Been meaning to write this for weeks now.  Today, I'm home recovering
from yesterday's cataract surgery, so I don't have lots of work
clamoring for attention.

When I read the posting about the building in Manhattan that leans one
foot over into the vacant lot next door, I immediately opened up
Google Street View to find the property in question.  To my
disappointment, I couldn't see much of it.

However, that was in New York.  As Google Street View has developed,
it has gotten better.  Specifically, it works much better in
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh than in NYC.  Among other advantages, in
the more recently-done cities, you can look up toward the tops of tall
buildings, the ceilings of tunnels, and so on.

So what to look at in Philadelphia?  After some wandering around, e.g.
looking at City Hall and the walls of the Eastern State Penitentiary,
both of which I saw in person when I was there last, my fingers took
me to the 6200 block of Osage Avenue, where a 1985 confrontation
between police and a radical group called MOVE started a huge fire
that destroyed dozens of houses.

I remember the Philadelphia mayor tearfully promising the burned-out
homeowners that "we will make you whole" by rebuilding all the houses.
 And various construction trades and architects hurried to volunteer
their services and share the photo op.

The neighborhood around Osage Avenue today looks pretty solid, with
row houses probably built in the 1910s and 1920s.  But the post-1985
replacement townhouses (on Osage and on parallel Pine Street) are an
exception.  Most of the windows look to be boarded up, and torn
building paper hangs off the facades of even the occupied ones.

Hmmm.  Eighty-plus-year-old vernacular houses in West Philadelphia are
occupied and look pretty good, while a group of 20-year-old
architect-designed houses are mostly vacant wrecks.  Or am I
misreading these photos?

See for yourself.  Go to maps.google.com, search on "6200 osage ave,
philadelphia", click on "StreetView", click on one of the blue lines
to get a view window, click "Full Screen" to make it bigger, use your
mouse to move around.  Click on arrows to move up and down the street;
mouse-drag inside the picture to get a 360 view.

Don't just look at just the first houses you see.  Swivel around and
look at both sides of the street.  Stroll down Osage from 62nd to 63rd
(aka Cobbs Creek Parkway), go north a short block, and come back along
Pine Street to see the houses on the other side of the block.

What do you think?
                                                                      Larry

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Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
Washtenaw County Clerk & Register of Deeds, http://ewashtenaw.org
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
Weblog: Polygon, the Dancing Bear, http://potifos.com/polygon
P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

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