Tulpehocken Street — Land on the Turtle’s Back

The Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion stands at 200 West Tulpehocken Street, at its intersection with Greene. Tulpehocken itself is a Lenape name, most literally meaning “place of the turtles,” but when I grew up, I learned its meaning in a more cosmological sense: “land on the turtle’s back.” The ground beneath the Maxwell Mansion, and beneath the street itself, is far older than any house, far older than the grid of Germantown streets. The mansion, built by a wealthy textile merchant who only lived there for just three years, is a false permanence—a teaching object. It asks: What do we build for? What actually holds us? For me, the answer seems increasingly not walls, but attention. And now, studying textiles, I know I will likely never build a mansion, but I can create works that hold attention, meaning, and memory.

There is a  Tulpehocken Station Historic District in Germantown.  It's defined by large suburban houses were built in the area from about 1850 to 1900 in a variety of styles including Carpenter Gothic, Italianate, and Bracketed as part of the Picturesque Movement of architecture. In the 1870s styles moved toward High Victorian and Second Empire. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, and it covers about six square blocks, bounded by McCallum Street on the north, the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks on the south, Tulpehocken Street on the west, and Walnut Lane on the east.  The Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion is part of this district.

Tulpehocken Street carries layers of meaning. On one level, it is linguistic and literal: from Lenape roots, tulpe / tolpe means turtle, and -hocking / -hocken indicates land, place, or stream. On another, it is cosmological and symbolic. In many Eastern Woodlands traditions, including those of the Lenape, the world itself is formed on the back of a great turtle. North America is often called Turtle Island by indigenous people. To walk on Tulpehocken is to walk on land held, carried, and supported, not inert; it is to inhabit a place layered with ecological, spiritual, and relational meaning.

As a child, I passed Tulpehocken without fully understanding its depth, yet its presence was grounding. Many friends lived on and around Tulpehocken, in beautiful Germantown houses off the small streets that branched from it. I remember Nikki Anderson, a pretty, petite girl I think I knew from Germantown Friends. I don't remember exactly anymore. She lived in an apartment overlooking the train tracks by Tulpehocken station. I was tall and gawky beside her, while she moved with small, smooth gestures, stud earrings glinting. Tulpehocken held the rhythms of friendship, observation, and everyday life.

Tulpehocken was more than a street — it was a signal and a guide. The Tulpehocken station on the Chestnut Hill West line, the stop before Upsal, marked my preparation to get off for home from Masterman. When the conductor announced Tulpehocken, it was a warning, a marker of transition, a reminder to pay attention to movement and timing.

And then there is the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion.  That place that I dreamed about in December. Waking up with the words, "Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion on my lips." It sits on a street with an Indigenous name (someone must of thought let's name these trips for the Indians - wouldn't that be fun), a large stone house asks to be noticed. Its presence teaches permanence is an illusion. Walking past it, standing in it, observing it, it asks what truly endures. Tulpehocken Street, in all its linguistic, cosmological, personal, and historical layers, reminds me that the land I inhabit, and the art I create, rests on layers of living memory and attention. Every pattern, surface, or textile I design is built on the layered foundations of both place and experience and Tulpehocken is part of who I am.  It's in my blood and bones.

Tulpehocken reminds me that the land is on the turtle’s back, fusing microcosm and macrocosm. I once found an eastern box turtle in the Wissahickon and brought him home, naming him Tippy. Yet I had to release him because he would not eat; he didn’t want to be confined, and I had to honor that. I understood that if I kept him in a terrarium, he would die. He needed to wander and explore. I am like that turtle—I, too, carry the land on my back and walk on land beneath my feet.  I too need to wander and explore. 

I think now as I am writing to have a Tulpehocken mentality is to know that carrying the land on your back is a responsibility. It is a reminder to tread gently, to be present, to be joyful, and yet to honor the world I inhabit. I say I live on Turtle Island, not North America, because I want to honor the Indigenous people who were already here. To be Tulpehocken, in mind and in heart, is to walk with care, awareness, and the knowledge that attention and responsibility are the foundation of both life and art.

Greene Street — The Thread of Memory, Spine of Becoming, and Path of Learning

Greene Street is like a longitudinal thread running through my life, carrying layers of meaning. From walking it to Germantown Friends Kindergarten through fourth grade, to catching the train at Greene and Upsal for Masterman, to waiting for the H bus at Johnson and Greene to Central High School, Greene Street has carried me both physically and emotionally. Its corners, houses, and trees are vessels of memory, reminders of a youth long gone. I am 55 now, and though I haven’t lived in Philadelphia for decades, Greene Street remains alive in me.

Most poignantly, Greene Street holds the memory of a spring walk in third grade with Aran Pelicia, a boy I had a huge crush on. It’s hard to believe I could have felt such intense emotion at eight years old, yet I did. Before he moved to Arizona, we began walking together along Greene Street. He told me stories of his father running marathons, of his family camping in Baja California, eating lobster burritos by the sea. One day, he walked with me past his turn on Tulpehocken, staying all the way to Johnson, telling me that he used to think I was weird—but now he realized I was actually very cool. I hung on every word. Did he like me? Would he become my boyfriend? Even today, I feel the elation and specialness of that walk: him staying with me, going out of his way, crossing a threshold into shared attention.

Greene Street was never just a route. Unlike Germantown Avenue—“The Great Road,” as Indigenous people call it, darker, denser, and confining—Greene Street felt rolling, open, and spacious. For me, it became a street of movement, transition, and aspiration, a place where I learned how to go from somewhere toward something. And somehow, Greene Street was always about education: the small lessons at Germantown Friends, the expanded horizons at Masterman, the deeper challenges at Central. Each step along the street carried me closer to knowledge, self-discovery, and the realization that learning happens in motion, in observation, and in walking alongside others.

On Greene Street, I was observed, re-seen, recognized. Aran’s words articulated a truth I already felt but had never been reflected back to me. And it happened walking, side by side, in spring, past Tulpehocken and the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, past where he should have turned. In that brief overlap of our paths, I felt truly seen—and, for the first time, in love, with the thrilling sense that it might be reciprocated. Greene Street, in all its familiar bends and intersections, is a street of formation—a place where my early self, my curiosity, my capacity for emotion, and my journey of learning first walked in alignment.