The Post Where I Go into a Few Stores I Usually Wouldn't

One of my friends I made at college comes from a remote part of the state. His girlfriend also happens to be from that remote part of the state, and is still out there for school. Since we had a couple months to settle into the city, he wanted to give her a tour of it. Being the gracious friend he is, I was invited to third fourth wheel (as his roommate also came along with us). I was already pretty familiar with Center City at this point, but she brought us through a bunch of stores I otherwise never would have set foot in. That's the day most of the pictures in this post came from- taken furtively, of course. Most of my friends have no idea I write this and I intend to keep it that way.

Scandia House, Rittenhouse Square

While the building dates back a few decades prior, this building became home to Scandia House in 1964 as part of the boom in Scandinavian-style furniture of the time. They've been closed for a very long time but the logo remains on the side of the building, which is now home to a salon, spa, and will soon be adding a restaurant to that mix. Interestingly, there is still an active copyright on the Scandia House name.

About 50 feet from where I took this photo, we passed a guy with a Scottish accent talking on his phone. My friend asked me if that was James McAvoy, but I didn't know. So we pulled around a corner and checked his Wikipedia page to confirm he did look like that and was from Scotland. By that point, the guy had finished his call and was walking into a store, so we followed him into the MAC Cosmetics. Lo and behold, it actually was him! My friend got a picture with him, and we didn't question what he was doing in a makeup store.

WCAU Building, Rittenhouse Square

This Art Deco masterpiece opened its doors in 1931 and holds the distinction of being the first building specifically built for a radio station in the country. Woolworth occupied the ground floor at the time. I would assume they signed a 50-year lease upon its completion, as they moved up to Spring Garden Street in 1981 and the building was converted to the Art Institute of Philadelphia. The school started to run into trouble in 2016, sold the building to a developer, and vacated the first two floors. Those floors became an Old Navy store later that year. The Art Institute continued to lease the upper floors, but ultimately closed the Philadelphia campus altogether in 2018 along with 41 of their 50 campuses. The Art Institute is currently in bankruptcy court and not expected to make it out. It would seem something is now happening with those floors, as earlier this year plans to add another floor and rooftop pergola were in front of the historical commission. I suspect this means apartments.

Along Chestnut Street

The closer you get to broad street, the taller these old office buildings get. It's a fun place to walk. The building currently occupied by H&M was originally home to the Bailey Banks & Biddle Company's headquarters.

Rite Aid/Payless, Rittenhouse Square

This Payless store first opened in the 70's or 80's. The logo was updated and interior completely redone in 2013. The store closed with the rest of the chain and now sits vacant. I'm guessing Payless once used the upper floors, but they were sealed off long before the store closed. Update: It was a Rite Aid as of 1976 and can be seen during the running scene in Rocky. They moved to the former Sunray diagonally across the street in the 80's. The building next door looks historic but I can't find much out there on it. Indochino opened there in 2015, replacing Liberty Travel. UniQlo to the right of that was originally Jackson & Moyer clothing store, which also became part of the Art Institute in 1981. This building was completely vacated by them for UniQlo.

Shops at Liberty Place, Rittenhouse Square

This mall sits on the bottom of and between the Liberty 1 and Liberty 2 office towers. It was developed by Rouse and opened in 1990. It gets insanely heavy foot traffic (you can't find a seat in the food court at lunch time- and there's triple the amount of seating you'd think a mall like this needs), but despite that has a disappointingly high vacancy rate. 

Here's the outside of the mall, as viewed from the third (maybe? I forget) floor of the Nordstrom Rack across the street (which itself is an entire former Bonwit Teller). Ruby Tuesday closed their store in the mall last year. It's currently vacant but I suspect with the amount of street frontage it has it won't stay that way for much longer. The brick building is home to what I believe is the world's fanciest Rite Aid. It's an old high-ceilinged 1920's banking lobby they turned into their pharmacy space.

