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Center City towers from The Laurel Rittenhouse. Photo by Thomas Koloski

Philadelphia YIMBY Observes Views from the Top of The Laurel Rittenhouse in Rittenhouse Square, Center City

8:00 am on October 18, 2021 By Thomas Koloski

Nearly a month ago, The Laurel Rittenhouse at 1911 Walnut Street in Rittenhouse Square, Center City, celebrated its topping out with a commemorative event. Designed by Solomon Cornwell Buenz and developed by Southern Land Company, with the Harman Group as the structural engineer, the tower rises 48 stories tall and 599 feet, with additional two floors of mechanical space The parapet that will soon be constructed will reach 593 feet. The building will house 185 rental apartments and 60 luxury condominium units in the upper portion. Today, Philadelphia YIMBY shares skyline photos taken during our tour of the skyscraper as seen from the 48th and 49th floors, just under the final concrete slab.

Philadelphia 1905 and 2020 south elevation. Photo by Thomas Koloski

Looking Back At The Creation Of The Philadelphia Massing

7:30 am on September 26, 2021 By Thomas Koloski

For over a year, Philadelphia YIMBY has been providing extensive publications and visuals depicting new developments planned for the future as well as notable towers that have risen in the past. We have offered images from drawn schematics, custom-made renderings, and skyline massings to give the public a clear look at the structures featured. Any time new high-rise buildings have been revealed or design changes were made, YIMBY reports on the changes with three-dimensional skyline views from various directions. In this feature, we look back at the creation of the 3D skyline massings that we continue to provide to this day.

Northeast Northern Liberties. Credit: Post Brothers

Northeast Northern Liberties: an Emerging Waterfront Hub in Search of an Identity

8:00 am on September 18, 2021 By Vitali Ogorodnikov

The latest entry on Philadelphia YIMBY’s First Anniversary Countdown, which looks at the most frequently mentioned article categories over the course of the past year, found North Philadelphia‘s Northern Liberties neighborhood at the 18th place, out of the 1,800+ categories surveyed. Yesterday’s entry outlined at the neighborhood’s history and general composition. Today we look at Northeast Northern Liberties, a former industrial hotbed turned no-mans-land that is now rapidly transforming into a major urban hub, and some of the challenges that the emerging district still needs to address.

Unfinished Liberty Place design model. Photo from Helmut Jahn

Visualizing the Under-500-Foot-Tall Early Iterations of Liberty Place on the Skyline

8:00 am on September 16, 2021 By Thomas Koloski

The Liberty Place complex is emblematic of the Philadelphia skyline as they played a key role in Center City‘s skyscraper growth. The towers currently stand 61 and 58 stories tall, with angled sharp crowns pointing toward to the sky, one tower capped with a tall and another with a short spire. The project was commissioned by Willard G. Rouse III of Rouse and Associates, who had originally pictured a $150 million 38-story tower rising to a height that measured somewhere under 500 feet. Just days after New Year’s Day in 1984, the building was first discussed in a publication about how Rouse won the bid for the site how it may become the city’s premier office tower. The architect, Helmut Jahn, was selected in March, and had produced a rapid succession of concepts under 500 feet, which eventually evolving well above that height. Today we share exclusive massing concepts of how the skyline would have looked if the towers were built to their originally planned height.

The new Philadelphia skyline. Photo by Thomas Koloski

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

8:00 am on August 19, 2021 By Vitali Ogorodnikov

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.

Philadelphia skyline 2017 from New Jersey. Photo by Thomas Koloski

Looking Back At Developments Under Construction In 2017

7:30 am on August 8, 2021 By Thomas Koloski

Philadelphia has had certain key years when skyscraper construction saw a notable surge, when many developments were underway at the same time. For instance, much of the current Center City skyline took form in and just after 1987. Another key year for construction took place in 2017, when various high-rise projects spanned multiple neighborhoods. Most of these developments stood under 500 feet, with some barely noticeable from afar, yet others added significant bulk to the skyline. The tallest skyscraper under construction was the Comcast Technology Center, the city’s first supertall tower and still the city’s tallest building. In this publication Philadelphia YIMBY looks back to when this collection of developments was underway four years ago.

YIMBY Presents Massing Animations of The Philadelphia Skyline Growth from 1985 to 1990

8:00 am on July 30, 2021 By Thomas Koloski

In recent months, YIMBY shared multiple publications covering the historical status of the Philadelphia skyline. Though our massing renderings have gone all the way back to when City Hall stood alone in the skyline, the modern skyline largely came into being around 30 years ago, when developers finally dared to pass its 548-foot-high William Penn Statue. Philadelphia YIMBY presents our custom animation of the Philadelphia skyline rising between the years 1985 and 1990, when Center City received some of its most iconic skyscrapers.

South to north: 2260, 2411, 2419, 2509 North 7th Street. Credit: Google Maps

Grandeur and Desolation: Four Minor Buildings in North Philadelphia East are Gradually Turning the Tide in a Long-Neglected Neighborhood

7:30 am on July 30, 2021 By Vitali Ogorodnikov

During the postwar period, Philadelphia has undergone a period of depopulation and saw numerous demolitions. Neighborhoods were affected to widely varying degrees, with some remaining largely intact and others losing blocks upon blocks of their housing stock. Thankfully, the trend has reversed back to growth during the past couple of decades. Today we look at how four relatively minor buildings approved at North 7th Street in North Philadelphia East will help turn the tide in a long-neglected neighborhood.

The Laurel Rittenhouse from Washington Square West. Photo by Thomas Koloski

YIMBY Tours the 41st Floor at The Laurel Rittenhouse at 1911 Walnut Street in Rittenhouse Square, Center City

8:00 am on July 28, 2021 By Thomas Koloski

Recently, Philadelphia YIMBY went on a tour of one of the highest condominium floors at The Laurel Rittenhouse, a 48-story residential tower under construction at 1911 Walnut Street in Rittenhouse Square, Center City. Designed by Solomon Cornwell Buenz and developed by Southern Land Company, the skyscraper is nearing its final height of 599 feet, and work is expected to begin soon on the cross-braced crown. The tower will house 185 rental units in the lower portion and 64 condos in the upper section.

Philadelphia skyline 1969. Photo and edit by Thomas Koloski

YIMBY Presents Mockup Time Lapse of the Philadelphia Skyline from 1901 to 2020

8:00 am on July 11, 2021 By Thomas Koloski

YIMBY has presented extensive coverage on the development of the Philadelphia skyline over the decades. In its early years, church steeples, factory chimneys, and shot towers dominated the skyline, rising above numerous low-rise buildings. Office towers began to rise in the early twentieth century, as businesses flocked to Center City, and proliferated more rapidly in the following decades, particularly in the past 40 years. Today we present an animated rendering of the skyline, showing how the mass of skyscrapers had risen from 1901 to 2020. Each frame shows the towers under their current construction status for the year depicted.

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