History and Context

8th & Oxford, looking West at the South side of Oxford and the SEPTA Rail tracks.

The Third Annual Ed Bacon Student Design Competition focuses on the Ludlow neighborhood of lower North Philadelphia. For the purposes of this competition, the site boundaries are Girard Avenue, Ninth Street, Cecil B. Moore Avenue, and Fifth Street. However, for a Ludlow resident, the neighborhood's boundaries are considered somewhat larger, extending North to Montgomery Avenue and East to Germantown Avenue.

The history of this neighborhood, like that of other parts of North Philadelphia, recalls a once thriving community with a strong industrial presence, abandoned for the dreams of suburbia, leading the neighborhood to erode due to neglect and lack of both public and private investment. Ludlow was the focus of several experimental redevelopment efforts in the 1950s and 1960s, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful in breathing new life into this declining area.

Today Ludlow is finally seeing a new wave of construction, much of it thanks to active community development corporations, in partnership with City and Federal Agencies. These recent developments are not without their drawbacks, however, the starkest of which is a severe reduction in density and a suburban building pattern. Many blocks newly developed seem suburban. Driveways outnumber pedestrians. Once the new houses are occupied, the neighborhood will still lack adequate recreation facilities, commercial activity, and educational resources to support new residents.

The neighborhood has suffered dramatically over the years, and this new construction will hardly make a dent in a sea of vacant blocks and parcels, dotted with crumbling older homes — reminders of a historic architectural aesthetic that has all but disappeared. There is neither an existing neighborhood plan, nor a functional citywide comprehensive plan to guide Ludlow's contemporary development. It will take fresh thinking and true vision to rebuild and revive this disinvested community.

Early History

In the early 20th century, Lower North Philadelphia was at an extremely prosperous section of the city. Residents who lived through the decline and fall of neighborhoods like Ludlow spoke of the safety they felt, perfectly comfortable walking the streets in the early hours of the morning. Three story row houses lined the blocks. Corner stores bustled with activity.

To hear such comparisons is striking when walking through Ludlow today, or thinking of it at its nadir around mid-century.

Just prior to World War II, Lower North Philadelphia saw a major population surge. In the 1940 Census, a little less than half of the population was African-American. There was a strong Jewish community centered around two synagogues and a Jewish school on North 7th Street. Foreign born Russians, Germans, Austrians and Hungarians were numerous as well, as was a burgeoning Latino population.

However, as was the trend in Philadelphia and across the nation, the years following World War II saw an exodus of white families out of inner cities. The consequences of their abandonment for Ludlow were contagious; the degradation of a row house poisoned the houses on either side, perpetuating a slide towards condemnation. Often, however, demolition did not quickly follow condemnation, leaving abandoned properties as festering sores on the body of the suffering neighborhood.

Post-War Redevelopment

In 1945 the Federal Redevelopment Act enabled cities across the country to form redevelopment authorities to handle the renewal of disinvested areas. In Philadelphia it was the role of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission (PCPC) to certify blighted areas and create a redevelopment plan, then it was the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority's (RDA) job to find developers and handle the financing structure for the redevelopment area. The Federal Housing Act of 1949 took the redevelopment efforts in Philadelphia and across the U.S. to a new level, providing enormous public funding for urban renewal.

In 1948 PCPC certified its first batch of redevelopment areas, including the Temple Redevelopment Area which included the Ludlow neighborhood. The Temple area would be amended several times between 1948 and 1968. In 1950 PCPC produced its Southwest Temple redevelopment plan, and in 1955 its Northwest Temple plan. Early on PCPC decided that the "Temple" area should be divided along the natural boundary of the Reading Railroad (now used by SEPTA regional rail), above 9th Street. The decision to do so would directly shape the form of Ludlow today.

With redevelopment area plans in hand, the RDA sought out to construct new housing in the Temple area, including the Ludlow neighborhood. The successful implementation of the Harrison Public Housing Project in 1953 and 1954 marked the first part of the Southwest Temple Plan to be realized. It provided the template for the redeveloping of the other so-called "Units" of the Temple Redevelopment Area.

Other development efforts took place in the neighboring Poplar area to the south. The Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) also got involved in the Temple area, demolishing over 500 dwelling units and constructing a low-rent housing project containing 300 dwelling units and housing approximately 1,323 persons.

After the development of the Harrison Housing Project, PCPC and RDA orchestrated the development of Jefferson Manor, the expansion of the Harrison School playground and of the St. Malachy's Church and school in a similar manner. Redevelopment proposals were approved for the remainder of Southwest Temple, along Broad Street, and Northwest Temple, mostly dealing with the Temple University expansion.

Later Urban Renewal

Ludlow never underwent a successful transformation as its westerly neighbors did. The Reading Railroad provided an intimidating frontier separating urban renewal from urban neglect.

To the west, the Redevelopment Authority interested a small-time, local developer named Norman Denny to build a new semi-suburban community to be called Yorktown. It would be the first major, market-rate development in the U.S. promoted specifically to middle-class, African-American families. With the completion of the first phase of Yorktown in 1961, the city turned its attention to the frontage on North Broad Street and the implementation of the Northwest Temple Redevelopment Proposal, rather than eastward to the Ludlow neighborhood.

Ludlow indeed festered. By 1964 more than two-thirds of housing structures in the community were substandard; twenty percent were vacant. Occupying 10% of the Twentieth Police District, Ludlow accounted for more than 20% percent of the District's crime. Ludlow's census tracts ranked near last in the health of its residents. Tap-rooms and dens of sin abounded. Vacant lots accumulated trash at an astonishing rate; a collection of burned out cars, empty liquor bottles and dead dogs became the normal scene on the streets of Ludlow. Children played in abandoned lots and alleyways, lacking any kind of recreation facilities.

