Dash in Philly

A while back someone asked if I knew where Dashiell Hammett had lived during his time in Philadelphia. Sadly, Hammett hardly lived here at all. Just a year and change around 1900, when Hammett was only six years old, before Hammett's father moved his family to Baltimore. (So I guess we won't be launching any Philly Poe Guy-style crusades anytime soon.) Biographer Richard Layman includes the two Philly Hammett addresses in his Shadow Man: 2942 Poplar Street and 419 N. 60th Street. (Layman's source was Philadelphia city directories from 1900 and 1901.) At first, when I did a Google map search and a PhillyHistory.org search, I was hopeful... could the Hammett homes still be there?

Above is the intersection of Poplar and N. 30th, and according to Google, 2942 is just one house in from the corner (on the left side). This photo was taken January 11, 1932, a little more than 30 years after Hammett lived here. However, a real estate search reveals that these homes were built in 1920; the original Hammett home razed by then. Same thing with the N. 60th Street address; those rowhomes, too, were built in 1920.

Still, we can claim that Hammett probably skinned his knees on the mean streets of turn-of-the-century Philly...

(Photo courtesy PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Philadelphia Department of Records.)