We can only imagine what South Kensington looked like when Gratz Fire Protection Services started their business at 241 W. Oxford St. in the last 1970s or the early 1980s. It must have been pretty rough. We suspect the neighborhood was mired in a state of decline back in those days, as industry was continuing

A reader reached out to us the other day and gave us the heads up that a one-story warehouse at 438 Memphis St. was no more. Given the terrific location, mere steps from Palmer Park and Frankford Ave., it actually came as a bit of a surprise that this property

The Municipal Services Building (MSB) covers roughly 2/3 of the square block that's just to the northwest of City Hall, offering locals a one stop shop of bureaucratic hoops through which to jump. For example, you can pay your water bill at MSB, or grab a building permit, or apply to

The southern section of the West Poplar neighborhood has undergone major changes over the last several years, with a mix of larger projects, like the Spring Arts Point development, and plenty of smaller, one-off infill. New construction has generally dried up in this neighborhood beyond Fairmount Avenue, mostly because the

There's something about a steamy July morning that makes us think about pallets. For your enjoyment, here are some pallet facts, thanks to Business Dictionary: Standard American pallets measure 4' by 4', but European pallets are typically rectangular in shape, measuring 1m x 1.2m. Who knew? Pallets can generally handle

While East Kensington has become a booming neighborhood in terms of residential real estate development over the last handful of years, its history is distinctly industrial, like many other sections of Kensington. Most of the factories went belly up or moved away decades ago, and years of disinvestment in the neighborhood

A couple of readers have reached out to us in the last few days, wondering about some zoning notices they, uh, noticed, on the 800 block of N. Delaware Ave., just south of Wells Meats. This discovery was incredibly exciting, as zoning notices near the river are often a sign of

It wasn't so long ago that owning a beer distributor was one of the most enviable professions in Philadelphia. Thanks to the restrictive liquor laws in Pennsylvania, distributors had a huge captive audience of customers that were looking to throw a kegger or buy beers without the massive upcharge that comes

The corner of 40th & Walnut is officially the northwest edge of Penn's campus, but the reach of the university extends far beyond that intersection. Off-campus student housing has extended west of 40th Street for a long time, but it's only really been in the last decade or so that

The intersection of 6th & Poplar is a study in contrasts. The northwest corner is home to a row of homes that were built a few years ago, one of which recently traded for $760K. The southern section of the intersection is the northern edge of the Liberty Place Town