Philadelphia was awfully lucky to have Willis G. Hale doing his thing here at the end of the 19th century. Hale designed a number of amazing buildings over the years, including the Divine Lorraine and the Hale Building at Juniper & Chestnut (finally getting renovated after years of blight). While many of Hale's best buildings have been torn down over time, we've fortunately been left with a number of Hale homes scattered around the city. Take, for example, a row of twelve mansions on the western side of the 1500 block of N. 17th Street:
Hidden City provided some great info on these homes back in 2012, describing how businessmen William Elkins and Peter A.B. Widener retained Hale to design them in 1886. This project was part of a real estate speculation effort by Elkins and Widener, who accurately predicted that wealthy Philadelphia residents would soon drift away from the Center City core. But this neighborhood didn't stay wealthy forever, and by the 1970s the homes fell on hard times. By the time the century turned, many of the homes were sitting blighted and vacant, and it's only because of their presence on the Historic Register that they weren't demolished along the way.
As you might expect, as the neighborhood has turned in the last decade or so, the buildings have come back to life, mostly being used as student apartments. At this point, from what we can tell, only 1510 N. 17th St. is currently unoccupied, though developers purchased the property last year at sheriff's sale and are now doing a renovation.
Next door, 1512 N. 17th St. was redone in 2008 and is currently listed for sale for $530K. The building has been chopped up into five units, with a studio, 2 one-bedrooms, and 2 three-bedrooms, all of which are surely occupied by students every year. Looking at the photos in the listing, the guts of the building are mostly new, but some original details remain, like a fireplace, some flooring, the central staircase, and some wooden elements.
Let's face it, whoever buys this property will surely buy it as an investment property and earn roughly 6% per year on their money. But wouldn't it be more exciting to buy this amazing building and turn the inside into a dream home that reflects the amazing exterior architecture? Then again, it might be a hard sell to build a dream home and have to deal with college parties next door every weekend during every school year. Eh, maybe best to move to one of the other blocks designed by Hale, perhaps in a quieter part of town.