South Front Street Historic District

Built of hand-made brick in Flemish bond, the houses on South Front Street in Southwark stand two and a half to three and a half stories high, with steep gable or gambrel roofs, dormers front and back, and two rooms deep with a kitchen wing behind. Most were completed before 1769, and the group includes the earliest surviving houses on Front Street, a road that ran parallel to the Delaware River and served a port economy of commercial and maritime trades. Number 708 and number 712 date from about 1740, while numbers 700 through 706 were built between 1760 and 1769. Daniel Harrison, a carpenter and member of the Carpenters' Company, built 708, and Samuel Smith, a shipwright, built 710 and 712. Nathaniel Irish, also a Carpenters' Company member, built 700 through 706. Eighteenth-century interiors survive, including paneled chimney walls, fireplaces with original moulding, and close newel stairs. The corner house at 700 was the Widow Mallaby's tavern, and 706 was also a tavern.