On file at the Department of Records of the City of Philadelphia is an extremely rare photo of a horsecar operating on Germantown Avenue.
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Notwithstanding the enormity of the fiscal challenge currently confronting SEPTA, historians of public transportation, as well as other interested parties, may find it encouraging to know that on file at the Department of Records of the City of Philadelphia is an extremely rare photo of a horsecar operating on Germantown Avenue. Taken some time in 1880, this photo is viewable on Facebook at the following address: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/xg7CuSwELridoUsc/?mibextid=xfxF2i.
The horsecar, belonging to the People's Passenger Railway Company, is approaching the intersection with Broad Street, which Germantown Avenue crosses on a diagonal.
After this photo was taken, horsecars, of course, continued to operate on Germantown Avenue for another fourteen years. Then, exactly 130 years ago this week, on August 5, 1894, electric streetcars replaced them, initially as far north as Chelten Avenue, in Germantown.
Seven days later, on August 12, electric streetcars also replaced the horsecars as far north as Westview Street in Mt. Airy. This had, in fact, been the northern terminus of horsecar operations.
Electric streetcars finally came to serve Germantown Avenue as far north as Rex Avenue in Chestnut Hill, on March 7, 1895. On August 31, 1913 the operation, which by then extended nearly the entire length of the city, was designated as Route 23, and from Center City northward, this designator still applies.
In the fall of 1992, SEPTA withdrew the environmentally friendly streetcars from Route 23, replacing them with buses on an ostensibly temporary basis. It concurrently pledged to return the route to streetcar operation by the end of 1997.
To date, this pledge remains unfulfilled, in spite of the extensive prior investment in the infrastructure. It is encouraging, nevertheless, to see that Route 23's overhead electrical system remains largely undisturbed.
As the Trolley Modernization Project advances elsewhere in the City, we hope that SEPTA will ultimately act upon this pledge. This eventuality is, in the words of Shakespeare's Hamlet, "devoutly to be wished."
Mark D. Sanders, President
Philadelphia Street Railway Historical Society
