This week, Hidden City’s Nathaniel Popkin and Bradley Maule met with Drexel University President John Fry to talk campus development, partnerships, ideas for his proposed “innovation neighborhood,” and his vision for integrated high density development linked to high speed rail

Certainly the most tantalizing school site to be going on the market is the seven acre University City High School Campus, wedged between Penn and Drexel. The history of institutional involvement, however, is long and painful, says Nathaniel Popkin, who meditates on past failures and future possibilities. Bradley Maule’s photo essay on the school campus helps tell the story

The group CosaCosa brings the politics of the New Deal into a New Deal-funded auditorium in a school about to close–a song cycle for a cycle of economics and politics. Katrina Ohstrom previews the PIFA performance in words and photos

A lens on American education policy at Bok, one of the only school buildings in the city to have been built completely by the WPA. Its closing leaves a students adrift and the future of vocational education in doubt. Katrina Ohstrom has the story and photos

Hidden City has covered more churches and schools that have closed, are closing, or might be closing, than we’d really care to. John Vidumsky has plotted them on a citywide map to illustrate just how widespread the closings have been, and to place them into their geographical context

The “ruin porn” tag was put on our tours and events schedule; we think we’re offering something that’s quite a bit more–we want to make people alive to the city’s possibilities

Enamored with the idea of salvaging an old floor? HC contributor Jacob Hellman has an insider’s story on the reclamation of a South Philly school gym’s hardwood. The upshot–it may not be as easy as you think

Ever wondered about that distinctive boxy shape you see in most Philadelphia schools? Philip Jablon dives into the architectural vision of Irwin T. Catharine, the man responsible for the schools’ blueprints.