Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/370

 the coal-fields, beyond the old city limits at Vine, and extending to Callowhill and beyond. This created the city of Spring Garden. The river settlements, the Northern Liberties, Kensington, Richmond, grew under the triple influence of manufacturers and cheap coal, out of the villages whose farm-houses, taverns and mechanics' dwellings of the early years of the century still dot the raw newer dwellings of the past forty years. Like settlements had grown in Southwark and Manayunk. The gaps and sutures still remain to mark the old divisions. The squalid stretches of South Street from river to river, for nearly a century the resort of cheap stores which sought city trade, and avoided city taxes. The like ragged selvedge along Vine, influenced, too, along much of the line by low, open ground. The gap fringing both banks of the Schuylkill, marking days when the railroad and the Market Street bridge made the more distant uprise of Fortieth Street more accessible than the lower region nearer. The bare and vacant patches about Germantown Junction, over which the old village has never quite grown down to meet the approaching city, where for various reasons of grade, access was not easy, and where