Chester’s Lost Direction...or...Chester’s not backwards, it’s sideways

Rocky & Bullwinkle always provided an either-or title to their cartoons and it’s appropriate here, too.

During an innocent discussion I had with a guy about a wall, we almost ended up arguing because of direction. 

As we stood outside a Chester building, he insisted he was referring to the north wall, and I told him that it was the east wall. In a way, we both were right, but, of course, I was more right. 

Chester has the crazy distinction of being a sideways city. Geographically, if you face Chester from the Delaware River, the left side is the West side, and the right side is the East side.

But, when you consider that if you travel a few miles to the left you end up in Wilmington, and travel a few mile to the right you end up in Philadelphia, one could argue that left means south and right means north.

Since the wall was on the Philly side, he was calling it the north wall. But, according to how Chester is laid out, it would be considered the east wall. 

It doesn’t help that I-95 runs through Chester in a north-south direction. But, every numbered street in Chester runs parallel to I-95 and they are east-west roads. Even big-daddy Rt-291 is a east-west road. 

So who is right?

On a map, Chester isn’t straight up and down, or straight left to right. It’s sort of on a 45 degree angle that makes it a south-west to north-east city.

When I-95 gets to Chester from the south, the road is going more east than north on it’s way to Philly. But once it passed Lincoln Financial Field and hits the Walt Whitman bridge, it makes a hard left and goes straight north from there. 

So remember, when you are in Chester and pointing toward Wilmington, you are pointing west -- toward Philly, east -- over the Delaware river, south -- and towards Brookhaven, north.

To most of us, none of this matters. But if you tell a contractor to stucco the north wall, you may be in for a surprise when you come home.