We were rolling through the neighborhood the other day and noticed this on the front of 2459-63 Frankford Ave.

Street art

Tentacular!

Looking at the building you’d think it was one property- but it isn’t.

Recently, a buyer purchased the 12 foot-wide section of the building seen on the right, but two additional segments of the building are owned by another party. Hopefully, the new buyer will do some restoration work and inspire the owners of the rest of the building to improve their part of the structure’s facade.

But in the meantime, love the tentacle!

Love the tentacle!

The Fairmount neighborhood has seen plenty of development over the past couple of decades, so much so that north of Fairmount Avenue and west of Corinthian Avenue, it’s rather rare to find new projects and/or blighted properties.

While nearby Francisville has seen action like it was a high school real estate make out party, Fairmount has generally played it very close to the vest recently, with Fairmount Court being one of the few larger developments in the neighborhood in the last couple of years. We have, however, covered a couple of examples of blighted buildings in this neighborhood, notable for their vacancy and poor condition in an otherwise well-maintained neighborhood.

Case in point

The blighted three-story structure at 2619 Brown St. is located at the northeastern intersection of Brown and Taney Streets. On March 20th of this year, L&I posted a notice…

A reader checked in recently, asking about an unusual building in the Fairmount neighborhood. In a neighborhood full of classic, lovely homes, 765 N 26th St. definitely catches your eye as you’re passing by due to both its architecture and its lovely hanging greenery.

The building

According to an old listing, this property was designed by architect Frank Weise, one of the people responsible for the depression of I95 as it passes through Center City. In addition, Mr. Weise was involved with the renovation and restoration of Head House Square in Society Hill in the 1970s. Weise designed several other modernist structures around town, and was known for using curved surfaces, according to his obituary from 2004.

Curved entranceway

Behind this front wall is apparently a former blacksmith’s shop, a stone…

Members of the Fairmount Civic Association are focused on bringing traditional corner commercial spots back to the neighborhood streets both on and away from Fairmount Avenue, the main thoroughfare for the neighborhood.

And while this project, located at the corner of 26th and Poplar Streets, across from Lazo’s Pizza, should it matriculate, remains situated in the early discussion phases, it’s one such example.

The property

Closer look

That’s where we’ve heard the owner of 888 N. 26th St. has expressed interest in converting the site, last used for residential purposes, into a café of sorts. Might we have that long-desired local upscale Fairmount sandwich shop a coming? There’s also an abandoned lot across the street that might arouse some potential interest for activity, if new life comes to this corner. If anything maybe…

A reader reached out to us on Twitter about 2417 Brown St., a blighted property near their house. Located just down the street from the still-being-built Fairmount Court 2.0, this property hasn’t interfered with the efforts to sell these new homes, but as its condition declines, it could become a quality of life issue for people living in the area.

The property

Doors and windows, anyone?

According to out reader, a pigeon infestation indicates that the property is not currently occupied. Looking at the building, our guess was that a tax delinquency could push it to sheriff’s sale. We were surprised to see that it wasn’t delinquent but the reason for this became clear when we noticed that the property is tax exempt. Purchased by John DeLuca in 1948, it has an exemption designation for…

A reader who was enjoying having the city to themselves on this holiday weekend sent us this photo of the Perelman Building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, wondering how someone was able to yarn bomb this building without any interference from the, ahem, authorities.

Awesome

It was only after a little digging that we discovered that this apparent act of subversion was instead an installation in and of itself. According to a post on Architizer,  Elisabeth Agro, Curator of American Craft at the museum, asked artist Jessie Hemmons (Philadelphia’s resident yarn bomber, Ishknits) to create this piece, Craft Spoken Here, for the museum.

Certainly something cool to check out as you wring the last hours out of this long weekend.