Ring the bell and get ready for this one!!! YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS IT!

Watching this ,I could almost smell the piss.

Montreal has 32 kilometres of underground city that is active and vital and beautiful. No need to get cold in the winter. Toronto also has a huge vast underground of 30 kilometres of shops, restaurants etc. called The Path. I think there are videos on both.

I used those tunnels as a kid in the late sixties. I went to school near Suburban Station, the terminus of the Pennsylvania RR commuter lies. The concourse was a convenient way to get out of the rain and snow, at the time the only commercial activity was a news stand that stocked Marvel Comics.

Philly the first "Graffiti" City but also the First City to be known for tieing your old sneakers together and throwing them over the telephone wires. Years later you could drive by and still see your childhood sneakers hanging in South Philly somewhere, no joke, LOL

Wow, I had no idea so many underground concourses closed. Before moving into my fraternity house at Temple, I explored all of them. Because of the many transportation systems I could travel from campus to Folcroft easily more than a dozen ways with my monthly SEPTA pass. I discovered a lot.

In the 70s, You could walk from Arch St. underground all the way to Strawbridge's. This was great on rainy and cold days.

The internet of today still doesn’t have “smell-e-vision”; my recollection of some concourse areas is that there was a strong smell of urine there. And possibly homeless folks living there.

y'know you could have like, asked people who live here and use the concourse daily about the concourse rather than fabricate a crime wave explanation for the closure of the north concourse

This really takes me back. Shivers. Grew up here and took the subway all the time. This is kinda weird now. I haven't lived there since 1988 but I am going to visit next month.

Huh. I never realized the network was so big. A significant chunk is still open and used around the suburban station/city hall area, though wow is it easy to get lost.

"The Gallery" mall is/was not underground. The concourse for the Market-Frankford subway might have been underground, but The Gallery rose about 3 or 4 stories above street level. The concourse from 12th and Locust to Broad St to Suburban Station is still the best pedestrian path on a rainy day. Lit's, Strawbridge & Clothier, and Gimbel's department stores (all long gone) had entrances directly from the concourse. There used to be an outdoor ice skating rink at concourse level at 17th and JFK Blvd. The center-city loop from 8th and Market to 16th and Locust is not unused. Its now the Patco High-Speed line from New Jersey. Patco also passes by the unused Franklin Square station (under the mostly overlooked northeastern square in Philadelphia's grid).

As a long term (though not native) resident of Philly I find this fascinating. So much invisible history.

I guess for people familiar with Philly this is great but would've helped to have more map overlays to show the system rather than just street names.

interesting, but filled with major errors and misconceptions. many tunnels were simply filled with utility lines and the walkways were moved to parallel tunnels, most of the concourses are still in use, and one can walk from 7th to 19th now, and from near arch street down to spruce...same as for past 90 years. the walkways connect two major regional commuter stations, a dozen commuter lines, 5 trolley lines, and 4 subways including one to NJ, many fantastic office towers, shops, department stores, government buildings, and restaurants. the arch street portion was cleverly and responsibly converted to a beautiful facility for homeless to shower and rest, but you never showed that. this was sensationalized with all those pix of graffiti and references to crime, making a truly beautiful city look frightening and dangerous. the video was supposed to be about tunnels, but most of it was about everything but. in all fairness you should pull that video and replace with a more balanced and honest one..

Edmund Bacon was Kevin Bacon, (the dancer/actor) father. In the late 50's 56 to 59 I traveled those tunnels every day of the week. The "UGLY" graffiti was non existent. B 4 school let out for the summer it was a lot cooler to walk down there. I walked from Reading station at Lehigh Ave. & Broad St. to Broad & Spring Garden St. to go to school. You could hear the subway trains/trolleys but I did not see them till I got to major subway stops and I had the tunnels to myself. The were well lit, clean, tiled and the echo was Cool.

We probably will never know what might have happened with mass transit in the future in Philadelphia if " Trolley King" George Widener( and his son) had not died on the Titanic in 1912.

Back in the 1990’s as a police officer we would get “detailed” from our districts to the subway. We all hated it, our radios didn’t work down there, they gave us SEPTA radios so we were out of communication with Philadelphia Police Radio, the whole place was filthy and smelled intensely of urine.

