Kensington Tour

American Street - History of a Neighborhood

As you follow the tour, remember that Kensington wasn't always like this. Kensington used to be the industrial heart of Philadelphia and the surrounding regions. In 1945, the United States had half the industrial capacity of the entire world and Philly was a big part of that. There were hundreds of factories producing a wide range of goods. American Street used to have a different factory on every block.  People say that you could walk down American Street and find a job in five minutes.

Now American Street is abandoned.  The factories that used to be here are all gone and so are the jobs that used to employ the residents of this neighborhood. Factories closed down for lots of reasons - they closed due to automation (i.e. we just don't need a lot of people to work in manufacturing anymore); they moved to find non-unionized workers, lower wages, less regulation; and the forces of globalization made it easier to move their sites of production to more financially attractive areas. They move to the suburbs, the southern United States or overseas.

American Street is a symbol of the de-industrialization of America - and of the lack of responsibility that companies have to their workers.  All of the houses that you see on surrounding blocks were built for factory workers.  Many of them are abandoned but this neighborhood is still full of people.  Instead of jobs that pay $16-$20 an hour, they can only find minimum wage and under the table jobs with no benefits...If they can find a job at all  There is a myth that poor people, in neighborhoods like Kensington,  do not want to work.  This neighborhood was designed for people who worked.  They didn’t stop working, their jobs were taken from them.

An important part of the history of this neighborhood is it's diversity. With people coming from all over to work here, Kensington is about 1/3 White, 1/3 African-American and 1/3 Puerto Rican. There's also small Asian and European immigrant communities. You can't say poverty is just a racial thing here, because it comes in all colors.

Many of these lots are contaminated with toxic chemicals left by companies that closed down. We had a tent city here and within three days people developed respiratory and digestive problems because of the toxins in the ground.

American Street is part of the Empowerment Zone project, from the early 90's "Enterprise Communities Empowerment Zone" legislation.  Philadelphia and Camden were given $80 million dollars to create jobs, mostly through tax breaks to corporations.  More than 6 years ago. We don’t see any development here, even though $17 million was designated for this strip.  180 jobs were created. What happened to all of that money?

Next: Schmidt's Brewery : What's Left