Elmwood Park, also known simply as Elmwood, is a neighborhood in the

Southwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west— ...

section of

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States. It borders the city line with Delaware County at Cobbs Creek, and extends to the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river in eastern Pennsylvania. It flows for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map(). accessed April 1, 2011. from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Pottsville ...

. The Eastwick neighborhood borders it to the southwest, and Kingsessing borders it on the northeast. Poles and Irish Americans had long been the majority in the neighborhood, organized around

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

parishes established throughout the early to mid 20th century. In 1985, Mayor Wilson Goode declared a

state of emergency A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens. A government can declare such a state before, during, o ...

as white rioters demonstrated outside two houses in Elmwood, creating an "imminent danger of civil disturbance." One home had been sold to an African-American family and the other to an

interracial Interracial topics include: * Interracial marriage, marriage between two people of different races ** Interracial marriage in the United States *** 2009 Louisiana interracial marriage incident * Interracial adoption, placing a child of one raci ...

couple. Between 1990 and 2000, the white population decreased by 57.39% while the African American population increased by 55.40%.

Vietnamese American Vietnamese Americans () are Americans of Vietnamese ancestry. They constitute a major part of all overseas Vietnamese. As of 2023, over 2.3 million people of Vietnamese descent live in the United States, making them the fourth largest Asian Ame ...

refugee A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as ...

s and

West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...

n immigrants have joined African Americans in making today's Elmwood a more racially diverse neighborhood as the white population decreases. The Route 36 trolley runs along Elmwood Avenue through the heart of the neighborhood. A storage facility that is also used as an alternate terminus is also located there. The Thomas Buchanan Read School and William J. Tilden Junior High School were added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1986. Elmwood Park's
The Labor Monument: Philadelphia's Tribute to the American Worker
' (2010) by artist John Kindness is one of the first monuments in the United States commemorating the contributions of organized labor nationwide. The monument was commissioned by the Association for Public Art (formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association) and installed in 2010 at 71st Street and Buist Avenue.

Demographics

As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2000, there were 27,329 people living in the neighborhood. The racial makeup was 31.15%

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

, 55.40%

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

, 10.33% Asian, and 0.75% from other races.

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

or Latino of any race were 2.25% of the population. The median income for a household in the neighborhood was $24,817.

Education

Free Library of Philadelphia The Free Library of Philadelphia is the public library system that serves the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the 16th-largest public library system in the United States. The Free Library of Philadelphia is a non-Mayoral agency of the ...

operates the Paschalville Branch, which serves Elmwood and other subdivisions, at 6942 Woodland Avenue. The system also operates the Eastwick Branch, which serves Elmwood Park and other subdivisions, at 2581 Island Avenue.Eastwick Branch
" ''

''. Retrieved on January 3, 2008.

References

External links

Philadelphia Imposes a State of Emergency
''New York Times'', November 24, 1985
Recent Trends in Immigration to Philadelphia
Johnny Ceffalio, University of Pennsylvania {{Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania Neighborhoods in Philadelphia Irish-American neighborhoods Southwest Philadelphia