In Francisville

The property at 1811-13 Ridge Ave. has been sitting vacant for at least the last twenty-five years. This was not an unusual sight for most of those years, as Francisville was in a severely depressed state, with the Ridge Avenue corridor beset by blight and vacancy. Of course, it's old

The five-story building at 909 Corinthian Ave. dates back to 1911, and was originally constructed as housing for nurses. Those nurses worked across the street, at Lankenau Hospital, at least until the hospital moved to the Main Line in 1953. Unrelated to the building, it's remarkable to consider that two hospitals

The building at 1723 Francis St. sits in the middle of Francisville, at the intersection of Francis and Perkiomen Streets, where Francis Street curiously and dangerously switches directions from one-way moving northeast to one-way moving southwest. Why this continues to be the case and how there are not numerous head-on collisions

About a year and a half ago, we drew your gaze to the 1700 block of Cambridge Street. On this block, and also on the 1700 block of Ridge, developers built about two dozen twin homes about twenty years ago, at a time that virtually no other construction was happening in Francisville.

As recently as a decade ago, the northeastern section of Francisville was in rough shape. Years of disinvestment combined with wholesale demolitions of vacant properties during the Street administration had left a tremendous amount of vacancy in this part of the neighborhood. There were numerous blocks where empty lots outnumbered buildings,

The Philadelphia Housing Authority is perhaps best known for its sizable developments that cover several consecutive city blocks (often with unfortunate suburban-style architecture), but PHA also owns a ton of scattered site properties which are supposed to blend in with their surroundings. Not surprisingly, these units are much more difficult to manage

Francisville, we hardly recognize you these days. So many blocks in this neighborhood have changed so much over the last decade or so, but we were dumbfounded recently by the complete transformation of Ridge Avenue between Vineyard and Ginnodo. Turn back the clock just half a dozen years, and it was home

We've always appreciated the architecture of two yellow buildings at the corner of 19th & Harper, even though they've been showing their age for quite some time. That condition is probably due to the fact that metalworker Komplete Welding occupied the two buildings for a number of years, and let's

For as long as we can remember, 808 N. 19th St. has been home to an auto garage, the misleadingly named Girard Body Shop. Of course, the auto-centric use dates back to at least the 1940s, much further back than we can remember. Interestingly, it seems the property hasn't been

"No comments from the peanut gallery," is an expression beloved by dads and high school teachers alike, often directed in response to smart aleck kids. The phrase dates back to the days of vaudeville theatre, when patrons sitting or standing in the least expensive section of the theater were known to heckle performers