FEATURE STORY
Students, neighbors, and
Germantown Speaks
organizers gathered for the
fourth intergenerational
conversation, held at Center
in the Park in Germantown.
The Commercial Corridors Project
A RICHLY STORIED AVENUE
by Molly Lester, Grants and Program Director, Philadelphia Regional Fund
This past November, in a room overlooking Vernon Park in northwest Philadelphia, five Germantown High School students joined
eleven senior citizens around a table at The First Presbyterian Church in Germantown. Just one year earlier—almost to the day—
everyone in the room had witnessed the election of President Barack Obama and today, they sat musing about the campaign stop he
made to the park, only a few steps away.
“Did any celebrities visit Germantown when you were growing up here?” one student, Eli, asked of the older faces across from him.
“I remember John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon coming through during the election of 1960,” an elderly woman recalled.
At this, another woman at the table sat up straight, waving her hand dismissively. “Oh, but that was recent!”
Eli was too stunned to scribble anything in the notebook in front of him.
This event at First Presbyterian
marked the start of a series of
intergenerational oral history events
known as Germantown Speaks that
emerged from Partners for Sacred
Places’ Commercial Corridors
Project. Over the course of five
community conversations last fall
and winter, more than 50 older
residents shared their experiences of
life in Germantown with nine local
teenagers. Different in age, race
and gender, their stories joined to
shape a shared, nuanced experience
of Germantown Avenue in the 20th
century—although they never did
agree on what counted as “recent.”
Partners’ work with historic
congregations has continually
evolved since its founding 21 years
ago, expanding from occasional
technical assi