Editing Rittenhouse Square (section)

=== From Goosetown to High Society ===

For most of the 18th century, the square remained deep within dense woods, offering pasturage for local livestock and serving as a convenient dumping spot for "night soil." Until the city's elite began building mansions in the 1850s, the neighborhood had a distinctly unglamorous nickname: '''Goosetown'''.

Neighbors first began improving the square in 1816, adding lawns and a wooden fence to keep grazing animals away. In the decade before the Civil War, the square gained trees, walkways, and fountains—though the fountains created so much mud that City Council ordered them removed.

James Harper, a merchant and brick manufacturer who had recently retired from the United States Congress, became the first person to build on the square around 1840, purchasing most of the north frontage and erecting a stately townhouse at 1811 Walnut Street. A building boom followed in the 1850s, and by the second half of the 19th century, Rittenhouse Square had become the most fashionable residential section of the city—home to Philadelphia's "Victorian aristocracy."