Today’s article is a conversation with Historic America’s very own Sonali Prillman and Ted Maust, the director of the Elfreth’s Alley Museum in Philadelphia. The museum aims to preserve and tell the story of Elfreth’s Alley, one of the oldest continuously inhabited streets in the United States. By maintaining the museum, Ted and his team hope to tell not only the story of the alley itself but of Philadelphia and the United States as a whole. If you want to learn more, a great place to start is the article which Ted wrote for us back in February about the history of Elfreth’s Alley.

However if you wish to learn more about early fire departments, rowdy volunteer firefighter brawls, the oldest property insurance company in the country, what it is like to run such a unique museum, or about how one of the oldest residential streets in the United States has changed through the centuries — then make sure you keep on reading!

How did the way the alley was arranged, as the houses are and were very close together impact the need for fire prevention and safety measures?

Ted: The alley was built in a pretty haphazard way. It looks like a lot of parts of Philadelphia that were built later which were built more intentionally with row homes. The houses on the alley were built one to three houses at a time and in direct opposition to what William Penn wanted for the design of Philly. William Penn had laid out the plan for Philadelphia with these really wide blocks and streets because he had lived through the great fire of London. He even has this great quote:

“Let every house be placed, if the person so pleases, in the middle of each plat, as to the breadth way of it, that so there may be ground on each side for gardens, or fields, that it may be a green country town, which will never be burnt, and always be wholesome.”

— William Penn

So basically he wanted big lots and a house right in the middle of each lot so that there was very low risk of fire spreading. He wasn't able to enforce this as people wanted to be near the port because Philadelphia is in between two rivers, so instead of spreading out from one river to the other, they all crushed up against one river. In the alley itself, the street was created by cutting a road through one of those big blocks that William Penn had laid out. There are actually two alleys through this one block and it's very crowded, so the risk of fire is probably pretty high. The houses were built out of brick for the most part. We think that there were some production buildings in between the houses and many of them were probably wood construction. Some of the earliest houses on the street may have been wood and even the ones that were brick would have had quite a lot of wood. The roof structures were also mostly wood and some of them actually have wood interior walls, so there was probably a lot of fire risk. Water was very nearby as there were the rivers, but there wasn't running water on the alley until the 1930s. For most of the history of people living on the street there hadn’t been running water, which is a challenge for firefighting.

Who invented fire insurance and the idea of volunteer firefighting groups and what were the purposes of these two organizations?

Ted: People really love talking about firsts and I think there’s probably a couple individuals who would have claims of firsts for both of these ideas. As far as I know, the first fire insurance in North America was in Charleston, South Carolina. There was a company started there in 1735, but it was relatively short-lived. The city had a major fire in 1740 which seems to have wiped out that insurer. As for volunteer fire companies, there's a lot of earlier examples in the British colonies. Boston was probably first as they had some paid firefighters as early as the 1670s. By the early 18th century, there were some of these fire societies that were both prototype or proto-fire companies, but also mutual aid societies, so they worked similar to insurance. For example, if you lost your home or belongings to fire they may be able to give you some money after that loss. Ben Franklin came from Boston, but he probably also had heard about the Charleston insurance company. When he was in Philadelphia he innovated both of these ideas, so the two ideas of insurance and then fire fighting are often conflated, but in 18th century Philadelphia they were pretty distinct entities. In 1752, Franklin started the first fire insurance company in Philadelphia which still exists today and that is the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. I don't remember the first year of the Philadelphia fire companies, but basically fire insurance deals exclusively with an insurance policy. They send somebody to your house and in the early days they would write up a description of your house. Later, they would make maps of whole neighborhoods, but they would list all the things that were both risks for fire as well as things that would need to be replaced if they burned. One of the reasons that I use a lot of these records is that they describe the insides of the houses in ways that we don't have other windows into. They’ll talk about what kind of moldings were in the house because those were both made of wood and also expensive to replace. I'll talk a little later about some of the other things that fire companies got up to, but they are pretty distinct. It does get confusing because by the nineteenth century like the 1830s and even the 1820s, there are some organizations that are serving both functions of insurance and fire fighting. There's something called the Fire Association which started as an organization where fire companies would come and talk to each other, negotiate, and divide up territory. In the 1820s that association became an insurer, so it's a little complicated because there is that overlap. For the most part they're pretty distinct and fire companies were somewhat incentivized to come help fight a fire because they might get a reward. At some point they were also subsidized by the city and those systems of payment and subsidy are probably really complicated.

