Turning the Blight Around

For those of you who follow me regularly, my Sunday Cycling Series was put on hold this week due to nasty weather. It's likely going to be on hold for another week due to Easter. I may sneak something in on Saturday, but that's for another time. Today...

I was thinking about how it's been almost a year since Wash Cycle moved into our Thompson St. location, and how the neighborhood has been rapidly changing since we moved in. One example are the seemingly daily demolitions and new constructions.

A rather large demolition occurred this past weekend just west of our Thompson location, when the Blumberg high rise was imploded. I couldn't attend (and believe me I wanted to), but I spotted the rubble on my route today:

Partially hidden by other structures that will soon bear the same fate

If you look closely, you can see the center city Blue Cross building in the hollowed out townhome on the left. The Blumberg high rise was a once imposing figure in the neighborhood, visible from our laundromat almost 10 blocks away and also from Ridge Avenue:

Not anymore!

Pretty metaphoric to see something that was once so towering (literally) be brought down. If you're curious, my friends over at the Spirit of Penn's Garden covered this much more in-depth, including more photos from where I'm standing in the last picture above. They're making way for low-rise housing which will hopefully reduce the blight, recreational drug use and other crime that has long plagued this post-industrial area.

Anywho, I continued west on Oxford Street towards my first delivery. Something looked different between 24th and 25th streets:

Well obviously the houses are different...

I photographed this block back in December, when the entire row was standing. Come to think of it, I passed through here no more than a couple weeks ago (it may have even been last week) and they were all still standing. Things can change faster than you think...

But on the contrary, there's this baptist church just a couple blocks away that's been standing for over 125 years:

Probably because they're tax exempt...

As I mentioned, we moved into our Thompson St. location almost a year ago, and these are just another two of the (hopefully) positive changes I've seen in the area in that short of a time. I know we've played at least a small part in it, and again, hopefully we'll continue to...