In West Philly

Across the city, civic groups are taking proactive steps toward diminishing crime and blight in their neighborhoods.

In Passyunk Square, residents are taking the blight fight into their own hands. Across town, when the folks at University City District learned through a comprehensive safety study that the area around the 46th Street El station

Yesterday, we were driving through the neighborhood, and noticed that 4063 Spring Garden St. was being torn down. A block to the north of a number of student housing units on Baring St., this home sits at the end of a row of examples of truly gorgeous West Philadelphia architecture.

On the western end of University City, the 5000 block of Baltimore Avenue is experiencing rapid change.

Here is where the immaculate pink, red, green and blue painted homes and tree-lined suburbanesque West Philly blocks begin to blend with some poorly maintained homes and vacant, blighted properties. There are at least six abandoned

West-Philly born astronaut Guion Bluford, Joe Frazier, Will Smith, and dancer Judith Jamison are part of a new mural scheduled to be painted at SEPTA’s 46th Street Market-El Station in May. The mural will be part of the "Elebration" of the completion to the almost decade-long Market-El rehab project that began in 2000.

The celebrities

Why did a chicken in West Philly cross the road? Who knows. Maybe a better question is how’d the bird get there in the first place. But in 2008, West Philly horticulturalist Andrew Olson spotted one of the clucking fowl crossing the road and it gave him an idea.

And from

When properties become dangerously dilapidated to the point that they may collapse and injure people, the city (eventually) steps in and tears them down and sends the owners the bill. In West Philly, a new program is attempting to step in before the city demolishes 100-year-old Victorian West Philly homes and

We noticed a 'For Sale' sign from Reliance Realty, LLC on 5021-5023 Baltimore Ave., the building that abuts the new privately-owned urban farm that we told you about last week.

The property includes six apartments and two commercial spaces, and over 6000 sqft of interior space. At 5023 Baltimore Ave., barbershop Cuttin' Up is the tenant. 5021

It's been more than a year since our first post about Mariposa Co-op's relocation to 4824 Baltimore Ave. Initial plans called for the move to be completed last fall.

But that didn't fly and then it was supposed to open in December, then, by mid-February, then March 1st. When the opening

A reader asked us about the large, surprisingly vacant lot adjacent to Clark Park on Baltimore Ave., and we set out to investigate. What we found was disappointing, though not altogether surprising.

4224-26 Baltimore Ave. is a huge lot on the southwest corner of 43rd & Baltimore, directly to the east

After staring at a vacant, overgrown lot behind their home in West Philadelphia for a few years, a couple purchased the parcel and turned it into an urban farm through the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s City Harvest Grower’s Alliance Program, which provides supplies for homeowners interested in running their own urban farm.

Yesterday,