The ‘haunted’ Society Hill Hotel was once Philly’s funkiest flophouse. It will reopen as a boutique hotel and whiskey bar.

The Society Hill Hotel has had many lives.

In its nearly two centuries occupying a corner in the heart of Old City, it has been an oyster cellar, a Civil War recruiting station, a railroad and steamship ticket office, a cigar store, a rubber stamp office, a printing press, and a bank. For a deeply strange stretch from the 1950s to the 1980s, it was a wonderfully funky flophouse, home to sailors, longshoremen, a nightly belly dancer, torch singers, and a country western guitarist.

By earlier this year, the charming 191-year-old brick building at 3rd and Chestnut sat shuttered. Its iconic neon sign no longer cast light on sidewalks where Founding Fathers once strode. Its upstairs rooms were still charred from a 2021 fire.

“I love the history of Philadelphia, so this building always felt really unique to me,” said Mike Cangi, the new co-owner of the hotel. “It really didn’t seem like it was living the life it should be living.”

Cangi and his partner, Brian Linton, aim to bring new life to Society Hill Hotel. The best friends are cofounders of United By Blue, the eco-friendly apparel line and coffee retailer they launched in Old City in 2010, and built into a national brand before selling it last year. (In March, the new owner closed the company’s last two cafés in Philadelphia.)

Looking for their next joint venture, Cangi and Linton bought the historic property in May, and are now renovating it into a boutique hotel with 15 upstairs rooms, a cafe, a restaurant, and a whiskey bar. They are restoring the original gas neon sign.

This week, they launched an Instagram account called Finding Brotherly Love, which will offer a behind-the-scenes look into their effort to remake the old hotel in the heart of the historic district. Mere stumbling distance from the Museum of the American Revolution, Carpenter’s Hall, and the First Bank of the United States, the hotel has sat vacant since its most recent incarnation, the Monkey Bar, closed during the pandemic.

“This hotel, this location, embodied all of the things that we love about Philadelphia,” Cangi said. “We always wondered why it was not one of the most vibrant spots in the neighborhood.”

Built in 1832, the hotel first operated as an oyster cellar, according to city land records. These 19th-century waterfront attractions were known for their rough-hewn clientele. Before long, the basement oyster bar blossomed into a corner barroom and hotel called the Franklin House, said Andy Waskie, a former Temple professor and Civil War historian. (Not to be confused with the luxurious Continental Hotel, which hosted Lincoln, and later became the Benjamin Franklin Hotel.)

During the Civil War, the hotel served as a recruiting station for the 59th Volunteers cavalry regiment, Waskie said

“Like many public buildings that had space, it became a choice place to recruit,” he said. “People came there to eat and drink and officers would sit at a little table to the side of the barroom.”

The volunteers saw hard fighting in the war, including guarding Gen. George Gordon Meade’s headquarters at Gettysburg. But one unfortunate soldier died steps from the hotel, a recruit thrown from his horse in the street. His ghost is said to still haunt the hotel.

“He died in front of the building where he was recruited, and now he haunts the hotel,” said Waskie, who once operated a ghost tour in Old City.

By the 1950s, the hotel was haunted mostly by longshoremen and seamen crashing on the cheap. It was Heaton’s Hotel then, a flophouse that offered dingy rooms and maid service for $25 a week. Downstairs, the bar’s red vinyl booths were filled with quirky characters, and the entertainment was something else. There were nightly performances by Shalimar, the belly dancer; Cheri, the torch singer, and Ray Hatcher, a country music singer. The owner’s parents lived upstairs.

“We bought a flophouse,” said Stuart Harting, who bought Heaton’s with his partner, Lance Silver, in 1979. “Sailors would just come up with their duffel bags over the shoulders and drink shots and lager.”

Harting and Silver cleaned the place up — tearing down the stucco, installing a new bar and stained glass chandelier — and called it the Society Hill Hotel. Since then, the hotel has seen a series of operators.

For their part, Cangi and Linton said they see the hotel as a natural next step. They both develop old properties. Cangi and his wife, Katie, renovated the historic Reeves House in Wildwood, which they now run as a rental property. In 2021, Linton and his wife, Joanna, renovated an aging Poconos motel into a boutique micro-hotel.

Now, they want to give the Society Hill Hotel the life it deserves. They’re keeping some of the old touches and character, like the beautiful wooden bar from the last renovation and large barroom windows, which offer incredible light. They envision a mix of colonial and art deco style for the cafe and whiskey bar. They’re replacing the tiny rooms upstairs with more spacious rooms spread across the hotel’s three upstairs floors. There will be suites with views of the historic sites. Unlike the flophouse, each room will have a bathroom.

The opportunity to own a hotel that has hosted guests for nearly 200 years was too much to pass up, they said.

“We really wanted to do something that stands out,” said Linton, during a recent tour of the work. “It’s a new chapter.”