Tasteful Friends: A Mansion in Philadelphia.

That certainly is...ornate. All I can think about is the dust collecting in those gilt curlicues.

Unfortunate that the original builders didn't take more care with the exterior, which looks forbidding and institutional.

Maybe that was the "care" the builders intended, Sylvia.

A bit overdone to say the least. It's been a brewery and with all those meters, I'm guessing it's been offices or apartments in the past. My impression is that the Fairmount neighborhood is "transitional" as in grand, often institutional, buildings near the art museum and ordinary row houses further away.

Maybe a museum but wouldn't want to live there. The energy is dead.

Fixing the sandstone facade will cost another 5 million. Or you do it the Philadelphia way and clad it in vinyl panels.

It's a great house, very interesting, but ultimately I don't really like it, or rather wouldn't want to own it.

Built in 1890, it's that showy end of the century grab bag approach, with no holding back and every competing idea put to the test. I like the bombast and force of Victorian architecture, but at the end it got a little corrupt and sometimes frilly, or in this case too Beer Baron Baronial. The exterior is handsome enough, and some of the interiors and interior details are very nice indeed, but it doesn't come together agreeably for me.

I was in the house many years ago. A interesting woman, and apparently well known biochemist had it for ages and did a lot or repair and restoration. She had lived in an apartment in it and then she bought it for very little money after a fire in the late 1980s, in any case it was her great passion. That part of the Spring Garden neighborhood was dodgy then, despite Green Street having an interesting collection of industrialist's houses, it never had the appeal of, say, Spruce Street with its more elegant mix of houses and tree-lined street. Green Street was more than a bit rough. Today the surrounding streets look much better if still not great, it's not a part of Philaldephia where I would like to like, and I'm quite fond of the city.

One of the front parlors is superb, with fine woodwork and a beautiful ceiling with Grecian vase-inspired decoration in gold leaf (see photo) It like it darkened by time and would leave most of the ceilings uncleaned, filling in the missing bits of decoration (from plaster failures) if I could afford it. To me, this style looks best a bit frayed and time-darkened, to brighten it all up to the hues it had in 1890 would, in many of the other rooms, be too flowery for me.

The biochemist added all the water heaters and electric meters seen in the basement photos. She rented out parts of the house and kept other parts for herself.

OP- YOU are tasteful to post this listing because this house has some gorgeous details in the interior. The house has not been ruined by any McMansionized updates like the bathrooms or kitchen.

I spoke too soon. They did McMansionize some of the rooms. None the less it still has some beautiful perios details intact.

The exterior is not "institutional" in person. It's the grandest house on a block full of brownstone mansions. It was cut up into apartments for the time I lived in that neighborhood, in the 1990s.

Not one of you grew up cleaning wood blinds.

Fuck that house

Did Miss Vince Fumo ever unload her white elephant further east on Green Street (approximately @15th-16th Street)?

It's fucking awful. Specifically the position of the house. Right on the street with low fences and no gardens.

It’s not in a bad neighborhood, close to the fabulous Philadelphia Arts Museum, Rodin Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary, Kelly Drive, etc. Not sketchy at all anymore. Fairmount has greatly improved in recent years although there are pockets of resistance.

The problem is the facade which is crumbling and impossible to restore for a decent price. The garden has fabulous magnolia trees.

Real Estate jargon has this as an economically distressed building. There is value in every room if it is torn out and sold piece by piece.

Depending on the markets, this could be salvager’s dream with a bare lot at the close.

[quote]It's fucking awful. Specifically the position of the house. Right on the street with low fences and no gardens.

Never stepped off the farm or out of a suburb to visit a city, R13?

I invite correction, but I can't think of a house in the center of Philadelphia that is set well back from the street, surrounded by high walls or fences, and ringed by gardens.

WOW! I have friends who live around the corner and I never knew that this fabulous place was an actual house.

R12, you sound very thick-skulled

R16 - it's not - it's 6 separate apartments. If you go on streetview, it says Bergdoll Apartments.

