In this third installment in our series, Ethan Wallace examines the long term effects the Columbia Avenue riot has had on this weary section of North Philadelphia. Dubbed an “extinction event”, Wallace sifts through the ruins of the once vibrant neighborhood while considering the encroaching development of Temple University’s campus and the social unrest happening in Ferguson, Missouri

Photographer Sarah Bloom has built quite a body of work in abandoned places—with nude self-portraits. Ethan Wallace chats with her about process, product, and places

Holistic medical treatment? Compassionate psychiatric care? Palliative architecture and urban design? All of it pioneered in West Philadelphia by Thomas Kirkbride 170 years ago. Ethan Wallace has the story

House of horrors? From 1990, when it closed, until 2006, when it was demolished, the legend of Byberry State Hospital in the Northeast grew in our imagination. Now two new books aim to set the complicated record straight. Ethan Wallace has the review

What’s that Plains Indian doing in our woods? Ethan Wallace reveals the wrong identity of the statue of the Lenape chief Tedyuscung on the Wissahickon’s “Council Rock”

With plans for a Live Nation concert venue in the former Ajax Metal complex in Fishtown moving forward, we take you inside the former smelting plant and laboratory

Ethan Wallace remembers the Croyden Apartments, a.k.a. “Paradise City.” Once the largest squat in the city, the apartment complex was a haven for crust punks, street kids, and modern hobos on their way through town

In Philadelphia, smokestacks were once the most prominent feature of the skyline, competing only with church spires for dominance of the horizon. They towered above every mill, factory, and plant, rising hundreds of feet into a smog choked sky