Philadelphia approves its largest historic district in nearly 20 years

Powelton Village is an iconic West Philadelphia neighborhood made up of intricate Victorian-era rowhouses and twins, nestled in Drexel University’s ever-expanding footprint.

Neighbors have watched as the historic, gingerbread-style structures were demolished and replaced by new housing designed for students who wanted to live close to campus. The trend became more acute as Drexel and Wexford Science and Technology revitalized the Market Street corridor and the life sciences sector exploded.

In 2019, the Powelton Village Civic Association began discussing the creation of a historic district for the neighborhood.

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The Philadelphia Historical Commission approved the Powelton Village Historic District last Thursday, covering 817 buildings that were constructed between 1851 and 1931. That means they will be protected from demolition and that owners will have limited ability to modify the exterior of their homes.

There are a further 80 “non-contributing” properties in the coverage area that were not built during that period, but will be subject to review to ensure they are compatible with the “character of the district” says city spokesperson Bruce Bohri. The commission will have the power to approve or reject construction on those sites, while 40 other non-contributing sites are undeveloped and the regulators will only have power to review and comment on those proposals.

The Powelton Village historic district is the largest created since at least 2003, when backlash from City Council over the feared costs of regulation began to challenge the city’s preservation movement.

“Powelton is one of the most unique neighborhoods in the city, but it’s being threatened by increased development pressures,” said George Poulin, co-chair of Powelton Village Civic Association’s zoning committee. “This was a long time coming.”

Political opposition to preservation reached its peak after the Great Recession and after two small historic districts were minted in 2010. No new proposals were considered until 2017. During that period, development activity in the city surged, and demolitions of older buildings spiked.

As neighborhood groups began to protest the destruction of beloved landmarks, the incentives for local policymakers began to shift. At community meetings, elected officials heard concerns about neighborhood character and historic fabric, as opposed to backlash against overreaching preservationists.

When then-West Philadelphia City Councilmember Jannie Blackwell threatened to strip the historic commission of its powers in the 2000s, she argued that historic preservation regulations could negatively impact lower-income homeowners. She feared that their home values were threatened by regulation, and that the costs of upkeep could be burdensome.

But in recent years, Council members have heard a different set of constituent concerns.

“It’s a response to the development boom in the city, where neighbors are alarmed by the threat to the historic character of their neighborhoods,” said Paul Steinke, executive director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia. “They are embracing the historic district model to get some control over demolition and new construction, which has been changing the face of the city in good ways and bad for the last decade.”

In 2017, city officials began approving new historic districts again. They started with small efforts, such as eight homes on 42nd Street in West Philadelphia. These districts covered less ground than districts created in the 1980s and 1990s that included hundreds or thousands of properties in neighborhoods such as Rittenhouse Square and Society Hill.

In the last five years, the number of historic districts has almost doubled, although many are miniature in scale, protecting only a handful of properties. The Powelton Village district is the largest since the 2003 approval of a district in Old City.

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“Concerns [about the cost to property owners] haven’t completely gone away,” Steinke said. “But the historical commission has shown a willingness to exercise flexibility and the threat of the loss of character has been so great that more homeowners are willing to take that risk.”

Drexel University did not oppose the Powelton Village Historic District and Poulin from the civic association says that local landlords did not offer fierce resistance, either. At a neighborhood meeting, 114 attendees voted in favor. Only four voted against.

But a handful of property owners who believe that the preservationists efforts infringe on their property rights do oppose the historic district.

In at least one case, homeowners sought exclusion from the district in part because of perceived cultural differences between their corner of the neighborhood and the Powelton Village Civic Association’s priorities. A representative noted that so many buildings had already been demolished and replaced with student housing that there was little of the original character left on his block.

“The need to have the historical commission to exercise jurisdiction and govern us by ordinances is unnecessary and not needed or wanted,” Terrance Alter wrote in an email on behalf of residents of the 3800 block of Spring Garden Street. “The historical district will only penalize the remaining families that plan to pass down their family residence to future generations.”

Some housing experts fear that expansive historic protections can stymie development in growing neighborhoods, preventing new housing in areas that need it most. In such cities as New York or Washington, where housing has long been at a premium, some preservation efforts are seen as an attempt to do what newly permissive zoning codes no longer can: keep out denser forms of housing.

“The problem in Philadelphia right now is that the City Council is still down zoning [using zoning to make it harder to build dense housing],” said Alex Armlovich, senior housing policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a think tank in Washington. “But the historic district stuff could become more of a binding constraint, and needs to be watched very closely.”

But that outcome isn’t guaranteed and Armlovich says that preservation can be a strong economic development strategy, especially in older cities such as Philadelphia or Baltimore, where there is still a fair amount of vacant land.

In Powelton Village, Poulin says that his civic association is already in touch with other West Philadelphia community groups about establishing neighborhood-wide protections in areas such as Spruce Hill, where two previous attempts at historical preservation failed, and Garden Court.

“I think this is a model for other neighborhoods,” Poulin said. “Hopefully, this is just the beginning and not the end.”

*This story has been updated to accurately reflect how “non-contributing” properties in the historic district are regulated.