I have been hearing of folks wanting to move to philadelphia and it has peaked my curiosity. Anybody know of interesting firms (design/build, multdisciplinary, general good design and so forth)? how about the liveability of philadelphia and how it would compare to other "east coast" cities?
on that note - read recently that philly is the leading city for medical research...that just kind of blew my mind - but with that kind of base
as the foundation for a renaissance seems like you can't go wrong...as
a city, it just feels right...urban, gritty, equal parts decay and activity.
I did some CA work out there and had the opportunity to live there for about a year. Compared to other eastern cities it is very affordable.
Two years ago I wasn't seeing the renaissance much but there is much potential for one. There is an unusual amount of urban decay which gives the entire place the gritty feel. I loved that about it yet wished that some of the decaying neighborhoods weren't so crime laden. Unfortunately, like most major metros, the people are still fleeing up to Bucks County. They public school system is probably the worst in the nation and I wouldn't reccomend living in Philly at all for families and children. That aside there is a good academic community there with the area colleges. I'm not well informed on area firms, especially design build, but there are some very old and well established local firms that do have a good area rep. Best of all is that Philly is so close to everything on the east coast. Easy trip down to DC or up to NYC. Nice location for travel.
Oh, dear, this one may be hard to shut me up about! I moved to Philly ten years ago, from Portland OR, and really hated it at first…but after a couple years of adjusting to the Philly attitude I now love the city and can’t imagine leaving.
It’s a great place for lots of things: lots of architecture jobs, especially in medical/science specialty buildings or historic preservation/contextual work. Lots of large institutions, a concentration of colleges (UPenn, Drexel, Temple, Phila U, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, etc. etc.) means lots of institutional work and lots of young, smart people. It’s a very youthful town, in the way that Portland is and many mid-western cities aren’t.
It actually does remind me a lot of Portland in the early ‘90s. HUGE restaurant scene, growing music scene, growing art scene. Downtown is very cool, and very walkable – small blocks (like PDX), lots of brick, interesting mix of historic and modern buildings. Rowhouses are the norm, and prices for them in center city are rapidly escalating. Again, it’s a very, very walkable city, so living downtown and walking to work is a great pleasure. Not as bike friendly as I’d like, because the drivers are always in a hurry – like everyone on the east coast seems to be – and the streets are narrow. But again, great for walking, and the Fairmount Park/Kelly Drive river walk/bike path is an easy few blocks from downtown.
Very gay friendly, too. Definitely some race relation issues, and the political pay-to-play action can be very disheartening, but West Philly (the neighborhood near UPenn) offers lefty grassroots resistance.
The grittiness is still apparent, in an interesting way, but the downtown core revival is moving quickly outwards into the neighborhoods – you can find new $400,000 rowhouses being built next to crack houses in many of the neighborhoods now – and the new homes are selling while the crack dens are definitely on the way out.
Philly does suffer under an inferiority complex from being so close to NYC – but for those who take advantage it means a $20, 2 hour bus trip makes the galleries, etc. of NYC so accessible, while rent is ¼ that of even Brooklyn these days.
And while A’s comments are fairly accurate, I have a 1 year old and am constantly stunned at the number of strollers and new parent groups and play groups in the park I see in this town. Lots of people are feeling optimistic about raising a kid in the city here – the charter school and magnet school system offers good alternatives to the public schools, some of which are quite good if parents are active in managing their kids’ education.
A few more firms: Wesley Wei architect, and Otto Design Group, very cool design-build.
Wished I had talked to you Liberty Bell before I had my stint out there. Now I'm thinking I should revisit as a tourist to see the changes over the past two years.
While I was there I rented what was basically an old gatehouse on a huge estate up in the Chestnut Hill area. I loved it with the 19th cent. architecture and cobblestone streets. Would spend the weekends running in Fairmount park and enjoyed the pubs in old town.
I didn't however notice a huge youth, 20 something's scene, outside of the universities. Was I in the wrong places or was my head stuck into work too much?
Aug 26, 04 11:27 am ·
·
I was born in North Philadelphia in 1956. I'm living in Olney since 1958. I've seen lots of Philadelphia in my time, and over the last ten to fifteen years I've seen a lot of Philadelphia disappear.
