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Today's big discount department stores do combine five (or more) stores that would have been separate in the 1920s and still are today — dry goods*, grocer, drugstore, hardware store, furniture store — but the department stores (*many of which originated as "dry goods" retailers) of the 1920s already had sections that sold domestics (linens/bed/bath), appliances, housewares, furniture and even food (though not as much of it as one would later find in those new supermarkets). So the difference between today's department stores and the ones of the 1920s isn't as great as I think you portray it here.
As MDAllstar or maybe one of the posters who followed up on his OP pointed out, on Philadelphia's Market Street east of City Hall in the 1920s, one would have found six department stores: Lit Brothers, Gimbels (which was based in Philadelphia even though it's more closely associated with New York), Strawbridge & Clothier, Frank & Seder, Snellenburg's and John Wanamaker.
Within a decade of the year that photo was taken, one of them — Strawbridge's — did two things that sort of mirror the debate we're having here: built a new, much larger store at 8th and Market streets, the city's principal shopping intersection (Lits and Gimbels also had their stores at this intersection), and opened its first branch store (three years after the 8th and Market store opened) in suburban Ardmore, followed shortly by a second in Jenkintown.
Put slightly differently, the seeds were being planted for the end of downtown's dominance at the same time as those pictures were shot. Work started on the nation's first planned suburban shopping center, Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, in 1921; four years later, the city's premier department store would open a branch there. Suburban Square in Ardmore, where Strawbridge's opened its first branch, welcomed its first stores in 1928. And so on.
The downtowns of those cities that had sizable residential districts either within them or close to them — Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia — seem to have weathered that era of dispersal better than many others, which suggests that MDAllstar's argument that boosting the residential population of downtowns will stabilize them now has more than a little merit.
And even though downtown living has been a minority preference for some time and will remain so for the forseeable future at the very least, this is a country of hundreds of millions of people, and it won't take all that many of them to support a vibrant downtown. Even the kids who emulate "Friends" after graduating college, then head for the land of lawns after they pair off, will continue to play a role in that.
To provide some visual evidence of the changes being discussed here, I took some pictures of the very block of Market Street MDAllstar featured when I went down to the Reading Terminal Market to pick up produce today. (jjbradleynyc and others: The great in-city public markets — Seattle's Pike Place and Philadelphia's Reading Terminal are perhaps the two best known — are indeed tourist draws, but they also manage to retain the affection and patronage of many locals, a lot of whom will travel into the city to shop them the way they once did the department stores. [I was a poster boy for a mid-2000s RTM marketing campaign that featured the faces of regular shoppers from all over the area; one of my fellow "faces of the RTM" lived in Bear, Del., and others lived in the northern 'burbs and on the Main Line.])
The RTM sits one-half block north of this block, beneath the former Reading Terminal trainshed (which is now part of a huge convention center just to its north). I couldn't shoot the photos from the same angle, as there are no longer buildings from which I could shoot a photo of the 1200 block from their upper floors, but these photos should offer you some point of reference for comparison. As there aren't lots of offices in this part of Center City, the traffic during the week is pretty close to what you see here on a Saturday:
One of the office buildings, which houses offices of Jefferson Health System, is in the first photo on the right, next to the Pennsylvania Convention Center Market Street entrance (former Reading Terminal headhouse). Snellenburg's, across the street in the 1920s, closed in 1962; the bottom two floors of the old store were left standing afterward. Those floors got demolished to make way for the two apartment-over-retail towers on the left (with the big Jumbotron billboards, installed under a city ordinance that promoted billboards on Market east of City Hall ("East Market" or "Market East") as a way of enlivening the street), part of a six-building development that includes a hotel, a building devoted to the design trades, and another Jefferson medical office building (the sixth building is on hold until conditions warrant it). Thomas Jefferson University Hospital sits one block southeast of this one.
The third building on the left is the Loews Hotel (nee Philadelphia Saving Fund Society building). Designed by local architects Howe & Lescaze in 1932, it's considered the first "International Style" modernist skyscraper in the United States. The building to its right is the headquarters of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA).
