It's quite possible that the R.B. Dutt Company dye works at 1736 Mascher St. was a very impressive edifice a century ago, but it's certainly not making any "best of" lists nowadays. A company called Interior Creations has been based out of this property in recent years, building custom furniture for restaurants. But we'd have to imagine that it was some previous tenant that closed up most of the building's windows and slathered it with two-toned stucco. These days, you can only see one section of original brick, which still bears a sign for the company that once occupied the building.
If this building still happens to do something for you, we suggest you make your way to South Kensington soon to say your goodbyes, as developers from PRDC Properties have a plan to demolish the building and replace it with twenty new homes. You may recall, we covered another project from these developers just a few weeks ago, a plan for 43 new homes near 5th & Spring Garden in Northern Liberties. PRDC got support from SKCP at the end of last month, per Star News, and got approval from the ZBA last week.
We haven't seen renderings, but from what we understand each of the homes will have garage parking, with access coming from a drive-aisle. We're guessing here, but we'd bet that ten of the homes will have frontage on Mascher Street and the others will be located immediately to the west, fronting the drive-aisle. With almost 20K sqft of space for this parcel, the number of homes makes plenty of sense, even though it's a very safe bet that they'll look more like the new homes going up a few blocks to the south than they'll look like the existing homes on the block.
This isn't an uncommon theme in this neighborhood, which is seeing more than its fair share of huge residential developments. We aren't sure where the buyers are coming from, but the developers remain optimistic that they're out there. To date, they've been correct.