We were traveling through South Philly the other day, when some fresh-looking demolition caught our eye. We didn’t have much context for what things looked like before at 1909-13 S. 12th St., but thankfully the Time Machine function in Google Maps was able to help us fill in the blanks.

Screenshot 2024-08-07 At 11.20.17 AM
In the past

The 1900 block of S. 12th St. contains, with few exceptions, two-story row homes. You can see in the image above that 1911-13 S. 12th St. was among those exceptions. This one-story building looks like it was used for industrial purposes, and indeed that is very much the case. Dating back to at least the 1930s, this property was used as a sausage factory. 1909 S. 12th St. was apparently used as part of the enterprise, for the storage of equipment. Combing through the zoning archive, we see that the property was also used as a wholesale meat market in the 1980s. What has happened here since those days, we cannot say. What we can say is that all the buildings on this property were demolished within the last few months.

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Current view
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Closer look

In their place, look for new construction that fits the neighborhood a bit better than meat processing and/or sales. Three homes will be built here, with plans calling for each to rise three stories. The height will make these homes a bit different from the bulk of the other homes on the block, but the project will still be a step in a positive direction, as we don’t imagine that the folks already living here wanted a new industrial user. In addition, losing a garage and getting a parking spot back on the block will surely be welcomed by all.

While we don’t know for sure, we have to think that these homes will be listed for sale. This area doesn’t see so much new construction, so assuming that the homes get listed we will be quite interested to see how they’re priced. A home needing renovation on the block is listed in the low-$300s. A couple nicer two-story homes have sold for more than $500K on the block. Could three stories of new construction fetch a $750K sale price? We’ll keep an eye out, as this doesn’t seem out of the question.