Clearly, foot traffic is nowhere near what it was in the 1920s, even though the same transit routes serve the street (buses have replaced the trolleys and a subway line runs under Market Street). But it's enough to keep the businesses there in good shape. But perhaps worth noting is that behind where I'm standing in the first photo is a three-block-long indoor shopping mall that just got a makeover intended to revive it, as traffic inside it (save for the below-ground floor that connects to the Reading Terminal's successor train station, a hub for SEPTA Regional Rail) has been anemic for decades. The Philadephia 76ers anniounced a couple of months ago that they want to build a new arena in place of the western end of this mall, which I take as a sign that the makeover hasn't really brought people back inside.
Apropos of nothing else in this post: jjbradleynyc, I imagine you're aware that Brooklynites have been moving to Philadelphia in non-trivial numbers over the past two decades plus. It seems that the level of urban amenities in Philadelphia is high enough to satisfy them while the rents and house prices are significantly lower. I joke that "the Brooklynites figured out they were paying New York prices for the Philadelphia experience and figured it would make more sense to pay Philadelphia prices for it." (Net migration between Philadelphia and Manhattan is towards Manhattan; it's net towards Philadelphia from the other four boroughs, but the net numbers moving from Brooklyn exceed those of the other three combined.)
When did Center City reach its highest density? Is population density in Center City higher now than in 1950? I think Center City has done the most office-to-residential conversion over the last 20 years and the density in Center City is proof of that. Downtown DC has been very office centric over the last 50 years and this new era is unchartered waters for downtown DC with all the office-to-residential conversion.
For most cities, the infrastructure is already there in the downtown core. There are tons of buildings already built waiting to be converted. This is why I asked the question. Look at this picture of downtown DC below. Now imagine the density if many of these buildings are converted to residential:
IMO that Street View from last summer along West 34th Street backs up the argument that we will never see the level of pedestrian activity we saw in the 1920s in most American downtowns.
After All, Midtown Manhattan didn't lose its shopping — Gimbels went under, but as the Street View shows, other stores took its place, and Macy's remains an anchor. The number of office workers nearby fell with the onset of COVID, but the area still has lots of people living around it. Yet the streets aren't packed with throngs of people, though you do see more of them than you do in most American CBDs at midday.
As for downtowns becoming neighborhoods again: I'm fortunate to live in one of those older cities whose downtown never ceased to be one. Market Street today sure doesn't look like that now, and the office canyon west of City Hall has less foot traffic now than it did pre-COVID — though some residential buildings (both new and converted) have kept it from falling off a cliff. But most of the streets of Center City Philadelphia have about the same level of activity that view of 34th Street shows. And that may be the best we might expect going forward in the cities that are already multifunction neighborhoods.
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Another city that is frequently assumed to be at the top of "vibrant downtowns" is San Francisco. Here is a recent scene from the center of their downtown, between two subway stations (if you believe I "cherry picked" a spot, just keep scrolling down the street):
Along with cities already mentioned... Chicago!!! The Loop is already awesome, but it will only get better this millenium.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Losfrisco
Another city that is frequently assumed to be at the top of "vibrant downtowns" is San Francisco. Here is a recent scene from the center of their downtown, between two subway stations (if you believe I "cherry picked" a spot, just keep scrolling down the street):
When did Center City reach its highest density? Is population density in Center City higher now than in 1950? I think Center City has done the most office-to-residential conversion over the last 20 years and the density in Center City is proof of that. Downtown DC has been very office centric over the last 50 years and this new era is unchartered waters for downtown DC with all the office-to-residential conversion.
For most cities, the infrastructure is already there in the downtown core. There are tons of buildings already built waiting to be converted. This is why I asked the question. Look at this picture of downtown DC below. Now imagine the density if many of these buildings are converted to residential:
I would have to do some digging to find out the historical changes in density of Center City Philadelphia. but since that part of the city AFAIK has not lost population since 1950, when the city as a whole began the six-decade-long slide that saw 25 percent of its 1950 population leave it, I suspect that the answer to your question is, It's at its peak population density right now. The blocks to its south and north — the ones the Center City District has been calling "Greater Center City" since the 1990s — have likewise gained population for the last three decades, and the total population of this area now stands somewhere around 220k.
