The Bar and the Church

As part of my genealogy research account, I also have access to an online newspaper archive, and I confess to getting lost there at times. For example, a couple years ago, I spent an hour or two looking at Christmas cookie recipes in the Philadelphia Inquirer from the late 60s and early 70s, knowing that my mom had once read these same articles. 

Recently, I found myself immersed again in the archives of the Inquirer. This time it was a more specific search centered around the location of Jack's Bar, the place my dad often went to after work. Some evenings, my mom would pile us into the car, and we would drive into the city to pick him up there. Parking was at a premium, so she usually sent either my brother or me past the wrought iron grate and down the stairs into the place to fetch my dad. 

I learned that the establishment was on the lower level of a historic building just a block from Independence Hall. Built sometime in the mid-19th century, it housed a stationary store and paper warehouse and later The Philadelphia Call, a biweekly newspaper published for a couple decades starting in the 1890s. It was also the site of a furniture and home goods store before falling into a bit of decline with the rest of the neighborhood. The 1960s brought an urban renewal project to Independence Hall and its surrounds, though, and that particular building was demolished a of decades or so later.

Tangentally? I turned up this photo, which was also from the Inquirer, published on November 10, 1969, in the New Jersey section. An interesting juxtaposition! I will note, though, that the church is still there today.