The hilariously imaginative novel of non-existence, THE ODDS OF OTTOPIA, is centered in Philadelphia 2004.
Philadelphia Museum of Art at the head of the Axis of Life
Logan Circle next to Hardian's Tomb
City Hall next to the Tomb of Augustus
Independence Hall and the quondam Liberty Bell Pavillion next the Gardens of Sallust
yeah, my brother is a radio announcer for wysp in philly. he loves the place. the handful of times i have visited him there have been great. nice vibe to the city.
you can't forget in my opinion the best food on the east coast...you walk through the city with a unique smell at every corner...try Tony Lukes (best Cheasesteak in the city) South street is a art Mecca with a very trendy inde flavor! just don't judge it to soon Philly is a city that you need to understand before you fall in love with it. Stay away from the large Arch. firms...althought they have good benefits. the design intent of them in horrible...stay small!
Philly is a fantastic city to live in and to work in - first of all its very affordable, and there are great neighborhoods with loads of character and unique spaces. also a pretty good alternative art/music scene. and TONS of architecture firms. stay away from Kieran TImberlake unless you like the exclusive ivy league thing, Erdy Mchenry is a great place (but they work you like crazy) - Venturi is...well.....its own animal really. are lots of firms doing solid work, if not that cutting edge - AOL-B, voight-mctavish, sandvold-blanda (small, but interesting), and bigger offices like HLM Design and Hillier have offices there as well. MGA partners (used to be Mitchell-Giurgola which is now in NY) is good....and there is a host of others. and philly has great radio stations. i know that sounds like an odd detail, but i lived there for 7 years, and being in NY now....well there is nothing on teh radio of any quality here! ampm -im really familiar with philly architecture scene, so you have any more ques, just ask.
thanks a ton, y'all!
been making a list of potential cities to relocate and philly was on it. did a short visit in june and liked it a lot, but had no archi-info, since the only folks i know there are musicians or physicists!!
ampm, here is a link to last week's article in the City Paper (one of our two big alternative weeklies - the other is Philadelphia Weekly, plus there are lots of other smaller cool papers) about Philadelphia as a place to live:
215 is our area code. The main cover story is the link, and the blue sidebar links you to areas of interest like local beer, arts, music, etc.
This link may self-destruct at midnight tonight, as the new CP comes out on Thursdays...
Sep 22, 04 1:18 pm ·
·
I like getting my soft pretzels from the vendor at Grant and Krewstown Avenues. Tell him the guy with his brother Otto in the white Jeep Cherokee sent you.
Hear COPA's opening new digs just down the street too. How copacetic!
Stand corrected Liberty Bell - regardless....
That article was very interesting about how many old "rust belt" cities must deal with marketing their cities as the US population shift continues to move to the sun belt. Sorry for the pun but I hope Philadelphia can have a "phoenix" of sorts. I also love how they tout the area of being a brewers heaven.
Thanks for the stats, A. But really, if they're including Atlantic City (NOW we're talkin' s**hole cities...) in the Philly area then you might as well include the NYC area as well, only a 30 minute drive farther. Drive two hours out of Phoenix and you get to some gorgeous isolated unspoiled (so far) desert.
I didn't understand beer until I moved to Portland. While Philly does have some very nice local brews - Victory Hop Devil, for example - I miss walking two doors down from my firm in PDX to get a fresh Bridgeport IPA at 5:10 pm every other day.
God...........I really DO miss that.
Anyhow, my mission in moving east was to singlehandedly reverse the flow of easterners flooding my beloved western states. Not working so far, but I see Philly rising in the near future. It has a scrappy underdog attitude that is very cool and unpretentious.
I really enjoyed my time in Philly but was always aghast at the old treasures of building that were always being torn down. Here in MN anything that has some age is always saved for restoration or adaptive re-use. I just didn't see a community committed to that three years ago. As for beer, I had my favorite Irish pub in Old Town but do agree that Portland is the beer lovers capitol of the USA. As far as size of the cities I always look at the east being like one giant city from Boston down to DC. Those stats I don't see eye to eye with on things like including Baltimore in the DC metro and extending the Philly metro halfway across NJ, etc. Isolated cities like Phoenix are easier to determine population and who really cares who is biggest? I'd take the scenic drive west of Philly into the country over the drive outside of Phoenix but to each their own.
