Actually, this is not the story of just one building. It?s the story of changing fashions, fortunes and uses.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, developers and impresarios sought to promote the area north of Spring Garden Street and west of Broad Street as a fashionable district for newly wealthy Philadelphians. A number of grand structures went up along this stretch of North Broad Street, most notably Oscar Hammerstein?s Metropolitan Opera House (1908) three blocks north of this site. The grand structure that occupied this site was the second home of Central High School, the oldest public high school in the city and still one of its best today. It?s on the left in this 1913 photo of the intersection of Broad and Green streets:
By the time Central High School moved to its current site in West Oak Lane in 1936, North Broad Street had become Automobile Row ? home to most of the city?s car dealers and garages. We don?t know when the building that housed Wilkie Buick in its later years was erected, nor when the dealership went out of business, but here?s what it looked like after the dealership had closed:
After the dealership closed, the building sat vacant for several years until the fall of 2010, when developer Michael O?Neill (now a sand magnate) put together a deal for a mixed-use project that involved two of Philadelphia?s best-known restaurateurs and a local caterer.
The restaurateurs are Stephen Starr and Marc Vetri, and the caterer is Joe Volpe. In the photo at the top of this article, Volpe?s Cescaphe Event Group operates Vie, the banquet hall at left, and Starr?s Route 6, a seafood restaurant named for the main highway on Cape Cod, is at the far right. Around the corner from Route 6 on Mt. Vernon Street is Alla Spina, Vetri?s Italian gastropub, with 20 different beers on tap. (Vetri is no stranger to this neighborhood, having opened Osteria up the street at 640 North Broad several years ago.)
The development also includes a 98-unit apartment building at 15th and Mt. Vernon streets. You could say that this project marks North Broad Street?s return to fashionability. Well, almost: just down the block on the other side of Broad is one last reminder of the street?s days as an automotive hub.
Goodyear Tire store at Broad and Brandywine streets
-By Sandy Smith for PhiladelphiaRealEstate.com
Current site photos by the author
Source: http://blog.philadelphiarealestate.com/buildings-then-and-now-600-n-broad-st/
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