Other Lives

— Photo by ML

You could smell the stench as soon as you entered the house. Then, immediately, you saw the filth and chaos. People had lived here until recently, and some of the residents had had pets. A dog had even been left behind for several days until a neighbor was able to let him out.

We had been looking at properties in North Philadelphia when we came across this former boarding house. It was an ordinary 3-story brownstone in a fairly intact city block in a part of town where many buildings are boarded up, burnt out, or torn down often leaving weed strewn empty lots. I had seen a few boarding houses before, but they were all empty. For whatever reason, this house, however, still held some of the belongings of its former residents, and, while walking though the house, I got a glimpse of how life can be when you have little or nothing.

Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia

— Photos by ML

Walking through the Strawberry Mansion section in North Philadelphia is quite an experience. You can see hints of a very different world from the past in the ornate row houses and avenues. There are so many details on these brick that call out the amazing craftsmanship from another era. Inside many still have beautiful ceilings, and here and there one can still find the original leaded stained glass panels above the entrance doors. The houses usually have hardwood floors, high ceilings, and stairs with wooden balusters and hand rails...

Stop! This sounds almost like a description of the houses in Philadelphia's Society Hill section? Maybe so, but only because I left out a few details. Society Hill and Strawberry Mansion are both romantic names hinting at a glorious past, and, in terms of geography, they're actually only 4.5 miles apart. But in terms of everything else, they might as well be on different planets.