Nobody likes to see old buildings get torn down. Just over the last few years, Philadelphia has seen a torrent of demolitions, with old churches getting torn down at an unprecedented rate. Take, for example, the former BLANK church, which has made its home at the northwest corner of 17th & Bainbridge for the last century and a half. About a month ago, we told you it would be demolished and replaced by town homes. In the time that’s passed since then, demolition has gotten underway.

This is obviously very depressing. But the building wasn’t designated historic and as a result, there’s not much anybody could have done to stop the developers from buying the property, tearing it down, and replacing it with high end homes or condos. And as we’ve said before, there’s a push-pull situation between the benefit of designating a property like this as historic and the financial hit the religious institution will take as their property becomes less valuable as a result. Sure, we want to maintain architectural diversity in our neighborhoods. But should we be willing to take money out of the pockets of churches to serve this goal? It’s a hard question to answer.

But maybe there’s another way?

Synagogue partnership, everything else was deleted. Oh crap.