The Philadelphia Contributionship, the oldest property insurance company in the country, as it appears today. It was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1752.

How similar or different are these two organizations compared to modern fire insurance and firefighting groups?

Ted: I don’t really know how different fire insurance today is from fire insurance in the 18th century. I'm sure it's very different and much more complicated. Fire fighting is pretty different. The equipment is very different. In the eighteenth-century most fire fighting was done with just leather buckets. There is the Fireman's Hall Museum right around the corner from us which if you are interested in more stories of the history of Philadelphia firefighting, they’re really the place to go. They have a fireman's hat on display that’s basically just a tophat as well as some very early fire engines, but nothing compared to what we have today where we have a system of high pressure water throughout the city. The biggest difference is that the fire companies were volunteers and they functioned as social clubs as well as fire fighting organizations. Like the company in Boston, they were similar to mutual aid organizations, so not so much for fire, but they would pay benefits if one of their members died in a fire. For instance, if you were a volunteer firefighter and you died fighting a fire your family would be provided for by the fire company. They often were represented ethnic groups within the city as well. There were Irish fire companies, Scottish fire companies, and German fire companies to name a few and they just became these centers of social life, but also of social chaos in the city. By the mid-nineteenth century they were known for three things: their parades, their drinking, and their fighting. They would have these big parades that would have multiple fire companies in them and they would be drinking. Then one group would pass another company's headquarters and there are stories of them either chanting rude things or somebody making an offensive gesture and then there's just a brawl. They would also go visit other fire companies and be put up in high style. Fire companies from New York and Baltimore, for example would come up and they would just drink a lot. The city did have some control over them and by the mid-nineteenth century, I think because they were sort of subsidizing their operations, they put some rules into effect. One of the rules was forbidding the fire fighters from actively drinking at the site of fires, which who knows how effective that was. Eventually the temperance societies got really involved with fire companies and were trying to get them to quit drinking which you know, maybe worked. The other thing that changed and got us closer to firefighting that we have today compared to the nineteenth century is that our building technology has changed dramatically. We went from having primarily wood frame buildings with stone or brick to being able to have steel and cast iron involved. Buildings were getting much taller which made it much harder to fight fires, requiring new technology and skills. Cities around the country had also begun professionalizing their fire departments. Boston which had really been at the forefront of this, as I said, they had some paid firefighters as early as the 1670s, but by 1837 they had a full professional fire department. Cincinnati was another one in the 1850s. In the 1860s, the Philadelphia City Council tried multiple times. They had a fire advisory council for the fire companies, but they were trying to make a full fire department. They had several bills in the 1860s that just didn't quite work, but eventually passed in 1870.

Some old fashioned fire fighting equipment on display at the Fireman's Hall Museum in Philadelphia.

Before the formation of volunteer firefighting groups how were fires fought? How successful were these methods?

Ted: Right around the same time that it started these volunteer fire companies, the city of Boston produced a hand crank water pump for fighting fires. Beyond that most of early fires were fought with leather buckets. If you lived in a city, especially in a place like Elfreth’s Alley, that was probably a higher risk for fire — you would buy a couple leather buckets by the door and they would have your name painted on them. If there was a fire you would run out and join the line of people making a bucket brigade to the closest source of water. On Elfreth’s Alley, it might have been a well or they might have gone the whole way to the Delaware River which is only about a block and a half way and you would just pass buckets of water. After the fire fighting effort is done everybody finds the buckets that have their names on them and they take them home. How effective was this? I don’t know. The effort was probably not so much to put out the fire, but slow the fire so people could get their belongings out as well as to try to prevent it from spreading to other houses. With those goals in mind it might have been somewhat effective as people kept doing it, but in terms of saving a house or actually quickly putting out a fire, probably not very effective.

How well did the volunteer firefighting groups work? You mentioned some of their vices, what were these problems exactly and how were these problems addressed?

Ted: I talked a bit about the drinking and the fighting. There’s actually a dissertation on this called “The Violent Volunteers.” There were lots of different efforts to try and curb these habits. The fire companies were very male-dominated, but they were also an interesting cross section. They would have these older men running the organization, but they also had lots and lots of young men who were members. Lots of organizations tried to get to those young men and curb their vices, as you put it. The YMCA, which was founded as the Young Men's Christian Association in 1844, did a lot of outreach to young firefighters. Church organizations did a lot of outreach to young firefighters. The city's control, to the extent that I understand it, appointed one person to oversee these various fire companies. I think the only real tool that they had was that they could censure the leaders of the various fire companies. They couldn't really enforce any sort of moral codes or behavior codes on the firefighters themselves. Now, eventually the drinking and the violence got to a point where some of these fire companies were having shootouts with each other and throwing bricks at each other. Then the city got a little more involved because it became a police issue. There were a couple brawls where police showed up and were attacked by the combatants themselves and it was just really messy, so that’s one of the reasons why they professionalized the fire department.

A postcard that dates back to 1906 showing one of Philadelphia’s YMCA branches. The YMCA and church organizations did a great deal of outreach to young firefighters in an effort to combat the drinking and fighting habits of the men.

How did fire prevention and safety change Elfreth's Alley? Philadelphia? Did the city become safer?

Ted: I think it's kind of hard to tell. We don’t have an example of an alternate history if these things didn't happen, so it’s kind of hard to prove, but it probably did generally make the city safer. Having people who were if not professional in terms of being paid, but who regularly fought fires, be in charge of firefighting was probably a good idea. There were also a lot of factors of urbanization that made fires more likely at the same time, so it's a little tough to figure out where the difference there lies. For instance, as time went by on Elfreth’s Alley, fire probably became more likely on the street. By the early twentieth century a lot of the houses were in pretty bad condition as a result of a complex set of forces. A lot of people who were living in the homes were relatively poor and were renting. The landlords probably weren't maintaining these houses. People who owned the houses who were actually living there were also probably quite poor themselves and also couldn't really maintain the houses. You have all these houses becoming older and that means that they're probably starting to fall down literally in some cases and that might increase the risk of fire. The roofs were probably in worse condition. By the late 19th century an in the early 20th century, there were a lot of factories around the street which were producing things that were not just flammable, but explosive. There was a boot polish factory just about half a block away and right up against behind two of the houses on the street was a paint factory. We know of a few fires on the street in the 20th century because there are newspaper photos of them from the 1930s and 50s but, beyond that we don't have a whole lot of records. There's at least one fire right at the corner of the alley, but we don’t know a ton about the fire themselves. The paint factory in 1938 did have a big fire and it damaged at least two of the roofs that were right up against it, but the impact was probably bigger than that. This is because that paint factory owned three of the homes in the alley. My speculation at least, and I think other people have speculated this as well, was that that company was probably going to knock down those homes and redevelop them whether to expand their factory or produce something else. However, after the fire it seems like they didn’t have the extra cash to do that redevelopment. They had to rebuild their factory and their warehouse, so shortly thereafter it seems like that paint company started being a little more cooperative with the preservationists who were at that point trying to protect Elfreth’s Alley. That was an example of a fire helping the alley survive, but beyond that it’s a little tough to tell. I talked a little bit earlier about the fact that we use fire insurance all the time. One of the reasons we talk about fire on the alley a whole lot is that when people come and visit the street one of the things they see on the houses are “fire marks.” These are basically metal logos of fire insurance companies that were put on houses to show that they had fire insurance. If you've ever seen the stickers in people's windows that say this house has a ADT Security System, it's essentially that, but in metal. One of the companies their logo was the shape of a barrel with a fire hose, one of them was an eagle, one of them was an antique fire engine, to name a few, so those are physical markers that people ask about, so we talk about fire a lot.

The “fire marks,” which used to be used by fire insurance companies to indicate if a home was a client of their services, on display at The Philadelphia Contributionship.

Are there any interesting facts or unknown stories on fire or fire prevention in Elfreth’s Alley that more people should know about or that you like to talk about?

Ted: Sure, so I mentioned that right around the corner from Elfreth’s Alley is the Fireman's Hall Museum located in Old Fire Hall. They have all these artifacts of old firefighting, but they also get a lot of money from the fire department today because one of the things they do is talk about fire safety and fire prevention. That museum started in the 1970s, but it seems that the idea of connecting fire history, fire prevention, and fire safety predates that museum. I don't know if this was directly connected to the same people who started the museum, but in the 1960s maybe even in the 1950s one day a year, usually during Fire Safety Week which is in October, the fire department would bring antique fire engines and some antique fire fighting artifacts to Elfreth’s Alley. They would hold a press conference almost, but usually in historical costume and they would read out things like William Penn’s guidance about how the city should be fireproof or the first code for the city from the 1680s. In the 1960s, the fire safety manual during Fire Safety Week was starting to make a splash. They were trying to get some coverage in the paper and I think that coming to Elfreth’s Alley and talking about the old ways of dealing with fire and the current ways of dealing with fire, they saw that as a really strong message. They have these huge sheets of paper in two booklets and one of them says something along the lines of “ye old fire prevention rules, 1682” and one say “fire prevention rules, 1961.” It’s a little corny in a way, but it’s really interesting that they thought that Elfreth’s Alley was this place worth talking about this in. It's also possible that they were storing the fire engines at Old Fire Hall, which became the new museum. It may have been close by, but that's one thing I like to talk about. The other thing if you are interested in specific stories of fires, I don't know if there are any on the alley or stories of the brawls between the fire companies that dissertation that I mentioned, “The Violent Volunteer,” is really the best source for it. They talk about the shootouts and drinking — that might give you some more stories.

“Fire Safety Week” on Elfreth’s Alley, sometime during the 1960s.

Could you tell us about your job? What is it like to run a historic site like Elfreth’s Alley and what does it take to keep this historic site and museum running and opening smoothly?

Ted: I am now the director of the Elfreth’s Alley Museum. I am the only staff person, so I have a volunteer board of six people who are my bosses and colleagues. I work about thirty hours a week and I am responsible for most of what happens at the museum, but board members will do a lot of work as well. I do everything from take out the trash, dealing with mice and rats — which is kind of gross. I take care of everything from that to when we are open in the summer, which we will probably be opening sometime in May this year and we’re open most weekends during the summer and fall. I'm there pretty much every day that we are open. I also write grants, communicate, train, and manage volunteers. During the season when we are open, those things take up a lot of time. Keeping the museum clean and orderly as well as just keeping it open takes up a lot of my time. When we are not open roughly from November to March so I can do some other projects. One thing that I did a lot last year was work on our fundraisers. We have two fundraisers a year which are typically open house events, but because of the pandemic we had to turn those into virtual events. Then, also during the pandemic, we started doing a podcast and we are working on season 2 right now. I’ve been mostly working from home since last March, but yesterday I was there at the museum. I was trying to clean up the garden a little bit and throw away old sticks and things, so it’s a bit of everything.

Elfreth’s Alley is a historic site, but it’s also a neighborhood where people are actively moving in and out of. What is it like working in a museum that tells the history of this alley and neighborhood while it is constantly changing every year?

