metropolis photo essay: Philadelphia Metropolis

My Philadelphia: Icons

  Through our stories and essays, Metropolis serves as a chronicle of modern Philadelphia. Over the summer, under the title My Philadelphia, we ran a series of essays about five city neighborhoods. In another series, we profiled young Philadelphians who... (Comments)

My Philadelphia: Spring Garden

We hadn't particularly meant to move to Spring Garden. In fact, we lived here for months--surrounded by drop cloths and buckets of joint compound and the implacable seepage into everything of the dust and grit produced when you demolish or repair walls made of plaster and horsehair, or so somebody said at the time--before we knew we had. (It's bounded by (Comments)

My Philadelphia: Kensington

By Dalyn Montgomery» I learned a new word; "Kenzo". This new word is even better when used in my favorite insider's movie title, "The Little Kenzo Who Could." Everyone else thinks Rocky was from South Philadelphia but now I know he was really from K&A. Lots of people are from Kensington. From, because they all left. (Comments)

My Philadelphia: West Philly

By S.G. Grant» We continue our series of Cover Stories on Philadelphia neighborhoods with S.G. Grant's essay about West Philadelphia. It's not the buildings and the businesses that attracts her, but the people -- in all their varied forms, colors and origins. Read on for Grant's census of modern West Philadelphia (Comments)

My Philadelphia: Mount Airy

Mount Airy has a reputation as a liberal bastion of Philadelphia, a world unto itself with aging hippies, racial diversity, and beautiful homes. It is all that. Which is just fine with me. I have lived in the neighborhood since 1986, raising my son on a street of row houses built (Comments)