Long–ago first glances

Philadelphia Inquirer, The, December, 2006 by Alan J. Heavens

See if you can identify the city in the following passage: "Streets are so much alike and placed at such equal distances apart" that strangers often get lost because they can't tell one street from another. If Philadelphia was your first guess, congratulations. But the observation isn't a current one.

It was made in 1828 by Peter Neilson, who was visiting the city from Glasgow, Scotland. Travelers' views of Philadelphia and other U.S. cities between 1775 and the early 1840s are the basis of Where We Lived: Discovering the Places We Once Called Home (Taunton Press, $40). The author, Jack Larkin, is chief historian of Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts and an affiliate professor of history at Clark University. In an interview from his home in Warren, Mass., Larkin said visitors had a generally positive view of the "surface life of Philadelphia, even though it was 'Quakerfied,' " as New ...