After it closed in 1794, public burial grounds came to dot the city's landscape.
The city's last potter's field opened in 1956 at Dunks Ferry and Mechanicsville Roads in the Far Northeast and accepted the dead for three decades. One of the first graves was for a still unidentified murder victim known as the "Boy in the Box."
Before that, the potter's field was in a triangular plot now used as police parking lot at Luzerne Street and Whitaker Avenue in North Philadelphia.
When it opened in 1914, the burial ground adjoined Philadelphia Municipal Hospital. It became the final destination for thousands who died in the 1918 flu epidemic or who died destitute during the Depression.
In those days, the dead were buried for a year and a day before their remains were cremated at a crematorium on the hospital grounds.
But after the crematorium broke in the 1940s, the bodies piled up at the potter's field, and the conditions became something of a scandal in the 1955 mayoral race, though Republican W. Thacher Longstreth could not leverage the outrage to defeat Democrat Richardson Dilworth.
Here are locations of some other potter's fields based on "A Register of the Burial Grounds of Philadelphia," a handwritten manuscript compiled by Charles R. Barker in 1944 and on file at the City Archives.
Foot of Race Street at the Schuylkill.
Logan Square.
Fairmount Avenue and 19th Street.
South side of Lombard Street between Ninth and 12th Streets.
Northwest corner of 15th and Catharine Streets.
South side of Carpenter Street between 11th and 12th Streets.
George and Ginnodo Streets in Francisville.
Playground at West Queen Lane and Pulaski Avenue in Germantown.
Franklin Field.
Reyburn Park in North Philadelphia
Contact staff writer Joseph A. Gambardello at 215-854-2153 or jgambardello@phillynews.com.
