The Lighthouse - 1893

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The Lighthouse 1893

Founded in 1893 as a settlement house, the mission of the Lighthouse is to provide educational, recreational and economic improvement programs to families and individuals to improve the quality of their lives. For more than 100 years the Kensington, Fairhill and North Philadelphia communities have relied on the Lighthouse to provide multi-cultural services that respond to the multi-dimensional needs of our communities’ members.

In response to the unique pressures that the families of North Philadelphia faced, ranging from recent immigration to substance abuse, the Lighthouse began providing services to the children of our community through educational and literacy, arts and music, and sports and recreational programming. As the needs of the community changed, the Lighthouse expanded its services to aid the elderly and under-employed in the community. The Lighthouse began the first Meals on Wheels program in the nation to feed the growing elderly population and was a pioneer in the Women’s Rights and Suffrage movements. The Lighthouse has always been driven by its commitment to the families and to be in the forefront in developing creative and cutting edge services to meet families’ needs. For more than 114 years the Lighthouse has been in the community, providing services to the community, enabled by support from the community.

On June 13, 1910, Charles K. Hamilton completed the first round trip airplane flight between two major cities flying between New York City and Philadelphia. The leading newspapers in those cities, The New York Times and the Philadelphia Ledger, sponsored the prize-winning achievement, each contributing $5,000 to the first individual to successfully complete the feat. Taking off from Governor’s Island in New York harbor at 7:30 am, Hamilton followed the Pennsylvania Railroad main line and landed in Philadelphia at the Lighthouse Field at 9:26 am. Concern for his safety led Hamilton to wrap 5 inner tubes around his midsection as he flew over the Hudson River. Hamilton’s biplane is still in existence today in a museum in Nebraska. This historic flight signaled the beginning of the commercial value and viability of airplane travel

In 1937, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus brought “the greatest show on earth” to the Lighthouse Field. By 1940, the Lighthouse Boys Club soccer program was “the largest single soccer organization in the world.” Ed Farnsworth of Philly Soccer Page stated that, “It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Lighthouse Boys Club not just in the history of soccer in Philadelphia but in the history of soccer in the United States. Aside from providing the richest source of soccer talent for Philadelphia clubs at all levels of the game for much of the 20th Century, Lighthouse also provided a model for community-based soccer clubs that were intrinsic to the youth soccer boom that began in the 1970’s and continues to grow to this day.”Half of the 1938 United States Olympic Soccer Team was from Philadelphia and most of those players learned the sport at Lighthouse Field.

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