Between 2003 and 2013, the Althea Gibson Community Education and Tennis Center at 1000 W. Girard Ave. provided a safe space to neighborhood children at a tennis facility that might have felt more at home in the 'burbs then on this West Poplar corner. The community center ultimately closed due to lack of funding, and developer Michael

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

If you stand at 8th & Poplar, the first thing you'll notice is the Quaker building, an old warehouse originally built for Strawbridge & Clothier in 1918, just a block to your the west. The building not only catches the eye because of its size, but also because of its poor condition,

If you read this blog with any regularity, you're probably at least generally familiar with the concept of zoning. But for any first timers out there, please allow us to provide a very basic bit of background. Every property in Philadelphia has an underlying zoning designation that dictates what its

The diagonal Point Breeze Avenue was once the commercial heart of the Point Breeze neighborhood, allowing residents to shop for most of their needs without straying too far from home. Like the rest of the neighborhood, the corridor fell on very tough times over the second half of the 20th

In the years just before the founding of the school that would eventually be known as Temple University, wealthy Philadelphians were building spectacular mansions for themselves in the neighborhood which Temple would eventually come to occupy. While the greatest homes were probably located on North Broad Street, there were some pretty

Many Philadelphians take the nameless shopping district along the southern part of the city’s Delaware waterfront for granted even through the auto-oriented area of strip malls and big-box stores feels more like the Northeast than South Philly. Nonetheless, the vestiges of the area’s industrial roots are visible in all directions-- the

As we've reminded you on numerous occasions, Kensington was once known as the Workshop of the World, producing all kinds of stuff, from hats to chairs, dyes to toxic chemicals. As a result, the neighborhoods in the River Wards are a mix of homes which housed the factory workers and the

Traditionally, 1802 Francis St. was used as a side yard for 1804 Francis St., the home next door. It was well maintained, fenced-in, landscaped, and an old listing indicates that it was also used as a small garden. When the owners of the home at 1804 decided to sell last

Ask ten people and you'll probably get ten opinions on what to do with the Delaware River waterfront. Historically, the Delaware was the center of commerce for Philadelphia, bringing goods in, shipping goods out, and providing countless jobs in this endeavor. As times have changed and shipping has become less