A threatened South Jersey lighthouse | Real Estate Newsletter
And apartments on the way in Kensington.
This New Jersey building puts the house in lighthouse.
In this region, when we think of lighthouses, we tend to picture free-standing pillars. But the East Point Lighthouse in Cumberland County actually looks like a house that just happens to have a lookout tower jutting from the roof.
It’s a Cape Cod style of lighthouse in which the tower extends out of the building that serves as the keeper’s home.
The 174-year-old lighthouse is the state’s second oldest. And it’s being threatened by erosion and the terms of a new lease.
Read on for that story and to see what we learned about saving money from shadowing energy advisers on home visits, see the watercolor that a fellow reader painted of her son’s home, and peek inside a Center City penthouse for sale.
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— Michaelle Bond
The 19th century East Point Lighthouse holds a museum and gift shop and welcomes about 6,000 people for tours each year. Antiques and photos placed in the rooms recreate the homey feel from when lighthouse keepers lived there with their families.
A spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Protection called the lighthouse an “icon of the Delaware Bay region.”
But erosion has eaten away the beach in front of the lighthouse by three-quarters since the 1940s.
And if the historical society that operates the lighthouse can successfully bid for a new lease, it’ll cost the nonprofit an additional $10,000 a year, said Nancy Patterson, the organization’s volunteer president.
Read more about this historic lighthouse and the forces that threaten it.
The former site of Philadelphia Beer Co. and its parking lot sits in the space around where Fishtown, Port Richmond, and Kensington come together. It’s become one of the city’s most desirable residential areas.
A developer based in Montgomery County wants to replace the site with 87 apartments, half as many parking spaces, and more than 7,700 square feet of commercial space.
The goal, said a designer working on the project, “is to have a modern reinterpretation of the city block.”
The developer plans to make eight or nine units affordable to households that make less than the area’s median income. In exchange, the developer wants to build more homes than would normally be allowed.
Read more about the proposal and why a neighborhood group isn’t happy.🔑
The latest news to pay attention to
Three years after denying a proposal for a new police station in North Philly, the Philadelphia Historical Commission unanimously approved the city’s controversial plan.
A Philly house-flipper who admitted to bribing a city employee to get ahead in competitive sheriff’s sale auctions has now been sentenced for threatening a witness.
A large surface parking lot in Chinatown could be replaced by a mid-rise apartment building with hundreds of units.🔑
Rare stained glass windows by Tiffany that a West Philly church sold for less than $10,000 were sold at auction for $200,000.
Most large U.S. cities reversed or slowed pandemic-era drops in population. Not Philly.🔑
This is what Cherelle Parker’s mayoral victory could mean for the proposed Sixers arena.
House of the week: For $900,000, a three-bedroom home in Fitler Square
Summer unofficially arrives this weekend. With temperatures — and energy costs — on the rise, it’s a good time to think about your home’s energy efficiency. (I know it’s on my mind.)
To help us learn how to lower our energy bills, my colleague Erin McCarthy asked a Peco adviser to come to her apartment and point out the ways her home was wasting energy.
She also recruited our colleagues Jake Blumgart, who lives in a South Philly rowhouse, and EJ Smith, who lives in a single-family home in the suburbs, to participate in energy audits, too.
What she learned will make you feel less guilty about all that ice cream in your freezer, tell you how much energy your electronics are really using, and teach you what to do about leaky windows. (Replacing them isn’t usually worth the cost.)
Her story tells you how to sign up for your own home energy assessment and how to save on your energy bill, room by room.
“The skyline is the star” of a 42nd floor penthouse in Arthaus, a new luxury high-rise condo building on the Avenue of the Arts, according to Jimmy DeLaurentis, who designed the 4,378-square-foot space.
The penthouse is one of three in the 47-story building, and it’s on the market for $8.1 million.
Through floor-to-ceiling windows and from two balconies, visitors can see the Delaware River to the east and City Hall to the north. DeLaurentis, an interior designer, chose furnishings that wouldn’t block those views.
Among the touches he included in staging the space are pieces from his high-end line of pet sofas, custom-designed furniture, and a photo of Frank Sinatra over the fireplace. That’s in addition to pieces like an amber glass chandelier.
Peek inside the penthouse to see its design and its city views.
🧠 Trivia time 🧠
Philadelphia’s Masonic Temple, the Romanesque-style building at 1 N. Broad St. in Center City, is celebrating 150 years. The building is a landmark in the world of Freemasonry and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Question: Masons built the temple, which is open to the public, using 16,000 blocks of what material?
A) Marble
B) Granite
C) Limestone
D) Sandstone
This story has the answer.
📷 Photo quiz 📷
What Philadelphia intersection does this photo show?
📮 If you know (without Googling), email me back. You and your memories of visiting this spot might be featured in the newsletter.
A bunch of readers knew the location of last week’s photo — a church turned office space — including a few people who used to work inside the building. Shoutout to Gary D., who said he was an intern there, and Kate C., who liked the stained glass and said she “always had Jesus watching me as I worked on the first floor.”
The building is at 22nd and Chestnut, next to the Mütter Museum.
🏡 Your home experience 🏡
This week, we have another interesting visual representation of a home in response to my question a couple weeks ago.
Regina Frizell painted a watercolor of her son’s house in the Wissahickon neighborhood. She said the home was built around 1910. In her painting, her granddaughter peeks through the window.
Next week, I’ll feature a charcoal drawing a reader submitted of his Germantown home. He bought the picture from a previous owner of the house.
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The most expensive New York City condo sold for about $240 million a few years ago. A real estate data company studied how many median-priced homes you could buy for that amount in cities across the country.
In some places, you could buy a few hundred. In Philadelphia, you could buy roughly 1,300 homes.
Something to think about. Enjoy the rest of your week.