And not only have there been a good number of older office buildings converted to residences but also many brand-new buildings have been added to the housing stock, like the two on Market Street in that photo I posted. (Beyond some small hotels, I'm pretty sure that the residential population of Market Street in the 1920s was zero west of Sixth Street, or close to it.) As I type this, one high-rise apartment building is about halfway to topping off in the block bounded by 11th, 12th, Chestnut and Walnut (where the upper floors of every commercial building still standing have been converted to apartments), and cranes have gone up to begin work on two more bouldings nearby, one of which replaces a one-story Wendy's and a few adjacent buildings in that same block and the other of which is located in the block below it on 12th Street and replaces several other low-rise commercial buildings (and is bracketed by two earlier commercial-to-residential over retail conversions of older buildindgs).
Put another way, even if the foot traffic on Market is well below where it was in the 1920s, Center City Philadelphia may be one of the strongest cases in support of your proposition.
The scene I linked a) has clearly visible pedestrian walkways b) is in the center of downtown, and c)between two subway stations. We have a myriad of threads on this site where SF is boosted to the top of US downtowns.
Seems like you shouldn't have to hunt and peck "for that one spot where the people are" there.
I would have to do some digging to find out the historical changes in density of Center City Philadelphia. but since that part of the city AFAIK has not lost population since 1950, when the city as a whole began the six-decade-long slide that saw 25 percent of its 1950 population leave it, I suspect that the answer to your question is, It's at its peak population density right now. The blocks to its south and north — the ones the Center City District has been calling "Greater Center City" since the 1990s — have likewise gained population for the last three decades, and the total population of this area now stands somewhere around 220k.
And not only have there been a good number of older office buildings converted to residences but also many brand-new buildings have been added to the housing stock, like the two on Market Street in that photo I posted. (Beyond some small hotels, I'm pretty sure that the residential population of Market Street in the 1920s was zero west of Sixth Street, or close to it.) As I type this, one high-rise apartment building is about halfway to topping off in the block bounded by 11th, 12th, Chestnut and Walnut (where the upper floors of every commercial building still standing have been converted to apartments), and cranes have gone up to begin work on two more bouldings nearby, one of which replaces a one-story Wendy's and a few adjacent buildings in that same block and the other of which is located in the block below it on 12th Street and replaces several other low-rise commercial buildings (and is bracketed by two earlier commercial-to-residential over retail conversions of older buildindgs).
Put another way, even if the foot traffic on Market is well below where it was in the 1920s, Center City Philadelphia may be one of the strongest cases in support of your proposition.
Agreed! I think Center City became a residential neighborhood out of necessity because the office market struggled over the last few decades. Cities like DC, Chicago, San Fran, Boston, and NYC have been gateway office markets for so long that office buildings were still very profitable and class B and C office buildings could be converted to class A office buildings with high demand. That has now changed in a big way which creates an incredible opportunity for residential growth in the office cores of those cities and many cities around America.
DC has almost 200 million sq. feet of office space in 61 sq. miles when counting private and federal office space. The residential conversions are being announced almost monthly right now. Office owners are even handing their office buildings back to their lenders. It's called a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure agreement with the lender. The lenders are offering the office buildings for sale at a discount marketing them as office-to-residential conversions.
I think over the next year, many other cities will see a flood of office-to-residential conversions being announced. We will be looking at very different downtowns in the future. One of the biggest changes will probably be multiple grocery stores opening in downtowns all over America over the next decade to support the new residential population. That will make downtowns around the country livable and create an entire new world. They will become neighborhoods.
Last edited by MDAllstar; 10-02-2022 at 09:37 AM..
Agreed! I think Center City became a residential neighborhood out of necessity because the office market struggled over the last few decades. Cities like DC, Chicago, San Fran, Boston, and NYC have been gateway office markets for so long that office buildings were still very profitable and class B and C office buildings could be converted to class A office buildings with high demand. That has now changed in a big way which creates an incredible opportunity for residential growth in the office cores of those cities and many cities around America.
DC has almost 200 million sq. feet of office space in 61 sq. miles when counting private and federal office space. The residential conversions are being announced almost monthly right now. Office owners are even handing their office buildings back to their lenders. It's called a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure agreement with the lender. The lenders are offering the office buildings for sale at a discount marketing them as office-to-residential conversions.