I moved away from Philly 11 years ago. I remember as a teenager walking all of those concourses underground to avoid the foot traffic on the street, especially when it rained. I am saddened to hear that many of the walkways and concourses are closed. I remember getting off the Market-Frankford El at 8th Street and walked the concourse to the Gallery directly underground. So sad to know these are closed. I also remembered during my high school years (the 80's) when the Broad Ridge Spur was re opened after years of closure, and the reopening of the Fairmount Avenue stop on the Broad Street Subway. I also remember the closed area after the Tasker Morris stop. So many memories.

This is a great job! One thought for your next video, all these streets names - _From X street to Y street_ gives me no sense of scale because I don’t know the city. On one of those google maps perhaps placing indicators would be helpful. I enjoyed this one!

I would only add that the practice of closing down underground passageways began long before 2012. In late 70's/early 80's, I often used the underground tunnel that ran from the southwest corner of 30th street station under 30th street to the subway concourse for the Market St. El. That was closed in the late 80's I believe. And even in the early 80's when The Gallery was a thriving mall, the associated underground concourses underneath Market Street were not well utilized. It was dark and damp down there, not very inviting, thought to be dangerous. The city tried to clean it up, but their efforts did not lead to more utilization by commuters or pedestrians. There was frequently talk of extending The Gallery into that space, but nothing ever came of it, likely due to the expense of actually making it comfortable down there. It was handy on a rainy day, if you happened to be going that direction and weren't going far enough to get on the subway. I even used it a few times when I was a bike messenger, to get out of the rain, though I avoided actually riding down there. The police didn't like that at all. There used to be more underground access to office buildings. I remember using a staircase that would take you from a hallway off the below-ground-level concourse of suburban station (past the barber shop, if you remember where that was) up to a hotel fronting on 17th street. That staircase was also closed sometime in the mid-80's when the hotel was renovated or converted to office space, I don't remember. It would be nice to see some of these underground spaces be utilized again, but two things would have to happen first. One, mass transit would have to become a lot more popular again. And the issues of crime, grime and poor lighting would have to be sufficiently addressed to give the general public confidence in using those spaces again.

In all this you missed the biggest abandoned concourse of all. A lot of native Philadelphians don't know this but there is a concourse that runs under the Roosevelt Blvd that was intended as a spur of the Brraod st subway. Construction was stopped in the 40's at the advent of WWII as there was no money for infrastructure as all was going to the war effort. It is sealed and never completed

I used to roam those tunnels as kid. It’s amazing how if you have some time and curious friends, you can discover a whole new world.

When I was in High School in Philadelphia back in in the early 1980s (1980-81) I used to use these tunnels to get from around 15th & Spruce to 10th & Chestnut, where my dad worked... I remember fondly exploring what seemed semi-abandoned spaces at the time- especially when I would travel farther over to "The Gallery", and look at the older display windows from long gone stores. This was nothing new the... For a young teen age kid, it was quite interesting to wander these long, undulating hallways, below the street, and above other trains...

Killadelphia... Really??? Cheap shots are unnecessary. It undermines your "informative" vlog.

When I attended junior college in center city from 1969-1971I was able to walk from the Reading Terminal to Broad and Spruce streets using the concourse system . I did have to dodge massive piles of dog poop left behind buy police dogs. There was a police sub station in the center of the south Broad St. concourse. They were very convenient in super cold and rainy weather. All five original department stores could be accessed by the concourse system and the Market East gallery.

We call them,Trolleys in Philly-

Love this kind of history. In my city, we have an intire network of catacombs under our downtown area due to how they simply constructed new structures on top of old ones.

There's also a concourse tunnel / passage in north Philadelphia, in the area of Broad St. and Lehigh Ave. It ties together the two North Philadelphia stations, the one on the Subway and the other on the NE Corridor. This also was closed with a "high crime" reason. The Subway stop was built with dual island platforms as it was originally an express stop, because both stations had high usage / transfers back in the day. This configuration still offers an advantage to commuters as those coming from certain directions can avoid Center City and directly transfer to/from Amtrak, and I understand a few hundred commuters daily still use this connection to go to NYC.

Looking forward to this. I grew up in Folcroft off Chester Pike and went to Temple University after hs and I commuted my first two years. I loved exploring. Sometimes I'd take the 8th and Market Spur off the southbound Broad Street train. My last year in school I lived behind the the art museum at 27th and Brown and discovered a no longer used train tunnel running along the museum. I'm sure there's a lot more perhaps that I don't know about but very much looking forward to watching. I've lived in Chicago the past 26 years and really enjoyed your Chicago videos.

