Fill This Front: The Ashe Building West Side

1230 Chestnut

            
               Chestnut East sure has come a long way since I started this shitbag blog, but it isn't fixed yet. Though there has been an ASSLOAD of improvement along this stretch (with much more to come), some little pieces still manage to stay shitty. The Cunningham Piano Building and attached one-story retail structure are still vacant, the old Bread and Butter space is still the featureless rear of a fucking nightclub, the Hale Building is still empty, 1208 Chestnut looks even shittier than before, the Bailey Building is still in limbo, 1200 Chestnut is still covered in bum piss, and this, 1230 Chestnut, has had that fucking gate down for 6 years.
            1228 and 1230 Chestnut were once part of the same building, built in 1925. It was called the Ashe Building, named after the guy that paid for it, Benjamin Ashe. It was built as 4 stories and became store and offices of the Philadelphia location of a NYC-based shoe store chain called Wise. For reasons unknown, the whole building was reduced down to two stories in 1940 and the 1228 and 1230 storefronts were separated forever.
            1230 went through a buttload of different stores over the next 6 decades, mostly clothing store chains from NYC. From 1980 to 86, it was Sounds of Market II. In the late 1980s it was the KSS Cab Company. In 2001, Famous Brands Outlet came along, giving the front the last lit-up sign it would ever have. The sign was still visible on the front as recently as 2 years ago, reversed around so as to not be as readable. As late as 2007, the front held one of those shitty electronic junk stores with no name.
             On February 28, 2008, the owners of the Omnivision optical store/optometrist's office at 1103 Chestnut bought 1230 Chestnut for exactly $2 million. They had designs for a massive renovation of the place drawn up by Moto Design Shop. From the look of things, the place would become a gigantic version of Omnivision, with huge first and second floor spaces with some more stuff in the basement. Things seemed to have been delayed and the plans changed several times but by the start of 2012, everything about the project was approved by zoning, even a small third story addition on the back.

The drawing for the overhaul from late 2011

               I guess that's still the plan for the place, but very little seems to have changed here... though the facade has been cleaned, the graffiti that was on the gate is gone, and the old signage has been removed. So what's the hold-up? Are the owners still trying to get funding together? Is there something about the building that's holding construction back? The place has racked up a whole mess of L + I violations and is getting more and more noticeable as a vacant storefront while the rest of the block has (slowly) improved.
           I do seem to remember some rumors of a local restaurateur being interested in this space once, but I can find no confirmation of this. Moto Design Shop's website has an old restaurant rendering that resembles this space, but there are plenty of other storefronts in this city that have a similar configuration so its hard to tell. 
            Well if this place gets put back up for sale or goes up for lease, just think about this: this is two stories of 1800 square foot floors of storefront located in a high-foot traffic area near the Tony Goldmanized 13th Street in the Midtown Village/Gayborhood section of Washington Square West. Public Transit kicks ass over here, one block from both subways, 5 trolley lines, and the countless buses that run down Chestnut Street. The 23 bus, the most heavily used in the whole system, runs down 11th and 12th Streets nearby. Even more buses run on Market Street a block away, including a bunch of New Jersey Transit stuff. Therefore, if you put the right store in here, you will kill!!!
            Think about all the shit that's going on at East Chestnut right now-- the retail is waaay better than it used to be-- long empty storefronts are now filled and two are expanding. Three buildings that used to have vacant upper floors are now apartments. Brickstone Realty's development is set to change the East side of Broad forever. Now's the time to get this building back to life. FILL THIS FRONT!
                    

June 2012 via the Google Streetview time machine, with squatter-types hanging out in front. Compare this to the current pic above to see how the facade has changed.

Old-Ass Building of the Week: Wayfarer's Lodge #1

1720 Lombard Street

                   This isn't just any apartment building-- those walls have a lot of talking to do. Check it out at the Hidden City Daily!

Fill These Fronts: The Sprucy Storefronts

1506-08 Spruce Street

                    Good lord, I hate the fact that there's a single-story suburban-style retail structure here instead of a building. I get infuriated, however, over the fact that they can't seem to stay filled very long. Its time to either knock this fucker down and build a building, or get these fuckers leased!!
        This crappy retail building was constructed in 1977, coinciding with the construction of 1500 Locust, 1521 Locust, and the renovation of the Acme next door (now CVS #1545).  It was designed by the shitty short-lived firm of Baker, Rothschild, Horn, and Blyth who also did a crappy row of houses on the 300 block of Fitzwater. When it opened at the end of 1977, it was fully leased with three stores: Atlantic City Sub Shoppe, Sav-Mor Discount Store, and Greener Pastures Natural Foods.
       Though a lot of different uses would pass through these three storefronts over the next 37 years, some managed to stay open for quite awhile. The Sav-Mor Discount Store, the first to use the middle space (1506B) , stayed there all the way until the end of the 20th Century. A Chinese restaurant in the easternmost space (Space A)  opened in 1982 and stuck around until the early 21st Century, when they moved to Wynnefield Heights. Academy Pizza lived at the westernmost space (Space C) for a long-ass time. Also consider that the neighborhood right here was much more raw back then... the Drake was a pile of crap, there was a huge empty lot across the street, and there was no Kimmel Center nearby. 

