Real estate development has obviously changed dramatically over the last hundred years, though some aspects of the experience remain the same as they ever were. Today, if a developer gets their hands on a sizable parcel, it's common practice to build a bunch of new homes that look exactly the same

Until the early 1960s, the blocks between 5th Street, 7th Street, Brown Street, and Poplar Street were traditional Philadelphia blocks, lined with row homes, apartment buildings, and the occasional mixed-use or industrial building. Of course, that's not the case today, thanks to an urban renewal effort from the Redevelopment Authority. The PRA (then the RDA, still) condemned and

Leopard Street is such an amazing street name. You know you'd feel amazing about yourself if you had a Leopard Street address. Who wouldn't? So it's kind of a shame that Leopard Street only exists for two blocks in the entire city, running north-south between Front Street and Frankford Avenue,

Architects, contractors, and developers all agree that it's easiest to build a new building in the shape of a rectangle. Well, a square probably works too, but the key point is that right angles are desirable, angles create a challenge, and rounded corners look cool but they're a real pain

Market Street, as the name implies, has served as a commercial corridor in Philadelphia since the days of Billy Penn. Though plenty of residential and institutional uses exist on various blocks of Market Street, commercial or mixed-use are generally the norm. Going west from Front & Market, it takes until 39th Street

It's been a long and winding road for 1843 E. Passyunk Ave. over the last half dozen years or so, so much so that there's surely a whole contingent of people that don't even remember that King of Jeans and its amazing sign called this address home for many years. The

The triangular parcel at 5050 Baltimore Ave. has been vacant for as long as we can remember, having fallen into a state of decline along with many other properties along this section of the Baltimore Avenue corridor. But as we've shown you over the last several years, there have been several

Traditionally, whenever someone mentioned Frankford Avenue in Fishtown, they were almost definitely referring to the section of the corridor that starts above Girard. If not, then they were probably thinking of the section of Frankford between I-95 and Girard, home to Barcade and Garage. They almost definitely weren't considering the 900 and 1000

A couple of readers have reached out to us of late, wondering about the ongoing construction at the corner of Randolph & Oxford, in South Kensington. This corner is the rear of an old industrial building, and nobody would have claimed that the building possessed much street presence before the work got

Ridge Avenue has experienced an avalanche of new construction over the last handful of years, as developers have bought up vacant or blighted properties and constructed modern mixed-use buildings in their place. As we've documented, these are unusually forward thinking projects, as businesses haven't exactly been rushing to fill those commercial spaces to