Sharswood “Choice Neighborhood” Initiative

Ongoing and Upcoming Projects 

Sanctuary Farm Mural
Sanctuary Farm is an anchor resource for residents of Sharswood and nearby communities. Mural Arts is producing artworks at Sanctuary Farm’s Sharswood satellite garden as well as at its main site in Strawberry Mansion, a few blocks away. Artist Cindy Lozito has created a mural that celebrates the history of urban farming in Sharswood and Strawberry Mansion (24th and Berks main garden), and Mural Arts will soon commission an artist to work with the community to conceive, design and build placemaking improvements (22nd and Cecil B. Moore satellite garden and farm stand).

A Place in Time: Webb Plaza 
Webb Plaza is a new public space on Ridge Avenue, an anchor of the new Sharswood Plaza retail and residential complex as well as the Ridge Avenue retail corridor. Amir Campbell is currently developing a series of eight mural panel installations that will reflect the history and dynamics of this community, including the story of Richard Webb, whose Webb Department Store occupied this site and was famous for its vinyl record offerings. Mural Arts will soon commission an artist to conceive and design of other placemaking projects, including mosaic embellishment of seatwalls, a painted path to the Grocery Outlet store, and decorative murals on a garage structure.

Sidewalk Poetry
Mural Arts has collected original poetry from Sharswood residents and will incorporate it into the new sidewalks that are constructed in the community through an innovative sidewalk stamping process. Mural Arts is working closely with PHA, housing developers and their concrete contractors to hone the process of installing these poems; this winter a few pilot poems were installed a site that is still under construction.

Community and Youth Art Hub
Mural Arts has organized an ongoing “art hub” program, with periodic community events in various public spaces and an afternoon “art club” at the Vaux Big Picture School, led by Cindy Lozito. These projects have helped the project team – artists and staff – meet with Sharswood residents in fun and informal settings, for afternoons of artmaking and discussion. Artists Dyymond Whipper-Young and Eric Battle have helped lead these events. Keep an eye out for the announcement of more events for 2025.

Current RFQs for Artists 

Visit the Mural Arts Artist Opportunities web page for current opportunities for artists in Sharswood.

Upcoming Art Hub Events 

Watch for updates to this schedule.

Upcoming Community Engagement Events 

Rhythm & Resilience Community Events with Amir Campbell

Thursday, February 13 | 6-8PM and Thursday, February 27 | 6-8PM

Vaux Building, 2300 Master Street, Philadelphia PA 19121

Join Mural Arts and artist Amir Campbell for an evening of joy and celebration of Sharswood history and community! These events kick-off the upcoming mural series at Webb Plaza. We invite you to contribute to a Sharswood history timeline, participate in an art-making exercise, and engage in a photobooth to document your iconic dance moves.

If you have any pictures, objects, and stories relating to Sharswood and North Philadelphia, please bring them along. Otherwise, bring yourself and more folks! Refreshments and a groovy playlist will be provided.

Watch for updates to this schedule.

About Sharswood 

Sharswood’s modern history can be traced to Philadelphia’s late nineteenth-century industrial era, when it was transformed from agricultural lands to a neighborhood of row houses for workers, many of them German immigrants, in the breweries that were built in the area to take advantage of water from the Schuylkill River.

About a century ago, the neighborhood was invigorated by the influx of Black Americans moving from the segregated South to seek work in Northern industrial cities, in the early years of what is now called the Great Migration. Ridge Avenue became a significant corridor for Black-American culture, rivaling areas like Harlem in New York and the Hill District in Pittsburgh, and Columbia Avenue (now Cecil B. Moore Avenue) became a bustling corridor of businesses serving Black Philadelphians.

From an artistic and cultural point of view, this time became known as Philadelphia’s Black Renaissance. But conditions in Sharswood were difficult. The neighborhood quickly became segregated and outside of the war years work could be hard to find. By the 1960s, when much of the nation was enjoying the benefits of the postwar economic expansion, Sharswood was experiencing some of the city’s worst housing conditions, highest rates of unemployment, poor educational attainment and a markedly lower average income.

Sharswood became a locus of action for racial and economic justice. In 1964, tensions between Black Philadelphians and the police erupted after officers attempted to intervene in a domestic dispute. Three days of unrest followed, with nearly 800 arrests and the destruction of nearly 200 properties, particularly on Columbia and Ridge Avenues. In 1965, following years of legal actions against Girard College’s whites-only policy, activists launched a months-long protest at the college and the state office building downtown, attracting Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in support and resulting in the integration for the school in 1968. (The “Cecil B. Moore Freedom Fighters” were commemorated in a mural completed in 2021.)

Community revitalization efforts began in this era, as well. In 1966, to improve neighborhood conditions, the Philadelphia Housing Authority built the Norman Blumberg Apartments, three towers surrounded by low-rise buildings on an eight-acre site along 23rd Street just south of Ridge Avenue.

However, as Philadelphia lost industrial jobs and population in the last third of the twentieth century, Sharswood was hard hit. Disinvestment took hold: businesses closed on Ridge Avenue, residents left and schools closed. Many of the families that remained in Sharswood, including those in Blumberg Apartments, were experiencing deep and sustained poverty.

Fifty years later, change is looming in Sharswood. In the last decade or so, Philadelphia has experienced reinvestment and population growth driven largely by its successful service, education, health and research sectors. Real estate investment pressures have reached Sharswood, advancing from Brewerytown to the west, Fairmount / Franklintown to the south, and the Temple University area to the east. Sharswood residents and business owners, whose resiliency sustained them through decades of disinvestment, are now facing pressures of displacement.

About the Choice Neighborhoods Program 

The Blumberg Apartments and the area surrounding them has been designated as a “Choice Neighborhood” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 2015.

PHA obtained a federal grant to develop a plan for using public and private funding to support locally-driven strategies in a comprehensive approach to neighborhood transformation, including the replacement of the Blumberg apartment towers with low-rise, mixed-income housing (one of the original towers, with housing for seniors, remains). In 2020, PHA received a HUD Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant, which is catalyzing more than $300 million worth of “neighborhood, housing and people” goals and strategies.

Those strategies include the creation of more than 600 units of housing (replacement public housing, low-income and market-rate rental, and workforce and market-rate homeownership units), on site of the former Blumberg Apartments and on property PHA acquired throughout the neighborhood, as well as rehabilitation of existing housing.

They also include neighborhood-focused items like a fully-realized Peace Park, a new Ridge Avenue Shopping Center and supermarket, and a small business incubator. Community residents will have access to resources for improving education, health, and job preparedness via new and continuing programs based at a workforce center in the former Vaux School.

Mural Arts public art projects are envisioned as a thread the weaves together all aspects of the program – neighborhood, housing and people.

Project Partners and Team 

Lead Partners and Funders

Philadelphia Housing Authority

Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency

Department of Housing and Community Development, City of Philadelphia

Community Partners and Advisors

Big Picture Vaux Charter School

Mosaic Development Partners

Sanctuary Farm

Lower North Philadelphia CDC

Brewerytown Sharswood Neighborhood Coalition

Project Manager

Sahiti Bonam

Phil Asbury

Todd Bressi