It used to be South of South — a working-class corner with a Black history that goes back to the Great Migration. The hospital that gave it the new name closed in 2007. The neighborhood it left behind became the most-asked-about family pocket in the city.
For most of the 20th century, the area between South Street and Washington Avenue, Broad to the Schuylkill, was a working-class Black neighborhood. The civil rights organizer Octavius Catto lived and was murdered here in 1871. Most outsiders didn't have a name for it.
Through the Great Migration, this strip filled with families who'd come north from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Mother Bethel A.M.E. — the founding church of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination — sits a few blocks east. The Marian Anderson Recreation Center, the Octavius Catto statue at City Hall, the Fanny Jackson Coppin House on Lombard Street: this neighborhood was central to Black Philadelphia's civic life for over a century.
By the 1970s and 80s, like most of the city, it had hollowed out. Vacancy was high, the Graduate Hospital on South Street had become the largest local employer, and the name nobody used was "Southwest Center City." Locals just called it South of South — SoSo, occasionally — or said where they actually lived: Bainbridge, Lombard, Christian, Catharine.
In the early 2000s, when gentrification arrived, real estate agents wanted a name. "South of South" was hard to market. A neighborhood association settled on Graduate Hospital — after the hospital that anchored the area — and the name stuck, despite the fact that the hospital itself closed in 2007. The renaming itself became a flashpoint: a clean-up of identity that some longtime residents read, fairly, as erasure.
What can't be erased is the geography. From here you can walk to Rittenhouse Square in fifteen minutes, to Penn or Drexel in less than twenty, to Center City offices in ten. A two-bedroom rowhouse with a roof deck became the upgrade move for couples who'd outgrown Center City condos. School-district push made Greenfield Elementary the most-fought-over zone in the city. By 2018, prices had passed Center City rowhouse averages.
Catharine, Bainbridge, and Lombard streets between 18th and 25th are the family heart of the neighborhood. Saturday mornings on the sidewalks look like a college town fifteen years after graduation.
Run, ride, or walk straight onto the Schuylkill Banks at South Street and connect to 30 miles of trail. It's the closest thing the city has to a backyard for the neighborhoods on its western edge.
Penn, Drexel, CHOP, HUP, and Penn Medicine campuses are all walkable or one bridge away. Two-income medical-faculty households are a meaningful share of the buyer pool.
Pub & Kitchen, Friday Saturday Sunday, Hungry Pigeon, Honey's Sit 'n Eat, Sidecar, Loco Pez. Less hipster-cluster than Fishtown, more dinner-party-after-the-game.
Naval Square — a gated condo development on a former Civil War-era hospital — is the green pocket on the western edge. Marian Anderson Recreation Center is the public counterpart at 17th and Catharine. Pool, fields, programs.
Owner-occupants who want the city's amenities without the high-rise lifestyle move here. They walk where they used to drive, and they don't go back.
Two- and three-story rowhouses, often 14–18 feet wide, with renovated kitchens and roof decks. Family-buyer staple.
Two- and three-story rowhouses, often 14–18 feet wide, with renovated kitchens and roof decks. Family-buyer staple.
Three-story builds with garages, often abated. The trophy product. Concentrated south of South Street and west of Broad.
Gated development on the western edge with concierge, pool, and parking. A different lifestyle inside a few-block envelope.
Unrenovated or partially renovated rowhouses, often the same 14-foot width. Increasingly rare. The reno opportunity tier.
Tell us what you're looking for in Graduate Hospital — Greenfield catchment, new construction, or a reno opportunity — and we'll send you the listings worth seeing.
Family buyers move fast in this zip code. Knowing what's coming up before it lists is half the game.
— Prosperity Real Estate & Investment Services