New South Philly Rowhouse Owner...

[Crystelle]

Joined awhile ago but thanks to insomnia and googling remembered I could search for answers here. House was built about 1910 and I am it's 3rd owner, the first not within the family. I believe (using the city's rowhome guide) I have what is called a "laborman's house". Likely it was part of the tract house movement at the time. I'm struggling with what it might have looked like since it appears as a more well to do family, my owners made a series of upgrades. My kitchen alone had 5 floors and 3 ceilings. Sadly my wide plank floors were hidden below layers of vinyl and on the first floor some termites did damage... after the water damage caused by the removal of the original radiators. Oh for the love of an old house! Well wish me luck. I'll maybe post some interior shots later but they're pretty gnarly...

[Gothichome]

Hello once again Crystal. All our old homes have a history, some not so great, but they can all be remedied with thought and a little bit of effort. You should drop a line off to Devyn at Our Philly Row House.
https://ourphillyrow.com/
He is also. a member of the District, I’m sure he would love to connect.

[1918ColonialRevival]

Welcome. Would love to see some pictures of your house. Nothing is too bad for our eyes!

How many rooms does the rowhouse have and how wide/deep is it? That will help determine the status of the original owners. In Baltimore, the rowhouses range from very simple affairs originally built for workers in the mills and the seaport to large, extravagant attached mansions.

Don't trust city records for the build date. By you saying you have wide plank floors, I would guess your house was built in the 19th Century. Look at other rowhouses in the neighborhood to get an idea of how yours may have looked. Usually, builders didn't vary designs too much, especially in the houses built for the working class. Sanborn insurance maps and old city directories can be helpful in narrowing down a construction date. Also, looking at old census reports on sites such as Ancestry.com can help you research who lived there and when.

[Crystelle]

Hello once again Crystal. All our old homes have a history, some not so great, but they can all be remedied with thought and a little bit of effort. You should drop a line off to Devyn at Our Philly Row House.
https://ourphillyrow.com/
He is also. a member of the District, I’m sure he would love to connect.

Thank you so much I will reach out!

How many rooms does the rowhouse have and how wide/deep is it? That will help determine the status of the original owners. In Baltimore, the rowhouses range from very simple affairs originally built for workers in the mills and the seaport to large, extravagant attached mansions.

I have 3 bedrooms but I believe it was originally 2 and a nursery; the wood flooring in the rear room is amended with much thinner planks which match flooring in the kitchen. Sadly the kitchen was completely unsalvageable and I am forced to use tile there. My lot is quite deep. Even at about 45' deep I still have a sizable patio out back (maybe another 10'). I'm 16' wide. I know that the family came here from Italy and immediately purchased this house and opened a candy business in an area on Broad Street affectionately termed "mansion row". Definitely of the working class I think they were upwardly mobile. I found gold leaf in the original wallpaper behind a door jamb and we discovered gas lighting elements in the bedrooms. My entryway is white carrara marble with purple(?) thresholds. My staircase looks like red oak (an upgrade in a house like this or so I read on another site).

wallpaper front bedroom.jpg (134.46 KiB) Viewed 508 times

[1918ColonialRevival]

If that's it in your avatar, it looks like a working class, or what would be known today as "blue collar" rowhouse. The good thing is, it looks like a style I've seen in other parts of Philly, so even if all of the ones in your block were modernized at some point, there should be some original examples out there to give you an idea of what it looked like. Try to learn who the developer of that neighborhood was and see if they built other blocks. In Baltimore, probably 75% of the rowhouses in the city were built by less than ten builders.

Has the exterior brick been covered over? Hard to tell, but it looks like it may have received something similar to the Formstone treatment that many working and middle class Baltimore rowhouses received between the 1940s and the 1980s.

Based on the lines for gas lighting and the piece of wallpaper uncovered, I would probably date your rowhouse closer to 1900 than 1910, though some localities had dual gas and electric lighting through about 1920. In Baltimore, new gas light installations were just about a thing of the past by 1910. I would assume it was the same in Philadelphia.

Being in Philly, you can likely find some good architectural salvage materials to use that would cost about the same as sourcing new materials. You also have one of the best mom and pop hardware stores I've been to in my life up in the Germantown area - Kilian Hardware. Definitely worth a trip up that way.