GoldenMonkeyRedux t1_j5vrcz5 wrote on January 25, 2023 at 10:13 PM

Reply to comment by jbphilly in For anyone looking to buy a house in West Philly... by kingintheyunk

Unless I’m mistaken, the colIapse was between Pine and Osage and only affected porches/cars not homes. The CVS block has never had homes on the east side as it was formerly the Clark estate and then Penn’s Divinity school. The west side was the Burnham estate as of 1899. My 1905 map stops at spruce, so I can’t tell what happened afterwards.

I live nearby and have never heard of anyone’s basement flooding between Spruce and Baltimore on 43rd. Keep in mind the collapse meant they had to rebuild the terra-cotta pipe in large areas. That said, if the city doesn’t regularly clean out the catch basins at Spruce and 43rd, the flooding is terrible. Over a foot-deep pond. I could imagine that getting into Cafe Pho Saigon and the underground apartments on the north-west corner.

My house is fairly close to 43rd and Spruce and I have zero structural issues; however I’ve noticed that my concrete basement floor has lifted in several areas over the last 13 years. Definitely moisture underneath.

jbphilly t1_j5vxfia wrote on January 25, 2023 at 10:53 PM

I don't know which Pine/Osage collapse you're talking about. Not one by 43rd Street for sure - all the houses around there are original AFAIK. But yeah, the low-lying corners of 43/Spruce and 43/Baltimore are for sure big flooding zones.

GoldenMonkeyRedux t1_j5vykcr wrote on January 25, 2023 at 11:01 PM

Hmmmm…I’ll have to see if I can find info on it. I went to lecture at University of the Sciences about the Mill Creek about 15 years ago. I may be confusing the collapse on Sansom between 43rd and 44th with the smaller one on 43rd. Will try to look into it later.

GoldenMonkeyRedux t1_j601nru wrote on January 26, 2023 at 7:28 PM

The more I look into it, the less I can find about what I wrote about, so now I’m questioning if that actually happened. Maybe my memory is jumbled, but I swear there was a collapse south of Spruce on 43rd that took out a bunch of porches and some cars. One little girl fell in but was rescued.

Oh well. I am glad to see it doesn’t run under my house though.