A nomination of Spruce Hill as a Philadelphia historic district under the city's Preservation Ordinance has been made by the University City Historical Society and the Spruce Hill Community Association. The nomination formally submitted to the Philadelphia Historical Commission (PHC) focuses on "the evolution of one of the nation's first suburbs," an area "largely shaped during the heyday of the omnibuses and horse-car street railroads that transformed the scale of the city after 1854." Emphasis in the documentation is on development during the second half of the 19th century "as a mixed elite and middle class neighborhood that is represented by single, twin, and detached housing." The presentation goes so far as to state: "If the nineteenth century was a period of growth for the West Philadelphia district, the twentieth century has generally been a period of stasis and decline, stimulated largely by changing fashion for elite residence and by the shift to a transient student population after World War II."
In considering nominations of areas of the city for designation as "historic districts," and in
deciding on applications for permits involving work on buildings in districts so designated, the
PHC classifies properties as significant, contributing, or
noncontributing to the "historical or architectural character of the district as defined in the
Commission's designation." These classifications are important not only because a large proportion
of significant and contributing buildings is necessary to support a nomination, but also because
the categorization will affect the scrutiny placed on permit applications for work on properties in any designated district.
The definitions of these terms are as follows:
The documentation submitted as part of the "nomination" recognizes the great and largely irreversible changes to the physical character of Spruce Hill since the time it was developed as an early suburb. Nevertheless, in a cynical attempt to present the area as being dominated by buildings which meet the requirements of the Preservation Ordinance to for a "geographically definable area possessing a significant concentration ... of buildings ... united by past events, plan or physical development," the advocates of historic designation claim that "despite a general conversion from single family, elite and middle class housing to apartments... the district's stock of buildings survives with a high degree of integrity."
To make this sweeping but highly dubious assertion seem credible, the authors of the nomination have
had to arbitrarily categorize all manner of buildings in the area as contributing. This includes
individual houses having styles totally distinct from the early mansions or late 19th and early 20th
century twin and row homes, large apartment buildings having no distinctive character whatever
-- some of which were constructed on land once occupied by civil war era mansions, properties
which have been so drastically altered over the course of time that they either bear no relation to
the architectural character of the original structures or have for economic and social reasons
essentially zero probability of being returned to anything closer than at present to their initial design. Further, several tracts of buildings in the area encompassed by the Spruce Hill nomination, and labeled in the submission as contributing, would more appropriately fit the description given by the PHC's senior Historic Preservation Officer, Dr Richard Tyler, at a workshop in November 1997. Namely, "We don't need the same density of housing that was constructed rapidly to house masses of newly arriving immigrants. We are preserving a type of housing that is appalling."
Click here for examples of buildings gratuitously classified as contributing in the Spruce Hill nomination.