Why is South Jersey so different from the PA suburbs? (Philadelphia: section 8, sale)
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After some time on Google Street View I've realized that pretty much across the board PA & NJ suburbs do not look the same at all.
In PA older towns are dominated by rowhouses, while in NJ they're mostly single family homes. Towns like Haddonfield built at a similar time to Media look vastly different. The architecture in towns in SJ reminds me more of Cleveland or Milwaukee, with lots of bungalows and houses that look like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9126...7i13312!8i6656.
I've searched but can't find a town in PA that looks like Collingswood or Glassboro... Every town has a stark transition from rowhomes to large suburban homes. It seems like NJ is more standard across the board with less variation from the smallest to largest houses. There are not many huge mansions in NJ, but also much fewer rowhouses.
The PA suburbs are richer while the NJ ones have more of a working class presence. Also the PA suburbs tend to maintain more of their own identity, with far more colleges & jobs, while NJ is mostly bedroom communities.
Why are there so many differences in the look and feel of these places when they're just across the river from each other? Do you have any idea what causes this?
Note:
Houses built 1900-1940 are much more common in NJ than PA, while PA has more built before 1900. Look at the population counts for towns like Collingswood which grew from 1,633 to 12,685 during that time, while in Norristown only grew from 22,265 to 38,126. Basically NJ counties experienced serious growth at the turn of the 19th century while PA had similar growth a few decades earlier. This may be a contributing factor.
South Jersey is more connected to Philadelphia and acts almost as an extension of the city in suburban form. The area grew during "white flight" era too, and was viewed as an upgrade to South Philadelphia: Larger homes, yards, shopping centers, better schools, etc. Therefore most (not all) of SJ is bedroom communities or standard suburbia.
The PA burbs evolved over hundreds of years and each county / municipality has a distinct identity. The PA burbs have a very powerful independent economy, more wealth, distinct history, and home to some of the nations most notable towns, institutions, schools, parks, architecture, companies, etc. Of course standard suburbia exists on the PA side, but far less so than in SJ.
My two cents on architecture & built environment: The topographies of each area are quite different. A lot of the PA burbs grew outward from small walk-able centers, usually near a rail stop or industrial hub, and communities become more suburban in nature as you travel further from a hub. Stone is also much more prevalent in SEPA, hence the heavy use of field stone throughout the region (real or fake).
As far as comparing Media to Collingswood or Doylestown to Haddonfield, etc., Age, industry, wealth are certainly factors, but I'd have to do more research, but I'm sure another Philly poster (maybe Sandy) can dive into that.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tusco08
After some time on Google Street View I've realized that pretty much across the board PA & NJ suburbs do not look the same at all.
In PA older towns are dominated by rowhouses, while in NJ they're mostly single family homes. Towns like Haddonfield built at a similar time to Media look vastly different. The architecture in towns in SJ reminds me more of Cleveland or Milwaukee, with lots of bungalows and houses that look like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9126...7i13312!8i6656.
I've searched but can't find a town in PA that looks like Collingswood or Glassboro... Every town has a stark transition from rowhomes to large suburban homes. It seems like NJ is more standard across the board with less variation from the smallest to largest houses. There are not many huge mansions in NJ, but also much fewer rowhouses.
The PA suburbs are richer while the NJ ones have more of a working class presence. Also the PA suburbs tend to maintain more of their own identity, with far more colleges & jobs, while NJ is mostly bedroom communities.
Why are there so many differences in the look and feel of these places when they're just across the river from each other? Do you have any idea what causes this?
Note:
Houses built 1900-1940 are much more common in NJ than PA, while PA has more built before 1900. Look at the population counts for towns like Collingswood which grew from 1,633 to 12,685 during that time, while in Norristown only grew from 22,265 to 38,126. Basically NJ counties experienced serious growth at the turn of the 19th century while PA had similar growth a few decades earlier. This may be a contributing factor.
southbound_295's point about the bridge is a salient one.
