Railroading in Victorian Germantown: The First Suburb and the Iron Triangle

On June 6, 1832, the Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad began operating a 6-mile railway line between Germantown and the city below. Now part of SEPTA’s Chestnut Hill East line, it was the first railroad to operate within Philadelphia and established Germantown as America’s first railroad suburb. Germantown became a popular commuter suburb for wealthy Philadelphians, especially after the Pennsylvania Railroad opened the Chestnut Hill West line in 1884. However, Victorian Germantown and its twin railroads are at the center of a larger story. The locomotives that traveled the East and West lines did not merely enable elite suburban living, they were also the engines that drove Germantown’s manufacturing boom. This presentation will outline the history of railroading in Germantown, describe the changes that it wrought in the late nineteenth century, and contextualize these changes within the wider history of the Philadelphia region and—more broadly—the United States.