Chun Hing, Sav-Mor, Academy Pizza in 1986. PhillyHistory.org

Same stores still open, 1995.PhillyHistory.org

                  Really, it seems that the last 10 years or so have shown the most flux with these fronts... they seem to change constantly. The last three occupants were Bella Cena (closed a year ago), Giancarlo's Lounge (closed over 2 years ago), and Mamma Mia Pizzeria (closed nearly 2 years ago). Its time to get these fuckers filled again.
                 The advantages of these spaces are numerous. Now that all three are empty, they can be combined into a gigantic 11,000 square foot space with over 50 feet of window frontage. Otherwise, take one of the three spaces. Space 1, the easternmost space, expands into the back of the middle space and is the largest of the three at 5,514 square feet. The whole thing is set 16 feet back on the sidewalk, which in 1977 didn't mean shit but nowadays means that you can throw up some outdoor seating with no problems.
               This location is the bee's knee's and squall's balls. Tons of foot traffic from the pharmacy, theater, bars, and other food service spots nearby. There's a huge parking garage across the street for your potential customers. The spaces are only one block away from the Broad Street Line and a short walk from the Market Frankford Line.
               The place is owned and managed by the Howard Winig Associates Realty Corporation. You can find its listing here on Loopnet. FILL THESE FRONTS!!!

Butt-Fugly Building: Fox 29 Studios

330 Market Street

Blechh

                 Goddamn, what a disgrace. This doo-doo brown-bricked dungeon of dick cheese has been fucking this corner up for the last 42 years and will probably continue to do so for 42 more. Its short, boring-ass design is of course indicative of its time period, when there was an attitude that ugly brown brick boxes were the wave of the future. This is the fugliest of all Philadelphia's television studios, and that's saying something considering that channel 17 runs out of a goddamn converted supermarket!
               Though we all know this building as the Fox 29 Studios, it actually has its own name: the Royal-Globe Building, one of many with the same name around the country and definitely the ugliest. Its starts like this: on December 31st, 1963, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority created something called the Independence Mall Urban Renewal Area Covenant, a 50-year promise to help develop the areas around the recently-completed Independence National Historic Grass Lot Collection look less like ass. This area, 4th and Market, was designated "Unit #3", where the plan was to mow down all the cool-ass old buildings at the corner and replace them with some of the most boring and ugly pieces of architectural trash the city would ever see.
             After years of inactivity, some development finally started to happen. The Federal Government built garbage-ass 400 Market by 1970, spurring interest from private developers to get involved. On June 16th, 1971, the RDA made available a $3 million construction loan to the Richard I. Rubin Company for the creation of a 4-story speculative office building that would stand at the southeast corner of 4th and Market.
           Once Rubin was able to pin down the Royal-Globe Insurance Company's Philadelphia office as an anchor tenant, demolition of the corner began. The Market Street side of the site consisted of only two buildings-- a one-story 1950s-built retail structure that looked like shit and the butt-ass awesome Mutual Trust Company Bank which had just been fully restored 11 years earlier.

Mutual Trust Company Bank, 1928. From the PAB.

...and in 1971, right before demolition. PhillyHistory.org

                     Construction of the 83,976 square foot shit-brick ass pile went very quickly. The building was complete by early 1972. The design was by the shitty and short-lived firm of Stanford G. Brooks and Associates. Royal-Globe moved 800 employees into the building, doubling the number in their previous office. Another tenant to take up a small space in the new place would be a cruddy 7-year-old low-power television station called WTAF, broadcasting on channel 29 from this location (well really from a tower in Roxborough) starting on November 30th, 1972.
                    Royal-Globe would eventually take ownership of the building but reduced the space they used over the years, leasing offices to a whole shitload of other firms. Once WTAF became a Fox affiliate in 1986, they went about taking up more space in the building so that they could produce their own original news programming. In 1995 as WTXF (changed in 1988) they took up even more space when Fox bought the station (which is a long story in itself) and did a major overhaul of the building. Even at this point, what was left of Royal-Globe still owned the building and there were still some offices of other companies inside.
                  Finally, in 2005, Fox 29 took over the whole building and did a mega-renovation that included the ground floor studio with a window on 4th and Market corner, which unfortunately looks out upon later shitty buildings that were the result of the same RDA plan. In 2006, the building sold for 4.7 million to its current owners, something called Jober Holdings.
                 Though the building is as ugly as sin, it does have one of the city's greatest treasures: Good Day Philadelphia. I know it sounds corny, but I almost can't picture this city without it. This program has been running since 1996 and contributes heavily to the 42.5 hours of news that is filmed in the butt-fugly Royal-Globe Building every week. That Mike Jerrick guy is fucking hilarious and who doesn't love Steve Keeley ?
                   So it pisses me off even more that the Royal-Globe Building has to be so goddamn atrocious-looking... awesome-ass Good Day Philadelphia is stuck in one of the city's worst-looking buildings, facing a bunch of other butt-fuglies from the same era. I like that the station didn't fuck off to City Line Avenue like some of the others, but if they're going to stay in Center City and show a street corner in the background of their broadcasts, they need to move somewhere that has a nicer view... which is pretty much anywhere in Center City than here. Harumph!