In 1966, PCPC and its executive director Edmund N. Bacon turned its attention to the Ludlow area — a neglected, violent and windswept example of the failure of earlier urban renewal efforts. Part of the inspiration for this new focus was a television special by station WFIL, documenting the terrible conditions and crime of the Ludlow area. PCPC worked with PHA to create a new concept called the "Used House Program," an early example nationally of scattered site public housing. In the program, PHA would acquire abandoned homes and convert them to single units of public housing, thereby "scattered" throughout the community.

In August of 1966 PCPC produced a new community plan for Ludlow. The next year PCPC began an effort to move the Perry Equipment Company out of Ludlow and have the City acquire its building site for a new recreation center. The fight for the recreation center between 5th and 6th, Master and Jefferson Streets was a transformative one for the local community group, the Ludlow Community Association. The Association's President, Marvin Louis worked with PCPC for several years to convince City Council to spend a hefty sum to acquire the land for what is now the Cruz Recreation Center.

This was but a single hard-fought victory in what Marvin Louis calls a "downhill fight." PHA's scattered-site housing program was significantly underfunded, and the agency could not keep up its newly rehabilitated homes. As houses became so dilapidated that they could not be used for public housing PHA abandoned them, and over time the City tore them down. The next several decades saw a rapid rate of abandonment and an ever growing collection of vacant parcels, then larger vacant lots, then whole vacant blocks. What was supposed to be a public investment to restore individual houses turned into a blighting factor, resulting in numerous abandoned homes left to infect Ludlow. The most up-to-date census data puts the neighborhood vacancy rate at just above twenty percent.

Contemporary Reinvestment

The 1980s and 1990s saw a major demographic shift for the Ludlow area with a significant influx of Latinos into the eastern end of the community. The 1980s and 1990s also saw a surge of public housing projects in Ludlow as the City's Office of Housing and Community Development (OHCD) began rehabilitating PHA-owned scattered-site structures, pumping millions of dollars into Eastern North Philadelphia.

Ludlow's redevelopment in the 1990s and 2000s was largely spearheaded by several community developers — the Ludlow Community Development Corporation, Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM), and the Hispanic Association of Contractors and Engineers (HACE). These groups were supported by PCPC, the RDA, PHA, the Philadelphia Office of Housing and Community Development (OHCD) and the quasi-public Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHCD).

In 1992, OHCD and HACE completed a project of rental units. The Ludlow CDC, PHDC and OHCD teamed up in the mid-1990s to develop the Ludlow Village homes, now in Phase V. The Ludlow Villages were funded largely through federal sources — Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and the HOPE IV program. This project received its most recent round of funding in 2005 for its fifth stage. In March of 2007 APM and the RDA broke ground on a project called Pradera III (The Meadows). This project was funded with support from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, the Reinvestment Fund, Local Initiatives Support Coalition (LISC), and other sources.

APM is planning other efforts near Ludlow focusing on additional housing and transit-oriented development around the Temple University SEPTA rail station, which is two blocks from the Pradera developments — the Northwestern tip of the competition's target area. This initiative, along with the soon-to-be-completed Pradera III, are both part of APMs Neighborhood Revitalization Plan, which represents the most comprehensive vision for transforming this area.

Existing Conditions

The Ludlow neighborhood lacks an overarching continuity. No two blocks are alike, save the suburban-style, cookie-cutter public housing blocks. Commercial activity is extremely limited — corner bodegas dot the neighborhood, while the strip along Girard Avenue is grossly underutilized. Though private investment is creeping west up Girard from the Delaware, one still encounters gutted structures on the North side of the avenue.

Ludlow is best understood on two feet. But simply navigating the neighborhood as a pedestrian is a struggle. Construction projects close off entire blocks, and impede sidewalks. Many sidewalks are in a state of deep disrepair and pose injury risks. Since the Philadelphia Zoning Code mandates one-to-one parking in new construction, curb cuts, driveways, and garages are plentiful, and disrupt the pedestrian experience significantly. But the most prevalent impression is the openness and emptiness.

Many factors — aesthetic and demographic — contribute to this. As noted, the first culprit is the severe loss in density. The extensive demolitions over the past half-century or so all but eliminated classic three-story row homes from the neighborhood. There exist entire city blocks with only a handful of structures. Though some density will be returned once the above projects are completed, it is unlikely that the lost urban density can ever fully be restored. Moreover, public housing projects often combine two previously existing lots to create one big lot, with enough room for a driveway, and double the private open space, at the expense of public open space.

Outside of the Cruz Recreation facilities, public open space is nonexistent. Street trees have dwindled, and the canopy is roughly three percent, according to figures recently compiled for GreenPlan Philadelphia. There are three community gardens initially conceived by the Philadelphia Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green program in partnership with the community, but they have not been maintained and now are overgrown beyond recognition.

Demographically, the data confirms the disappearance of a community. Besides a vacancy rate of more than twenty percent, only six percent of occupied households have a married family with children. Similarly, a fifth of the households are single mothers, and single women, living with or without children, make up nearly a half of the households. Most damagingly, however, renters outnumber owner-occupiers by nearly six-to-one. The citywide average for a neighborhood is sixty percent owners, to forty percent renters. In Ludlow it is eighteen percent owners, and eighty-two percent renters. With such a transient constituency, it is hard to develop a neighborhood identity, and makes the successes of the existing community organizations that much more remarkable.