudor style houses at N. Haverford and Ventnor Aves. screamed to me that we
were in Mayfair. The intersection of
Frontenac and Gladstone Aves. teased, 'You're at Frankford and Cottman
Aves.' Margate's fire hall could be a newer
Philadelphia Firehouse, and its
Community Church is a descendent of the ancient Christ's Church at 2nd
Street in Old City Philadelphia.
We
ventured back to Ventnor for this year's vacation. It was like coming home again. Even our temporary neighbors chatted with
each other and greeted us. At night,
this friendliness was like sitting outside in the city waiting for the ice
cream truck while chewing the fat. And
dogs. What city neighborhood would be
complete without the occasional barking of a dog? I met so many dogs on my vacation whose
owners were as gentle as they were. Were
these people duplicated from my childhood city home, like their
architecture? I didn’t know, but what I did
know is that I wanted to visit again next year.
