Society Hill

If you visit Philadelphia as walk through Society Hill, you’ll be blown away by how peaceful, how green, how charming, and how well put-together everything is. The houses are built in the old colonial rowhouse style, with colored shutters and reddish bricks. The trees are perfectly spaced along the streets. The sidewalks are made of bricks, each in good condition. All the people walking the streets seem to be in a good mood.

I once had someone tell me that Society Hill is the ideal neighborhood in Philadelphia. On the surface, it might seem like this is the case. But scratch the surface a little bit, and you’ll realize that you’ve scratched everything away. There’s nothing left underneath. There are no corner BYOBs, no interesting bars, no clothing stores, no strong arts community. This helps keep the neighborhood quiet, but it also precludes most urban recreational activities.

The neighborhood is not so named because it is the home of Philadelphia’s ‘High Society’. It’s named after the Free Society of Traders that was located in the area all those centuries ago. But today, the ‘society’ in Society Hill might as well refer to the wealthy, as you need deep pockets to buy or even rent in the area.

Society Hill is beautiful, sure. But it really isn’t anything more than that. That’s why I prefer not to live there, but to venture through every once in awhile to admire the old houses and the lush trees. But for everything else that you expect from city life, there are far better neighborhoods.