Lower North Philadelphia

33 North 22nd Street. Credit: Solomon Cordwell Buenz / PMC Property Group via the Civic Design Review

Architecture Firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz Comes In at Number 23 on Philly YIMBY’s First Anniversary Countdown

Philadelphia YIMBY’s First Anniversary Countdown, which looks at the most frequently mentioned article categories over the course of the past year, finds architecture firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz at number 23 out of the more than 1,800 analyzed categories, with a total of 34 tags amassed during the period. The company, which is (spoiler alert) the only architecture firm to feature in the entire Countdown, owes its high ranking to both a large number of significant ongoing developments and our prolific coverage of such.

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Current view of The Maven. Credit: Khosla Properties.

Philly YIMBY’s First Anniversary Countdown Looks at Entry Number 30: Francisville

In 1682, William Penn’s surveyor general Thomas Holme laid out a rectangular street plan for the new planned city of Philadelphia. Today, the area covered by the original plan comprises Center City, yet its grid continued to extend in all directions until it either hit a natural boundary, or was shelved in the postwar period when gridded city plans fell out of favor. As such, most of the city’s central neighborhoods follow the rectilinear plan, with a few notable exceptions. One among these is Francisville, a neighborhood situated west of Broad Street in Lower North Philadelphia. Here, a small yet clearly noticeable group of streets run at a roughly 45-degree angle to the main grid, as they follow Ridge Avenue and predate the grid’s extent this far north. The neighborhood fell on hard times in the postwar period, yet today it is awash in new construction as low- and mid-rise buildings are rising in every direction. The construction boom translated to 28 category tags over the course of the past year, landing Francisville at the 30th place on Philly YIMBY’s First Anniversary Countdown, where we track article categories we tagged most frequently over the course of the past year. Today we visit the most notable developments that we have covered in the neighborhood during this period.

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The new Philadelphia skyline. Photo by Thomas Koloski

Philly YIMBY Launches Its First Anniversary Countdown by Looking at Rittenhouse Square and Brewerytown

A year ago, the start of August marked the launch of Philadelphia YIMBY. We were excited to extend New York YIMBY’s years-long legacy of covering architecture, construction, and development to the City of Brotherly Love. Since that time, our staff has shared over 1,000 articles, covering a wide variety of topics that were cataloged into more than 1,800 categories. In celebration of Philly YIMBY’s first anniversary, we look at our most frequently tagged categories in a month-long series of articles that will run as a countdown that starts with the 31th most-popular category and will run until it hits number one. Today we begin our countdown by looking at Rittenhouse Square and Brewerytown, the two categories tied for the 31st place.

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The Maven at 1533 Ridge Avenue. Credit: CANNOdesign

Structural Frame Complete at The Maven at 1533 Ridge Avenue in Francisville, North Philadelphia

Construction work continues to progress steadily at The Maven, a 28-unit mixed-use development rising at 1533 Ridge Avenue in FrancisvilleNorth Philadelphia. Designed by CANNOdesign and developed by Khosla Properties, the building rises five stories tall, with a commercial space on the ground floor. Residential units situated above, consisting of studios, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments. Tester Construction is the general contractor. In total, the building holds 23,665 square feet of space. Construction costs are estimated at $3.9 million.

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