For the last few years, Arcadia Boutique has held down the retail space at 265 S. 20th St., right on the corner of 20th & Manning, right in the middle of one of our favorite commercial corridors in town. This store, along with their other location in Northern Liberties, offered shoppers clothing, accessories, and gifts with a focus on featuring sustainable designers and “eco-fashion.” But in the middle of last month, Arcadia’s Rittenhouse location closed its doors for good.

The closed store

According to a sign in the window, the space is currently available for sale or lease, though it’s not presently listed anywhere we were able to find online. And as we carelessly neglected to take down the phone number on the sign, we couldn’t even tell you asking prices at this time. Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop us…

Perhaps last weekend you enjoyed a day of music at the Roots Picnic at the Festival Pier. Tonight, you may enjoy the stylings of the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. And maybe you’re like us and still listen to Phrenology once every couple of weeks. No matter, there’s no denying that the Roots have been one of the most impressive musical success stories to come out of Philadelphia in recent decades. And now they’ve been immortalized in a new mural.

New mural

Last week, the latest work from the Mural Arts Program was unveiled in a ceremony in the rear of the World Communications Charter School at Broad & South with guests including the Mayor and most of the band. The artists for the mural are known as Amber Art…

We’ve passed the corner of 21st & Walnut repeatedly in the last few months, wondering when some new tenant would take over the vacant space on the northeast corner, next to Pure Fare. This space was home to Nature’s Gallery Florist for years, until their move down the street back in November.

The space

The handsome new space for the former tenant

The high-trafficked corner space has gotten considerable interest, according to Jackie Balin, the listing broker from Fameco, but nobody has signed on as of yet for this roughly 900 sqft space. No doubt, whoever ultimately takes the space will not want for foot traffic, with Rittenhouse Square just a couple of blocks away and several popular businesses like Vernick, Irish Pub, and Capogiro in the immediate…

At 1836 Delancey St., on the corner of one of the most regal blocks of Center City, sits a property that was given to General George Gordon Meade and his wife for his service in the Civil War. He died in the house in 1872.

The home

The current structure is listed as being built in 1885, indicating this likely isn’t the true iteration of the building the General called home. The plain, red-painted brick building stands as an end cap to the picturesque street, with Meade’s name carved above the entryway on South 19th Street. The haphazard and unkempt paint job, its plain red wall with awkwardly spaced windows, and its overall bleak appearance are out of place for the block. The building retains some early-20th century detail in the partially damaged leaded glass windows. It…

A couple of years ago, we spent a weekend in Montreal and came away totally impressed with Bixi Montreal, their wildly successful bike share program. For those unfamiliar with the concept of a bike share, the idea (at least in Montreal) is that Bixi places corrals of bicycles around town, and individuals are able to rent bikes for up to thirty minutes, returning them to corrals near their destination. Bixi is available with a monthly subscription for locals, or for 24-hour blocks for tourists. With their success, Bixi has expanded to Toronto, Boston, Melbourne, and several other cities around the world.

And why not in Philadelphia? Well, it seems that it’s really just a matter of not yet. According to the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities, the City has plans to launch a bike sharing program by the end of 2014. So it’s…

Since 1989, Scoop DeVille has made its home at 1734 Chestnut St., watching dozens of businesses come and go on the block. But come tomorrow, Scoop DeVille will fade away into ephemera like so many other businesses before it, according to Michael Klein.

Scoop DeVille

Klein writes that the owners of the business are being squeezed out of this space by rising rents, and will be opening a combo breakfast-lunch-ice cream shop called Sophie’s Place in Wayne. As for Center City fans of the establishment, a new Scoop DeVille, under different ownership, is apparently coming to 1315 Walnut St., most recently home to Tutti Frutti and a space that we’ve written about in the past. In the space next door, Potito’s Bakery opened a downtown location since we last visited this…