Philadelphia’s 66 neighborhoods are not created equal when it comes to row homes. Some blocks stopped time in 1910. Others were razed and rebuilt in the 1950s. Some are in the middle of a decade-long transformation. Here are ten neighborhoods every row home enthusiast should know — from the iconic to the overlooked.
== 1. South Philadelphia: The Archetype ==
Ask a Philadelphian to picture a row home and they picture South Philly. The neighborhoods south of Washington Avenue — Passyunk Square, East Passyunk, Newbold, Girard Estates — contain some of the most intact row home fabric in the city. The 1890s speculative builders who laid out these blocks created a template that repeats for miles: 14-foot-wide lots, two or three stories, red brick, marble steps, cornice lines at uniform height. Walking these blocks is like reading a textbook on late-Victorian urban residential architecture.
== 2. Fishtown: Before and After ==
No neighborhood better illustrates the row home’s economic transformation than Fishtown. A decade ago, fishers’ workers’ cottages on Frankford Avenue sold for $120,000. Today the same cottages, gutted and rebuilt with rooftop decks and chef’s kitchens, list at $650,000. Fishtown is a case study in what happens when a row home neighborhood reaches a tipping point — and what gets lost in the process.
== 3. Germantown: The Gothic Anomaly ==
Germantown challenges the South Philly row home template at every turn. Many of the attached houses here are stone, not brick. The lots are deeper. The architectural styles range from Georgian to Italianate to Craftsman. Germantown Avenue is one of the longest continuously settled streets in America, and the residential fabric on the cross-streets tells that story — if you know how to read it.
== 4. Strawberry Mansion: The Preservation Frontier ==
Strawberry Mansion contains some of the grandest row home stock in Philadelphia — three-story twin and attached houses from the 1890s and early 1900s, with elaborate cornices and decorative brickwork that would cost $200,000 to reproduce today. It also contains hundreds of vacant and deteriorating properties, legacy of the neighborhood’s decades of disinvestment. The preservation battles being fought here will determine the fate of an irreplaceable architectural resource.
== 5. West Philadelphia: The Victorian Grid ==
The neighborhoods west of 40th Street — Cedar Park, Walnut Hill, Cobbs Creek — were developed as middle-class streetcar suburbs in the 1880s and 1890s. The row homes here are larger than South Philly counterparts, often 16 or 18 feet wide, with bay windows, front porches, and decorative gable ends. They represent a different strain of the Philadelphia row home tradition — aspirational rather than utilitarian.
== 6. Kensington: Ground Zero for Change ==
Kensington’s row homes have been documented obsessively in journalism about Philadelphia’s opioid crisis. Less discussed is the quality of the housing stock itself: solid brick construction from the 1890s and early 1900s, built to house the workers of the textile mills that once dominated this part of the city. As the neighborhood begins a tentative recovery, understanding its row home fabric is essential to understanding what is being preserved and what is being lost.
== 7. Northern Liberties: The Blueprint ==
Northern Liberties in 2000 was Fishtown in 2015 was East Kensington in 2024. The neighborhood’s transformation from post-industrial working-class enclave to gentrified destination followed a pattern that has since repeated throughout the city. The row homes that remain here — particularly on the side streets off 3rd and 4th — show the original fabric beneath decades of renovation.
== 8. Bella Vista: The Immigrant Layers ==
Bella Vista’s row homes carry the visible marks of successive immigrant communities. Italian-American owners added tile work and ironwork from the 1920s through the 1960s. Later waves of Southeast Asian residents added their own modifications. The current wave of professional buyers is adding yet another layer. Reading the facades of Bella Vista is reading the immigration history of South Philadelphia.
== 9. Brewerytown: Mid-Century Modifications ==
Brewerytown’s row homes were significantly altered in the mid-20th century — aluminum siding, porch enclosures, replacement windows — in ways that obscure but do not destroy the underlying 1890s construction. As the neighborhood gentrifies, some owners are peeling back the mid-century modifications to reveal original brick; others are preserving them as part of the neighborhood’s social history.
== 10. Port Richmond: The Undiscovered Fabric ==
Port Richmond is where serious row home observers go when they want to see the unaltered thing. This working-class neighborhood northeast of Fishtown has not yet experienced the renovation wave. The row homes here — brick, modest, well-maintained — look much as they did in 1950. For how much longer is an open question.
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Philadelphia RowHome Magazine will profile each of these neighborhoods in depth over our first year of publication. Subscribe to receive every issue.