Edmund Bacon, Father of Kevin Bacon. I was lucky enough to see them both having lunch in Rittenhouse Sq one day shortly before Edumnd's passing

Philadelphia Born and raised. Excellent video!

Expansive subway!? A single north / south line, and a single East/west line.

This is so interesting! My boyfriend used to explore the tunnels and sewer system under his town in Indiana. He loves tunnels, so I've got to show him this!

Killadelphia ? That’s pretty harsh. Lots of good in the city that’s not covered. Also when you mention something that happened in the 50s, use. Realistic picture, not something from the 70s

Now Philly the entire city is one gigantic dope fiend

At 2:40 note Frank Zappa driving a trolly

Love going into the comments to read all of the memories of so many different people

Every major city in America is has tunnels under it

as a kid we used these to escape the rain... they were so fast you could get anywhere downtown without dealing with rain. But they were disgusting... nasty tile, bum pee... The borth concourse seems to always been closed... the spur always interested me... seeing a "dead" subway station was always fascinating... gallery is now defunct... Amazon now

Cool vid! When I was a student at the University of the Arts I used to leave class, enter the concourse at Walnut-Locust and walk underground all the way to The Gallery nearly every day. This was back in the early '90's; the homeless encampment back then was at the 13th Street El station instead of the PATCO tunnels near where I started out. I never had any issues down there at all...

Absolutely loving this forgotton underground tunnel "series"

Unpopular opinion: If we actually cared about the environment, we would expand our rail network, re-install the underground delivery system, and ban semi-trucks anywhere this is in play and below 95% capacity. Most importantly, deny air travel except when absolutely necessary. Personal ground travel makes up the smallest portion of pollution. Yet it’s the only thing that gets attacked by environmentalists because it’s an easy target.

When I had Federal Court Jury Duty in Philadelphia, I found my way into one portion of a subterranean marketplace, during lunch break. I remember it was raining, and thankful for the convenience of being able to move around out of the weather. Another time, I had to take a Penske truck to clear out an office right across the street from the Comcast building. Again, the loading docks were all underground, and easily navigable, even with such a large truck. It's almost like two cities sitting atop one another.

Thanks GOD BLESS EVERYONE ALWAYS Philadelphia USA 🇺🇸

I went to school in Newtown Square. Took the train from Baltimore to Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. Walked the tunnel to get the El out to 63rd Street the the bus to Newtown. Great transportation. This was late 50's. Baltimore only had the bus system. The subway wasn't started until the mid 70's.

Now I see why certain gates on the market-frankford line are closed throughout the city. Also, during the Eagles parade, in center city everyone used the underground tunnels to move around different parts of the parade. Very informative and interesting piece. 👍🏼

Ah yes! The many underground tunnels of Philthydelphia. I used the SEPTIC (SEPTA) system lots; more than I care to remember. Rode the Broad Street subway from the Oregon Avenue station to the Walnut-Locust station for two years and hated every minute of it. The cars at the time were built like boxcars, they jerked all over the place, the windows would be stuck open and the sound was deafening as the train roared through the tunnels with wheel screeching. The smell of urine prevailed in all the stations. I felt like I needed to be decontaminated after having used the subway. There were stops like Lombard-South and Ellsworth-Federal that were dimly lit and dirty. I had to use Ellsworth-Federal for several months while I was working in a machine shop. If I had to work late, I'd take my huge adjustable wrench and a hardhat home with me in case someone tried to attack me. If they did, I would have bashed their head in with that wrench. Nobody ever bothered me. I do not miss that city one bit. It is dirty, corrupt, and ridden with crime. It is a genuine cesspool. Glad I was able to get out of there.

I love the abandoned subways and concourses. they are beautifully eerie

I hate when people try to elevate or justify or mollify graffiti and it's destructive effect. Call them taggers. Call them vandals. Call them criminals, but don't call them them artists for crying out loud. This comes from someone who's lived almost 30 years in Phila.

Interesting video. We used those subways all the time. Growing up in Philly I remember the CornBread tags. Other big ones back then were Chewy and Kool Earl.

FYI, Ed Bacon is actor Kevin Bacon's father.

Fantastic video as usual!

