Hello from Philadelphia!

[Big Blue]

True, that, Don M!

[Nicholas]

Ahh....the typical, Philadelphia, not quite a rowhouse...rowhouse. I knew of many like this. Quaint and cozy.

[Big Blue]

Yep! That is very much what it is, Nicholas! They (realtors) always refer to these single, narrow homes as "farmhouses" around here.


There are many scattered about the area, all very much the same, most with a setback from the street of at least a small front yard, others up on big slopes with tall Wissahickon schist retaining walls, and others like ours built right on the street.

I watched over the spring and summer as one almost just like ours had the roof raised and a third floor added, as well as a huge addition to the back complete with a garage below it, cut from the earth. The slope down that driveway was way steep! No idea how they are getting out of there once it snows!

The whole thing must have cost a fortune. It was pretty interesting to watch the project happen, thats for sure!

Ours is about 1050 square ft, or 1200 or so, depending on what document ya read... kind of like the age!
And, not at all what we pictured ourselves in, quite frankly. We were looking for an old stone or brick garage/warehouse to convert to a live work space, and just happened upon the listing and decided to take a look.

The crank in the greenhouse sealed the deal!

And yes, Gothichome, I would agree about the age and style of the door. There are a few eastlake style hardware pieces inside, and some in the greenhouse, and I couldn't quite figure if they and the front door were added on to "dress it up" at some point, or if they were original... but the dates didn't quite mesh. And the back door had the same detail as the front on the framing, so having it been added later didn't make sense to me as they would not have done the back door to match had that been the case.

We liked those few small details, though. It had enough original details that we thought it charming, but a few things changed that we felt like we could make it our own without feeling bad about making changes that were personal ourselves. I so, SO wish I had more of the original windows though.

Mostly, I'd like to restore the windows and replace a few missing doors, and keep it in line with the era, as well as replace/fix the few plaster issues and address getting the foundation repaired correctly. The kitchen had all been redone prior, so if we change that it may be not exactly period.

It is constructed like a row, with the side walls bearing the load, so any interior walls could be altered. I'm pretty sure had we not purchased it, it would have been gutted to be one clear span upstairs and down, and lost any character it originally had.

It has 3 pass thru bedrooms upstairs, the smallest in the back now divided into two rooms when it got it's indoor plumbing. It's not a period style bathroom, however. And in need of some serious work, to boot.

Downstairs is livingroom, dining then kitchen. Originally I think they had a small vestibule (very small) inside the front door, but still unsure of that. I know a neighbor had one she thought to be original, now removed.

I'm going to try and visit the city archives and see if I can get some more info about the block as a whole, and the house. I'm hoping to find that it has a cistern somewhere for rainwater collection that may be useable, as I know the street on the old maps I was shown had no sewer or water, then sewer at one point and finally water lines run.

The good thing is that it is built like a row, but has a lot that is considered triple wide, which is what made it so attractive to us.

I love our little house!

[Kmarissa]

Very cool house and greenhouse! It may not be terribly fancy, but it's still a little slice of history. In fact, it sometimes seems that the humbler, more everyday parts of our history have a way of getting lost more often than the big, fancy parts.

If you're still battling those ants, I've had great luck with Terro ant poison, which is borax-based.

[Big Blue]

Kmarissa, I agree with you. This section of Philadelphia has a ton of history attached to it. Many historical sites and buildings up and down Germantown Avenue that have deep connections and historical roots. I have always loved it here and never take for granted all the rich history and architecture that surrounds me, not to mention the parks and arboretums, and the old cemeteries and such.

For good measure, two of my favorite places: Lower Burial Ground, Hood Cemetery http://www.hoodcemetery.org
and the Wyck House, the oldest established, continuous Rose garden in the United States
http://wyck.org (I love to volunteer there every so often, wish I had more time to do it more frequently!)

But I also see the importance and beauty found elsewhere, aside from the stately manor houses. I'm equally fascinated with the "workingman's cottages", rows and rows of mill workers, weavers homes, and blue collar, regular people's homes. To me, these blocks are just as beautiful and meaningful in the same way. Heck, I'm a regular person, and I count, so why shouldn't these slices of history count, too? I'm lucky to live in such a rich, diverse area and have so many different little pieces of history around me that I can appreciate every day. It's a window into a time long gone, but that show so many different types of architecture and ways of living. Philadelphia's "trinity" homes are equally as fascinating to me as the largest Society Hill/Rittenhouse Square monster-sized "row houses"!

