Jim’s Steaks, rebuilding after fire, will expand into Eye’s Gallery next door on South Street

The South Street landmark Jim’s Steaks will be much larger when it reopens later this year after repairs from a fire last summer.

In a deal consummated Friday, Jim’s owner Ken Silver bought Eye’s Gallery, the iconic folk-art shop next door, which also was heavily damaged in the July 29 fire.

Both Silver, 58, who runs the popular eatery cofounded by his father in 1976, and Julia Zagar, 82, who opened Eye’s with her husband, Isaiah, in 1968, told The Inquirer the transaction between the longtime next-door neighbors was a win-win. “We hugged at settlement,” Silver said. “How often does that happen?”

The signature glass and tile mosaics at Eye’s — by Isaiah Zagar, who created the nearby Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens — will be maintained and included in the Jim’s expansion. Jim’s will gain a full floor of ADA-compliant ground-floor seating to complement its second-floor dining room.

The upstairs seating area was always too tight, and Jim’s forbade customers from saving seats. “The people who didn’t understand how Jim’s operated don’t realize that it only takes 20 minutes to eat a cheesesteak, and you’re pretty much done and out,” Silver said. “People get in line, and they’re thinking, ‘I’m going to go and save a seat.’ We had somebody up there saying, ‘You’re not allowed to save seats.’ We had to be pretty stern in our enforcement because otherwise people would be coming upstairs with trays of steak sandwiches and people would be sitting there with no food. Sometimes, it got contentious. Hopefully this will alleviate a lot of that.”

Silver said there also will be two small tables in what are now the front windows at Eye’s, allowing views of the South Street parade. Lines of patrons along the sidewalk had been a regular part of life on South Street before last July.

He is targeting Labor Day for the reopening. As before, the shop will not sell fries, tater tots, onion rings, or anything deep-fried.

Julia Zagar, relieved to not have to rehab her century-old building, said she was targeting April 1 to reopen Eye’s in a storefront a half-block away, at 327 South St. She said she was thankful that Silver is going to “save a lot of the legacy of Isaiah’s early work.”

The Zagars have spent the last several months removing pieces from the three-story Eye’s building. The new location will be somewhat smaller but will feature a larger ground floor.

Julia Zagar said the original Eye’s Gallery’s look was shaped over the decades. “I liken it to doing a painting,” she said. “You put in a color and then you step back and you look at it, and you don’t like part of it, so you go back and you put in another color. We did [the original Eye’s] little by little, changing things, putting new things. Here, we’re doing it in a much shorter time.”

The sale of the Eye’s building had been in the works for months, but the Zagars declined to discuss the matter publicly before Friday’s settlement. Something was clearly afoot, though. On Dec. 3, Silver posted photos on Twitter that showed workers in the ruins of Jim’s. He thanked people for “the flood of well-wishes and support” but indicated “there’s lots of work ahead.” On Jan. 1, he posted renderings of the work that did not specify the expansion.

Last year’s fire started in electrical wiring in the century-old building’s heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system. Water and smoke damage was extensive.

The founding of Jim’s can be traced to 1939, when Jim Perligni (by some accounts spelled Pearligni) opened a shop at 62nd and Noble Streets in West Philadelphia. The business was sold in the mid-1960s to William Proetto.

In 1976, Abner Silver, a lawyer who had done work for Proetto, joined him in opening the Jim’s at Fourth and South Streets, then part of Philadelphia’s Fabric Row.

South Street was literally at a crossroads in the 1970s, as plans for a crosstown expressway had been scuttled shortly before and businesses catering to young people — such as J.C. Dobbs and the TLA — were moving in. So were counterculture folks like the Zagars.

The location was a natural for cheesesteaks, a tourist favorite.

Abner Silver and his wife, Joan, and the Zagars quickly became friends. Ken Silver said his brother, Michael, five years his junior, would tag along to work with his parents. “They couldn’t afford babysitters,” he said, adding that Michael Silver and Ezekiel Zagar would play together on the third floor.

Abner Silver, who also had a shop called Abner’s at 38th and Chestnut Streets, assumed sole ownership of what is formally Jim’s South Street Steaks & Hoagies after Proetto’s death in 2011. Shortly after, Ken Silver took over the business. Abner Silver died at age 79 in 2015.

The Proetto family operates the Jim’s Steaks location in Springfield, Delaware County.

Demolition work began at the South Street Jim’s on Jan. 4. The day before, Silver removed the last of the autographs, photos, and memorabilia from the tiled walls. They will be cleaned, stored, and rehung.

“I hate to say it,” Silver said, “but something good came out of something horrible.”