In West Philly

Without thinking too hard about it, you would readily agree that a car wash isn't the highest and best use for a 16K sqft property on the 4100 block of Chestnut. And yet, if you visit this block and direct your attention to 4125 Chestnut St., you'll see the Chestnut

Spruce Hill has some of the most beautiful architecture in the city, with a mix of Victorian homes, Gothic apartment buildings, and more decorative columns than you can shake a stick at. At the intersection of 46th & Spruce, we see examples of some of the types of buildings that make

We've had our eye on the 5000 block of Baltimore Avenue for awhile now, watching as it has slowly improved. We've seen new businesses open on the block, like bar-restaurant Booker's, event space Petit Fete, and artsy gift shop Vix Emporium. We've seen plans come and go without coming to

From the first time we set foot in the Boyd-turned Sameric shortly before it closed, we've had a bit of an obsession with old movie theaters. Numerous beautiful cinemas once dotted the Philadelphia cityscape, but as the years have rolled along, many of those buildings have met the wrecking ball. A handful

Earlier this month, we told you about a plan from Campus Apartments to demolish an attractive building at 123 S. 41st St. and build a 98 bed student housing building in its place. And we lamented that the new building wouldn't possibly hold a candle, architecturally, to the Italiante mansion that's been here for over

When you consider that the trolley portal at 40th & Baltimore is the busiest at-grade rail station in town, its awful condition in recent memory becomes especially egregious. But the fact that it's historically been a concrete wasteland will make its transformation into the 40th Street Trolley Portal Gardens all the more

We've been keeping tabs on the building at 4100 Chestnut St. over the years, first bringing it to your attention back in 2011. At that time, we noted that student housing player Campus Apartments had purchased the building, with longtime occupant Graphic Arts Inc. moving their operations to Port Richmond. The

We've probably walked past the corner of 40th & Ludlow dozens of times over the years, and at no point did it occur to us that the building on the northwest corner of the intersection might have a notable history. We were way off base, but if you look at

As far as greater Center City goes, we've got a really good handle on neighborhood names, boundaries, and the different challenges of dealing with various community zoning committees. But when we head into West Philadelphia, we admit that our neighborhood geography gets a little shaky. And the farther west we

A reader reached out to us recently, wondering about some demolition activity on the 600 block of Union Street, which is just north of the 3900 block of Haverford Avenue. We figured we'd investigate, as development would sense on this block given the amount of new construction we've seen nearby