Keep in mind that several railroads built webs of tracks emanating outward from Philadelphia into its Pennsylvania hinterlands during the 19th century. These made settling in the towns they served possible. Some of the towns (e.g., the county seats of West Chester, Doylestown and Norristown) were already in place when the railroads arrived, and many others (the Main Line communities, Ambler, Hatboro, Glenside, Elkins Park...) were built around the train stations.
Southern New Jersey had some rail lines, but they were fewer in number overall than on the Pennsylvania side. The PATCO Speedline parallels one of those lines for part of its length, and you might notice that the communities along that line, in particular Collingswood, Haddon Township and Haddonfield, do look and feel different from many of the newer communities that grew most rapidly after the opening of the Ben Franklin Bridge or after World War Ii. (The Tacony-Palmyra Bridge opened the same year as the Ben Franklin — 1926 — but its effect on suburban growth in South Jersey was more muted because of its location several miles north of the downtowns of Philadelphia and Camden. And the effect of the Delair railroad bridge, opened in 1903 (making it the first of the area's Delaware River crossings), was nil because the PRR didn't build commuter train stations along the line that fed it from the New Jersey side; such railroad commuting as took place in South Jersey had Camden and the ferries as its destination.
(Edited to add: Because it was the first main road the bridge fed, the White Horse Pike (US 30) also urbanized earlier than much of the rest of South Jersey, and Oaklyn especially also looks different from most of the rest of South Jersey. The White Horse Pike also runs through another belt of Black settlement that includes the historic borough of Lawnside.)
There are a few communities away from the rail lines (or on lines that were later abandoned), like Merchantville and Moorestown, that have that more walkable, town-like character found in Collingswood and Haddonfield. Again, however, their settlement predates the opening of the Delaware River Bridge (the BFB's original name, changed when construction on the Walt Whitman began in 1954) by many years.
OTOH, Cherry Hill is perhaps the stereotypical South Jersey suburb. It has no town center to speak of; in its place is South Jersey's largest shopping mall. It's laced with wide arterial highways and filled with subdivisions of ranchers and split-levels on quarter-acre lots. The post-WWII exodus from South Philly turned a bunch of rural towns, some of them heavily Black, btw, into suburbs populated largely by the Italian-Americans who had lived in South Philly. (It was Black farmers in Mount Laurel who were getting priced off their land but could not find suitable alternatives they could afford in the township who sued it, producing the landmark New Jersey Supreme Court decisions known as Mount Laurel I and Mount Laurel II that require every municipality in the state to make some provision for affordable housing within it.)
BTW, the century that saw Collingswood grow (along with every other South Jersey borough and township save Camden City itself) is the 20th, not the 19th. Centuries are one number ahead of the first two digits of their years.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl
southbound_295's point about the bridge is a salient one.
Keep in mind that several railroads built webs of tracks emanating outward from Philadelphia into its Pennsylvania hinterlands during the 19th century. These made settling in the towns they served possible. Some of the towns (e.g., the county seats of West Chester, Doylestown and Norristown) were already in place when the railroads arrived, and many others (the Main Line communities, Ambler, Hatboro, Glenside, Elkins Park...) were built around the train stations.
Southern New Jersey had some rail lines, but they were fewer in number overall than on the Pennsylvania side. The PATCO Speedline parallels one of those lines for part of its length, and you might notice that the communities along that line, in particular Collingswood, Haddon Township and Haddonfield, do look and feel different from many of the newer communities that grew most rapidly after the opening of the Ben Franklin Bridge or after World War Ii. (The Tacony-Palmyra Bridge opened the same year as the Ben Franklin — 1926 — but its effect on suburban growth in South Jersey was more muted because of its location several miles north of the downtowns of Philadelphia and Camden. And the effect of the Delair railroad bridge, opened in 1903 (making it the first of the area's Delaware River crossings), was nil because the PRR didn't build commuter train stations along the line that fed it from the New Jersey side; such railroad commuting as took place in South Jersey had Camden and the ferries as its destination.