The 4th Street side. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

99 Years Ago in Philadelphia: End of July, 1915

Woodrow Wilson Arrested in Philadelphia

              If you look exactly like the current president, don't expect to be able to travel the country unnoticed, especially if you plan on being on the run. At the end of July, 1915, James K. Lewis was tracked down in Philadelphia after 11 months on the lam. This Mount Holly, NJ resident abandoned his family after selling his carpentry business. It all would have worked if the guy didn't look exactly like the current president, Woodrow Wilson.
            Upon being spotted in San Francisco, Lewis, traveling under the name James Landis, started moving eastward, going from place to place until people noticed his resemblance to Wilson, forcing him to move on. His capture came at the hands of Detectives Knox and Lowry of the Philadelphia Police, who spotted Woodrow Wilson at 3rd and Cumberland Streets and remembered that a Wilson double was wanted in Jersey. They arrested him and locked him up at City Hall, where he was later extradited to Mount Holly, where he was accused of "non-support" of his children.

The corner where James K. Lewis was arrested as it appears on Google Streetview. What a dump.

A Spy in Kensington?

                At the end of July, 1915, rumor had it that there was some kind of spy operating in Kensington, of all places. Some thought he was a German spy, others thought he was British. Some other folks thought he might actually be a Mexican. The cops in Kenzo were instructed to keep their gossip to a minimum and be on the look-out for a dude taking photographs.
               A policeman McDougall eventually spotted the suspect and followed him around for a day. Because he was mostly photographing trolleys, McDougall assumed he must be a spy for the private "jitney" companies, aka bus companies. In 1915, there was a cold war going on between the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company, operator of the city's trolleys, and the many private bus companies that started operating around this time, taking all their customers. Once McDougall saw the spy photographing large buildings, he started to think that this Jitney Spy was figuring out where to engage new bus lines and which buildings could be converted to garages.
            Upon concluding this, McDougall arrested the suspect, who would not give his name but would curse out the cop in Russian the whole way to the police station. When brought before Magistrate Scott, he was ordered to open his camera case. It was filled with liquor. The suspect then gave his name as George Adolphus Scott and said that he found the camera in a park and was photographing trolleys and buildings hoping to sell the photos to tourists and/or postcard companies. 
            Magistrate Scott released him on the condition that he would photograph areas outside of Kensington.

The Tenderloin: Rife With Cocaine and Silk Shirts

        Philadelphia's notorious Tenderloin district, which extended fully from 13th to 6th between Race and Callowhill (but was mostly centered around 800-1100 blocks of Vine), had two big things going on at the end of July, 1915: cocaine and silk shirts.
        The Cocaine was being processed and distributed from 235 North Watts Street (now a crappy Season City SLE-Z parking lot), at the home of one Harry Reynolds, known as the "Cincinnati Kid". When cops raided the place this week in 1915, they found a veritable cocaine factory and were able to trace it to drug dealers operating neighborhoods away, one way out at 51st and Market. Dr. J.G. Lumen, a Chinese doctor working in Chinatown, reported to police that many of his patients were coming in complaining of their addiction to the drug and worried that they would lose their sanity if not satiated.

Just a coincidence.

                The silk shirt problem in the Tenderloin started getting noticed around this time in 1915 by a Detective LaStrange, who started to realize that every man he arrested or even spoke to in the Tenderloin was wearing the same loud silk shirt. Further investigation showed that the William G. Becker store at 1018 Chestnut had been robbed of hundreds of silk shirts twice in the previous two weeks.
                After some good old fashioned police work, LaStrange was able to determine that a group of miscreants from a rooming house at 918 Winter Street were the ones stealing the shirts, and that a Harry Davis was distributing them from his place at 831 Vine Street. LaStrange gathered up some other detectives and many arrests followed A few weeks later, the robber's stories of hardship came out. Some claimed to have turned to a life a robbery as a result of having to support their families, others said they moved into the Tenderloin without knowing about its criminal element and got swindled into joining it.
              No one bought their bullshit and each got charged with not only the two robberies of the Becker store, but also of the robbery of the Evans' drug store, which they did in between.

