Renderings Revealed for 1713-21 North Front Street in Fishtown

A recent submission to the Civic Design Review has revealed new renders and information for 1713-21 North Front Street, a six-story, 55-unit development in Fishtown. The new building will replace a parking lot on the east side of Front Street between East Columbia Avenue (aka Cecil B. Moore Avenue west of Front Street) to the south and West Palmer Street to the north. Designed by CANNO Design and developed by Khosla Properties, the structure will span 56,600 square feet, which will include a 2,570-square-foot retail space on the ground floor, and a roof deck, which promises to offer sweeping skyline views due to the building’s relative prominence (the building will rise 73 feet to the main roof and 83 feet to the top of the pilot house). Ten parking spaces will also be provided.

1713-21 North Front Street will rise on the northern end of the Fishtown commercial core and will be situated within a ten-minute walk to the north of the Girard El station.

1713-21 North Front Street. Credit: CANNO design via the Civic Design Review

1713-21 North Front Street. Credit: CANNO design via the Civic Design Review

1713-21 North Front Street. Credit: CANNO design via the Civic Design Review

1713-21 North Front Street. Credit: CANNO design via the Civic Design Review

The upper levels of the development will be clad in rather conventional gray metal panels. Architecturally speaking, the building’s highlight will be its two-story base, which will be clad in red brick and will sport phantasmogorical parabolic arches that open onto commercial storefronts, blind arcading, and garage access. Circular accents of varying sizes and purposes, which range from oleil-de-boeuf windows to decorative indentations, add a further touch of whimsy to the composition. The corner cutaway at the southeast corner of the building will offer a particularly intriguing feature. While the design will stimulate the ground-level pedestrian experience, it will unfortunately not extend high enough to be visible from the elevated Market-Frankford Line that runs past the building.

1713-21 North Front Street. Credit: CANNO design via the Civic Design Review

Units at 1713-21 North Front Street will range from studios to one-bedroom apartments. The building’s compact central core will feature an elevator and two stair banks. As the floor plans show, every bedroom in the building will have a direct outdoor-facing window; lamentable as it is that we have to point out this fact as some special feature (as bedrooms without windows that face directly outside are prohibited in Pennsylvania), a worrying number of new developments in Philadelphia feature windowless bedrooms or bedrooms with windows that face another room rather than looking out directly outside.

Given its unique design, ground-level retail, significant number of residential units, and sensible interior layout, 1713-21 North Front Street will be a very welcome addition to the northern section of Fishtown. Moreover, the way the floor plan ensures that every bedroom will have an outside-facing window offers further testament to the damaging effects of overly-strict height restrictions, as most new buildings with windowless bedrooms appear to have been forced into this unfortunate lout via city legislation that severely limits height for apartment buildings and effectively mandates short and broad structures with very wide floorplates.

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