Philly L&I approves demolition of Chestnut Street properties that preservationists had tried to protect

The landscape near Philadelphia’s famed Jewelers Row could continue to change as the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections last week gave a green light to demolition for two buildings on the 700 block of Chestnut Street.

The buildings at 730-32 Chestnut St., most recently home to a Christian ministries bookstore and National Watch & Diamond exchange shop, will be cleared to make way for a seven-story building with 42 residential units, city records show.

The move frustrated Justin Brooks, a lawyer who said he paid $1,500 to file a nomination last winter that proposed designating the 600, 700, and 800 blocks of Chestnut Street as a commercial historic district to be called the Chestnut Street East Historic District. Becoming a historic district would have given the buildings there — most of which were built between 1809 and 1965 — special protections against demolition.

He filed the nomination on behalf of the Keeping Society of Philadelphia, a preservation-advocacy group, two weeks before the coronavirus started to shut down Pennsylvania last year. The Philadelphia Historical Commission, which reviews proposals for historic designation, canceled its public meetings in March and April and didn’t begin to meet again until May, over Zoom.

When the Historical Commission’s office closed, it was reviewing historic district nominations, said Paul Chrystie, a spokesperson for the commission. The commission tried to begin reviewing historic district nominations again, he said, but there were logistical concerns and resistance.

“Many parties objected, claiming that they could not effectively participate in the review while meeting remotely,” he said in an email. “Based on that experience, the Historical Commission placed all historic district reviews on hold. Members of the Keeping Society are consistent attendees of and participants in the commission’s meetings and thus were aware that district nominations were on hold.”

There were also “strict time restrictions” on the review process, he said.

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“It must, for example, complete the review of a nomination and decide whether to designate a property within 90 days of any permit application involving a nominated property,” he said. “For this reason, the commission could not begin the review of the Chestnut Street East Commercial Historic District without having any idea as to whether it could complete that review within the prescribed time frame.”

A year and a pandemic later, the Keeping Society’s nomination has languished as the office of the Philadelphia Historical Commission remained closed and its members worked remotely.

The commission begins to have jurisdiction over a property and demolition permits when it sends the property owner a formal written notice that it could give a building historic designation, Chrystie said.

The commission never got that far. Toward the end of August last year, Tristate Exchange LLC, the owner of 730 Chestnut, filed a demolition application.

“The Historical Commission has not treated the Chestnut Street East Commercial Historic District nomination any differently than any of the other district nominations currently before it,” Chrystie said. " ... With the historic district program restarted — the first district review will take place at the commission’s April meeting — the commission looks forward to reviewing all of the district nominations before it, including the Chestnut Street East Commercial Historic District.”

Brooks, a partner at the Ardmore law firm Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, refused to let COVID-19 be an excuse.

“Your commission is using COVID as a pretext for complete and total abdication of your responsibilities and duties,” he wrote in an email that he sent to a number of city officials, including members of Philadelphia City Council. “The rest of the world goes on — including the issuance of demolition permits — and yet the Historical Commission has essentially ceased to function.”

He dangled the possibility of a lawsuit against the Historical Commission and the city’s Department of Planning and Development, citing “a history of gross, excessive, and illegal delays in considering nominations.”

Brooks had compiled a thick portfolio of research about the historic stretch of Chestnut Street.

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The property at 730 Chestnut was first a home to a merchant, Richard Gernon, around 1809, according to the nomination for the Chestnut Street East Historic District. In 1840, a music importer, Augustus Fiot, repurposed the building for commercial use.

From 1851 to 1859, according to the research, Fiot constructed a four-story building for commercial purposes and rented out the first floor to other businesses while he kept the remaining three for himself.

Next door, over the years, a number of commercial vendors ranging from daguerreotypists, hooped-skirt and dress trimmings dealers, and milliners occupied 732 Chestnut St., which was once known as 198 Chestnut St.

In 1891, Chestnut Street had to be widened, which required building owners to tear down their own facades to move farther back. The properties at 730 and 732 Chestnut were consolidated and became a site for menswear by John B. Morley & Co., according to the Chestnut Street East Historic District’s research.

Despite losing some facades in the process of the street widening, “it’s a really intact block when you think of other buildings on Chestnut,” said Oscar Beisert, a Philadelphia preservationist and founder of the Keeping Society.

But the demolition approval of 730-32 Chestnut, as well as the ongoing changes to Jewelers Row, has threatened that.

The area surrounding Chestnut Street has long attracted consternation from preservationists since Toll Brothers, based in Horsham, razed several buildings on Jewelers Row, or the 700 block of Sansom Street, in late 2019. It has begun to build a 24-story glass tower, albeit with delays from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s like so much of our city — there’s no plan other than to allow people to develop by-right,” or according to the zoning code, Beisert said. “They’re not taking into account what’s currently there unless it’s historically designated.”

He, too, expressed disappointment with the pace that the Historical Commission had attended to the application for the Chestnut Street East Historic District.

“If you can demolish and you can build a big tall building, there should be due process on all fronts,” he said.

It was unclear when demolition might begin at 730-32 Chestnut.