In Old City

It was well before our time and it was probably before your time too that Old City was known more for manufacturing than for nightclubs and art galleries. At this point, virtually all of the neighborhood's industrial past is gone, with many of the old buildings demolished and some converted

For much longer than we've been alive, 2nd Street in Old City has been the place to go downtown if you're in the market for restaurant supplies, be it a couple cases of glassware or a 6' griddle. Thanks to a combination of the internet and natural attrition, we're now left

109-131 N. 2nd St. was home to the National Products Company, a restaurant supply business, for the better part of the 20th century. Sometime in the middle of that wonderful century, they clad their building’s facade in orange tiles, making it one of the more unique structures in town. In the early 2000s, after

Wow, have things ever changed at the southwest corner of 3rd & Market. If we turn back the clock a few years or a few decades, Suit Corner was operating out of a double-wide commercial space, selling suits as gaudy as the paint job on the facade. Unfortunately, a fire

We were making our way through Old City the other day and it struck us that a new building had sprouted on the 100 block of N. 2nd Street, seemingly overnight. Okay, overnight is a bit of an exaggeration, but it's undeniable that the progress at The National project at 109-131

Suit Corner held down the southwest corner of 3rd & Market for way longer than we can remember, selling sometimes garish suits at always reasonable prices. Shirt Corner, a similar store which we believe was owned by a member of the same family, had a similarly long run on the

A reader tipped us off recently about a big new building currently getting framed at 222 Vine St., and we're kinda amazed it hasn't come onto our radar previously. For whatever reason, a one story building was constructed at this address back in 1960, a structure that has housed an

The Corn Exchange National Bank building has always been one of our favorites, both because of its impressive Neo-Classical architectural design and our desperate desire to open an account at an institution with such an amazing name. Alas, there hasn't been a corn bank in Philadelphia for decades, leaving our dreams

Recent history has been a little odd for the building at 113-15 Arch St., but developers are now looking to stabilize its future with a major renovation effort. Back in the day, at least part of the property was home to a paint business. By the early 1970s it was in

The Delaware waterfront was once a hub of industry, as ships delivered raw goods, factories produced stuff while belching waste into the river, and other ships collected the new stuff and took it away. That's not the case anymore, at least not in the vicinity of Center City. Still, we've