Brace yourself for a West Philly story that’s not about student housing. Can you believe it? Neither can we.

We were skimming through Instagram yesterday and happened upon a photo of 4102 Lancaster Ave. from the feed of @mmbixler. The first floor of this building is home to a clothing store called Daebat, with the upper floors covered by some vaguely patriotic sheathing material that hides the building’s original facade. Despite its current condition, the building has a pretty interesting history. If you stare at it for enough time, you might realize it yourself.

This place was originally the Leader Theatre. According to Cinema Treasures, it was constructed in 1912 as a stage theater, eventually becoming a movie house as cinema became more of a thing. It underwent multiple renovations over the years, ending its run as a theater in 1968. For some time, the building was home to the Philadelphia Police Athletic League, and turned back to private hands by the mid-1980s. Before it became a clothing store, it was a discount store for many years. According to an old listing, there’s 2,000 sqft of space in the storefront and another 7,000 sqft of storage on the upper floors. This gives us a sense that there’s little that remains of the old auditorium, but then again, we’ve seen examples of other cinemas where original details have stuck around unexpectedly.

This part of West Philadelphia once had a collection of several movie theaters, all within a few blocks of this location. The only theater that’s still around is the Cinemark at 40th & Walnut, and that building is only about a decade old. Some of the old cinemas have been demolished, while others have been repurposed, like the Leader Theatre. Perhaps, in the coming weeks, we’ll check in on some of those other buildings and see whether their original use is obvious at first glance.