In Point Breeze

Philadelphia's newest vegan cafe/bakery opened recently in a building that had previously sat empty and blighted for a number of years. Perhaps you remember, we told you about a year and a half ago that Batter & Crumbs Cafe would be opening at 1401 Reed St., marking the end of

Point Breeze has seen more residential development over the last half dozen years than perhaps any other neighborhood in Philadelphia. Even today, you'd be hard pressed to find a block north of Dickinson Street that hasn't seen some (or a ton of) construction activity over the last year. One might think that

Sometimes, boundaries between different neighborhoods feel quite arbitrary. What makes South Street so special that it divides Grad Hospital from Rittenhouse or Hawthorne from Wash West? When wide streets like Washington Avenue or Broad Street separate neighborhoods, that at least makes a little sense. But perhaps the clearest dividing line for neighborhoods

The West Passyunk neighborhood isn't one we cover too frequently in this space, since it doesn't see a whole lot in the way of development activity. The neighborhood's boundaries, for those unfamiliar, go from 18th to 25th Street from east to west, and Mifflin Street to Passyunk Avenue to the south.

The diagonal Point Breeze Avenue was once the commercial heart of the Point Breeze neighborhood, allowing residents to shop for most of their needs without straying too far from home. Like the rest of the neighborhood, the corridor fell on very tough times over the second half of the 20th

The Friendship Baptist Church at 1730 Wharton St. was constructed in 1888 as the 18th Street Methodist Episcopal Church, designed by J. Franklin Stuckert. In honor of its hundredth birthday, the gorgeous building was added to the Philadelphia Historic Register, protecting it from demolition and/or significant exterior alteration. This is great news

If you're reading this blog, you're probably quite familiar with the perks of city living. Walkability! History! A dozen coffee shops within half a mile of your home! The list goes on. Of course, living in a city isn't all peaches and cream. It's not always a treat to live in such close proximity

A couple of readers have reached out to us over the last couple months, expressing hope for a new business on the horizon for Point Breeze Avenue. You may recall, about a year and a half ago, we shared the news that the triangular building at 2101 Reed St. was

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

Way back in 2011, we wrote about the 2100 blocks of Federal, Annin, Ellsworth, and Alter Streets, trying to understand why the homes on these blocks don't look anything like other homes in the neighborhood. Most homes in Point Breeze are of the row home variety, and these homes certainly don't qualify as row homes. The