I think over the next year, many other cities will see a flood of office-to-residential conversions being announced. We will be looking at very different downtowns in the future. One of the biggest changes will probably be multiple grocery stores opening in downtowns all over America over the next decade to support the new residential population. That will make downtowns around the country livable and create an entire new world. They will become neighborhoods.
Already happening here.
The Giant Company (aka Giant of Carlisle, Pa., corporate stablemate of Landover, Md.-based Giant Food Stores — Ahold Delhaize owns both) has been expanding aggressively within the Philadelphia city limits with both full-line supermarkets and small-format stores called Giant Heirloom Markets.
The largest of the latter opened about nine months ago on the street floor of the former Strawbridge & Clothier store at the northwest corner of 8th and Market. Two more Giant Heirloom stores have been in business for four to five years serving "Greater Center City"; one is located at 23rd and South streets, serving the Fitler Square, Rittenhouse Square and "Graduate Hospital" neighborhoods; the other, on North 4th Street just below Spring Garden Street, serves Northern Liberties, one of the "Greater Center City" neighborhoods along with Graduate Hospital.
The chain has also opened two full-size stores in this territory. The first, at 23d and Arch streets, is in Center City proper and located on the second floor of a new two-tower apartment complex called Riverwalk. This store has a food court with cafe seating overlooking the Schuylkill and 30th Street Station that has a wall of beer and wine taps (about 50 total).
The second is located in a just-opened apartment building one block from the Community College at Broad and Spring Garden streets in Spring Garden, also a "Greater Center City" neighborhood. This should get good patronage, as it sits atop an express stop on the Broad Street Line subway and is also across the street from the former Philadelphia State Office Building, now apartments. The apartment building it's in went up in a flash thanks to modular construction. No huge wall of beer taps, but a good selection of beer and wine in bottles and cans that you can consume in its seating area. (The 8th and Market and 4th and Spring Garden Giant Heirloom markets also have smaller walls of beer taps in their seating areas. This feature in the three stores that have it should tell you something about the target customer base.)
Apropos of nothing else in this post: jjbradleynyc, I imagine you're aware that Brooklynites have been moving to Philadelphia in non-trivial numbers over the past two decades plus. It seems that the level of urban amenities in Philadelphia is high enough to satisfy them while the rents and house prices are significantly lower. I joke that "the Brooklynites figured out they were paying New York prices for the Philadelphia experience and figured it would make more sense to pay Philadelphia prices for it." (Net migration between Philadelphia and Manhattan is towards Manhattan; it's net towards Philadelphia from the other four boroughs, but the net numbers moving from Brooklyn exceed those of the other three combined.)
Yeah, good point! I am aware of this trend, and have a couple of friends who did just that--moved from Brooklyn to Philadelphia (Fish Town and Rittenhouse Square), and love Philly.
I really do enjoy Philadelphia myself, and think Center City is one of the best downtown neighborhoods in the US.
It certainly has some neighborhoods that do match Brooklyn's cool vibes, gentrification, density and bustling nature. But overall, I think Brooklyn outmatches it still.
Philadelphia still has so many struggling neighborhoods (like so many cities--I get that), and I'd like to see a lot of those improve on a wider scale. I think this aspect holds Philadelphia back somewhat, from reaching even bigger heights as a city.
The rents are cheaper in Philadelphia, though, that is for sure.
The Giant Company (aka Giant of Carlisle, Pa., corporate stablemate of Landover, Md.-based Giant Food Stores — Ahold Delhaize owns both) has been expanding aggressively within the Philadelphia city limits with both full-line supermarkets and small-format stores called Giant Heirloom Markets.
The largest of the latter opened about nine months ago on the street floor of the former Strawbridge & Clothier store at the northwest corner of 8th and Market. Two more Giant Heirloom stores have been in business for four to five years serving "Greater Center City"; one is located at 23rd and South streets, serving the Fitler Square, Rittenhouse Square and "Graduate Hospital" neighborhoods; the other, on North 4th Street just below Spring Garden Street, serves Northern Liberties, one of the "Greater Center City" neighborhoods along with Graduate Hospital.
