(From the Monthly Progress in 2004)
In the late 1800s and early 1900s a large group of German speaking people immigrated to Philadelphia. Among these folks was a group from the Austrian Hungarian Empire from an area known as Banat which was located between the Danube River and the Black Sea.
These people settled in an area bounded east and west by Front and Fifth Streets and north and south by Lehigh and Girard Avenues. There were three Catholic parishes in this area: St. Peter, a German parish at Fifth and Girard; St. Michael, an Irish parish at Second and Jefferson; and Sacred Heart, a Hungarian parish at Palethorpe and Hancock.
These immigrants lived in “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” houses. There were hundreds of these dwellings in this neighborhood. They consisted of three floors. One room was on each floor with a circular staircase going from the basement to the third floor. On the first floor was the kitchen, dining room and parlor. The bedrooms were on the upper floors. There was no indoor bathroom but an outdoor toilet in the backyard. Hot water for bathing was heated on a coal stove and a large 3 foot round tub was utilized for bathing. This cold stove was the only heat for the entire dwelling.
F.P.W.
(to be continued next month)
EDITOR’S NOTE: this was written and originally published in Monthly Progress, Volume 59, No. 6– June 2004. It has been re-published here in 2026 with minor edits. Misspellings of names, capitalization and punctuation have been preserved as originally published.
Interesting, thank you.