Last year, developers demolished a one-story home on 19th Street in Francisville and replaced it with a three story duplex. The project caused a stir in the neighborhood in a way that you might not expect unless you visited the block in question. See, this entire block was razed and rebuilt by the Philadelphia Housing Authority back in the 1980s and all of the homes on the block look almost identical. To say the new building sticks out would be a pretty serious understatement.

One of these things is not like the others

Yesterday, when we were in the area snapping photos of the newly refurbished Francisville Playground, we spotted zoning notices on 738 N. 19th St., another home that looks like all the rest on the block. Immediately, we assumed that this home would be demolished and a similar project to the one down the street would soon be rising here. And wouldn’t ya know it, we were right.

Zoning notices are up

The property was purchased earlier this year for $189K by a company called Nineteenth Street Development. Interestingly, the demolition and construction of a new three-story duplex is all by right. The zoning variance is needed for the two-car parking proposed out front. And while we haven’t seen the drawings for this project from Harman Deutsch, we’re guessing that the building will resemble the new one down the street. It will also resemble its near-neighbor in how much it sticks out from its surroundings.

It will likely look something like this

This block, along with the 700 block of N. 20th St., are two blocks in the area currently undergoing a weird, uneven transformation brought on by the construction of new buildings that are surrounded by older PHA homes. Unfortunately, it seems like there’s nothing that will stop this mishmash from getting worse as we move forward, though we can’t say there’s any compelling reason to preserve the one-story architecture that dominates the blocks.

What do you think? Are these new structures an improvement? Should new homes on these blocks have some artificial height restriction, or is that ridiculous? Or should we just let the free market do what it does?