A Unique Philadelphia House
There is a style of house for everyone in Philly.
The log cabin sits at the corner of Lawrence and Popular Streets in the neighborhood of Northern Liberties. Built on four lots by artist Jeff Thomas in the 1980’s with a truckload of logs from West Virginia. Thomas’s inspiration for the home came from the “back to the land” movement of the 1970’s.
It is a two story cabin composed of one room on top of another with a steel chimney pipe rising up through the roof. The cabin is surrounded by a low stockade fence, stacks of firewood and a stand of walnut, locust and black cherry trees. Across Lawrence Street where once there was nothing but boarded-up buildings, expensive condos and rehabbed houses stand.
The cabin seems out of place until one remembers that in the 1980’s Northern Liberties was a remote section of the city, filled with abandoned row houses and factories. Most neighbors have come to accept the cabin and some love it. It stands today as a testimonial to the artists who first took over the buildings and established the area’s eclectic ambience.
Technorati: Northern Liberties, unusual houses, log cabins
