As with the other Uptown roadways mapped out by Whittier’s Quaker founders in 1887, Philadelphia Street has a Quaker connection: Philadelphia, PA was originally designed as a sanctuary city for those of the Quaker faith, a.k.a. the Religious Society of Friends. English Quaker William Penn (1644-1718), who also has an honorary street here in Whittier, was granted land in the American colony in 1681. The land was dubbed Pennsylvania (“Penn’s Woods”) and Penn sailed out to establish Philadelphia there in 1682. The city’s name does indeed mean “brotherly love” in Greek and it reflected Penn’s dreams for Philadelphia as a pacifist, abolitionist utopia.
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