NE corner of 12th and Spruce Streets (1880 - 2012)

     I found the top picture in a 1922 edition of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. At that time, readers were invited to send in old photos of Philadelphia and they would be printed on the back page. I looked up the history of the people who lived in the house (1137 Spruce Street) and the one that replaced it (bottom photo) and found the story to be of interest.

      In 1865, Alexander B and Sarah Ann Duncan moved into the old wooden house shown in the top photo. Alexander was 50 years old and worked as a cabinet maker. Sarah was 45 and opened a Toy/Variety Store in their house. They lived there until 1886 when the property was purchased by prominent physician, Calvin B Knerr. Knerr had the old wooden house torn down and replaced it with a modern 4 story building. The bottom floor storefront was Dr. Knerr's office and the top 3 floors were apartments.  

     In 1899, Dr. Knerr's son, Bayard Knerr, also opened an office there after he graduated from the University of Penn. Bayard also lived in one of the apartments. He was married 3 times, first in 1902 to a Canadian girl named Margaret Ross who was a cousin to England's Prime Minister Gladstone. Margaret was an opera singer and Bayard divorced her in 1909 when she went out for a world concert tour. Bayard next married Ethel Bransome in 1913. Ethel divorced Bayard in 1917 and he immediately married his third wife, Caroline. After his father left the practice in 1910, Bayard began to rent out some of the apartments. 

     In 1913 he rented one to F Roe Searing and his wife Nancy. F Roe was a successful building contractor. By 1915, Searing was unhappy with his life and confided to his secretary, Elizabeth Rendell, that he intended to kill himself. She persuaded him to instead run away and start a new life. Searing and his wife spent the Summer of 1915 at Atlantic City. One day F Roe went swimming and never came out of the water. He was presumed dead but no body was ever recovered. Miss Rendell had met him under the boardwalk with a clean set of clothes and drove him off to the train station. He headed south and eventually bought a houseboat and a small farm in Louisiana. The insurance companies were suspicious at the first. They had discovered that Elizabeth Rendell's sister May had taken out a policy on Searing just a week before his "drowning". Mrs Searing had to sue the insurance companies for F Roe's life insurance money and she won the suit in 1916. Eventually F Roe sent for Elizabeth Rendell to join him in Louisiana where they lived as man and wife. The insurance companies never gave up and found them in October of 1917. They were brought back to Philadelphia where they were convicted of insurance fraud. F Roe served 2 years and Elizabeth 1 year. Elizabeth died on January 3, 1921. F Roe and his wife Nancy reconciled by 1924 and lived together in Atlantic City until April 1932 when F Roe died. Nancy never remarried and lived until 1972, age 93. 

     As for Bayard Knerr, he was a very popular physician/surgeon/teacher...still residing at 1137 Spruce...when in 1923 he was sentenced to 60 days in prison for injuring an 11 year old newsboy while drunk driving. He died in January of 1935. Eventually the building became a Laundromat and today is a Restaurant.