c

NEIGHBORHOODS

More Neighborhoods
Coming Soon.

8000 block of Frankford Ave 1906

Pennypack Mill built 1697 - c 1880

Holme Family Homestead - c 1900

Thomas Holme, William Penn's Surveyor-General, who pretty much had his pick of available land, chose this area for his 1646 acre Well Spring Plantation. It would have been bounded roughly by today's Cottman Ave to Grant Ave and Frankford Ave to Roosevelt Blvd. Holmesburg acquired its name in 1801 when John Holme (no relation to Thomas Holme) changed the name of his Washington Lumberyard to the Holmes-Burg Lumberyard. For a brief period following the Revolutionary War the village, centered at Welsh Road and the Bristol Pike (now Frankford Ave) had been called Washingtonville. European settlement goes back to the mid-late 1600's with Swedes living near the mouth of Pennypack Creek and journeying up the creek to the fall or tidal line where the bridge at Frankford Ave was built in 1697. This had been a crossing point of the creek on the Lenape trail to and from their northern hunting grounds. The Pennypack Mill was built at the same time, but there are indications that an earlier mill may have predated Penn's arrival in 1682. The Pennypack Mill was one of the busiest in Philadelphia and with the completion of the Pennypack Bridge, the King's Highway (Bristol Pike/Frankford Ave) became one of the busiest roads. This was a natural stopping place and a fledgling community began early in the 1700's, simply referred to as Pennypack.

LINKS TO
POINTS OF INTEREST

Lower Dublin Academy
Pennypack Park

SUBJECT AREAS

Under Construction
Coming Soon.