Book review: 'Our Philadelphia: A Candid and Colorful Portrait of a Green City'
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
One thing that makes living in Philly exciting is the inevitable, and often unintended, unearthing of local lore.
Our Philadelphia: A Candid and Colorful Portrait of a Great City
Frank Brookhouser
(Doubleday, 1957)
One thing that makes living in Philly exciting is the inevitable, and often unintended, unearthing of local lore. While much of our history is in plain sight — the Liberty Bell, the Poe House, the Wanamaker Building — there are also many odd factoids that only locals know.
It’s fitting, then, that I found Frank Brookhouser’s 1957 book, Our Philadelphia on my grandmother’s bookshelf in Scranton, likely untouched for decades. This is the kind of book that, in its dedication to capturing the lore and overall “feel” of a city, isn’t above detailed profiles of ordinary citizens like the neighborhood bartender or pharmacist.
Brookhouser was a Philly journalist and poet of considerable output. This, combined with the fact that hardly anyone remembers him today, makes Our Philadelphia a deadly cocktail for lore-seekers. Imagine a long out-of-print book that renders every detail of our post-war city — the government, the neighborhoods, the bars and clubs — in a voice that is unmistakably “newspaperman.”
Brookhouser is not afraid of sentimentality, but is also unflinching when it comes to Philly’s “corrupted and contented” reputation. There is even a touch of noir at times: chapters like“The Stories Arrive with the Darkness” read like something out of a David Goodis novel.
Our Philadelphia is of a time when ironic detachment wasn’t yet the norm, and when having a personal attachment to a city felt more possible. There is a certain degree of kitsch in reading some of these sentences, but almost all of it is overshadowed by warmth and well-meaning nostalgia.
