I was born and raised in Kensington, and my first job after high school was at the K&A Social Security office. (It was so nice to be able to walk to work. Sigh. I miss that a lot.) Back then it was located in the Philadelphia National Bank building, which - except for the northbound El station at Allegheny - took up a large plot of of the northeast corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues.
Here's what's on that corner now -- after they merged and became CoreStates, and after CoreStates bought out First Pennsylvania Bank, kept the First Pennsylvania bank branch across the street open and closed the building where I worked, and after the El station was completely rebuilt:
The First Pennsylvania branch across the street is still there. It, like the sports arena in South Philly, went from CoreStates to FirstUnion to Wachovia to Wells Fargo. But what interested me is something I never noticed before -- not until one morning recently when I got off the El at Allegheny to catch the route 60 bus to work. One of the changes made in rebuilding the El station is that there are cashiers' booths and turnstiles only on on side -- in this case, the westbound side. So they built crossover bridges to the eastbound platform. One is quite close to the First Pa./CS/FU/W/WF building, and on this particular morning I noticed some words near the top:
I forget that these old buildings have had multiple lives.
