The Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road Company was one of the most significant companies in US history, emerging as the largest company in the world shortly after the Civil War. This company not only controlled rail road lines, as the name suggests, but also owned an enormous coal interest, primarily

Today is the first day for L'Anima, an Italian byob at the corner of 17th & Carpenter. Yesterday, the new restaurant offered a sneak preview of their space and their food, and we managed to snag an invite. To the extent that we're able to provide objective feedback after gorging on

We were scrolling through the ZBA calendar for today, and it came to our attention that development could finally be in store for a corner we've eyed for many years. 1836 E. York St. is an oddly shaped property at the intersection of Jasper St. and E. York St., in

We're pretty certain that the buildings at 1209-11 N. Hancock St. were originally built for residential purposes. The architectural details, like the locations of the windows and the intact cornices, strongly suggest an initial residential use. Somewhere along the line though, the buildings were combined into a single industrial use,

At the northwest corner of 26th & Federal stands the Progressive Worship Center, a Baptist church that's been operating since at least the 1990s. Also since the mid-1990s, an individual named Julius Cooper owned the sizable lots immediately to the west of the church. He didn't exactly keep them in

One Meridian Plaza was constructed at the northeast corner of 15th & Chestnut in 1972, and was originally called the Fidelity Mutual Life Building, in honor of the company that co-developed the property. Eventually, Meridian Bank became the lead tenant in the building, and by the early 1990s it was

The project coming soon to 2120 E. York St. is making us feel like we're going crazy, but it has nothing to do with the project per se. At some point over the last several years, we distinctly remember doing a little bit of research about this large industrial property that

Anyone traveling towards the Gaslands above and below the Passyunk Avenue bridge may notice a small set of rowhouses set between a whole slew of industrial sites. This forgotten neighborhood has stood isolated from the rest of the residential parts of the city for its entire 150+ year existence and

With Philadelphia's real estate boom humming along for longer than anyone might have expected, we're seeing several examples of long stalled or seemingly abandoned projects reappearing on our radar and actually coming to fruition. For example, there's the mixed-use development at 18th & Washington, first presented in 2011, which came back

We were traipsing through East Kensington yesterday and happened upon some new construction at 2447 Amber St. which caught our attention but not in a good way. We'd been on this block a few times before, most recently a few months ago when we told you about Letterly Green, at