Philadelphia is well known for cheesesteaks and pretzels, but there’s another food deeply woven into Philly’s history: Oysters. New York might get the publicity for its oysters, but by the 1800s Philly had nearly 400 oyster houses and Philadelphians consumed 300 million oysters a year.
For National Oyster Day, Hey Philly chatted with Rowan University history professor and seafood connoisseur Stephen Nepa to learn about Philly’s briny food history.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
What type of oysters were found here?
“Certain climates will foster a certain type of oyster, whether it's kind of crunchy, whether it's milky, whether it's shallow cup, deep cup. We had kind of a northeastern equivalent of what we would call today a Gulf Oyster. So relatively shallow cup and not so much crunchy, but a little bit. These were a little bit milkier, kind of higher salinity.”
How accessible were oysters?
“If we're talking the 1700s, they were locally harvested. It was not hard to find them. Bookbinder’s started as an oyster stand. It basically was a cart, and it was open-faced. There wasn't really a lid on it and then there was just usually ice. The oysters were laid out and you would have a guy there that would just shuck them right on the spot. They'd be kept in a bucket.
“Long before there's hot dogs or pretzels, oysters were kind of the original street food.”
How did people eat oysters compared to now?
“The easiest way to eat them is from a cart. If you have more refined recipes, baked oysters [and] oyster pie.
"In 1775, when the first Continental Congress was getting together …when these guys got out of Congress at three in the afternoon, they'd go to these really elaborate dinners that the wealthiest Philadelphians would host. And they would have oysters. They would either have them baked or on the half shell.
"Oyster stew is something that probably people figured out along with all the other soups — the snapper soup, the pepper pot soups — that you'd see on the streets.”
What were other uses for oysters?
“Once the oyster was eaten, the shells were used for street paving, for shipping ballast. They had all these secondary lives.
"Urban archaeologists here in Philadelphia, when they were excavating for the Museum of the American Revolution, they found layers of oyster shells that had been used for pavement, or maybe traction. There's oyster shells underneath the street all over the central part of what is now Old City.”
When did Philly’s oyster industry begin to decline?
“They're plentiful locally until industry in this area starts to develop, and then the industry starts to discharge its waste into the water and then, obviously over time, the oyster beds just die off. They can't function, they can't grow, they can't be nurtured because there's just too many pollutants in the water.
"After the Civil War, Philadelphia became an industrial behemoth. It is Philadelphia's industrial might that allowed the Union to win. Once we become the ‘Workshop of the World’ – one of the monikers that we no longer go by but it was applied to us after the Civil War – then industry really gets fast-tracked. All that heavy industry was seen as progress, growth, it was seen as a victorious Union going into the late 19th century. But the oyster is a casualty of that. By the 1870s, 1880s, our local oyster beds were gone, or you wouldn't eat anything from them. By 1950, there was nothing worth taking out of the Delaware River for human consumption."
What is Philly’s oyster future?
“Today, the Delaware [River]’s probably cleaner than it's been in 60 years, but I don't know if anybody could reintroduce oyster beds….With a lot less stuff going into the Delaware these days, maybe there's some hope. Who knows? Hard to say. We're just not eating from it anytime soon.”
