Permits Issued for 660 Brooklyn Street in Haverford North, West Philadelphia

Permits have been issued for the construction of a three-story, three-unit rowhouse at 660 Brooklyn Street in Haverford North, West Philadelphia. The new building will fill a vacant lot between two prewar rowhouses on the west side of the street between Wallace Street and Fairmount Avenue. Designed by Anthony Maso Architecture & Design, the structure will span 2,509 square feet and will feature a basement and a roof deck. Permits list JPL Construction as the contractor and indicate a construction cost of $250,000.

660 Brooklyn Street. Site plan. Credit: Anthony Maso Architecture Design via the City of Philadelphia

660 Brooklyn Street. Site conditions prior to redevelopment. Credit: Anthony Maso Architecture Design via the City of Philadelphia

The building will assume fairly conventional dimensions for a rowhouse, and will measure 16 feet wide, 54 feet long (with a nine-foot-long rear yard), and 36 feet high (39 feet to the top of the parapet and around 46 feet high to the top of the roof deck access pilot house. In its proportions, the design is quite similar to that of the adjacent prewar rowhouses, and will match their street wall setback.

Unfortunately, the property will lack the covered front porch of its counterparts, though such a feature may hopefully be added at some point in the future. Similarly, we hope that the entirely featureless front elevation seen in the permit documents is merely a diagrammatic oversimplification, and that the final product would have more to show for itself in terms of aesthetics, even something as simple as a plain yet high-quality brick facade.

660 Brooklyn Street. Building section. Credit: Anthony Maso Architecture Design via the City of Philadelphia

660 Brooklyn Street. Site conditions prior to redevelopment. Credit: Anthony Maso Architecture Design via the City of Philadelphia

At face value, 660 Brooklyn Street is merely yet another formulaic infill on a standard city block. However, even such a prosaic-looking project makes its own, however minor, contribution to restoring the urban fabric of a dilapidated block, contributes new housing stock in the form of the neighborhood’s traditional rowhouse vernacular, and makes effective use of its “fifth facade” – the roof – via an expansive roof deck.

Lee Park, with its extensive athletic facilities, sits a block and a half to the south. Lancaster Avenue, the neighborhood’s primary commercial corridor and the conduit for the route 10 trolley and route 43 bus, is situated a few short blocks to the northeast. The campus of Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, the northwesternmost outpost of University City proper, spans within a 15-minute walk to the southeast, near which the 40th Street Station on the Market-Frankford subway line is situated.

660 Brooklyn Street. Zoning table. Credit: Anthony Maso Architecture Design via the City of Philadelphia

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