Where We Live

I really love the neighborhood where we live with its mixture of the old and new. This neighborhood has been around for more than two hundred years so it is not a surprise to see everything from the small carriage size rowhouses to the large and often breath-taking Victorian mansions. Add a few factories converted into condos and there is something for everyone.

Manayunk has the charm of a small town in the convenience of a large city. Take a stroll down Main Street and you can visit any of the chic shops and gourmet restaurants. If you prefer to live here you can live in anything from the small sized carriage houses to converted factory condos to the enormous 19th century townhouses.

Climb the steep neighborhood hills and enter into Roxborough where you see families raising small children living in anything from a modern townhouse to a hundred year brick twin to an old 19th century mansion.

Wissahicken is full of large Victorian Style mansions in which some have been converted into apartments that are full of college students who prefer the quiet of a typical tree line street but just a train station away from their school's destination.

Because three medical schools are in short distance, you have a population of med-students living about.

Mostly everyone who lives here has a dog and so advertisements for "dog walkers" are plentiful and about.

Just North of Roxborough is a suburban-like section of the city called Andorra. Andorra has only been developed in the 1950's so this is the baby of the neighborhood.

Another reason I love where I live is the Wissahickon Park which surrounds the entire neighborhood. It is a place once inhabited by the Indian and was popular for its catfish. When you take a walk through its woods down by the creek you can just imagine what it was like for all those who lived hundreds of years ago when they took that same walk.

Some neighbors still have horse stables so it is not uncommon to see rider and horse riding freely down the hidden paths of the park. It is also not uncommon to come across an old mill or stone house that was built in another century.

The neighborhood still runs an Agricultural School complete with a live working farm where high school students can learn and practice this trade. There is nothing as satisfying as taking a small child up to the farm just so he/she can pet and feed carrots to the very human friendly horse on the property.