White in Kensington?? (Philadelphia: middle-class, real estate, houses)

[clamster]

Mod cut - Please note that this thread was started in 2009

How many white people are in the Kensington area. Do they get strange looks? Thanks.

[FindingZen]

I offer this quote from otters21 from the following thread:

//www.city-data.com/forum/phila...ladelphia.html

"Kensington is racially diverse but it is pretty dangerous with drugs, prostitution ,shootings and crime. However parts of it are gentrifying especially east of Front Street and south of Lehigh Ave."

[phlydude]

Kensignton used to be a mainly white working class neighborhood...it has gone downhill for many decades now and is a depressed area

when I was a kid, trashy white folks are often called "Kensos" in Philadelphia

It has become very diverse but has been dangerous for some time - K&A isn't what it was 30-40 yrs ago...

[clamster]

Thanks for the replies.

[Elena Pietropaula]

I grew up in Kensingston in the late 50's untill 1971. Kensington was a great place to grow up. We had many people from different ethnic groups. Germans, Jewish, Polish, Italain. We grew up learning many cultures. I remember the corner stores where you could by penny candy, deli foods and pickles from a barrel. We had a local "Huckster" who had a horse drawn buggy that came and sold fresh vegatalbes. We had a man that pushed a small wooden cart and grounded fresh horseradish and a pretzel man that came around every saturday morning. We had fresh doughnuts and cakes from corner bakeries. The VFW had parades on Frankford Ave. There were dime stores and Olbaums groceries on frankford ave. When a family had a crisis the neighborhood stuck with them and helped out. When they had a wedding or a baby shower everyone was invited.As the generations passed away....so did the morals and values of the people. So it wasn't Kensington that changed it was the people. I didn't grow up as "white trash", my father was a well paid carpenter that installed many stained glass windows in the local churches in kensington besides working for a carpentry mill.We played outside till dark...and we play stick ball on the corners and waited for Mr Softie. I am proud I grew up in Kensington. I'm sorry for what it has become if what is in these posts are true.

[solibs]

The honest answer to your question is, it depends. The white neighborhoods of "Kensington" have disappeared to become part of "Fishtown" or "Port Richmond" and the mainly hispanic neighborhoods to the west have become "West Kensington"

[slickvic277]

In regards to what Elena Pietropaula said the 50's are LONG gone.I lived in Kensington when I was a kid and up until the late 80's,early 90's it was still a descent place for working class family's.(although there was always an underlining problem with substance abuse even then).I lived at Dst and Westmoreland right across from Mcviegh playground and can remember playing baseball as a kid and swimming in the public pool,I went to Ascension of our lord school and have nothing but great memories of that time.

For the most part it was a tight nit neighborhood with hard working and proud people.But in the 90's the drugs and undesirables from the other side of the playground started there way into the neighborhood and the violence followed,there was race fights in the playground that escalated into several shootings and ended with murder of a local kid in 1992-93.My family moved from the neighborhood that summer and the decline crept it's way across the whole neighborhood.

The white people that could afford it moved and the bulk of the neighborhood turned Spanish.
I know a lot of the area has been "gentrified" but to what extent I do not know.The few times I have driven through the old neighborhood,only one word comes to mind "ghetto".

[solibs]

Most of the redevelopment money is east of Front St. but south of Lehigh . . . and it's only starting to move west of Frankford Ave.

It has jumped the tracks over to Port Richmond but that's all east of Aramingo.

If you look with a developers eye you'll definitely see signs of things happening (loft conversions, rehabs, etc) along 2nd, 3rd, etc - and even as far over as Germantown Ave. but it's mostly south of Berks. Still, it's definitely not "gentrified" and certainly not north of Lehigh.

Even the part of Kensington that's become "Greater Fishtown" isn't "gentrified". You just have a lot of white, middle-class, early 30's, first-time home-buyers moving in. But that's been a white neighborhood for 400 years. When those houses are topping $500k and the "old-timers" in the neighborhood have only been there for 20 years, then we can start talking gentrification.

[rugnot]

Elena- It wasn't "generations passing away." It was jobs moving out of state (early '60's).
This unfortunate phase continued for many years resulting in families leaving the neighborhood for jobs in other parts of the city and elsewhere.
When an area looses its employment base, it looses its local economy. Empty factories (those that used to exist around McVeigh Rec, Stetson Jr HS & elsewhere) yield empty houses resulting in a local depression. Housing prices crashed, small businesses left and all that remained were those who were trapped (when your house is no longer worth anything, where do you go...or do you?).
In such situations, neighborhoods undergo dramatic change as do the people who live there.
I grew up at Hartville & Ontario when Kensington was a proud moniker. The change happened swiftly, the textile mills moving to the South to anti-union states (thanks to the encouragement of a very successful Philadelphia real estate firm).
When it was over, as another has noted, Kensington was a ghetto w/ all the associated problems.

[otters21]

Originally Posted by rugnot

Elena- It wasn't "generations passing away." It was jobs moving out of state (early '60's).
This unfortunate phase continued for many years resulting in families leaving the neighborhood for jobs in other parts of the city and elsewhere.
When an area looses its employment base, it looses its local economy. Empty factories (those that used to exist around McVeigh Rec, Stetson Jr HS & elsewhere) yield empty houses resulting in a local depression. Housing prices crashed, small businesses left and all that remained were those who were trapped (when your house is no longer worth anything, where do you go...or do you?).
In such situations, neighborhoods undergo dramatic change as do the people who live there.
I grew up at Hartville & Ontario when Kensington was a proud moniker. The change happened swiftly, the textile mills moving to the South to anti-union states (thanks to the encouragement of a very successful Philadelphia real estate firm).
When it was over, as another has noted, Kensington was a ghetto w/ all the associated problems.

Also NAFTA and a certain President promising to move the manufacturing jobs to the southern states if he was elected are partly to blame for Kensington's decline.