HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVE

"Mansion Row", North 32nd Street, Strawberry Mansion Historic District, Philadelphia

Earlier this year Philadelphia’s City Council final gave approval to Mayor John Street’s ambitious Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI) by authorizing the issuance of $300 million in bonds over five years and approving a $65 million budget for the program’s first year. Although most of the discussion about NTI has focused on the plans to demolish 14,000 vacant structures throughout the city (2,000 in the first year), the program itself is much broader and more complex.

NTI’s basic goals are to eliminate vacant and dangerous buildings that are blighting influences on the city’s neighborhoods and provide support for neighborhood preservation initiatives in so-called transitional neighborhoods—those neighborhoods that have a low number of vacant units and stable housing market values. One of the goals of the demolition component of the program is to also assemble parcels of vacant land of sufficient size to attract traditional developers to create market rate housing for homeownership.

While the goals of NTI are admirable, and appropriate to conditions in many of the city’s neighborhoods, the implementation of the program presents both dangers and opportunities for historic preservation. The dangers for historic preservation became readily apparent when the City designated the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood as its first target area and released its initial list of properties to be demolished. The section of Strawberry Mansion selected lies between 31st and 33rd streets adjacent to East Fairmount Park.

Virtually the entire area consists of distinctive historic houses built primarily at the end of the 19th century. Blocks along Diamond Street contain distinctive rows of brownstones, a section along 32nd Street referred to as Mansion Row contains an extraordinarily handsome group of ochre brick twin houses, so significant it has been designated as a National Register Historic District. The housing stock of the rest of the area represents a range of exuberant Victorian housing styles with bay windows, corner turrets, generous porches and rich architectural details.

NTI proposes to demolish 150 vacant houses in this section of Strawberry Mansion but thus far has only provided information on the 45 specific buildings targeted for demolition – two of which are in the National Register District.

In response to community concerns, a number of neighborhood meetings have been held to review the demolition proposal and thus far no demolition activities have occurred, except along 31st Street. The Preservation Alliance, with the assistance of the AIA Community Design Collaborative, examined the 45 properties proposed for demolition. While many, especially those along 31st Street merit demolition, the majority of properties consist of distinctive historic houses which, ideally, should be preserved and protected for future redevelopment.

Theses conditions are not unique to Strawberry Mansion. They exist in many sections of North Philadelphia west of Broad Street, as well as in areas farther north along Erie Avenue (also an NTI target area) and are likely to exist in many other neighborhoods targeted by NTI. These areas represent the neighborhoods which came into existence in the late 19th century when the city expanded greatly as a result of Philadelphia’s prominence as an industrial center. This expansion brought with it many sections of simple row houses for factory workers, but also lead to the substantial development of neighborhoods with houses designed in elaborate Victorian styles for the growing middle class. Although historic Philadelphia is generally thought of in terms of its 18th century neighborhoods, representative of the Colonial period, Philadelphia’s collection of 19th century architecture is far more extensive and in many respects far more significant to the character of the city as a whole.

NTI provides funds to encapsulate buildings that merit preservation and to preserve them for future use. However, while the funds allocated for demolition are extensive, the funds available for encapsulation are limited and provide for only an average of 20 buildings per target neighborhood. NTI’s criteria for use of encapsulation funds are quite narrow, and do not include historic preservation as a primary consideration. Vacant houses must be capable of full rehabilitation for market rate housing within a reasonable period of time (two to three years) or be strategic properties in the center of otherwise intact blocks.

The staff of the NTI program are well aware of the dilemmas posed by historic preservation issues. They have been open to discussions with the Preservation Alliance regarding these issues. The Alliance has also consulted with the National Trust for Historic Preservation which is also concerned about the impact of NTI on historic properties. However, to date, neither the Alliance nor NTI has been able to establish a way to effectively preserve and protect that large number of historic buildings that deserve to be saved from demolition.

On the other side of the coin, the NTI program provides new resources for preservation of historic housing in neighborhoods of the city where vacancy is not as great. In these areas NTI funds are being used to expand publicly supported home improvement and rehabilitation fund programs and to expand the income limits for eligibility. These programs, operated through local banks, provide a new opportunity for owners and purchasers of historic properties to obtain funds for home improvements and restoration. From the historic preservation perspective, this offers a new resource for preservation of historic housing in many Philadelphia neighborhoods.