History - Early Philadelphia

William Penn founded Philadelphia as the economic and political capital of his colony in 1682. By 1730, Philadelphia had a population of 8,500 - putting it in the first tier of American cities along with New York and Boston. Forty years later, Philadelphia ranked first among colonial cities with a population of 28,000.

The U.S. was about 95% rural and Pennsylvania was no exception. Goods, especially grain from the backcountry, made their ways down creeks and roads to the navigable waters of the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Farms and open country still occupied most of the peninsula between the two rivers. The Ridge, which today is a slow and crowded urban street, was a country road leading from the port area on the Delaware past a number of country estates.

Several printers, including Ben Franklin, established shops to serve many colonial government, business and literary interests. Philadelphia had several newspapers and a magazine even before the Revolution. While Boston was the center of revolutionary agitation, Philadelphia, as a center of trade situated in the center of the seacoast, became the meeting ground for the Founding Fathers.

By the year of The Prep’s founding, Philadelphia had begun to exist as a major industrial center. In the 1850 Census Philadelphia had slipped to fourth nationally despite the growth of its population to 121,376. However, two factors were already beginning to change, the city's economic and ethnic face. Germans fleeing the failed Revolutions of 1848 and Irish fleeing the famine flocked to the Delaware Valley where employment was plentiful and growing. Steam was making it possible to build factories away from rushing streams and near large population centers. It could drive factory equipment and move the goods to market. Scattered towns on the banks of the two rivers blended into one. Philadelphia ranked 4th among American cities in 1850 only because of its compact design.

One of the most important companies for the city, and eventually for The Prep, was the Baldwin Locomotive works. Located at Broad and Callowhill Streets, just opposite the Inquirer building, it helped to strengthen the movement of industry and population away from the old city into what were then industrial suburbs.