1541 South Bambrey Street

Urban development is a delicate balancing act, and sometimes we must say goodbye to cherished local destinations in order to make way for a plan that is ultimately more beneficial to the community and to the city at large. One of such trade-offs is slated to occur at 7619 Germantown Avenue in Mount Airy, Northwest Philadelphia, where the Trolley Car Diner is set to meet the wrecking ball, to be replaced by a six-story, mixed-use residential development designed by Morrissey Design. Although the charming chrome, neon, mural, and freestanding trolley of the diner will be missed, the proposal at hand makes for more effective use of the site, bringing significant residential density within a two0-block walk of the Mount Airy Station of the SEPTA Regional Rail and replacing the auto-centric restaurant with pedestrian-friendly retail.

After five decades of population loss, when Philadelphia saw its resident count drop from 2.07 to 1.52 million between 1950 and 2000, the City of Brotherly Love has undergone a revival since the turn of the millennium, notching its resident total back up to 1.53 million by 2010 and 1.58 million by 2019, a relatively minor yet still much-welcome gain. The ensuing construction surge brought life-affirming, progress-heralding sounds of hammers and buzzsaws even to far-flung blocks that have not seen new development since the prewar era. Despite the building boom, however, some centrally-sited, transit-accessible districts remain surprisingly underdeveloped, such as Lower North Philadelphia, which extends roughly from Vine Street Expressway to the south to the Temple University area to the north. Today we look at the still-unrealized potential of this rapidly growing yet underbuilt district, held back both by zoning ordinances and local status quo, by considering an eight-story, 188-unit mixed-use development planned at 1527 Callowhill Street. Based on this case study, we lay out a proposition for greater building density both at the site at hand and throughout the surrounding neighborhood.