The Philadelphia Historical Commission granted protections to 188 buildings along a five-mile stretch of Ridge Avenue in Roxborough on Friday, creating the largest new historic district the city has seen since…
By Ashley Hahn Market Street east of City Hall was one of Philly’s great shopping streets. After years of decline, the tide has shifted, bringing new development to parts of this…
Kensington’s iconic milk bottle-shaped water tower and the aging industrial building it perches upon can no longer be demolished without a fight. In a unanimous Friday vote, the Philadelphia Historical Commission…
Even in a city known for its architectural heritage and historic buildings, Chestnut Hill stands out. Long one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Philadelphia, this sylvan community is home to rambling…
For the past decade, Philadelphia’s Historical Commission has only granted protections to a handful of individual properties each year. As the pace of development escalates, and more remarkable buildings are leveled, preservationists…
A proposed demolition mortarium on Ridge Avenue, in Northwest Philadelphia, has spurred a wave of demolition applications. The bill, introduced by Councilman Curtis Jones, would apply to a five-mile stretch of…
In late September Councilman Curtis Jones introduced a bill that would institute a one-year moratorium on demolitions along Ridge Avenue, a central thoroughfare that runs through Philadelphia’s northwestern neighborhoods. He worries…
The Philadelphia Historical Commission (PHC) will soon expand its office staff by two, the first increase in the size of the regulatory agency in 13 years, and one of several signs…
For decades, a modest two-story building at 4328 Main Street in Manayunk housed Sip N’ Steaks. The greasy spoon helped hold down this corner of the neighborhood’s commercial spine when its…
At its July meeting, the Philadelphia Historical Commission accepted eight new nominations to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, bringing the total number of newly protected individual sites in 2017 to…
The Committee on Historic Designation is one of the lower hurdles a nomination to the historic register must cross. The body is stocked with historians, an archaeologist, and a planner who…
The Philadelphia City Council is considering increasing fees across the board for most licenses and permits. That might seem like a potentially contentious proposition, inspiring pushback from the business community. Instead,…
At the first meeting of the year for the Philadelphia Historical Commission’s Committee on Historic Designation, one object and seven properties were recommended for listing in the local register of historic…
Jewelers’ Row wasn’t the only contentious case before the February Historical Commission meeting. Prior to the skirmish over Sansom Street, a series of nominations on La Salle University’s campus were sent…
Friday’s meeting of the Historical Commission opened with the latest twist in the ongoing St. Laurentius saga, but otherwise the meeting proceeded in a fairly breezy fashion. Which is not…
Friday’s meeting of the Philadelphia Historical Commission added the latest complication to the ongoing saga of St. Laurentius church. The Fishtown site took up an hour of debate and ended with…
On Thursday morning, three City Council members introduced legislation to bolster funding for the city’s overburdened Historical Commission. The bill, backed by Blondell Reynolds Brown, Mark Squilla, and Al Taubenberger would…
On Thursday morning, the Philadelphia Historical Commission decided to wait on the nomination for two Jewelers’ Row buildings to become historic because of demolition permits were issued for the properties the…
The nominations of two Jewelers’ Row buildings as historic took top billing at Friday’s meeting of the Historical Commission’s Committee on Historic Designation, which voted to support their designation. After hearing…
On Friday morning the Philadelphia Historical Commission’s Committee on Historic Designation voted unanimously to recommend the nominations of 706 and 704 Sansom Street to the local historic register. The full Philadelphia…