Permits Issued for 3119 North 13th Street Near Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia

Permits have been issued for the construction of a three-story, three-unit apartment building at 3119 North 13th Street near Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia. The development will replace a vacant lot on the east side of the block between West Clearfield Street and West Allegheny Avenue. Designed by KCA Design Associates, the structure will span 3,820 square feet and feature a cellar and a roof deck. Permits list Backcourt Builders as the contractor and specify a construction cost of $600,000.

3119 North 13th Street. Credit: Google.

3119 North 13th Street. Credit: Google.

The structure will measure 16 feet wide and 67 feet deep, with a ten-foot-deep yard in the rear. The building will be set back from the sidewalk by eight feet to match the streetwall of its two-story prewar rowhouse neighbors. Sadly, no similar gesture will be made to match the deep covered porches of the adjacent structures, as only a basic stoop will be included in its place; perhaps such a porch may be added during a renovation at some point in the future.

The structure will rise 34 feet to the top of the main roof (38 feet to the top of the parapet and 44 feet to the top of the pilot house), which lends nine-foot ceilings on every floor and an eight-foot ceiling in the basement. Although the building will rise notably higher than its neighbors, its impact will be significantly softened via an eight-foot-deep third-story setback.

3119 North 13th Street. Credit: KCA Design Associates.

Curiously, the balcony-sized roof space will not have a balcony on it; documents submitted to the city not only state “No Roof Deck” at the space in red lettering in at least two instances, but an annotation also calls for a “guard rail at sliding door to prohibit access to the setback.

Aside for a band of siding above the main entrance, the street-facing facade will lack ornamentation; however, the brick exterior may make for a decent fit for its prewar context. Furthermore, the new building will play an important role of filling in a glaring gap in an otherwise continuous street wall.

Over the past two decades, major university campuses, particularly those in University City in West Philadelphia and Temple University in North Philly, have driven sustained real estate development in oft-distressed neighborhoods along their periphery. Notably, this trend is, at best, minimal in the Temple University Hospital area, which has not seen much construction in recent years.

However, the area does have a variety of development-ready vacant lots both large and small. Coupled with not-too-distant proximity to both Temple University’s main campus and Center City further to the south, as well as direct rapid transit access via the Allegheny Station on the Broad Street Line and the North Philadelphia and North Broad Street regional rail stations, the neighborhood around the Temple University Hospital campus is ripe for further development.

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