You may recall a few months ago, when I deemed the 1300 block of Girard the crappiest looking block in the neighborhood. The north side is really the problem, there was an abandoned house that used to house Asian-American LEAD, followed by the “Haunted Mansion,” a big, dilapidated house owned by local political activists Dorothy Brizill and Gary Imhoff (which was the inspiration for my Abandoned House Watch series), then another abandoned house, followed by an occupied but run-down house and an overgrown alleyway. Really a terrible sight.
However, at least there’s some progress. The first abandoned house, which used to be a bungalow but was being fixed up into an 8-unit condo building, is finished and looks pretty nice — the before and after of that house are the pictures above. It fits in well in the neighborhood too, aside from the new bricks and a few other small things you wouldn’t know it was a new building. It also includes some of the wall from the bungalow, which you can see below. It’s now called 1323 Girard Street Condominium, and 5 of the 8 units have already sold. I like the porches too.
Nice to see something like this come in and replace something abandoned. There’s also work on the next abandoned house down the block, and to their credit, Brizill and Imhoff have fixed up the Haunted Mansion a bit. Maybe we’ll be passing the title of Crappiest Block to somebody else in a year or so?