I hate it - seems like someone bought this in the 80s and spent way too much money to restore it - a la This Old House - when old shit was in. It's not practical and overly ornate - and the furniture to match is just grandma. Then to have the conflicting kitchen and bathrooms makes no sense.

This could be a lovely mix of traditional and modern - but no. Somebody had a hard-on for historical restoration which was out of their budget and now they're stuck.

They're going to need to drop it another 2 to 2.5 million. 5.58 million for a 6 apt building that needs work? C'mon.

Not Bergdoll! I said I wanted Berghof!

They are not stuck, R18. She is dead. And she did a great job saving it during an economically very distressed time in Philly. Spring Garden was a slum in the 80s.

Sorry for the paywall I do not know how to get around it.

And here is an article on Bergdoll Junior, the most hated man in America. They show the wrong mansion unless he owned that too.

I love it!

Money Pit

Piece of Shit

[quote]it's 6 separate apartments. If you go on streetview, it says Bergdoll Apartments.

Presently, yes. Obviously it was built as a single-family house and could easily be reverted to that. I believe it's been apartments, informally and then formally for at least 50 or 60 years. It's what happens to many an old house that is too big and too grand for evolving neighborhoods and lifestyles. You can easily find 14,000 sf houses being built in the US today, , .but they are a very different sort of animal, even the ones the aim at some vein of historicism, no matter how vulgarly interpreted.

A few years ago I recall seeing individual apartments offered for sale (search the address and zillow.com to find). That can't have been an easy or inexpensive thing for the owner to have created a condo or co-op structure, and all that metering and individual waster atnks, etc. seen in the basement photos, and evidently the ambitious plan didn't pan out as the house is now being offered as a whole. Any buyer ought to have been cautious of buying into something that was, for instance, only successful in selling off a portion of the apartments or buying something that couldn't be moved into until enough buyers had demonstrated interest with money and sales contracts. The best hope is to sell it to someone who reverts it to a single family house, or who carves some separately accessed apartments from the rear wing for rent or sale to help finance the enterprise and relief some of the maintenance burden.

I like Victorian architecture, but the particular quality of this example and its location would put it out on consideration, especially when, for $1.1M less you could buy a beautiful and immaculately maintained 6600sq ft townhouse of ca.1830 on one of the most beautiful streets in the U.S., that needs nothing -- only painting and a few small changes to suit your taste. The Delancey Street house is not so far away as the crow flies, but a world apart and the house much more desirable as a place to live.

This area was not a "slum" in the 80s. It was the wealthier edge of a working class neighborhood and already gentrifying by the 80s.

I wondered about that.

I counted 3 kitchens!!!

It’s lovely. To convert it to a single family home would be a massive undertaking, though.

This is stunning even in its somewhat run down current state, and would be worth putting more money and time put into it to bring it back to its original glory room by room. Some rooms are already there, some need work, but the style is perfect for me even if its too big. I'd be inclined to leave it divvied up into apartments, keeping the grandest and most ornate for myself and letting the others

And R20 is right, that lady did a great job of keeping this more or less preserved as best she could, it would have been demolished without here which would have been a great shame

R25's link is gorgeous. Just a handful of things not to my taste, but nothing awful. THAT is worth the money - not this shit hole trying to be a museum without the funds to do it.

I don't want to live in a time capsule - I like R25's just fine.

Stunning is not a word associated with Philadelphia.

Ok R26, slum was too harsh. But 19th and Wallace was a drug market. With a temporary police lookout that was firebombed.

A nice article suggesting an architectural tour of the neighborhood surrounding 2201 Green Street. It noted that the house had been divided into apartments by the 1970s.

The Bergdoll mansion is not high Victorian on the outside it’s actually quite restrained and beautifully proportioned. I

R33 - and looks like it's falling apart on the sides from Google street view. The window frames and edges around the windows need work - as does a lot of the exterior.