(Edited to add: Because it was the first main road the bridge fed, the White Horse Pike (US 30) also urbanized earlier than much of the rest of South Jersey, and Oaklyn especially also looks different from most of the rest of South Jersey. The White Horse Pike also runs through another belt of Black settlement that includes the historic borough of Lawnside.)
There are a few communities away from the rail lines (or on lines that were later abandoned), like Merchantville and Moorestown, that have that more walkable, town-like character found in Collingswood and Haddonfield. Again, however, their settlement predates the opening of the Delaware River Bridge (the BFB's original name, changed when construction on the Walt Whitman began in 1954) by many years.
OTOH, Cherry Hill is perhaps the stereotypical South Jersey suburb. It has no town center to speak of; in its place is South Jersey's largest shopping mall. It's laced with wide arterial highways and filled with subdivisions of ranchers and split-levels on quarter-acre lots. The post-WWII exodus from South Philly turned a bunch of rural towns, some of them heavily Black, btw, into suburbs populated largely by the Italian-Americans who had lived in South Philly. (It was Black farmers in Mount Laurel who were getting priced off their land but could not find suitable alternatives they could afford in the township who sued it, producing the landmark New Jersey Supreme Court decisions known as Mount Laurel I and Mount Laurel II that require every municipality in the state to make some provision for affordable housing within it.)
BTW, the century that saw Collingswood grow (along with every other South Jersey borough and township save Camden City itself) is the 20th, not the 19th. Centuries are one number ahead of the first two digits of their years.
+5
Excellent points.
I feel that the OP selected areas in towns to prove a point when it comes to his links. They are not necessarily representative of that town. Other towns have been completely overlooked.
As you said, many suburban towns in South Jersey were rural until after WWII. Take Cherry Hill, for instance. It was Delaware Township until 1963. It was developed one farm sale at a time. There are areas of Cherry Hill that predate WWII. Ellisburg Shopping Center was the alternative to a downtown prior to building the mall.
I remember when the bodies of Irish laborers were found where they were discarded by the railroad when the main line was built in the 19th century.
There are rows in Haddonfield and Collingswood. While Collingswood predates Haddonfield, Haddonfield celebrates its founding by Elizabeth Haddon. The colonial period had Quaker women who were not seen as less than in their communities.
Last edited by southbound_295; 06-07-2021 at 09:47 AM..
Yes, Mount Laurel is where the Section 8 disaster began.
Able-bodied people shouldn't get help from the government to reside in an area that they can't afford on their own.
The New Jersey Mount Laurel decisions had nothing to do with what are now called Housing Choice vouchers, which are at least in theory usable anywhere, as the certificates promise to pay the difference between market rent and one-third of the recipient's monthly income. Again, at least in theory, a landlord who ran a luxury apartment building could accept voucher tenants if they so chose and would get market rent from those units, the difference being made up by the Feds.
"Affiordable housing" is housing a low- or moderate-income household could afford without a voucher. Usually, the measure of affordability is whether the house or apartment payment is within reach of someone making a certain percentage of the area median (household) income (AMI) - the Federal standard is 80 percent. And the "area" used to make the determination is the metropolitan statistical area.
If you bothered to familiarize yourself with what those longtime residents were told by the newcomers when they complained that the zoning ordinances being enacted by Mount Laurel Township were making it impossible for them to continue living there, which was part of the testimony entered in court, you might understand why the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled as it did. I'm sure you have heard the phrase "snob zoning" — it was that the residents were fighting.
BTW, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development launched the Section 8 program the year before Mount Laurel I. AFAIK, the formulas the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) devise for municipalities that agree to its oversight, either individually or as part of a regional agreement involving multiple local jurisdictions, do not consider the vouchers part of income.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hedonism
Nah.
Section 8 began in Mount Laurel.
Do some more research.
Section 8 is federal dating back to 1937. Mt Laurel was a decision of the NJ Supreme Court.
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