Soundgarden Hall is a new music and entertainment venue now operating on the waterfront at Spring Garden Streets and Columbus Boulevard, near Festival Pier.

Members of the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association (NLNA) voted recently to support a proposal for a two-year request for a special assembly license for this music venue for 900 underage music lovers and 500 adults with a BYOB option, making for a total capacity of 1400 at 520 N. Columbus Ave., with provisions. Its restaurant and entertainment zoning was pre-existing, thanks to Club Egypt, which occupied this space for years.

Soundgarden Hall

Those provisions included the likely collection of issues associated with the opening of a large venue: noise, parking, crowds, and security. NLNA requested owners document management and security measures. In two years, owners will have to reappear before the NLNA (and Old City Civic, probably) when the…

If you’ve ever closed down the bar at Tattooed Mom or caught a show at the TLA, you’ve probably tasted the sweet, sweet nectar of a giant slice of Lorenzo and Sons Pizza on a hazy South Street night out. This Philadelphia landmark has been doing its thing for over two decades, with the friendliness of the service only improving marginally over the years. It was a shock when a fire broke out at Lorenzo’s one morning this past June, and folks looking for a greasy nightcap on South Street have been forced to find alternatives ever since.

Lorenzo's

Perhaps even more surprising than the fire itself has been the extended time that’s passed without any apparent progress toward reopening. We recall one night, years ago, waiting on line for a slice and determining that the…

In our last post, we discussed one of Philly’s longer-running venues, the frequently repurposed TLA.  Today, we look into the history of one of the city’s newest venues: Union Transfer, at 1026 Spring Garden St.

Union Transfer

Closeup

The mid-sized music venue has generated a ton of buzz, quickly emerging as one of Philly’s best.  Drawing an impressive list of acts in its first year and providing a beautifully appointed interior, tremendous sound and a smartly-placed back-bar, the building has come a long way since its days as the Spring Garden Market, a name which it held before 1895, according to the photo taken from G.W. Bromley’s Philadelphia Atlas.

In 1895

The 1914 photo here below, taken from the Department of Records, shows the…

South Street’s Theatre of the Living Arts (TLA) has been a mainstay on Philadelphia’s visual and performance art landscape since its founding in 1964.  Though the venue officially became Fillmore Philadelphia at the TLA in 2007, its longstanding moniker is still preferred by just about everybody.  The sentimentality is not misplaced given the building’s important role in its neighborhood’s cultural history.

TLA today

Larger than the surrounding tailors, clothiers and cobblers in its midst, the building constructed in 1908 was called the Crystal Palace. According to Rivest’s Ultimate List of Movie Theatres, this was among more than 100 Nickelodeons that proliferated throughout the city in the aughts and teens.  In 1927, at the start of Hollywood’s Golden Age, RKO-Warner Bros. occupied the building and renamed it the New Palace Theatre.  According to Shawn Evans of PhillyHistory.org, this would make it one of 275 new full-length motion…

Yesterday, after enjoying our Jim’s Steak (whiz wit), we walked up 4th St., passing by the former TLA Video at 517 S. 4th Street.  There was a flurry of construction inside, and it looked like the workers were putting up a partition to split the vacant space into two. The newly divided space looks so narrow, what types of stores could use it?

New interior walls

Image from Google

TLA was located in The Foremost Building, a historic 36,500 square foot building now owned by Scimeca Foundation Inc, out of Media, PA.  Originally a Jewish immigrant hall dating back to 1896, it has been anything and everything from a Jewish newspaper office, to a wedding banquet hall, a produce market, wallpaper factory, to lastly the Foreman Meat Factory, which closed…