Ted: What is really special about this place is that people are still living there. That is really cool and I think it is really interesting, but it also presents certain logistical challenges. Our big fundraisers of the year really rely on our neighbors being willing to show their houses to people. We’re so grateful that they do that, but it means like we have to manage that relationship. People often think that we’re a neighborhood organization and we try to be that sometimes, but we can’t fix everything. We’re trying to do what we can for our neighbors. During the pandemic, it’s been weird because I don’t see people that often. In the summer of 2019, I was there most days. I was on the street, watering plants, taking out the trash, and seeing people. Since I haven't really been there that much, we've had maybe five houses with new people living in them. People moved out and other people moved in and I've met maybe one of them, so figuring out how to reach out and maintain those connections can be tricky. The other thing that happens is that when people visit the street they want to know about the people who live there. I want to answer their questions as honestly as I can without breaching privacy and those kinds of things. Probably the most common question that we get is not about the history of the street, but it's how much do these houses cost, so we try to be pretty vague and give a range. It is publicly available information, so if people want to they can find out what houses cost. At least one of our board members lives on the street which helps because then he can be a point of contact. We have great people living on the street and they live there because they care about the place. We have one couple who I believe has lived there for 45 or 46 years now and they are just the best supporters of the museum and of the National Historic Landmark that we could ever wish for. In general, people are pretty enthusiastic about it.

Elfreth’s Alley, just as dynamic as it is historic, as it appears in the 21st century.

Has the Alley changed in any way and if so how have you seen it change? Since it is a National Historic Landmark are people allowed to change their homes in any way?

Ted: I believe the Alley became a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and it was added to the Philadelphia Historic Register around the same time, but some of the houses were added individually to the Philadelphia Historic Register before. Once it was on that local historic register any changes to what is visible from the public right-of-way have to be run by the Philadelphia Historical Commission. You have to submit your plans and ask for their permission. This doesn't mean they don't approve changes. In 1972, one of the homeowners had a pretty unusual house on the street. The house was actually built over a cart path, so there was a tunnel that went through the house on the first floor. It had been turned into a garage at one point, but they wanted to turn it into living space. Originally, it had just been an open passageway and then in the 20th century it had these wooden barn doors on it. The homeowners then went to the historical commission and proposed turning the opening into a window. They argued that because it was originally just open, a window was just as accurate as a barn door and they were successful in that appeal. I don’t know if they would be successful today, I think the historical commission would probably be a little more conservative today in terms of what they’d allow. People often ask “why is that window there” and “how can they have that window.” The only thing is that even since 1960 the street has changed in significant ways that have nothing to do with the houses. In 1975, when the city was preparing for the American Bicentennial in 1976, they ripped up the whole street surface and replaced it. Previously the street service had been what is called Belgian Blocks which is just big stone bricks roughly paved and that was probably put in sometime in the early to mid-19th century. They ripped that up and they put down the middle, a strip of cobblestones, then on either side of that some slate pavers, and then on either side of that bricks. They wanted this to look old and colonial. The other reason they ripped up the street was to update things like the water pipes and run the electrical wires under the street, so that they weren't going from house to house across the street in order for it to look more historical. They also added lamp posts that are called Franklin lamp posts because they were supposedly designed by Ben Franklin. Some versions of them have existed in Philadelphia for a long time. However, the city went crazy for these things and they put them all around Philadelphia in the 70s. While a lot of the houses have mostly been unchanged in significant ways, that's a pretty big change. In terms of the interior and parts of the houses that aren't visible from the street, most of them have been updated. Twenty years ago you might find inside some of the houses that they still had really old electrical wiring and were only maybe one or two rooms deep, but now almost all of them are three rooms deep because people have added onto the backs of them. A lot of that started really early, even as early as the 1840s but that's been a very long process. People have added second bathrooms, I mean interior bathrooms are a 20th century invention to begin with, so lots of modernizations have happened in the houses. Most of the homes still have certain touches, all but one of them have spiral staircases because it’s really hard to fit a big staircase into these small houses. There's also been changes like people have updated their windows and I think technically there's probably a policy about paint colors for trim, but I don't know that anyone enforces it. If you look at Google Street View and go back in time you can see that lots of them have changed colors over the years, even in the last five years. One of the houses has a Kermit the Frog in the window and there are lots of signs that people are still living there. On trash day, a trash truck comes down the street and it’s very tiny.

