It’s our job to ramble about the city, seeking out new and (sometimes) exciting development situations. Over the course of these ramblings, we not only find all sorts of projects, but we also regularly stumble upon unexpected features of the Philadelphia cityscape. For example, we were taking a walk through Queen Village over the holiday weekend and noticed the entrance to the little 700 block of S. Reese Street on the north side of the 500 block of Catharine Street. It caught our attention because the street surface looked porous, like the 800 block of Percy Street, which we covered last week.

Intrigued, we decided to take a walk up the street. And we quickly realized that there was a new home under construction on the block.

758 S. Reese St. is the only property that has frontage on this block, and it was sitting empty for a number of years. It’s been on and off the market since 2003, trading for $120K in 2011 and then changing hands again about a year and a half ago for $200K. Developers have built a new single family home here with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and it’s already under agreement at a list price of $995K with a buyer who clearly values living on a quiet and peaceful block. The home looks like it’s approaching the finish line, and is set to settle next month.

As we said, this is the only home on this block of Reese Street, with everything else being the backyard of a home on 5th Street or Passyunk Avenue. According to the Big Green Map, it seems the entrance to the block is not porous, as we initially believed. But further up the block, it looks like the street transitions to cobblestone and then to porous pavers. We wonder whether that was a move from the City or from one of the property owners that uses the street to access their parking. We’re inclined to believe it’s the latter, as the pavers extend into the private driveways of some of the properties.

Whoever is responsible, it’s a cool stormwater feature on a little block that we never knew existed until just a couple days ago.