Yesterday, we noted some long-vacant properties on the on the 1300 block of N. Carlisle St., just a few blocks from Temple’s campus. Today, we look just a block and a half to the south, to revisit a project we first told you about last spring. At that time, we told you that Jin Feng Real Estate Investment LLC would be tearing down a collection of older buildings and constructing seven triplexes in their place. As bad as the old buildings looked, we’re not entirely sure the new ones are such a huge improvement.

Looking south down Carlisle in the past

Pretty much the same view, you can see that all the new buildings are at least framed

It’s a given that students renting an apartment for a year or two are going to be less discriminating when it comes to the look of the exterior of their building. Many, in fact, aren’t even so discriminating about what the apartment looks like on the inside (unless times have changed considerably since we were students). But whether the students care or not, these buildings will probably remain for the next hundred years- and this is what people will have to look at for all of those years:

Yuck

No delineation between two side-by-side buildings, and cheap little windows

You call that a cornice?

We get it that this development, on a little block several blocks from campus is perhaps a little riskier for the developers than others we’ve covered near Temple. And we’re not asking for Furness, Hale, or Kahn to come back from the great beyond to design student housing (though that would be both amazing and terrifying).

We don't even need them to be as nice at this one at 18th & Berks

But couldn’t these guys at least have made a token effort to make these buildings look at least a little better?