Hey, ever seen this building?

Ahhh!

You’ve probably passed by it at some point if you live in South Philly or if you like Dunkin Donuts. This unfortunate specimen, 1349 Christian St., is located just a few steps away from Broad St. and sits across the street from the High School for Creative and Performing Arts.

This traditional Philly row home looks like it was tortured for classified information and didn’t spill the beans. Ah, where to begin? Well, maybe let’s look at what this place used to look like to organize our thoughts

On the left, next to the bay

The windows obviously jump right out at you. Two of the windows appear to be located in their original locations, and one of those windows has been shrunk down. The other two windows have been eliminated, save some ice cube windows. Hey, at least they tried to blend the look of the replacement bricks with the look of the old bricks. Oh, wait.

The home’s door originally sat three steps up from the street. Notice that the door is now at street level. Just think about what that must mean for the inside of the house! Either there are three stairs just inside the front door, or the entire first floor had to be brought down a few feet. The cost and effort required for that task alone had to be tremendous.

With a couple of other attractive homes to be found on this block, like the one next door for example, the ugliness of this building is even more pronounced. But hey, at least they kept the (slowly rotting) cornice!

Zoomed in. Ugh.

In case you’re wondering how the owners of this property were permitted to butcher its façade so completely with no regard for the building itself or the people who live nearby who have to look at it every day, we suggest you take a look at OPA to answer that question…

In case you don’t feel like looking, we’ll spoil the surprise. It’s PHA! We think the new head of PHA is on the ball, so we’ll be bringing this one to his attention. Some basic repairs (or a wrecking ball) could really pretty up the block.