Graffiti first appeared in the 1960’s when our under ground ancestors had just discovered spray paint. Do you think we may someday find evidence of early man tagging these ancient passages.

You can still get down there but be careful you won't be alone

I'm reminded of Chicago's Ford City's Peacock Alley

The city is "old" Depends in your perspective of "old"....the house im in right know is fromt he middle ages so...yeah :D

I would have never known this. Interesting

How much do you want to get some old man who built the tunnels is living in an abandoned part where he has power, water, and is able to get in and out only when he needs to?

Everything was going great till you decided to call our city the unoriginal name of “killadelphia” …. So unnecessary

Being from Philly, there is another abandoned project for the Roosevelt blvd. they tried to build a subway system under it and there is only one tunnel that i know of that was turned into a concourse at the NE town Center, and has two access tunnels that have been closed since i was a kid.

Your video is a true treasure trove of historic Philadelphia transit information..🤪🚍🚇🎟️🌃

Gives me some Toronto PATH vibes! Love learning about old infrastructure like this

0:10 I NEED TO GO TO THIS PLACE, i love history so much especially when i can see it, aged and torn i love it so much

Someway, somehow, me and some friends managed to make our way from the bsl to the trolleys and not pay a dime. One of my friends knew the way, but I was just following. When getting off of the bsl I just follow the crowd to get to the el. There might be abandoned tunnels, but maybe showing something about the tunnels today can give people just how massive they are. Then they’d be able to understand just how much more there could be. Naming streets meant nothing to me, even though I could probably picture in my mind the streets mentioned. This is a good attempt, but philly is so robust, that even making a video about this small piece of philly feels not enough

" to offer you a scope of their size they ran from random street to random street and then from random street to random street " thank you I now understand how large they were

I live in Philadelphia and the history and tourist attractions are great but the gun violence must stop and greedy developers running up rent and housing prices

Very cool video!

Nope Corn bread did not start grafitti. grafitti was started in NYC

I went in a do not enter door one day and walked through tunnels for about 30-40 min before popping out in the back part of the gallery, where the fish market is

wowzers, now the gallery is called "the fashion district" , i had no idea that the gallery was in 1976 wowzers.

I went to school in Philly at Drexel until 2020. For most of my time there, I wasn’t really the explorer type, and I’m not a Philly local, so the reputation I heard of crime and homelessness in the city honestly made me nervous, so I just stuck around campus and University City. By the time I graduated, I got a full-time job in Philly and I felt like I was ready start digging into different parts of the city, but the pandemic struck right around that time. Everything closed down in a matter of days, and college students basically evacuated over the first few months after switching to online school. Tourism stopped and a lot of non-locals left, so the city was left barren, and the empty streets were roamed by homeless people, even in the university towns. On top of that the BLM protests and riots were going full force, so Philly felt like a war zone. Windows and entrances were boarded up, curfews, police patrols everywhere, National Guard convoys guarding monuments, and cars and stores around City Hall were in flames. It was really heartbreaking to see. I have since left Philly, and over my years there I developed a sort of love-hate relationship with the place. It’s so rich in history and culture, but it is plagued by a ton of societal issues. With my current career path, I will probably never be able to return to Philly, so I regret being so timid in my early years and not exploring enough. I’ll just have to settle for these documentaries I guess.

wow i grew up here and didnt realize they closed, remember walking around them as late as the 90s

I remember walking the tunnel from City Hall to Race Street on the Monday morning on my way to take my oath at the US Coast Guard recruiting office topside at Broad & Race - then off to Cape May. The Broad/Ridge Spur is a part of that line you refer to as the loop and does terminate at 18th & Locust with PATCO using that part of the line from 8th & Market since about 1960 some thirty-years after it was built. The complete loop back to Broad & Fairmount was not completed due to political reasons. Do not forget to mention the abandoned sections of completed subway along Arch east of Broad starting at 9th. I am not sure if there is a tunnel block north of City Hall eastward to the southeast corner but I remember using that to access Wanamaker's on rainy days or venture eastward as far as 11th & Market while slipping into the Gallery and make your way as far as 8th to catch either the El or PATCO; the concourse extends southward to Lombard and crosses at Locust to extend on PATCO property to 9th and 16th under Locust, which was suppose to be the south tunnel of the so-called loop. From any point on this description, one could also walk as far as 18th and John F. Kennedy Blvd while accessing most of the major buildings underground - can't do that in New York.

