by Tom Eveslage
Before there was CityView, when a stone wall and shrubs surrounded the Preston Retreat, Peggy Gallen walked past the formidable three-story building on her daily trip to and from Hallahan Catholic Girls High School. That was more than 65 years ago.
Peggy Gallen
Now an 82-year-old CityView resident, Peggy recalls the Retreat as a curiosity of sorts. At the time, she said, so-called “respectable people” delivered their babies at home. Others had the option of a nearby hospital, but women shared beds, disease spread and the mortality rate for mothers was high.
Dr. Jonas Preston’s money and persistence led to a new type of facility, one providing a “lying-in” hospital for “indigent, married women of good character.” There were strict admissions requirements. Patients ranged in age from late adolescence to 30 years old. They stayed an average of 30 days.
At the Preston Retreat, babies were “delivered differently,” Peggy said. Reflecting Preston’s Quaker spirit, even poor women got a bed of their own and the services of a midwife, she added. Pregnant women who came to the Retreat worked in the kitchen and laundry to pay for their hospital stay. “It was respectable, though, not a place for illegitimate babies. A woman had to bring a marriage license to be admitted.
The quality care the Preston Retreat provided, reflected in a higher survival rate for both mothers and babies, influenced practices in other hospitals, said Peggy, who herself trained and completed graduate work as a nurse. “I guess I became a midwife, too,” she added.
After 30 years living in Washington, D.C., Peggy “moved back home”—and to CityView—nine years ago. Her great-grandmother had immigrated alone to Philadelphia as a 10-year-old in the wake of Ireland’s famine. Peggy’s grandfather and both parents were born and raised in Philadelphia. Peggy grew up at 21st and Parrish streets, near Eastern State Penitentiary.
She’s delighted that part of her history, and the city’s, is reflected in Winifred Lutz’s sculpture and peppers the grounds of CityView. “I was gone—in the Peace Corps—when the Preston Retreat was demolished,” Peggy said. “But it wasn’t really necessary anymore.” It had made a difference for many people, and was valued by the community—even though many didn’t speak of it, Peggy said.
“People didn’t tell others that they were born there,” she added. “It was embarrassing to admit you were poor. Just recently, for the first time, I met a woman who said she was born there.” There was no reason for shame, she said. The poor had no other available public assistance.
Peggy thinks those of us in CityView should know the good that took place on these grounds.