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There is a forgotten dingy little alley connecting Second and Dock Streets, south of Chestnut street, which was once a pleasant
and flowery by-way in the centre of Philadelphia's most exclusive residential section. Until lately it was named "Lodge Street."
It is now called "Sansom." It is sometimes confused by historians, delving in the old directories, with "Lodge Alley," which
is now Jayne Street. In colonial times, upon the southern side of this little lane, at Second Street, was the Griscom residence,
the first brick house built in Philadelphia, and which was vis-a-vis to the "slate-roof house." The Griscom garden extended
to the grassy verge of Dock Creek. Adjoining it, on the south, stood the double house of Edward Shippen, first Mayor of the
city. Midway, in Lodge Street, and on the south side, was built, in 1755, the first Masonic hall in America. During the
Revolution it was used as a prison of rQuaker tories. These several structures were replaced in 1788 by the classic building
of the Bank of Pennsylvania, which, after the financial storm of 1857, remained to become a Federal provost prison in the
period of the Civil War. The view here presented depicts the western front of the band with its neat garden and the range
of time-worn warehouses and shops which were originally the homes of some of our "first families." The site of the Pennsylvania
Bank is now covered by the United States Appraisers' Warehouse, built in 1871, in preparation for which the work began with
the removal of the massive columns in the sections as shown in the drawing.
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