directions to harrah's casino chester pa

The number of industrial jobs tripled between 19 as new industries began to dominate the waterfront-most prominently in the form of the Pew family’s Sun Ship shipyard and Sun Oil Company (located in Marcus Hook). The early decades of the twentieth century cemented Chester’s status as a factory town, beyond textiles, with a burgeoning base in heavy industry.

In 1889 the independent borough of North Chester amalgamated with the city, and South Chester followed in 1897, giving the city its present physical geography. Beginning in the 1870s, its working-class population swelled with Irish, Polish, Italian, and African-American migrants attracted by plentiful work along the waterfront (notably John Roach’s iron shipyards) and in the city’s textile industry. As a consequence, Chester remained a lightly populated village throughout the eighteenth century (although it remained the seat of what was then Chester County until it was split in 1789 to create Delaware County).Ĭhester finally began to grow in the 1800s, especially after the Civil War, establishing itself as the economic and social heart of Delaware County. But when local landowners objected, Penn instead chose a site farther north that became Philadelphia.

He held Pennsylvania’s first General Assembly there, and even tried to make it his capital.

Initially dubbed Upland when it was settled in the 1600s by Swedish and, then, Dutch traders who lost control of the area after the Anglo-Dutch War of 1674, the town was renamed Chester by William Penn, who rechristened the village upon his arrival in 1682. This 1885 map shows a well-populated industrial city with a busy seaport. Chester’s population grew rapidly after the Civil War as migrants were drawn in by plentiful employment opportunities. The municipality’s fortunes shifted many times over the 334 years of its existence, evolving from a small Swedish settlement to the near-capital of the Pennsylvania colony to a neglected village to a manufacturing powerhouse and then into dire post-industrial decline.

Located 30 miles down the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the small but once industrially mighty city of Chester emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century as but a shadow of its former prominence in the county and the region.

Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Back.

Directions to harrah's casino chester pa