In Brewerytown

If you've traveled up Ridge Avenue through Sharswood any time recently, you might have noticed that the Philadelphia Housing Authority has completed their new headquarters, covering the bulk of the triangular block surrounded by Ridge Avenue, 20th Street, and Jefferson Street. While this building isn't exactly an example of peak urbanism,

As Brewerytown has boomed, development has continued to push northward toward Strawberry Mansion and eastward toward Sharswood. As you might be aware, there's only so much market rate development possible in Sharswood, since PHA is currently in the middle of a significant neighborhood transformation plan which will ultimately entail the construction

For a little over a century, an attractive little building has brightened the 2500 block of West Girard Avenue, but it doesn’t match anything else around it. Where did it come from?In 1915, an old blacksmith shop also used as the storefront for a junk dealer at 2517-19 W. Girard Ave. suffered a devastating

For decades, Fairmount has been one of the more stable neighborhoods outside of downtown Philadelphia. But this town has always been a city of neighborhoods, often changing block by block. So it's a little odd in the abstract that neighboring Brewerytown languished for many years as Fairmount hummed along, but

Like the slowest ping pong match in history, things keep going back and forth for the long vacant parcel on the northwest corner of 26th & Poplar. Three years ago, the owners of the property had a plan for an apartment building with 75 units and 38 parking spots. That never came to

At the northeast corner of 28th & Girard in Brewerytown, a corner building with a very noticeable facade stands out from the other buildings on the block. This old edifice, which has been in use as a daycare center and four apartments for the last couple decades, has seen a

The 2800 block of Girard Avenue in Brewerytown is a living example of a commercial corridor created from a former row of stately homes. While many on the row stand out in their own way, 2826 W. Girard Ave. is quite noticeably unusual. This building was built in 1874, just

At 1305 N. 27th St. there was once an industrial building which contained a leather business back in the early 1900s, according to a historic map. More recently though, as Brewerytown went through some incredibly difficult years, the sizable property was sitting vacant and unused, like so many other properties in the

Brewerytown obviously has a historic connection to industry, as its name strongly suggests. These days, industrial uses are pretty much absent around these parts, but the neighborhood's urban environment serves as a regular reminder of its past. To wit, several large scale projects have appeared within the neighborhood over the

The Philadelphia Housing Authority is now a few years into a massive redevelopment effort in the Sharswood neighborhood which will eventually result in the creation of over a thousand new units of affordable housing. This plan stands on two pillars- the demolition of the Blumberg apartment buildings in the heart of