Elfreth’s Alley, prior to its preservation, as it appeared around 1910.

Do you have any favorite stories or any questions that people often ask that you would like to share?

Ted: One of the challenging parts about this job or the history of this place is that we don't have the kinds of records that will tell you anything about what an individual was like or what their individual life was like. We have records that will say so and so lived here and they were a dressmaker or that so and so lived here and they made chairs, but beyond that we have to really work across the board. We can say chair makers in general did this so this chair maker probably did that which can make it really tough to be specific. I feel much more comfortable in part because I can be more specific talking about buildings. I would love to talk about the people who lived there, but they are not there anymore, but the buildings are there. One of my favorite parts is that the museum is two houses in this set of thirty houses. From our back garden looking back at the two houses you can see the back wall of both of them. They are all brick, but you can see all of these scars in the brick. One of the houses still has an extension on it and the other one also did, but it no longer exists. You can see where that wall came out as there's a doorway that used to be there that's been filled up with bricks, there are places where windows have been moved, and you can see all of this right in front of you. I don’t know when all those changes were made, so I can’t be specific about that, but there’s something about being able to see it and interpreting what you see that I really enjoy. There is some of that you can do on the street as well. There's one house where at one point it had its front door in the middle of the house and now it's on the side. There is also a window there and under the window you can see where there was a filled-in doorway. Those are the things I really love pointing out because people don’t notice them right away. They look at it and they see brick, but I think it gives us a window into the change as the alley has changed so much. People come and the first thing they think is “wow I’m in the 18th century” and the reality is is no you're in the 21st century but this street has been here all these years and it’s been changing. Yes, it looks a lot like it did in the 18th century, but it doesn't look exactly the same. I like pointing out the places where there have been changes and trying to interpret what they have been.

The entrance to the Elfreth’s Alley Museum — make sure you pay a visit!

Why do you think it is so important to keep these historic sites up to date and why do you think it’s important for people to visit and learn about these pieces of history?

Ted: There are lots of reasons. One of the reasons that I think our site is pretty important is that it’s one of relatively few historic sites in this country that talks about common people, especially in an urban setting. The people who lived on this street were not famous and while some of them were wealthy for their time, but they were not the elite. That is something that people don’t see much and is something that I think is pretty distinctive. I also think that there's this temptation to see historic sites as quite unchanging or static. In Philadelphia, for instance, I think many people in this city have come and seen our street at some point in their time in the city. They probably left with the idea that what they had seen told them everything they needed to know and that it's not worth coming back for another visit. I have great sympathy for them. You can visit this street for half an hour and see every bit of the brick work on the street, but there are more stories to tell and there are stories we haven't been telling for that long. The preservation effort started in the 1930s, the museum started in the 1960s, and until about the 1990s the museum only focused on the 18th century. Then in the late 1990s early 2000s, they started talking about the 19th century. The 20th century is what I want to be talking about. We try to talk about that in our podcast and in other programming, so I think that there is lots more there to be told. People see our site and it feels like it hasn't changed much but I think it's an interesting place to look out from at the rest of the city and talk about how the rest of the city has changed. We're located in one of the oldest parts of the city and we have really seen all the different changes that have gone around it. This street was there when Philadelphia was a colonial port. It was also there right in the midst of it, when Philadelphia was an industrial powerhouse, “workshop for the world” was its nickname. This street was there when the industry left and the neighborhood was empty warehouses.Now these buildings are galleries and theatres but the street is still there. I think this is true of a lot of historic sites. They can be a really interesting vantage point to look back at the neighborhoods around them and both document the changing of the neighborhoods and give some perspective as to what has happened and how they have changed. I don't think that all historic sites do that very well. I think a lot of historic sites, like our museum has been at various times in its existence, are happy telling one story and that's their reason to exist. They'll tell that story for years and that’s fine too. There is some value to that as there are some stories that are just so good, why would you tell a different story. But I also think there can be places to evolve and change to tell new stories too.

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An Interview with Ted Maust of the Elfreth’s Alley Museum

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