I do appreciate your intent on moving east. There is a special place in my heart for the pacific northwest and I think it is being tainted by Californians moving north, in addition to the easterners. I'm not that noble in my residences as I'm purely a carpet bagger and go where the best job is and the economic indicators say things should be good. No west coast cities are on those lists and that isn't stopping the growth of Portland so I don't know what to say.
Oh, and if Philly is going to be rising, what about Pittsburgh?
"Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in-between." James Carville
Sep 23, 04 1:57 pm ·
·
As to so much architecture becoming 'not there,' is it any wonder that http://www.quondam.com originates from a modest rowhome in a Philadelphia neighborhood that most would rather leave behind?
I've lived and worked in Philadelphia almost 50 years now, most of my life, and I never stopped learning more and more.
It's probably safe to say Philadelphia is quondam brewery capital of the USA, ie, all the many, many old breweries are just not there anymore.
And don't even ask where the quondam American Palace Capital of the World is. (I know there's Newport, RI, but a pair of black and white Philadelphia architects designed a bunch of them as well.)
[Hey liberty bell, you have an open invitation to Arbor Street. The trip will be amusingly educational, I'm sure. I especially want more architects to personally see the substantial remains of the 1814 Whitaker Mills stone barn (a rare Philadelphia structure indeed) mostly hidden in Tacony Creek Park.]
Philadelphia?
I have been hearing of folks wanting to move to philadelphia and it has peaked my curiosity. Anybody know of interesting firms (design/build, multdisciplinary, general good design and so forth)? how about the liveability of philadelphia and how it would compare to other "east coast" cities?
Philly is a great city and affordable, with a strong up and coming art and architecture scene
a few of many architects:
Erdy Mchenry Arch
Bolin Cywinski
Kerian Timberlake Harris
can't forget Venturi
Philly seems to be starting a renaissance - like chicago 8 years ago or NYC 12 years ago.
on that note - read recently that philly is the leading city for medical research...that just kind of blew my mind - but with that kind of base
as the foundation for a renaissance seems like you can't go wrong...as
a city, it just feels right...urban, gritty, equal parts decay and activity.
found this yesterday, also a good sign
http://slought.org
also check this activity out
http://www.onionflats.com
I did some CA work out there and had the opportunity to live there for about a year. Compared to other eastern cities it is very affordable.
Two years ago I wasn't seeing the renaissance much but there is much potential for one. There is an unusual amount of urban decay which gives the entire place the gritty feel. I loved that about it yet wished that some of the decaying neighborhoods weren't so crime laden. Unfortunately, like most major metros, the people are still fleeing up to Bucks County. They public school system is probably the worst in the nation and I wouldn't reccomend living in Philly at all for families and children. That aside there is a good academic community there with the area colleges. I'm not well informed on area firms, especially design build, but there are some very old and well established local firms that do have a good area rep. Best of all is that Philly is so close to everything on the east coast. Easy trip down to DC or up to NYC. Nice location for travel.
Oh, dear, this one may be hard to shut me up about! I moved to Philly ten years ago, from Portland OR, and really hated it at first…but after a couple years of adjusting to the Philly attitude I now love the city and can’t imagine leaving.
It’s a great place for lots of things: lots of architecture jobs, especially in medical/science specialty buildings or historic preservation/contextual work. Lots of large institutions, a concentration of colleges (UPenn, Drexel, Temple, Phila U, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, etc. etc.) means lots of institutional work and lots of young, smart people. It’s a very youthful town, in the way that Portland is and many mid-western cities aren’t.
It actually does remind me a lot of Portland in the early ‘90s. HUGE restaurant scene, growing music scene, growing art scene. Downtown is very cool, and very walkable – small blocks (like PDX), lots of brick, interesting mix of historic and modern buildings. Rowhouses are the norm, and prices for them in center city are rapidly escalating. Again, it’s a very, very walkable city, so living downtown and walking to work is a great pleasure. Not as bike friendly as I’d like, because the drivers are always in a hurry – like everyone on the east coast seems to be – and the streets are narrow. But again, great for walking, and the Fairmount Park/Kelly Drive river walk/bike path is an easy few blocks from downtown.
