feature story
Utopia Revisited
Residents Reunite to Share Stories
of 12th Street Childhood
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
T he word “utopia,” coined by 15th-century
English writer Thomas More, is based on the
Greek words eu-topos, which means a good
place, and ou-topos, which means no place.

The term was meant to show the idealized, just-
out-of-reach nature of a perfect place. Certainly, a
place that appeared so faultless could not possibly
exist without a catch or shortcoming.

Some of the former residents of East Oak Lane
would beg to differ. Hugged between North 11th and
Camac streets on one side, and Marvine and 13th
streets on the other, the 6000 block of North 12th
Street was home to about 50 families, most of them
Jewish, in the 1940s and ’50s.

The residents remember the neighborhood the
same way: Children addressed adults as “aunt” and
“uncle;” no one locked their doors; everyone had a
part in the annual Chanukah performance; and the
street on a hill was transformed into a sledding haven
in the winter, when the street’s fathers stood at the
top and bottom to block off incoming cars, and the
children spent the later afternoons and weekends
treading through mounds of snow.

Eighty years after the cohort of residents moved
to North 12th Street, the surviving “children,” now
septuagenarians and octogenarians, will gather for
a reunion on Sept. 10 in Rittenhouse. The meet-up’s
theme, “12th Street: Myth or Reality,” puts the neigh-
borhood’s utopic status to the test.

“All of us think that everything wonderful hap-
pened on 12th Street,” said Joan Cohen, 79, a former
12th Street resident. “... Anything bad or negative that
happened in our lives happened after 12th Street.”
The group of 30-40 surviving residents last con-
vened in the early 2000s, and the cohort believes
that the upcoming gathering will be one of the last
opportunities to meet and share stories of a unique
upbringing. “We are all brimming over with memories,”
Cohen said.

Cohen and her sister Alice Fisher both were born
and grew up on 12th Street, the children of young
parents looking to settle down during a tumultuous
time in United States history. On the eve of World
War II and following the Great Depression, many
couples found refuge in the less-developed East Oak
Lane section of North Philadelphia and had children
at around the same time.

“As the children grew, the trees grew — that kind of
thing,” Cohen said. “It was a new street, and I think
they all wanted to be friends. Most of them had lived
The 6000 block of North 12th Street today
Photos by Sasha Rogelberg
18 SEPTEMBER 8, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM