Category Archives: Campus Development

Meals on Wheels

Business, Campus Development, Community, Labor

By Lauren Griffin, Public History MA student at Temple University

Seeing food trucks and carts along a city street is not an uncommon sight. As you walk around Temple’s campus, however, you might notice that there are a few more food trucks than normal. Some of them don’t even really look like food trucks. There’s little stalls, a shipping container, metal carts, mobile trucks, and immobile trucks hardwired into the infrastructure of the street. For the Temple community, these trucks are beloved. During lunchtime, students crowd the windows, placing orders for birria tacos, Japanese teppanyaki, hoagies, and more. Although it might be surprising for something that seems so integral to Temple’s culture as an urban university, the food trucks and their operators had to fight to be there. So, what is the relationship between Temple and the trucks, and where did it start?

Street vendors were common in Philadelphia beginning in the 1800s, but because of their transient nature it can be challenging to pin evidence of their presence. It’s possible that the first street vendor at Temple was the young Walter Johnson, selling the classic Philadelphia food item, pretzels, in 1924. 

The Temple News, December 12, 1924. (Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries)

Another early food vendor on campus was William “Bill” Bush. Like Johnson, Bush sold pretzels. He also sold ice cream, candy, and apples right in front of College Hall for over a decade. In the 1940s, the city of Philadelphia introduced new sanitation regulations and a system of licensing for street vendors. After adjusting to the new regulations and in response to the growing student population and campus in North Philadelphia, street vendors started clustering around Temple University in larger numbers in the 1960s. Students were increasingly dissatisfied with university food offerings, and the food trucks filled a need for affordable, delicious, and quick food. 

One of the most famous and influential vendors of this time were two brothers, John and Milton Street. The Street brothers started out selling hot dogs and cheesesteaks on campus, but both would go on to become major figures in Philadelphia politics. John Street was mayor of Philadelphia for two terms, and Milton was an activist that fought for affordable housing before turning his attention to public office. Milton Street rose to prominence on Temple’s campus when he began speaking out against discriminatory practices by Temple University that targeted Black vendors on campus. 

Brother Hakim (left) and T. Milton Street (right) of the Black Vendors Association at City Council protesting discriminatory regulations placed on Temple’s food vendors. Street was said to have torn up the City Council bill during this session in 1975. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Street took on both Temple and the City Council to protest unlawful tows of vendor vehicles from the street around campus. Street attributed the problems to vendor competition and confusing and discriminatory regulations regarding where and when vendors could set up their trucks. After fighting against the food trucks for decades, in 1982 Temple created a permanent space, the Vendors Mall on 13th Street, for the food trucks. Street drew attention to the ongoing problems, and Temple built a new structure, the 12th Street Food Court, in 1996. 

The 12th Street Food Court privileged the few, and the following decades introduced new struggles for food vendors. Parking has always been a concern, and Temple has different options for different kinds of trucks. Some trucks are hardwired into the campus infrastructure, while some are removable carts that can be towed to different locations across the city. In 2015, Temple and the City of Philadelphia created a special Street and Sidewalk Vending District that restricted where food trucks could officially be set up. Trucks were allowed between Diamond, 10th, Oxford, and 16th Street, but not on 13th, the original location of Temple’s Vendors Mall. This ordinance also prohibited the use of generators, enforced minimum open hours for all vendors, and limited the number of total vendors to 50. 

A helpful guide to the food trucks from the 2015 Templar yearbook that emphasized creating a personal relationship with the workers. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA).

In 2019, Temple and the city department of Licenses and Inspection (L&I) once again targeted the operations of the food trucks by announcing they would begin enforcing a particularly difficult rule: vendors would have to remove their trucks overnight, hauling the mobile kitchens in and out everyday. This rule was costly for some food trucks, and impossible for many. Students launched a petition in support of the trucks, and eventually it was ruled that trucks would not have to move each night. 

Unfortunately, a new issue was lurking around the corner: COVID-19. The university shut down, and students left campus en masse. Having a semi-outdoor business was actually beneficial during the pandemic given the indoor dining restrictions, but many of Temple’s vendors were unable to move their trucks to find enough customers. Many food trucks went under during the pandemic, and it led to many questioning whether a move to another college campus like Drexel or UPenn would be best. 

Operating a food truck on Temple’s campus presents many challenges, but students and faculty create affectionate connections with the folks that serve up delicious meals each day. The relationship and support for vendors changes with each university administration, and not all vendors are treated equally. Their presence on campus creates a unique urban environment that has become a talking point of Temple marketing. Students love to debate their favorite spots and dishes, but the truck popularity also draws attention and money away from in-house university food services. Eating at the trucks as a student is making a choice to support local business, but does Temple make the same?

Listen to the stories of Temple’s vendors over at the Oral Histories page.

Building Appetites, Building Campus

Campus Development, Civil Rights, Class, Community, Urbanization, , ,

By Lauren Griffin, Public History MA student at Temple University

Throughout Temple’s history, its students, faculty, and staff have used food to forge community. To raise money for sports teams or other extracurricular activities, students would host bake sales, chicken dinners, or ice cream socials not too different from fundraising practices on campus today. Through food, university students created a network of support not just for their university, but for their peers and the larger Temple community. 

One unique food related event was the annual “flour fight” on campus. Sponsored by the Booster Club, 50 sophomore students concealed packets of flour on 20 members of their team. Freshman students were given 10 minutes to search for the packets and dumped them on the poor sophomores when discovered. Less about food and more about the clouds of flour that it stirred up, this was a yearly competitive experience for new students that welcomed them into the Temple community and their traditions. 

Sophomore student Frank Gibson climbed up the telephone pole in true Philadelphia fashion to escape the hoards of freshman. The sophomores ended up winning this year as freshman chased the trickster Gibson and missed the other flour bags hidden among the grounded. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Temple students bonded together, and the university’s appetite grew, but not for food. This time, they wanted land. In 1955, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission designated the area between 12th, 13th, Norris, and Diamond Street as the Northwest Temple Redevelopment Area, contributing urban renewal grant funds to redevelop the 38-acres under Institutional Development District zoning. The area around Temple was designated as blighted, which misrepresented reality. These were homes, gardens, and life that Temple began razing for their reimagined urban university. 

During the 1950s, cities across the United States felt the effects of deindustrialization as factories closed and businesses moved to the suburbs or abroad. Philadelphia’s deindustrialization disproportionately affected its Black residents, and it also heightened the competition within the working-class population as real wages declined and housing costs rose. In the 1960s and 1970s, residents of Yorktown dealt with structural inequality and a predatory housing market that had been preparing for university expansion. The housing crisis, combined with poor economic conditions in the neighborhood, led to the escalation of tensions that resulted in the Columbia Avenue Riots in 1964. 

Police taking shelter from the rain during the Columbia Avenue Riots, 1964. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

In 1965, Temple became a state-affiliated institution and received an influx of funding to expand their physical footprint. Temple began insulating itself from the rest of the community as they shifted into the next stage of development. Rather than close off Temple from the outside world, certain student groups like the Steering Committee for Black Students fought to integrate with the local community, demanding that residents be granted open access to Temple facilities and fighting for the protection of preexisting houses and community structures from Temple’s rapid expansion. One thing in particular they fought for was public access to the Mitten Hall Cafeteria. Temple dodged these requests, and student activists staged sit-ins to block customers from dining. Temple’s administration finally relented, and public access to Mitten Hall was finally granted. This victory was short-lived, however, as the Mitten Hall cafeteria would soon become obsolete as the new Student Activities Center was built in 1971.

Outdoor dining plaza at the Student Activities Center, 1985. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Community access to Temple dining facilities was a nice option for residents, but the situation inside the cafeteria wasn’t exactly stable at the time, either. Students had recently protested the high prices of meals inside Mitten Hall and carried the Brown Bag Boycott. In 1968, a Black waitress at Mitten Hall, Mattie Cross, was fired from her position after a white customer accused her of spilling water on her. The Steering Committee for Black Students protested this and called for Cross to be rehired. They also demanded  in addition that all Black employees at Temple be paid the minimum wage and that Temple release an official statement in apology to their Black employees.

Serving station at Temple University (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

As Temple was in turmoil, the community of North Philadelphia was taking steps to establish their own community spaces. Established in 1968 by Reverend Dr. Leon Sullivan, a prominent civil rights activist, the Progress Plaza at 1501 N Broad Street was the first African American owned shopping center in the United States. The goal of this shopping center was to support Black enterprise and help foster business within the community outside of Temple.

Rev. Dr. Leon Sullivan in front of Progress Plaza, 1969. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Sullivan made a deal with A&P food store chain for a 20 year contract to have a grocery store in the plaza under Black management. This was a major investment for the neighborhood, but satisfaction with the quality of the grocery store fell over the decades. After the Super Fresh market shut down, the area was left without a local source of affordable groceries, turning it into a food desert.

In 2009, decades after the opening of Sullivan Progress Plaza, the center underwent significant renovations and expansions so that Fresh Grocer, a new grocery store chain, could move into the space. While this was welcome news, the neighborhood still suffers from food insecurity. The area has also been classified as a food swamp, which is an area characterized by mostly low-quality food sources, like fast food chains and convenience stores. Many of those fast food restaurants are there because of Temple University catering to the needs of its students. 

When walking around campus, take a look at what food options you see. Are there a lot of big chains or local offerings? What cuisines and ethnicities are represented? Are dietary restrictions and healthy offerings well represented on campus? In looking at the variety of food service in campus, it is also important to recognize who is eating in what spaces, and who is serving.

A vendor serves up hot dogs to an eager crowd on Good Neighbor Day. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Meet Jim Amzovski

Business, Campus Development, Immigration,
Jim-Amzovski-Fames-Famous-Pizza

Jim Amzovski, with his brother Feim, have been operating Fame’s Famous Pizza since 1985. Born in Philadelphia to Macedonian immigrants, Jim grew up helping his parents operate a hot dog cart down in Center City. After their father passed away, they inherited the family business. They purchased a food truck and moved over to the Temple area. They brought with them their mother’s recipe and were the first original pizza place to offer fresh made pizza, not frozen.

The Amzovski brothers were eventually invited to make their business more permanent, and in 1994 they moved into the 12th Street food court. The food court was on the edge of main campus in the 1990s, and attracting clientele to the outskirts was challenging for the brothers at first. As campus was built around them, Fame’s popularity grew.

The Amzovski brothers have operated Fame’s through different administrations, changing campus culture, and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. As a veteran institution, Jim says he values his relationship with Temple students. He is also considering retiring soon. Listen to Jim’s oral history interview below.

Mitten Hall: Serving Students for Decades

Business, Campus Development, Class, Community, Labor, , ,

By Lauren Griffin, Public History MA student at Temple University

The first generation of students that attended Temple sourced their meals from a variety of different places. Some students commuted from home, some sought out meals at diners and lunch shops, or some students ate their meals at their nearby boarding houses. One of the early restaurants near campus was the Temple Restaurant, a lunch shop that was in operation until at least 1911. In 1908, they even served supper for students attending night classes. At this time, men and women had to dine in separate rooms. 

The Temple Restaurant was the first instance of university dining. The Great Depression interrupted the growth of Temple, but the administration responded by offering financial aid and by expanding services available to students. In the 1920s and 1930s with enrollment recovering after World War I and the Depression, Temple began constructing its own buildings near the Baptist Temple. One of those buildings was Mitten Hall, which permanently changed the campus environment as a student activities center. Not only a space for students to host club meetings and study sessions, it also offered a brand new cafeteria space. 

Photo of the cafeteria in Mitten Hall, c1930s. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

In addition, Temple started building dorms for students to live on campus. The construction projects in the 1930s under Temple President Charles Beury marked the beginning of Temple’s significant expansion into the surrounding neighborhood. Temple transformed from a university of row houses and commuters into a more idealized version of a university campus. Those row homes were not empty, however, and it was during this time period that Temple began demolishing the homes of its neighbors and erasing the former history of North Broad Street. 

