Early European settlement The first European settlement in the Northeast was by Swedish farmers, who emigrated there when the area was a part of the
New Sweden colony. They were followed by English
Quakers, including
Thomas Holme, who came to begin the settlement of
William Penn's Pennsylvania colony in the late 1680s. In the years to follow, Northeast Philadelphia developed as a scattering of small towns and farms that were a part of Philadelphia County, but not the City of Philadelphia. Before consolidation with the City, what is now referred to as the Northeast consisted of the townships of
Byberry,
Delaware,
Lower Dublin,
Moreland, and
Oxford, (largely rural areas); and the boroughs of
Bridesburg,
Frankford, and
White Hall, which were more urbanized.
Growth in industry and farming While most of the land in what is now the Northeast was dedicated to farming, the presence of many creeks, along with proximity to Philadelphia proper, made the towns of the Northeast suitable for industrial development. The Northeast's first factory was the Rowland Shovel Works on the
Pennypack Creek. In 1802, it produced the first shovel made in the United States. More mills and factories followed along the Pennypack and
Frankford Creeks, and traces of the
mill races and dams remain to this day. The most famous of these factories was the
Disston Saw Works in
Tacony, founded by English industrialist
Henry Disston, whose saw blades were world-renowned.
Consolidation and population increase By 1854,
Philadelphia County was
incorporated into the city. In the first three decades of the 20th century, rapid
industrialization led to the growth of industrial sections of the northeast and the neighborhoods surrounding them. These demographic changes, along with the building of the
Market-Frankford Line train and new arterial highways, such as the
Roosevelt Boulevard, brought new middle class populations to the lower half of the Northeast. Vast tracts of
row homes were built in that section of the Northeast for new arrivals in the 1920s and 1930s, typically with small, but valued front lawns, which impart a "garden suburb" quality to much of the Northeast, reducing the sense of physical density felt elsewhere in the city. Much of this development occurred east of Roosevelt Boulevard (Mayfair, Torresdale) and in Oxford Circle. (including
Irish,
Italian,
Polish, and
German Americans) and completed the development of the region, filling in undeveloped areas of Rhawnhurst and Bell's Corner and developing the previously rural Far Northeast. As older sections of the city lost populations of young families, the Northeast's school-age population swelled, requiring rapid expansion of schools, libraries, cinemas, shopping, transportation, restaurants and other needed amenities. The period from 1945 through the 1970s was marked in many American cities by urban decline in older, more industrial areas. This was especially true in Philadelphia, in which much of the city's North, West and South sections lost population, factories, jobs and commerce. During the postwar period, the Northeast experienced a heavy influx of growing middle-class families, and had become an almost exclusively white community. This aroused controversy in the 1960s and 1970s, as passions for and against
school busing were focused on the Northeast, to address racial imbalances, especially in the city's public schools. That racial imbalance was ultimately addressed by the upward mobility enjoyed by many of the graduates of the Northeast's excellent public and parochial school systems, who made their way out of the Northeast and into the suburbs from the 1980s onward, making room for new arrivals from the city's
Latino,
African American and
Asian populations.
A separate identity s, a central location in the Northeast In the 1980s, the Northeast developed along a separate path from much of the rest of the city. In addition to the racial differences mentioned above, the political climate in the Northeast was balanced evenly between
Republicans and
Democrats, while the rest of the city almost uniformly voted for the latter party. As a result, many Northeasters became more and more discontented with the high city taxes and a perceived imbalance in the services they received for them. This discontent grew to give rise to a
secessionist movement, led by State Senator
Frank "Hank" Salvatore, among others. Salvatore introduced a bill in the State Senate to allow the Northeast to become a separate county called Liberty County, but the bill failed to progress beyond this stage. ==Demographics==