Very gay friendly, too. Definitely some race relation issues, and the political pay-to-play action can be very disheartening, but West Philly (the neighborhood near UPenn) offers lefty grassroots resistance.
The grittiness is still apparent, in an interesting way, but the downtown core revival is moving quickly outwards into the neighborhoods – you can find new $400,000 rowhouses being built next to crack houses in many of the neighborhoods now – and the new homes are selling while the crack dens are definitely on the way out.
Philly does suffer under an inferiority complex from being so close to NYC – but for those who take advantage it means a $20, 2 hour bus trip makes the galleries, etc. of NYC so accessible, while rent is ¼ that of even Brooklyn these days.
And while A’s comments are fairly accurate, I have a 1 year old and am constantly stunned at the number of strollers and new parent groups and play groups in the park I see in this town. Lots of people are feeling optimistic about raising a kid in the city here – the charter school and magnet school system offers good alternatives to the public schools, some of which are quite good if parents are active in managing their kids’ education.
A few more firms: Wesley Wei architect, and Otto Design Group, very cool design-build.
Wished I had talked to you Liberty Bell before I had my stint out there. Now I'm thinking I should revisit as a tourist to see the changes over the past two years.
While I was there I rented what was basically an old gatehouse on a huge estate up in the Chestnut Hill area. I loved it with the 19th cent. architecture and cobblestone streets. Would spend the weekends running in Fairmount park and enjoyed the pubs in old town.
I didn't however notice a huge youth, 20 something's scene, outside of the universities. Was I in the wrong places or was my head stuck into work too much?
I was born in North Philadelphia in 1956. I'm living in Olney since 1958. I've seen lots of Philadelphia in my time, and over the last ten to fifteen years I've seen a lot of Philadelphia disappear.
The hilariously imaginative novel of non-existence, THE ODDS OF OTTOPIA, is centered in Philadelphia 2004.
some excerpts:
God's Bricklayer
party ends with a bang
House in Ottopia 43
bilocation--opening odds of Ottopia
surely touched by Eva Stotesbury
Cenotaph of Gordon Matta-Clark
What's going on down there?
dotting the landscape of Ottopia
Rising Sun and Tabor
Ludwig, Leni and the Lenni-Lenape
playing hooky
Philadelphia Museum of Art at the head of the Axis of Life
Logan Circle next to Hardian's Tomb
City Hall next to the Tomb of Augustus
Independence Hall and the quondam Liberty Bell Pavillion next the Gardens of Sallust
yeah, my brother is a radio announcer for wysp in philly. he loves the place. the handful of times i have visited him there have been great. nice vibe to the city.
you can't forget in my opinion the best food on the east coast...you walk through the city with a unique smell at every corner...try Tony Lukes (best Cheasesteak in the city) South street is a art Mecca with a very trendy inde flavor! just don't judge it to soon Philly is a city that you need to understand before you fall in love with it. Stay away from the large Arch. firms...althought they have good benefits. the design intent of them in horrible...stay small!
Philly is a fantastic city to live in and to work in - first of all its very affordable, and there are great neighborhoods with loads of character and unique spaces. also a pretty good alternative art/music scene. and TONS of architecture firms. stay away from Kieran TImberlake unless you like the exclusive ivy league thing, Erdy Mchenry is a great place (but they work you like crazy) - Venturi is...well.....its own animal really. are lots of firms doing solid work, if not that cutting edge - AOL-B, voight-mctavish, sandvold-blanda (small, but interesting), and bigger offices like HLM Design and Hillier have offices there as well. MGA partners (used to be Mitchell-Giurgola which is now in NY) is good....and there is a host of others. and philly has great radio stations. i know that sounds like an odd detail, but i lived there for 7 years, and being in NY now....well there is nothing on teh radio of any quality here! ampm -im really familiar with philly architecture scene, so you have any more ques, just ask.
thanks a ton, y'all!
been making a list of potential cities to relocate and philly was on it. did a short visit in june and liked it a lot, but had no archi-info, since the only folks i know there are musicians or physicists!!
ampm, here is a link to last week's article in the City Paper (one of our two big alternative weeklies - the other is Philadelphia Weekly, plus there are lots of other smaller cool papers) about Philadelphia as a place to live:
Marketing 215
215 is our area code. The main cover story is the link, and the blue sidebar links you to areas of interest like local beer, arts, music, etc.
