A Room With A View

Another photo recently found in a box of "stuff" on the third floor while clearing space for Becky's studio.

This is a photo taken from my bedroom of the house on Seymour Street that I bought from my Great-Aunt's estate when I got out of the Navy and wanted to live back in my old Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia while attending Temple University on the GI Bill. I took this picture sometime around 1974-1975.

We see St. Francis of Assissi Church tower in the background. It was my parish church when I was growing up and next to it on the left where we can't see here is the school I went to between 1957 - 1965. Then I went to North Catholic High School from 1965 through 1968 when we moved to Harleysville PA. I didn't like it there and enlisted in the Navy in December 1969.

Our house growing up cannot be seen in this photo but it was located just to the left of the green tree in the center of the photo. We were in the middle of the block. Right in front us in this picture is a protestant church. When I was growing up my best friend Juddy Lamos lived in the house next to the church where is father was the pastor. Their house was the building with the large chimney. I played in the yard all the time and occasionally we would actually play in the church. I thought it might be a sin to be in that church building.

Our family lived in the middle of the block on Greene Street between Logan and Seymour streets. My father's family had lived in the house on the corner of Greene and Logan across from the church. My parents met across the street from that house at the corner store there. When my grandfather died in 1950 and a few years later the house was sold to the Gillespie Funeral Home while the family moved down the street near Logan Park. That was the house I remember although there is a photo of me as a baby on the porch of the Logan Street house.

Years later when I was living across the street from that church it had evolved into a African-American congregation. We would often sit on the porch listening to Phillies baseball games and drinking some beer while the church gospel choir practiced in the evening. The sound of their singing added something to our nightly porch sittings.

The house was purchased by my Great-Grandfather Thomas Keegan and Great-Grandmother Bridget McDevitt Keegan in 1909. Becky and I still use the chest of drawers that belonged to them. My mother and my grandmother both grew up in the house along with a couple of Great Aunts and an Uncle. 

Becky and I lived there until May of 1979 when we moved to Buffalo NY.