First known as Old Blockey in 1835 located at 34th and University in West Philadelphia. Built to accommadated Philadelphia's poor. The facility had four main buildings; poorhouse, hospital, orphanage and insane asylum. Old Blockey was renamed Philadelphia Almshouse and Hospital around 1885. Blockey's location was isolated from any other medical facility, therefore, lacked skilled medical personnel.
In 1885, Blockey focused more on becoming a public hospital and opened its own nursing school. By 1906, the insane population housed at Blockey were moved to the new Philadelphia State Hospital also known as Byberry State Hospital.
In 1919, Blockey renamed its facility once more to Philadelphia General Hospital until it closed its doors in 1977. The hospital had a nursing home and a poorhouse. It treated those who had no money for medical care. My own great grandfather, John McCafferty/McCaffery died of tuberculosis in this hospital in August 1930.
In 2001, more than 1,000 bodies from the Almshouse were discovered during a renovation of the University of Pennsylvania. These bodies were moved and buried in Woodland Cemetery. In my research,
I came across a well written document from the archives that I want to post here.
BLOCKLEY "THE MEMORY LINGERS ON"
"As previously indicated, the entire area of University City was originally
the William Warner Estate of Blockley. As settlements developed and the section
became more populous, political sub-divisions sprang into being so that by 1854,
when the City was consolidated, little remained of the township, most of it
having given way to the District of West Philadelphia.
Although much of the early history occurred while the area was still known as
Blockley, we shall tell of it in the section on West Philadelphia. In a like
manner we shall consider that small portion of Blockley that covered the
northwestern slice of University City. It is that large acreage bordering on the
Schuylkill River we shall here discuss. For although it covered the least
desirable of the land west of the River and was the least populated, it left its
imprint in the history of Philadelphia, and made the name Blockley a synonym for
misery, sordidness and suffering.
Here, on the grounds surrounding the present Philadelphia General Hospital
was the Blockley Almshouse. It consisted not only of the alms-house, but also
the city hospital, the orphan asylum and the refuge for the insane. It is to be
remembered that our forebears had neither the understanding, the patience, nor
the knowledge of how to handle their helpless and afflicted, so that to be sent
to Blockley was to be condemned to horror and exile.
It must have been especially so in the very early days when, with
transportation and distance being what they were, Blockley was considered to be
far removed from the city. Indeed, in 1832 when it was proposed to move the
hospital from 10th and Pine Streets where it had been for over 65 years, one of
the serious arguments against locating at Blockley was that its great distance
from the medical school would make it difficult of access to the students who
might thereby be deprived of clinical instruction.
Despite the odium that the name Blockley received (some old residents even to
this day call the early step in the care of the unfortunate. It was a great
advance from the original brick building erected at 4th and Pine Streets in
1731, the first of its kind in America to house the sick, the infirm, the poor
and the insane.
In 1832 the City purchased 187 acres From the Hamilton heirs on which to
locate the new institution. Included were the present sites of part of Woodland
Cemetery, the Veterans Administration Hospital, Convention Hall, the Commercial
Museum, the original buildings of the University of Pennsylvania, the River
fields, part of Franklin Field, the University Museum and the Philadelphia
General Hospital.
Much of the land was then considered of little value. It was mostly lowland
that sloped down to water level and was criss-crossed with waterways that
traversed to marshy meadows. It was an ideal hideout for shadowy characters and
evil-doers who crossed the river in skiffs after a thieving or smuggling job
south of the city. As late as 1850 it was considered hazardous to be abroad
alone in this area.
Perhaps the largest of the watercourses was Beaver Creek or Beaver Run which
flowed through the Almshouse grounds and emptied into the Schuylkill River
opposite to Pine Street. It crossed Woodland Avenue (Darby Road) just east of
34th Street under a bridge which still exists at the same spot, buried about 25
feet below grade. The meadows along the river were purposely flooded in winter
so that the ice could be cut for the use of the hospital, ice which the
reknowned Dr. J. Chalmers Da Costa described as being "richly endowed with
bacteria. The caustic Dr. Da Costa, who for a time was physician-in-chief, later
wrote in his florid style "Blockley is the microcosm of the city. Within these
gray walls we find all sorts of physical and mental diseases, and also a
multitude of those social maladies that degrade man-hood, undermine national
strength and threaten civilization itself. Here is drunkenness; here is
pauperism; here is illegitimacy; here is madness; here are the eternal
priestesses of prostitution who sacrifice for the sins of man; here is crime in
all its protean aspects, and here is vice in all its monstrous forms."
Nor was it helpful that this place was under the control of a committee known
as the Guardians of the Poor. This appointed group consisted of political hacks
whose only interest was to line their own pockets which, of course, entailed the
obstruction of enlightened members of the professional staff, such as Dr. Da
Costa, who commented they had been named Poor Guardians because "they did some
of the poorest guarding on record."
Around the buildings of this dismal place was a high board fence with but one
entrance on Darby Road. In 1875 it consisted of four three-story buildings 500
feet long, in which were housed 3000 inmates, 200 of whom were orphans, and 600
insane. In the region of Franklin Field was Blockley's Potter's Field where so
many of the unhappy victims of this pest-hole were buried. When 33
rd
Street was being cut through to Spruce many skeletons of these unfortunate were
unearthed.
In 1868 Nathaniel B. Browne laid a plan before the Trustees of the University
of Pennsylvania to move that institution from 9th and Chestnut Streets to the
slopes of Blockley, where it might find the expansion room it so badly needed.
In pursuance of this plan the City sold the University a portion of the Blockley
land for $8000.00 per acre and in June 1871 the cornerstone of College Hall, the
first building, was dedicated. Thereafter, the neighborhoods of Blockley and, to
some extent, Hamilton Village, were on the upgrade."
