Delmar Apartments

Five-story, U-shaped apartment building in the Germantown-Chestnut Hill area of Philadelphia, completed in 1902 for developer John W. DeLong and designed by Frederick Fox in a Georgian Revival manner. Its Flemish bond brick walls rest on a Wissahickon schist base, with terra cotta quoining, a molded modillioned cornice, and a wraparound wood porch supported by paired Tuscan columns. Two four-story bays with fan-lit windows and imbricated shingles on the south and west elevations lean toward the Queen Anne Revival. The interior carries Georgian Revival trim, turned balusters and newels, and a public dining room in the eastern arm of the U. The building is significant as the first large apartment complex built outside Philadelphia's central core, placed beside the Chelten Avenue Station of the Philadelphia, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Railroad, and as a pioneer of the railroad-served garden apartment in the city. A second DeLong building on Morris Street followed five years later, and many apartment houses came after. The building is recorded as altered.