MURAL EXHIBIT: THE COLORED CONVENTIONS MOVEMENT AND BEYOND IN PHILADELPHIA

LA PIERRE HOUSE

La Pierre House sits next to the Academy of Natural Sciences, N.W. corner of Sansom St, ca. 1869. John Moran, photographer [Philadelphia: Publisher unknown, 1869], Courtesy the Library of Congress.

Along with Girard House, La Pierre House was one of Philadelphia’s premier hotels in the nineteenth century. Both were familiar places to Black Philadelphians, as traveling enslavers from the South would stay there and bring the persons they enslaved with them. Among its patrons was John H. Wheeler, who had unsuccessfully sued William Still and others for aiding Jane Johnson and her children—persons whom Wheeler enslaved. Wheeler had brought Johnson and her two children to Pennsylvania, a free state, with the intention of bringing them abroad. William Still, along with five deckhands, assisted in Johnson’s escape and were charged with assault (against Wheeler), but Jane Johnson’s testimony led to their acquittal. These hotels were sites of contact for freedom seekers and free Black Philadelphians. One unnamed enslaved person reportedly “took the Underground railroad” when their enslaver stopped by Girard House.[note] “News and other Paragraphs.” The Buffalo Daily Republic, July 31, 1857, p. 2.[/note] The National Era listed La Pierre House as one of the pricier places to dine and stay in Philadelphia, implying that while the hotel did take in African American patrons, there were other more economical choices. The hotel continued operating well into the late nineteenth-century. In 1872, activist, regular convention delegate, and dean of Howard University’s law school John Mercer Langston visited Philadelphia and stopped by La Pierre House.

 

CREDITS

Written by Samantha de Vera.

 

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