I take none of it for granted, and am just as pleased and proud of our little slice of history and its humbleness as I am proud of big landmarks such as Rittenhouse Town (site of Americas first paper mill) and the Germantown White House, (the Deshler-Morris house, where George Washington escaped yellow fever and used as a summer home on one occasion).

Without the surrounding "regular peoples homes" interspersed with the mansions, the area would be far less interesting, and have much less charm. Even the changes through the years as new (old) homes and rows were constructed and took the place of large estates is fascinating to me, and how the city evolved decade by decade as the times changed.

I hate to see these humble, smaller types of homes lost to gutting and flipping, general disrepair and new construction. It all takes away from the grand picture of the city and how it grew into what it is today. Places like these may not be on historic registers, but I do believe they have significance, too.

As far as the ants, I tried Terro and it works great, but we had several types of ants, all wanting a different kind of bait (of which I tried 4 or 5). In the end I had to resort to the big guns and spray the perimeter foundation with a professional insecticide. I hated doing it, but nothing else was working. I was as careful as possible and used the bare minimum recommended concentration to be effective for ants.

We are finally seeing results. Which is great, so we can start to move on to repairing the issues that were causing the problems in the first place. Joists and sill plates in basement that went unattended for too long with moisture issues. Never had any major water in the basement, but had seepage along one wall at the base that I felt could be easily fixed, given it was minimal. I'd seen much, much worse.Overflowing downspout now unblocked working well, so starting to dry up. Basement windows cemented over, causing way too little ventilation. Poor mortar patches outside in the foundation coming loose compounded the problem. Each piece added to, or was a result of, each other. All inviting the ant problem which was way out of hand. With them taken care of or at least in control, we can asses what needs doing so much easier and try and start making it happen!

Edited to fix hood burial ground link

[Gothichome]

Big blue, I commend you on your thoughts on the history of area rather than just the home. I have traveled a lot and have seen many towns, they all have the same basic bevelopemental history. You can see it in rings of bevelopemental as you go from the inner city to the outskirts. Starting in the centre of town the old industries that were centred thier all had thier residential areas, let's call them workers homes, most were located within walking distance of thier place of work. The owners with thier large homes were generally located on the other side of the inner core, maybe a short carriage ride away. As the town grew and you get further away from the core, public transit allowed working folks to live a little further out, the style and of home changed a little bit, but they all still worked in the inner districts. Interesting though is the sudden change, with personal transportation and the rising standard of living for the working classes let's say early teens. Now you get small properties with small homes, the noticeable difference is the lack of workers row housing. The owners still lived on the other side of town, maybe selling off thier homes and building larger further out. You can easily see the change in the street scape. One side of the road will be noticeably different than the other. In the years after, say the thirties, because of the distance from the core I see small suburban cores popping up. The DT, and inner core warehouse/ industrial no longer the focus of commuting workers. This too is easily noticed by the average home of the working folks getting just a little bit more fancy, story book cottage styles spring to mind. After that, after WW2 you see industries starting to move to the outer fringes of towns and cities. With more livable area for thier workers in the late fourties you get the start of urban expansion. And suburbs as we know of them today. Now it has been my observation though, that this pattern only exists in cities. In the smaller towns though you can almost date the period the town stopped growing and stalled by the number of developmental rings and home styles at the fringes of those towns. It's all interesting as history, and the in the context of our homes we so lovingly( or begrudgingly) put our efforts into. We have an architectural historian who visits, he may have more to add. History is not boring, it's just a story waiting to be told.

[Nicholas]

Hey Blue,

Although I have ties to both North Philly and Germantown, I grew up in the one of the last, prewar, city style rowhouse neighborhoods in the Northeast. 2 Blocks north of where I grew up, it looks more like suburbia.

One of the interesting things about the growth of the city is the way it incorporated some old towns into the city as it grew to encompass what used to be Philadelphia county. One is Fox Chase, which still has an inn built in 1683:

Google Street View: Fox Chase Inn

And Holmesburg, which was the site of a Welsh Mill at Pennypack Creek that dates to the 1600's, and has a bridge crossing the creek that was commissioned by William Penn, to have a better crossing across the creek on "Kings Highway", now Frankford Avenue, which at the time was the main road to New York.



Then of course there is the Ryers Mansion, on Cottman avenue in Burholme: