So many housing typologies, so little time

I promise I won’t always have such nerdy or alienating post titles 

Anyway, wow - I’m super excited about having this blog. I’ve already had 104 hits since launching it yesterday.  Thanks all for reading it, and for those of you on the east coast I hope that you’re not getting washed away in this crazy rainstorm we are having.  I’m going to continue to blog about my ride a few days ago all throughout South Philly.  A little background not mentioned before - the idea for this bike ride is a variation of one of my favorite rides that I have in the city.  Since the Schuylkill trail is so successful that it’s hard to bike up and down sometimes I really enjoy taking the 25^th Street viaduct south until the end, cycle around Girard Park and then on to FDR Park (near the stadiums) where there’s an awesome 1⅔ mile loop road.  I loop that a few times and then head back home.  The second half of my ride a few days ago I detoured through many residential neighborhoods.  Some I knew existed, others I’ve never been through.  Here is a map of the rest of the route:

As mentioned before, part of my favorite ride is biking around Girard Park, Located just a block north of Oregon between 21^st and 22^nd.  This is because the houses surrounding the park and to the blocks east are some of the only example of Arts and Crafts architecture in the city. However, these are not the typical bungalows but architectural variations on Philadelphia duplexes. Where West Philly has Italianate, Victorian and Second Empire duplexes; Girard Estates contains Bungalow, Prairie and Mission style houses.  Anyone that knows me well knows that my dream house to have an Arts and Crafts bungalow and this is the closest thing I can get in the city.  The house below would do just fine:

Interestingly these houses were built as rental houses by the city in the early 20^th century and the sold in the 1950 for private residences.  The whole area has the name Girard Estates because Stephen Girard’s country estate was here and he willed the land over to the city. His house still stands in the middle of his namesake park, amongst mature broad-leafed trees.  I admit, I looked at Wikipedia for that factoid. 

After my jaunt through Girard Estates, I continued down Moyamensing Ave as it turns into Penrose.  Penrose surprisingly has bike lanes.  Why a six lane road that looks like an industrial/suburban wasteland and leads to a bridge that no pedestrian or bike dare to cross needs bike lanes is beyond me.  I’m probably the only person that has ever taken advantage of them.  Seeing that I was on the right side of the road and it’s hard to cross a practical freeway I turned right into one of the more ridiculous places I’ve been.  Siena Place is a housing development that looks as if it’s been stalled since the housing bubble crash. There was a model house, a street of unfinished townhouses, several poorly paved streets and a cop.  See below, one can be yours for a meager $389,000. Ha.

I continued to bike down my new found street as there was a cool railroad bridge (it turned out not to be that cool). As soon as I was under it I found myself on northbound lanes of the I-95/ I-76 connector, 26^th street; right across from Sunoco’s refinery.  Naturally I took another picture, fuckers.

Opting not to travel on 26^th Street I headed back to Penrose, turned left and almost biked right onto I-76.  Thank GOD for those big striped buffers. On the other side of Penrose is Siena Place’s grown up cousin, The Villas and Regency at Packer Park.  I’ve seen this development before on my way to FDR park and always thought how creepy it was that such suburban style development could exist in South Philly.  Then again I live next to Naval Square.  While Naval Square seems like a refuge for people from the Pennsylvania suburbs, the vinyl clad dormitories at Packer Park are definitely respite for those from Jersey.  I counted at least 5 fountains in people “front yards.” Needless to say it felt like I was biking around the “neighborhoods” near my high school than South Philly. 

After traveling through FDR Park (I’m saving that for its own post, plus this one is getting way to long) park I headed west on McKean St. and up towards the PHA housing that is on the east side of I-76.  It looked just the same as Siena Villas and Regency at Placeless Park, only I highly doubt these places sold in the upper 300s. There is also the most postmodern high school I’ve seen in a while and the remains of a failed pedestrian bridge across the freeway.

While biking home I ran across these funny looking domiciles.  Someone forgot the second or third floors. 

Thanks for reading my rambles.  I hope that ya’ll are enjoying this blog.