Angry Mob Forms Around Baby Kicker

              On July 31st, 1915, one James Drikins was walking his 1-year-old baby in a stroller down the 2300 block of South Mildred Street. When he passed 2313 South Mildred, he accidentally bumped into its owner, Harry Wolfson. Wolfson, apparently infuriated by the event, kicked the stroller so hard it went flying into the street. Though the baby was un-injured, an angry mob formed around the scene. Wolfson was able to escape into his house and a Policeman Levering followed him inside to question him. Big mistake!
              Upon entering the house, Wolfson's wife, Yetta, held down the cop while Harry beat the shit out of him with a stone pitcher. Upon seeing Levering crawl out of the house with a huge gash on his head, the angry mob rushed the Wolfson house and beat Harry's balls off until two officers came along and apprehended him. Levering got stitched up at Methodist Hospital and the Wolfsons got held on $1000 bail each.

The Wolfson house as it appears on Google Streetview

Fill This Front: Stapler

1222-24 Walnut

                 After seven years and a massive renovation, you'd think there would be tons of motherfuckers jumping at the chance to get this great storefront. Tons of foot traffic, a 4,000 square foot floor plate, right off the Tony Goldman-ized 13th Street... you can't beat it. So why, oh why, is this storefront still vacant?
             This is the longest this storefront has ever been unoccupied, which sucks when you consider that the place has been continually filled since 1921. It was built in 1919 and 1920 by an unknown speculator under the designs of Frank E. Hahn, but was later purchased by the St. James Hotel next door (now Walnut Square) and altered by their favorite architect, Horace Trumbauer. In 1921, the storefront got its first retail tenant, Stecker Inc, a women's and children's apparel store. They managed to stick around until the early 1940s.
            In April of 1947, David Stapler moved the 50-year-old fabric store his father Charles created  into the building from South Philly and the store stayed open, staying in the same family, until April 2007, precisely 60 years later. It was David's son, Michael, who sold the building to the Girard Estate in that year. The Girard Estate sat on the building for the next five years, blaming the real estate bust for not doing shit with it.
              Finally, on March 3rd, 2012, they sold the building to a Holland, PA-based company called B & M Leasing for $1,912,500. Once word got out that the building was finally going to get its shit together, numerous chefs and restauranteurs descended on the space, hoping to take advantage of its massive size and proximity to bad-ass restaurants. Recognizing this, the new owners went about getting the building a liquor license, or at least said they would.
            The new owners also completely gutted and over-hauled the space, cleaning up the dirty facade and putting the upper floors into a better condition. The one feature of the building that was thankfully retained was the cool-looking street level display window, installed in 1954 by the William Linker Construction Company under the designs of George Daur. By the fall of 2013, they found a tenant for the top 3 floors (Kaplan International Center) and there was rumor that NYC's Bounce Sporting Club was looking to open in the ground-floor storefront.
           Then... nothing happened. The latest clue about Bounce Sporting Club was in a little article on this Fox Business News website where the dude who runs the place says he "plans to expand in 2014, having chosen strategic partners in both Philadelphia and Dallas" So what the fuck is going on here? The whole front has been modernized and re-done, the Kaplan place upstairs is rocking out like a motherfucker-- why does no one want this space? Let me break it down for you:

                       This is the +/- 4000 square foot retail space at 1222-24 Walnut Street. It has a huge fancy-looking front window with about 34 feet of frontage on a busy-ass section of Walnut Street in Midtown Village/the Gayborhood, part of Greater Washington Square West. The ceiling height is tall as shit and the floor space extends back about 104 feet, meaning you could fit just about anything in here. It has a rear access from St. James Street. The space is close to nearly every form of public transportation in the City of Philadelphia: a few blocks from both subways, 5 trolley lines, every regional rail via Market East Station, and a whole shitload of SEPTA and New Jersey Transit bus lines, including the 23 bus, the most heavily used bus line in the whole system.
                       Being that the previous occupant was able to make this space work for 60 consecutive years, its pretty safe to say that this retail space has some staying power... and they did it when there was no such thing as Midtown Village or even the Gayborhood! There aren't many other floorplates this size in the neighborhood, so this is really the only place around here that you can fit a more larger format-type place. The space is being offered for lease by CBRE|FAMECO and the price is "negotiable". Here's the listing. Don't wait! FILL THIS FRONT!!

Old-Ass Building: North City Trust Company

5700 North Broad

Pic by Brad Maule

               Check out this old bastard at Broad & Chew, way the fuck up at the top of North Philly. Its abandoned now but you can buy it for the low low price of $549k. Read all about it at the Hidden City Daily!