We passed by 616-18 S. 18th St. dozens of times over the years but never really paid it any mind. Upon closer examination though, the building clearly didn't look like the others on the block, both in terms of architecture and materials. We use the past tense because of late, it's looking different than it once did.
Well. We can't say we've seen this too often. Almost all of the brick facade has been removed, leaving exposed plywood and insulation. And it's been like this for weeks at least, maybe even a month or two. We've been wondering about the property ever since the bricks came down, and a couple of readers have reached out too, curious about what's going on.
As you can imagine, the property has some active violations. A non-hazardous violation came about in 2013 and was sent to court. That violation, from what we can tell, remains open. A violation that indicated partial collapse for a wall and/or ceiling was first issued in the summer of 2014 and was updated just a few months ago. This one is also open. Then there's a closed violation for a loose wall/missing bricks from last April. But still, we feel like there's something else happening here.
There may be a clue on the building itself.
The building has a not-quite-cornerstone which names the people who built the building in 1991 and their development company. A quick Google search took us to a twenty-five year old Inquirer story which describes the four-unit condo building as "one of the few housing projects under construction in the Center City area," which just goes to show how different things were the year before Ed Rendell became mayor. The story describes the building's veneer as a then-new material called R-Brick, which were large interlocking panels with a layer of half-inch-thick bricks on a backing of polystyrene insulation.
Is it possible that the R-Brick system failed after 25 years, which led to its removal? If that is indeed the case, why haven't new bricks or new brick veneers been installed on the building? We think the building is occupied, but we'd have to imagine that the lack of bricks on the outside is bad for the insulation and keeping water out of the inside of the building. Is it possible that there's some kind of legal battle taking place, holding up construction? If that's the case, is the delay causing harm to the building? We don't know all of the answers here, so if any neighbors have some additional info it would be much appreciated.