Can you find Capitol Street on a map? We’ll give you a hint: it runs north-south between 21st and 22nd Streets. Still nothing? Well, it’s understandable, as it exists for exactly four blocks in the entire city. South Capitol Street has two blocks in South Philly, running between Wharton and Reed, skipping a block, then popping up again between Dickinson and Tasker. North Capitol Street runs for two blocks as well (‘natch), emerging north of Fairmount Avenue and then disappearing forever at Parrish Street. Why does this happen with this street? Why was the name changed from ‘Capital’ to ‘Capitol’ at some point after the early 1960s? Why are there so many blocks between 21st and 22nd in other parts of the city, but those blocks are named ‘Woodstock’ or ‘Lambert’ and not ‘Capitol’? Who makes these decisions???
Ok, let’s take a breath and visit the 700 block of N. Capitol Street, in the Francisville neighborhood. In the 1980s, PHA organized the construction of a collection of homes targeting a low-income homeowner population. This was part of a larger project, which covered several surrounding blocks. On this block of Capitol, PHA took the unique approach to redraw the property lines to create double-wide lots to accommodate wide one-story homes, basically turning the typical Philly row home 90 degrees, but only going up one story. Back in the 80s, this was a reasonable use of land that had pretty much no market-rate demand. Today however, this represents a significant underuse. And the market clearly agrees.
We visited this block a few times in the past, starting in 2012. Back then, we told you about plans to build a three-unit condo project with parking. And indeed, that project was finished about a decade ago. Other projects have come along as the years have rolled on, including four units at 755 N. Capital Street and two homes at 739 N. Capitol St. which are currently under construction. We should mention, the zoning here was once very permissive, allowing up to three units on these properties by right. A remapping to single-family zoning has necessitated zoning variances in recent years.
743-747 N. Capitol St. is the latest project to come down the pike, having been heard by the ZBA earlier this summer. Developers are planning to redraw the lot lines for these two properties and create four new townhome lots. The plans call for homes with front-accessed parking, which would match the project immediately next door.
With this project getting the OK from the Zoning Board, we would imagine that construction will get started sometime in the coming months. With six conventional homes approved on this block and two of them looking like they’ll be listed for sale in the fall market, we have to think that the clock is ticking for the remaining one-story homes on the block. It might be a few months or a couple decades before the handful of longtime owners decide to sell, but whenever they do, it seems likely that interest from developers will be enthusiastic. Perhaps by then, more people will have heard of this little street – but we tend to doubt it.