It’s been a long time since we’ve found ourselves on the 2000 block of Cambridge Street, half a decade to be exact. Incidentally, our last visit to this block wasn’t about a new project, but to show you a handsome carriage house at 2005 Cambridge St. which dated back to the late 1800s. This building was designed by Otto Wolf and was originally used as the private carriage house of Christian Schmidt, the founder of Schmidt’s Brewery. Schmidt and his brewery are both long gone, but his old carriage house remains. It was ostensibly used as the architectural inspiration for a project on Opal Street, but we don’t really see it.

In the first image, immediately next door to the Schmidt carriage house, you can see there’s another carriage house at 2003 Cambridge St. that’s not nearly as notable. Meh, just a one story double wide garage that was surely once associated with a fancy home on Girard Avenue. Stamm Development Group, bought the property last year, and have been working on a project to convert the carriage house into a pair of new townhomes. And they’ve made some pretty great progress thus far.

According to the developers, they were able to reuse much of the existing building, though they did need to reinforce the footers and add steel. They lost the original facade, but we don’t know how they would have kept it and added additional doors. As it is, they were only able to include one door on Cambridge Street, with the entrance to the western property through a walkway on the western side of the project. Creating an easement on the side of the building not only allows for the entrance and breathing space with the handsome building next door, but it also makes it possible to have windows on the western unit. And who doesn’t like some additional natural light?

We’ve covered the work of these developers in the past, most notably for a collection of multi-family buildings at 16th & Ogden and a mixed-use project where Brown Street hits Ridge Avenue. It seems that these developers are concentrating some serious attention on Francisville, and this page on their website suggests as much. We’d say that their project on Cambridge Street is a fine addition to the mix in the neighborhood, and we’ll be on the lookout for their other Francisville projects moving forward.