For students and faculty, life on campus was good for a while. Mitten Hall was the center of student life. The cafeteria, dubbed ‘Casa Grilla,” hosted theatrical performances, poetry readings, dances, and special dinners. Things would change in the 1940s, however, when World War II came to campus. Students were drafted and left the university to fight overseas, and educational programming was modified to better assist a country at war. The US government also established a rationing system and in 1942 began restricting the quantity of high-demand food items that individuals could purchase. The annual Founder’s Dinner celebrating the legacy of Russell Conwell was even canceled one year due to rationing. While individuals were encouraged to plant victory gardens and start canning their vegetables, Temple’s student dining facilities struggled.

Article from The Temple News, March 23, 1945. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

After World War II ended, enrollment at Temple once again surged as veterans returned home and used their GI Bills to go to college. Temple expanded and built more dormitories and student dining facilities. Since the 1930s, the meals at Temple dining halls were prepared by Slater Food Company. Founded by Philadelphian John F. Slater, the company specialized in corporate and university cafeterias that focused on feeding large groups of people as quickly as possible. The relationship between Slater Food Service and the students of Temple was tenuous. In the 1970s, it came to a head with the Brown Bag Boycott.

A photo from the 1968 Temple University Alumni Review depicting two stylish boycotters. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Starting in the 1960s, students expressed their frustrations with how dining halls were managed. Cafeteria “bouncers” would kick students out of the dining room if they weren’t actively eating, food prices fluctuated randomly, and students regularly complained that dishware was dirty and servers got their orders wrong. The Dorm Senate Food Committee met to try and figure out a solution to students’ concerns, but Slater services also had complaints. Slater claimed that they had to devote a significant amount of their budget to replacing stolen dishware, coffee pots, and utensils. If students would stop stealing, Slater pledged to serve sirloin steaks and lobster in the dining halls. The cafeteria bouncer was actually an employee of the university in place to keep the student areas under control, and the dining halls had been notoriously overcrowded for years.

Smiling students protesting in the dining halls with a sign stating “don’t buy slater.” (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA)

In 1968, students had finally had enough. The Brown Bag Boycott Committee instituted a full boycott of Temple dining halls and Slater Food Services and encouraged all Temple faculty and students to bring bagged lunches from home. The catalyst this time around was Slater raising the price of a cup of coffee from 10 cents to 12 cents. This might seem minor, but Slater had been gradually increasing food prices over the past decades. The radicals behind the boycott were successful – prices were lowered. This wasn’t the end of Temple’s relationship with corporate food services, however. Slater would be replaced with Sodexo, and in 2017 the Sodexo contract was replaced with Aramark Food Services.

An inside look at a day in the life of a Sodexo employee, from the 2016 Templar yearbook. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

By the 1970s, Temple and its students had outgrown Mitten Hall. They needed a new space for the growing student population, so they built the Student Activities Center (the SAC) in 1971. The SAC continues to be a hub for student life on campus, offering expansive cafeteria and dining space, offices for student services, entertainment options, a bookstore, and more. It’s been renovated and expanded since the 1970s to continue to meet the needs of the shifting student population.

A sketch from 1984 depicting some proposed changes to the SAC. Is that a pile of boxes being unloaded, or is that little umbrella the formation of a food truck? (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Even though Mitten Hall is no longer the center of student life on campus, it holds a special place in Temple University’s history as a space of community, protest, and development. Students struggled against the corporatization of their meals, but there was a new answer to this problem: food trucks.

Temple, Taverns, and Temperance

Business, Campus Development, Community, Urbanization,

By Lauren Griffin, Public History MA student at Temple University

Header photo courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Print and Picture Collection

Let’s travel back to 1884 North Philadelphia, specifically, the Punch Bowl, a tavern and inn on Lamb Tavern Road near 2100 N Broad Street. The Punch Bowl was built in 1840, but it would be demolished in 1884. Local folks used to gather to watch the horses race up and down Broad Street, and its location wasn’t too far from the many mansions that made their home on North Broad Street. Many patrons of the Punch Bowl could have also traveled over to the tavern after getting off work from one of the many nearby factories, such as the Stetson Hat Company. After the Civil War ended, Philadelphia’s population grew rapidly. Drawn in by new jobs due to rapid industrialization, emancipated Black citizens and immigrants filtered into Northern cities. Streetcars were introduced to Philadelphia in 1858, connecting the suburbs and industrial zones throughout the city.


1862 Philadelphia Atlas showing Lamb Tavern Road, Monument Cemetery, and the area that Temple would begin developing in a few decades. (Philageohistory.org)

Down the road from the Punch Bowl, a man named Russell Conwell was gathering with seven working class men for tutoring lessons. These meetings were the beginning of what would eventually become Temple University. The group would meet at 1913 Mervine Street after getting off work in an attempt to better their life circumstances. Word eventually spread of the educational opportunity Conwell was offering for Philadelphia’s working class men, and the small meetings soon grew too large for the small rowhome.

Wiatt Society house, 1913 N. Marvine (Mervine) Street. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

With an early emphasis on night classes (7:45 – 9:45pm) to accommodate a work schedule, it was likely that Temple’s first students brought food from their homes or found food at local taverns for meals. The first classes of students would sometime meet in the basement of the Grace Baptist church for communal meals. These meals, called “Talent Penny Suppers,” were organized to help fundraise for programming and services during Temple’s early years.

Philadelphia has a long history of taverns, and in the colonial era these taverns were important centers of political debate, community formation, and social life for working men. The early taverns typically offered lodging options, but taverns in the 19th century had reduced their offerings to alcohol and simple meat-based meals. Following the Civil War, the Temperance Movement began to focus on taverns and saloons as centers of masculine working class life, and concerned industrialists supported the move to reduce worker intoxication. Taverns were just one source of food for Temple’s first cohorts.

Page from the 1901 Temple Dental School Yearbook which shares the requirements for admission into the Yankee Club. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Food options in the area would change over the decades as Temple grew, and the introduction of the Prohibition turned taverns into speakeasies. Temple’s crafty students continued to find ways to procure alcohol even with the Prohibition in place. They brewed gin in their bathrooms and smuggled drinks into school dances. Not everyone was against the 18th Amendment, however, and having a dry campus was preferable to some students and Temple administration.

Article from the Temple News in 1926 that shares the results of a student poll. More Temple undergraduate students were against the Prohibition than for it. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

The Prohibition was eventually repealed, and bars once again started popping up around the young campus. One of the more popular local hotspots was the bar Pete’s Tavern on the corner of 13th and Montgomery. With its location so close to campus and student dormitories, Pete’s was a popular spot to grab a drink and socialize. The Temple News even used the bar as their “night office” in the early 1950s.

Students outside of Pete’s Tavern, on the corner of 13th and Montgomery. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Unfortunately, Pete’s Tavern was demolished in 1956 to build a parking lot. That parking lot would also be demolished eventually and replaced with the Tuttleman Learning Center.

Article from The Temple News in 1951 about the upcoming plans to purchase Pete’s Tavern. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Pete’s loss was lamented, but there was always another business to take its place. As Temple ramped up their expansion plans in the 1950s and 1960s, some community members protested having bars in their community. With more and more students living on and around campus, community members were concerned about inebriated students causing trouble. There were also instances of drunk driving accidents as commuters tried to make their way home. Rather than creating a fully dry campus, Temple administration responded by implementing new guidelines in an attempt to educate students on how to drink responsibly.

A 1979 article from The Temple News that shares a new drinking policy for Temple dormitories after a series of drunk driving accidents in the region. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

Temple still deploys this tactic when it comes to student drinking. Despite the idea that Temple is a “dry campus,” the lawful sale and consumption of alcohol is allowed on university property, with some exceptions. Students are not allowed to have or consume alcohol within Temple dormitories, but they can walk down to Maxi’s along the Park Mall and grab a drink there. There are other popular student late night hangouts near campus, some of which did not survive the effects of the pandemic and loss of student business.

Page from the 2012 Templar yearbook. (Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA.)

The presence of alcohol might seem like a common thread through Temple’s history, but behind the alcohol is the importance of social spaces for Temple’s student body. North Philadelphia community members have valid concerns when it comes to alcohol creating issues or being linked to instances of crime in the neighborhood. What kind of social spaces are being created around campus, and who are they for? As demographics shift in “Temple Town,” whose influence holds the most weight in these discussions: Temple administration, Temple students, or North Philadelphia residents?