A new visitor center aims to root Germantown more firmly in its own history, showcasing it as the site of a major Revolutionary War battle and a place with important ties to religious freedom, abolition, and the Civil Rights Movement.
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The center opened in a two-story redbrick building at 5501 Germantown Ave. earlier this month. Owned by the Germantown Historical Society, it is intended to serve as a starting point for visitors and residents alike.
The exhibitions were curated using a process of community conversations in which neighborhood residentsshared what was important to them, said curatorKaila Temple. The main exhibit highlights major themes in Germantown’s history. Sections like “Activism and Advocacy” focus not only on the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery, but also on a student protest in 1967 that was met with violent police opposition.
German immigrants first settled in Germantown in the late 16th century, fleeing Europe in search of religious freedom. Germantown played a central role in the American Revolution and later became the site of strong abolitionist advocacy, and robust student youth activism during the Civil Rights Movement.
The visitor center hopes to both connect residents of Germantown with their local history and draw visitors from elsewhere. Visitors will be directed to visit the many historical sights in the area with maps available for walking tours. Director Tuomi Forrest hopes the visitor center can be a resource for neighbors and bring in more visitors from outside Philadelphia, citing those as “twin” goals.
The visitor center received about 200 people the first week it opened and hopes for more. It recently collaborated with Neighborhood Jawnts Tour Series, a Philadelphia-based tourism effort, to bring in visitors from around the city.
It has also worked closely with neighbors who want to learn more about their own homes and their ancestors. One neighbor found a wedding invitation from 1912 during home renovations and wrote to the center to ask for documents that would shine more light on who used to live in the home; another wanted more information of how his mid-1800s home came to be an institution for orphans; others ask to come to the center to do research on their ancestors.
The square where the visitor center sits dates to 1703. George Washington lived across the street from it in 1793, and when Philadelphians wanted the federal government to stay locally, they touted the square as an asset.
The Colonial Revival building where the visitor center is now housed was constructed in the 1790s and restored around the 1940s and ’50s.
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Visual markers of the Colonial Revival style, a result of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition’s reawakening of Americans’ desire to connect architecturally to their colonial past, still dominate the historical section of Germantown. Along Germantown Avenue, gray stone churches stand beside pale yellow, redbrick, and coral-colored houses.
But the visual character of the historic section of Germantown that houses the new center is not uniform, especially as new developments begin to populate empty lots.
A neighborhood ‘at an upswing’
As the local visitor center leans into Germantown’s past, some nearby residents and businesses — many of whom were not aware of the new center — said they were concerned with the direction of their neighborhood’s future.
Van Brooks, operations manager of a coffee shop kitty-corner from the visitor center, worries about development just down the street — afour-story apartment building that is visiblefrom the window of a visitor center gallery. “A lot of folks in this neighborhood don’t want this space to exist here,” he said. He worries the modern, flat apartment complex will begin to gentrify the neighborhood.
Nicholas Thaete, who has lived in Germantown for 46 years and runs an antique repair shop, says the neighborhood has gone through different periods. “It goes up and down. Right now, it is at an upswing,” he said.
And yet, as Debbie Curry, who works in a nearby fabric store, remembered, Germantown used to have more commercial activity: “There was a time when there were a lot of department stores. … You didn’t have to go to Center City to do your shopping.” Curry, 66, grew up in Germantown but moved from the neighborhood when she married. She is happy something is finally being done about empty lots.
“A lot of people thought for years that Germantown would see new development, but now it has,” Forrest said, standing in front of the visitor center.
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