Parkside Historic District

Built between the 1870s and about 1910 on the western edge of Fairmount Park, the Parkside Historic District in West Philadelphia combines mansarded Victorian rows, tan and red brick porch-fronted houses, and large apartment buildings. German brewers and their associates acquired most of the land, beginning with John Baltz's brewery site at 38th and Girard, and developers such as the Blockwood Improvement Company commissioned architects including Frederick Newman, H.E. Flower and Willis G. Hale. Their work uses terra cotta, pressed metal, copper trim and Flemish or Renaissance motifs drawn from Continental sources rather than English Ruskinian models. The district is regarded as an unusually complete record of how a single social group built a neighborhood, with a surviving range of building sizes. Its streetscapes are largely intact, and the buildings are important to the history of Philadelphia's German community.