Woolworth/Blick, East Market

This store opened as a Woolworth in 1946. I believe it coexisted with the other East Market store a couple blocks away, and both closed with the chain. This location's midcentury design got the exterior listed on the historic register so it couldn't be changed. I'm sure I've got a picture of it coming up at some point. West Elm took over the ground level, Lucky Strike Bowling Alley got the second floor, and Blick Art Supplies took the basement after they closed. 

It's not like Michaels or AC Moore, this store focuses more on fine art supplies and less on crafts and decorations. It's also on the expensive side, but they have a little gallery where they will display works by local artists of which one of the people I was with happened to be featured. This was strictly a viewing trip.

Conestoga Bank, Rittenhouse Square

Beneficial bought out Conestoga in 2017. Since they already had a branch a block up from here, they closed this location. This has since become a high-end bookstore who did a fantastic job restoring the original art deco façade. The vacant space seen at the corner of the block was formerly a Capital One Cafe, which moved across the street in 2016. It became one of the first, if not very first, Chase Bank locations in the state in 2018. It's ironic it took them so long to enter PA, since their headquarters is literally half an hour south of here in Wilmington- come to think of it though, I haven't seen any of their banks aside from the HQ in Delaware.

Modell's, Rittenhouse Square

This is one of two Modell's stores in this neighborhood. When they first filed for bankruptcy, I expected one to close and for them to keep the other. That wasn't the case, both were given the ax first round. Their closing sales were put on hold once lockdown began with the intent to continue after they reopened, but both stores were so badly damaged by the looting in May that never happened.

Urban Outfitters, Rittenhouse Square

This building was built in 1956 as Penn Federal Savings & Loan, but has been Urban Outfitters' flagship store for the past few decades. They kept the midcentury exterior intact (which I'm sure I have a picture of somewhere in the pipeline), but totally redid the inside. This store was badly damaged by the looting as well and almost burned down, but saved by a passerby who pushed the burning merchandise out into the street. They made their repairs fast and have been reopened for a couple months now, though they only replaced the windows that were totally broken so the cracked ones still need repair.

Brooks Brothers/Staples, Rittenhouse Square

I'm guessing Brooks Brothers opened this store in the 40's or 50's based on the marble around the entrance. They moved to a new location in 1997, and Staples took their place here. Even though they've been gone for quite a while, their logo is still set in the stone above the entryways.

W Hotel, Rittenhouse Square

This hotel began construction in 2015, and is slated to finish up by the end of the year. It currently clocks in as the 9th tallest building in the city. The site it occupies was surface parking for the last 20 years or so, but prior to that was home to a 20-story office tower and several smaller commercial buildings which were all destroyed by falling debris from the Meridian Plaza fire. It's nice to see something, especially something this tall, finally fill that space.

Shanghai Bazaar/Chinatown Square, Chinatown

Prior to its conversion to food court Chinatown Square (from where I highly recommend Khmer Grill if you're in town); this was home to the Shanghai Bazaar & New China Bookstore. They were basically an everything-Chinese store with a bookshop on the second floor that my parents would always stop at when we got dinner in Chinatown. It had a very distinct smell, which I only recently figured out what it was when my roommate bought an opium-scented candle as a joke. I have a feeling this store wasn't burning candles. Possible drug abuse aside, it was a neat store. I was upset to learn they were gone, but pretty happy with what replaced it. As you can probably guess, Chinatown Square totally redid the façade when they opened in 2016. Previously it looked almost like an old Woolworth, but I can't find anything to back that up so I'm gonna chalk that down as a coincidence.

Xe Lua, Chinatown

This is one of my favorite buildings in the neighborhood, in part because of its neat oriental-style wrought iron railings, but also because of that neon sign in the window. I like neon, pho, and trains, so it's pretty perfect. I suspect these buildings date back to the mid-Victorian era, but the railings were added on in the early 1900's when Chinatown was first becoming Chinatown. Plenty of new buildings in the neighborhood are being built in modern Asian styles, but there's disappointingly few examples of these early more traditional designs.