*"Killadelphia" is being heavily gentrified tho*

Had no idea about this in Philly, never been to the city myself. But this does remind me of the underground system in Montreal. One of my favorite parts of visiting relatives up there in the 90s was going to the underground mall/city in the business district. My family would take the subway out that way to hit that up on various stops. Or even just go above ground and roam the city. So many major buildings had underground presence tied to it. I think the Eaton building had up to like 10 underground floors, but could be misremembering.

The people that worked under there to build all of that structure and lay all of that tile, are nameless laborers. I hate graffiti because the people who do it think they're artists, while covering up the life's work of people who actually built things, and did something with their lives. Yeah, some of that graffiti is really well done, and some of those people could be artists. But they're disrespecting the reults of the blood, and sweat of generations of hard-working people in order to do it.

I never owned an umbrella while I lived in Philly...😎

*6:14** The Legendary Cornbread*

There’s also a fallout shelter somewhere downtown as well

Woulda been good to see a map of the streets your talking about... never been there, but like watching your vids. Cheers from Australia🇭🇲

Loved how he hit it on the nail with "Killadelphia". That's what we call it... and yes I live here so I can say it. 😫

I work in a place with one of these tunnels blocked off in our basement

How can it be that maps or photos are not attainable of the underground? City council doesn't have a plan of the city? No archives? Perhaps they should look into a different career path. Undertaker maybe as they seem to like things buried.

If you ever come to Philadelphia look me up and I will walk you through the tunnels

These tunnels are ancient and been there.

I lived in my uncles great aunties house in south west philly on 54 n trinity , in the basement on 54 n trinity there was a OLD tunnel /door way that we did not know what was at the end it was actually a dead in but I’m sure if the wall that was about 20 feet inside the door way was torn down that tunnel would just keep going

To be fair I think there are different points of entry to that place if I'm not mistaken because me and my friends used to go down there sometimes in areas that look just like that. But it's hard to breathe there's some really cool hidden places that never got finished here in Philadelphia or that was abandoned.

Hadn't thought about the pedestrian concourse in a lot of years but I was in them a number of times with grandparents and other relatives when I was a kid in Philly.

I actually live in this city!

The concourse out at 30th street was sketchy. There was a long poorly lit tunnel from the train station to the El

Hehehe I may have cackled a lil but at the killadelphia remark.. I was waiting for it

I always found the Philly subway to be spooky, and not so much in a ghostly way. Part of the problem is that unlike in NYC, where I was almost always very comfortable on the subway, the percentage of the people in the city that ride the subway is a very small fraction. Also there are lots of nooks and crannies where one could be pushed out of the view down the tunnel and easily robbed or worse. I would add I would never, ever use a public bathroom on the NYC subway for the same reason, and I have actually seen someone mugged in that way in NYC. Well, I didn't actually see it, just saw the victim go, saw the mugger follow and very quickly come out looking through a wallet. I was on the opposite side at the time. Anyway, Philly is spooky underground, but a very nice place to walk around above ground. Take the trolley. And of course, 'you cant' get to Frankfurt on the Frankfurt el, because the Frankfurt el goes straight to.......Frankfurt.

I walked those concourses every day for 10 years armed. However no one ever bothered me. In fact I saved the lives of two elderly men just being there when they needed help after they were attacked.

I still walk under here everyday the open parts

Philly should have zero homeless

I lived in Philly in the mid 80's and walked to work from the Fairmont neighborhood to CC. I used the tunnels all the time when it was raining or windy and cold. Real shame cause it was really convenient.

i remember back in the 80s, when Philcon (Philadelphia SF convention) was downtown for a couple years... the hotel had an access int the underground walkways- i was stunned... you could actually go down past all the "work" areas (technically off limits but not locked off) and go down the walkways and come out into the edge of the Gallery. as to the Gallery... i suspect most people only know it form the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff song, "Parents just don't understand"

The graffiti was a big deal in Philly long before the 80s. In the early 70s the biggest tagger as 'CHEWY'.

when I was in 5th grade in the late 1970s my class took a field trip to Philly from the Allentown area. I seem to recall that we took a little 2 car commuter train to get there and back. And I remember running through those tunnels because it was pouring rain and we needed to get back to the train for the ride home.