A recent site visit by Philadelphia YIMBY has confirmed the completion of construction at a three-story single-family rowhouse at 2121 East Dakota Street in Fishtown. Like its twin next door at 2023 Est Dakota Street, the new building replaces a vacant lot situated on the northeast side of the block between Amber Street and Trenton Avenue. The structure spans 1,500 square feet and features a basement and a roof deck. Permits list Paul Dietz as the design professional and Fidan Basha as the contractor.
Construction costs are listed at $207,000, of which $150,000 is allocated toward general construction, $12,000 for electrical work, $15,000 for mechanical work, $15,000 for plumbing work, and $15,000 for excavation work.
2121 East Dakota Street. Photo by Jamie Meller. August 2024
The structure, built in the city’s traditional rowhouse vernacular, fits contextually with the neighborhood’s prewar brick-clad buildings, while the white brick adds a cheerful appearance to the streetscape and brightens the narrow, alley-like street.
Nearly uniquely among large American cities, Philadelphia is notable for a relatively large number of exceptionally narrow streets. Although such alley-like thoroughfares are generally associated with historic neighborhoods such as Old City, they may also be found throughout its inner-city portion. East Dakota Street is one such street, with a barely-car-navigable roadway measuring around six feet across and roughly five-foot-wide sidewalks, which are also crowded to the point of near-impassability with building stoops, light poles, street trees, and planters.
Until recently, many of the properties along the block-long street segment sat vacant, with wildly overgrown vegetation that evoked an image of an urban jungle to an uncanny degree. In recent years the overgrowth was somewhat trimmed as new residential buildings, some as lofty as three stories, gradually began rising along its flanks, with the project at 2121 East Dakota Street poised as the latest addition to the lineup.
2121 East Dakota Streett. Photo by Jamie Meller. August 2024
East Dakota Street, with 2121 East Dakota Street on the center left. Site conditions prior to redevelopment. Looking southeast. October 2018. Credit: Google Maps
East Dakota Street, with 2121 East Dakota Street on the right. Site conditions prior to redevelopment. Looking northwest. October 2018. Credit: Google Maps
In 2019, author Charles Duff published The North Atlantic Cities, a nonfiction narrative book that looked at the history and celebrated the rather unique qualities of rowhouse-lined European (namely British, Irish, and Dutch) and American cities spanning both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Living on a street such as East Dakota takes both the charms and challenges of such urban living to their extremes, yet to aficionados of of the classic Philadelphia rowhouse lifestyle, such a location just may present a perfect opportunity for further development on this block that still offers several properties rife for new construction.
2121 East Dakota Street. Site conditions prior to redevelopment. Looking north. Credit: Google Maps
2121 East Dakota Street. Site conditions prior to redevelopment. Looking north. Credit: Google Maps
2121 East Dakota Street. Looking southeast. August 2011. Credit: Google Maps
2121 East Dakota Street rises about a block to the northwest of the Fishtown Roundabout, a traffic circle completed around 2021 at a particularly complex intersection of Frankford Avenue, Trenton Avenue, and East York Street. Sited at the junction of three neighborhoods (Fishtown to the southwest, East Kensington to the north, and Olde Richmond to the southeast), the circle is also known under names such as the Frankford-Trenton-York Roundabout and the East Kensington Round About. In an article covering a proposal at 2118 East York Street, published earlier this month, we offered more in-depth coverage of the roundabout and some of the intriguing new development that recently rose along its flanks.
Route 5, 39, and 59 buses run along nearby streets. The Berks and York-Dauphin stations on the Market-Frankford subway line both sit at a roughly equal distance within an eight-minute walk to the southwest and the northwest, respectively.
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This is also East Kensington.