This link may self-destruct at midnight tonight, as the new CP comes out on Thursdays...
I like getting my soft pretzels from the vendor at Grant and Krewstown Avenues. Tell him the guy with his brother Otto in the white Jeep Cherokee sent you.
Hear COPA's opening new digs just down the street too. How copacetic!
Phoenix is poised to surpass Philly as the #5 big city in the USA? Gasp! Phoenix is one s**t hole of a city if I've ever been to one.
Clarification: It is poised to overcome Philly in size of CITY. But in size of metropolitan area, it lags waaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind.
I shouldn't harsh on Phx too much as I grew up there, but when I think of what the word "city" means the permagrid of Phx is not even close.
Size as far as cities go something like -
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html
Size as far as metro areas go like -
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/United_States_metropolitan_area
Stand corrected Liberty Bell - regardless....
That article was very interesting about how many old "rust belt" cities must deal with marketing their cities as the US population shift continues to move to the sun belt. Sorry for the pun but I hope Philadelphia can have a "phoenix" of sorts. I also love how they tout the area of being a brewers heaven.
Thanks for the stats, A. But really, if they're including Atlantic City (NOW we're talkin' s**hole cities...) in the Philly area then you might as well include the NYC area as well, only a 30 minute drive farther. Drive two hours out of Phoenix and you get to some gorgeous isolated unspoiled (so far) desert.
I didn't understand beer until I moved to Portland. While Philly does have some very nice local brews - Victory Hop Devil, for example - I miss walking two doors down from my firm in PDX to get a fresh Bridgeport IPA at 5:10 pm every other day.
God...........I really DO miss that.
Anyhow, my mission in moving east was to singlehandedly reverse the flow of easterners flooding my beloved western states. Not working so far, but I see Philly rising in the near future. It has a scrappy underdog attitude that is very cool and unpretentious.
I really enjoyed my time in Philly but was always aghast at the old treasures of building that were always being torn down. Here in MN anything that has some age is always saved for restoration or adaptive re-use. I just didn't see a community committed to that three years ago. As for beer, I had my favorite Irish pub in Old Town but do agree that Portland is the beer lovers capitol of the USA. As far as size of the cities I always look at the east being like one giant city from Boston down to DC. Those stats I don't see eye to eye with on things like including Baltimore in the DC metro and extending the Philly metro halfway across NJ, etc. Isolated cities like Phoenix are easier to determine population and who really cares who is biggest? I'd take the scenic drive west of Philly into the country over the drive outside of Phoenix but to each their own.
I do appreciate your intent on moving east. There is a special place in my heart for the pacific northwest and I think it is being tainted by Californians moving north, in addition to the easterners. I'm not that noble in my residences as I'm purely a carpet bagger and go where the best job is and the economic indicators say things should be good. No west coast cities are on those lists and that isn't stopping the growth of Portland so I don't know what to say.
Oh, and if Philly is going to be rising, what about Pittsburgh?
"Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in-between." James Carville
As to so much architecture becoming 'not there,' is it any wonder that http://www.quondam.com originates from a modest rowhome in a Philadelphia neighborhood that most would rather leave behind?
I've lived and worked in Philadelphia almost 50 years now, most of my life, and I never stopped learning more and more.
It's probably safe to say Philadelphia is quondam brewery capital of the USA, ie, all the many, many old breweries are just not there anymore.
And don't even ask where the quondam American Palace Capital of the World is. (I know there's Newport, RI, but a pair of black and white Philadelphia architects designed a bunch of them as well.)
[Hey liberty bell, you have an open invitation to Arbor Street. The trip will be amusingly educational, I'm sure. I especially want more architects to personally see the substantial remains of the 1814 Whitaker Mills stone barn (a rare Philadelphia structure indeed) mostly hidden in Tacony Creek Park.]
I'm living in Philly right now and I have to say, this place is pretty boring!
Raton, do happen to go to UPenn? I could see how that would cause boredom. Otherwise, you have no excuse.
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