118 Elfreth's Alley

His father-in-law, Andrew Edge, had built House 120 to the west about thirty-five years earlier.  Hall sold the House 118 to a peruke (or wig) maker in order to open the Black Horse Tavern around 1764.  

As with so many of the Alley houses, House 118 was primarily a rental property for most of its existence.  The people who rented the house are representative of the population trends we see along the Alley, as well as of the diversity of Alley residents.  Moses Mordecai, an original member of the Mikveh Israel congregation, lived in the house, as did widow Catherine Foster.  Though we don’t often think of women living on their own during the Colonial period, in fact women headed about a third of the Alley households at the end of the 18th century.  These women – widows or spinsters – supported themselves by working as dressmakers, teachers, or innkeepers.

House 118 was the home of sailmaker Benjamin Brommel throughout the middle of the nineteenth century, indicating how important the waterfront was to Elfreth’s Alley residents over the first two centuries of its existence.  And in the 1900s, it was home to the extended family of grocer Richard Harley.  Harley, who was of Irish descent but a naturalized American citizen, lived with his wife, son, and five grandchildren all under the age of twelve.  Alley houses were almost tenement buildings in the late 19th and early 20th century, as immigrants from all over moved to Philadelphia, lived with extended family and boarders, and worked in nearby factories.