William Penn set aside this land in 1683 for the city's freemen. Schmidt's Brewery owned half of it for a century. Then Bart Blatstein bought the warehouses, opened the Piazza, and the rest is the cleanest urban-village renaissance in modern Philadelphia.
When Penn drew the city in 1682, he set aside land north of Vine Street for "first purchasers" — citizens who'd be granted property as a reward for settling the colony. They called it the Liberties. Most of it sat empty for fifty years.
By the early 1800s the Liberties were the working edge of Philadelphia — tanneries, breweries, and German-immigrant rowhouses pressed against the diagonal of Old York Road. Annexed into the city proper in 1854, Northern Liberties became one of America's first dense, walkable industrial neighborhoods. It stayed that way for a hundred and fifty years.
The defining institution was Schmidt's Brewery. C. Schmidt & Sons opened on 2nd and Girard in 1860 and brewed beer there until 1987. When it closed, it took the neighborhood's spine with it. By the late 1990s, blocks of Northern Liberties were boarded-up rowhouses interspersed with empty industrial lots. Population had cratered from peak. Drugs had moved in.
What turned it around was a developer named Bart Blatstein who started quietly buying parcels in the late 1990s. By the mid-2000s he owned the old Schmidt's site and had a plan: a European-style piazza ringed by apartments, ground-floor retail, restaurants. The Piazza at Schmidt's opened in 2009 — outdoor TVs, beer gardens, weekly markets — and worked. People moved in. Restaurants followed. The Standard Tap, opened in 1999 by William Reed and Paul Kimport on a quiet corner of 2nd Street, had been holding the line for a decade. Suddenly it had company.
By 2015, Northern Liberties wasn't transitioning. It was transitioned. Today it's denser, more loft-converted, and more priced-up than Fishtown was at the same point in its arc. The two neighborhoods grew up together and now feel like siblings — NoLibs the older, calmer, slightly more polished one.
Opened 1999. Local beer, no menu — they hand you a chalkboard. It's where the neighborhood goes when it wants to be at the neighborhood. The original gravity well of NoLibs's revival.
Bart Blatstein's masterpiece. An open European-style square ringed by retail and apartments, weekly farmer's market, outdoor TVs for big games. The single biggest reason NoLibs is what it is now.
A genuine community park run by a neighborhood association on land that used to be a tannery. Volunteer-built playgrounds, summer movie nights, off-leash dog area. The civic heart of the place.
Yards moved into a 70,000 sq ft brewhouse on Spring Garden in 2017 — technically Old City but functionally NoLibs. Tours, taproom, food trucks. Across the street from the SugarHouse Casino river esplanade.
15 minutes to City Hall on foot. Old City is a five-minute walk. Fishtown is across the El. Spring Garden, Callowhill, Northern Liberties form one continuous walkable district the locals just call "north of Center City."
Frankford Ave on a Saturday is loud. NoLibs is comparatively calm. Same density, same walkability, slightly older crowd, fewer bachelorette parties. If Fishtown is the bar district, NoLibs is the residential.
Two- and three-story 16-foot-wide brick rowhouses, often with the original brick exposed inside. The defining product. Roof decks added during the 2010s reno wave.
Two- and three-story 16-foot-wide brick rowhouses, often with the original brick exposed inside. The defining product. Roof decks added during the 2010s reno wave.
Old industrial buildings — Schmidt's, Levin's Mattress, Liberties Walk — converted to one-, two-, and three-bedroom condos. Tall ceilings, exposed timber, sometimes original lift systems left in.
Three-story builds with garages, often with the 10-year tax abatement. Concentrated around 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Streets and along Spring Garden.
The Piazza Building, Liberties Walk lofts, the Standard apartments converted to condos. Doorman buildings are unusual in NoLibs but not unheard of.
Tell us what you're looking for in Northern Liberties — restored row, loft conversion, or new-build townhome — and we'll send you the listings worth seeing.
NoLibs moves quickly when something good lists. Knowing what's coming up off-market is more useful than scrolling Zillow at 11 p.m.
— Prosperity Real Estate & Investment Services