The chain has also opened two full-size stores in this territory. The first, at 23d and Arch streets, is in Center City proper and located on the second floor of a new two-tower apartment complex called Riverwalk. This store has a food court with cafe seating overlooking the Schuylkill and 30th Street Station that has a wall of beer and wine taps (about 50 total).
The second is located in a just-opened apartment building one block from the Community College at Broad and Spring Garden streets in Spring Garden, also a "Greater Center City" neighborhood. This should get good patronage, as it sits atop an express stop on the Broad Street Line subway and is also across the street from the former Philadelphia State Office Building, now apartments. The apartment building it's in went up in a flash thanks to modular construction. No huge wall of beer taps, but a good selection of beer and wine in bottles and cans that you can consume in its seating area. (The 8th and Market and 4th and Spring Garden Giant Heirloom markets also have smaller walls of beer taps in their seating areas. This feature in the three stores that have it should tell you something about the target customer base.)
Nice! I also think the housing unit production in downtowns around America will help slow gentrification in outer parts of their cities. I know for DC, one of the reasons Ward 7 and Ward 8 east of the Anacostia River has been preserved is because of the amount of new net housing that has been created in the urban core in neighborhoods like NOMA, Union Market, Mt. Vernon Triangle, Navy Yard, and The Wharf. Those are all approaching build out and the next set of neighborhoods that can accommodate tens of thousands of units is Buzzard Point, Northwest One, Old Soldiers Home, and Hill East, but they will be built out in the next decade.
When the urban core in DC runs out of open vacant land in the next 10 years, there would be no place to go but to cross the river into east of the river neighborhoods in Ward 7 and 8 putting pressure on the Black community in DC. The massive capacity of office-to-residential conversions in downtown DC could produce enough new housing to keep meeting demand for the next 30 years. If DC converts about 10-15 office buildings a year to residential, gentrification could be contained to the urban core west of the river for the foreseeable future.
How do you think housing production in Center City is impacting gentrification in the rest of Philadelphia?
How do you think housing production in Center City is impacting gentrification in the rest of Philadelphia?
I suspect it is easing what would otherwise be greater upward pressure on house prices and (especially) rents in outlying neighborhoods like mine.
I should, however, note that I don't oppose gentrification here. I call myself a "two cheers for gentrification" guy, and the reasons why may well be specific to Philadelphia:
First, Philadelphia has a long history of high homeownership among not only the well-off but also its working and (proportionally speaking) even lower classes, made possible by the trinities of the 19th century and the modest "workingman's" rowhouses of the early 20th century. (I have on the wall of my apartment a lithograph from 1908, produced to mark the 225th anniversary of Philadelphia's founding (which actually took place the year before), which purports to show "The Philadelphia of To-Day" (it actually doesn't; it includes the Ben Franklin Parkway, construction of which did not begin until 1913) with the legend "America's largest Home City with more Home Owners than any other city in the world." The majority of housing units in this city are owned rather than rented even now, though only barely so; I think that Boston, New York and Washington are all majority-renter now. (It's only a matter of time before Philadelphia joins them, however, what with all the new apartment construction going on.) Civic leaders here saw widespread homeownership as a means of promoting social harmony and stability, and it worked pretty well. (The city built a model workingman's rowhouse for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair that was a hit with fairgoers.)
Second, those high rates of homeownership encompassed Black as well as white Philadelphians. Sure, most lower-income Black Philadelphians rent, but somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of them do not. I think this percentage is higher than in our peer cities. And the houses these Black Philadelphians own are for the most part in neighborhoods that have suffered from years of disinvestment, often starting with the blockbusting that led to white flight in the 1960s. Gentrification gives these homeowners an asset that has finally gotten to the point where they can actually cash in on their investment if they so chose. Stopping the cycle of redevelopment cuts this opportunity off as well.
Now, here's the raspberry: The renters really do get screwed. At least adding significantly to the rental housing stock may keep rents in redeveloping neighborhoods from rising higher than they otherwise would. So might all the 3-over-1 and four-story purely residential buildings rising here in Germantown.
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