Wendy's/Vietnam House/Shi Miao Dao, Chinatown

I would have loved to see this as a Wendy's. They converted the first two floors of a circa-1880 rowhome into their restaurant. 2-level fast food joints aren't uncommon downtown, but seeing them retrofitted into a former residential building is. If this is like any of the other double decker restaurants around here, the kitchen and counter were on the first floor and seating area upstairs. The atrium would seem to support my theory. They closed sometime in the 90's and became Vietnam House, who aside from a coat of paint did nothing to the exterior. They left parts of the inside -like the exposed brick-alone too, but did close off the second floor. That's now offices. Vietnam House closed last year and became a Chinese noodle house, who too did very little to the building.

Gimbels Site, East Market

During its first years, Gimbels was just one store that moved around quite a bit. They finally set up their first store on this corner in 1894. It held the distinction of being the world's first department store with an escalator. The company grew quickly from there. By the end of the 1920's they had expanded with new stores in NYC and Pittsburgh, bought Saks and Kauffmann's, and more than doubled the size of the Philadelphia store with the addition seen in the background here. In 1977, they replaced this store with their location at the Gallery across the street. The new one was short-lived, as the chain went under in 1987. After sitting vacant for a few years, it was decided that the old Gimbels should be torn down to make way for new development. Everything except the most recent addition was torn down and "temporarily" replaced with surface parking. Looking at the walls, it's pretty easy to see where the buildings used to connect. Since then, development proposals have come and gone but nothing has become of the property. The parking lot did go away for a bit in the late 90's when construction began for Disney Quest's second location here, but by the time they had excavated the foundation the first location had failed and Disney pulled the plans. It sat a hole for a few years before the parking lot was restored. Now, it's being looked at for the Sixers' proposed new arena. I think it's a viable candidate; it's almost a full vacant block in the heart of Center City. It would unfortunately probably involve demolishing the remnants of Gimbels, but to get rid of this public embarrassment of a parking lot it might just be worth it. (But, off the record, if I were to bet I'd say they're gonna put the arena down in South Philly's stadium parking lot sea.)

Fresh Grocer, University City

Once again, I popped into the store for a quick trip but neglected to photograph the entire thing. Here are the freezer cases in the front of the store, perpendicular to ~60 degrees from the aisles.

The produce department in this store was deceptively classy. I'll also give them credit for carrying a pretty wide selection. Now if only it was fresh.

Barnes & Noble/Penn Bookstore, University City

Curiosity got the best of me, so I wandered in here to see how intact UPenn kept it from the Barnes & Noble days. They actually kept it exactly the same, save for a couple small changes. I could easily be fooled into thinking it was still a B&N.

It even still has their café! Since it converted prior to B&N turning all their café's over to Starbucks, this is operated by Penn's campus dining- which ironically serves Starbucks coffee.

Not sure if Penn added all this university apparel or if B&N sold it too. Even though it was a full-scale location, it was still always Penn-affiliated. 

I might be understating it when I say it was a full-size store. It's probably larger than any other B&N I've been in- and my area has its fair share of 2-story ones. 

It's a good looking store too. I figure Penn helped them out with building it. They've got some deep Ivy League pockets.

American Apparel, University City

This location, which shares a building with the Penn Bookstore, closed with the chain in 2016. It briefly operated as Raxx Vintage West, the second (and westernmost) location of a vintage clothing store. That was gone within a year so I can't tell if it was a pop-up or just ill fated. Afterwards, it did another 1-year stint as a Lululemon Pop-Up, which as the name suggests was actually a pop-up. Now, it's home to Hello World, an independent housewares store that relocated from elsewhere in the building.

Is it cool to like Carrie Underwood? No. Am I still going to include one of her songs in today's post? Perhaps.