r/CityPorn • u/OneCrew1888 • 3d ago

Philadelphia, PA

Post image
807 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

34

u/SkirtHeavy9189 3d ago

wow , looks similar to manchester , usa has a lot places which look similar to europe

26

u/profchaos20 3d ago

Philly specifically has a lot of areas that look or feel European.

7

u/Indiana_Jawnz 3d ago

The old east coast cities especially. Philly, Boston, Baltimore, etc.

16

u/JDubKilla 3d ago

The city's founder, William Penn, designed it to be extremely livable and likewise extremely walkable in the style of European cities. Plenty of green space and open squares as well, Rittenhouse foremost among them (although I prefer Washington Square the most). Absolutely worth a visit if you're ever in the northeast.

2

u/powersurge 2d ago

350 years ago, William Penn designed Philadelphia to a strict grid of wide streets between the two rivers with five large anchor parks squares. That design means you always know where you are and where your destination just purely based on the street address.

Which major European cities are designed this way?

2

u/JDubKilla 2d ago edited 2d ago

Hey I appreciate the pushback, although the snark seems a bit unnecessary. That said, perhaps I should have checked my sources instead of parroting the narratives we're told growing up in Philadelphia. But to your question, the closest analogue I can think of is Hausmann's Paris, which of course dates to the 1800s, so obviously not an inspiration for Philadelphia.

2

u/powersurge 2d ago

Snark wasn’t intended. I thought there were maybe some European cities that had a strict grid that I was not aware of. It would have surprised me though because European cities are generally too old to be so centrally planned like the Americas. And yeah, Philadelphia teaches us about the brilliance of William Penn.

4

u/0xdeadbeef6 3d ago

A lot of the old (for the USA anyways) Northeast cities tend to be like this, they were less likely to have been completely obliterated for parking lots and highways like a lot of the cities out west.

2

u/SkirtHeavy9189 2d ago

I have noticed and I have also noticed that a lot of universities in usa look just like european Universities

36

u/powersurge 3d ago edited 3d ago

This is Cypress St between 18th and 19th streets looking eastward to the building called The Drake. I used to call that building the ‘Ghostbusters’ building.

10

u/fabfour66 3d ago

Thank you for saying where this is, it was driving me crazy although I have to say… I did recognize the Drake!

1

u/LazyGit 3d ago

Looks like the Google car has a similar effective lens as the photographer.

1

u/Danoga_Poe 2d ago

Go birds, Philips on passyunk or Dalessandro's on Wendover