In 2005, Bill Golderer, then pastor of the Presbyterian church at 315 S. Broad Street, ripped the pews out of the sanctuary to create a big dining room bathed in light from stained glass windows. That move helped thrust the historic limestone church, now Broad Street Ministry (BSM), toward radical, inclusive hospitality. Today, BSM offers,
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Convicted of attempted murder at age 17, Philly performing artist and musician Andre Simms, or DayOneNotDayTwo, his stage name, spent eight years in an adult prison. Released in 2021, he’s now the lead youth organizer with the Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project (YASP), 924 Cherry Street, a group of young people working to reform the
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A certain group that visited Ursinus College’s Berman Museum in the 2000s amazed Susan Shifrin, associate director for education at the time. During the visit, six patients living with dementia from a nearby Montgomery County care facility went from silence to talk to glints of joy while viewing paintings. “I realized there was a need
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One morning in the dead of winter, Robert, 83, and his wife, Donna, 71, (their last name is withheld at the couple’s request) members of Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden, a nonprofit that aids immigrants and asylum seekers, drove from their East Falls home to Center City’s Greyhound bus station to meet a Central American family just
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The young father made a post on Nextdoor, a virtual neighborhood network, pleading for diapers for his newborn son. Out of work, he had no money to buy them, he wrote, and his partner and baby were due home from the hospital. “Try Cradles to Crayons,” a neighbor wrote back. That advice may have helped
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In 1737, William Penn’s son Thomas and Penn’s secretary, James Logan — Logan Circle’s namesake — did one of the dirtiest deals in the country’s history. The Walking Purchase, specified that the Lenape Indians, whose homeland of Lenapehoking, stretched from the Chesapeake to New York, would sell Thomas Penn as much land as a man
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Debates roil South Philadelphia about the synthetic soccer fields proposed for historic FDR Park, at the end of the Broad Street subway line. In 2019, the Fairmount Park Conservancy and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation unveiled a master plan that calls for 12 synthetic multipurpose fields at FDR. “The opinion you hear [about the fields] depends
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Words on purses made by Kristianna Brown, 30, of Kensington, owner of SilentlyLoudShop, all but smolder in her booth at the April 24 Sustainable Marketplace at the Cherry Street Pier. “Art Hoe,” sewn on one of the colorful bags, is among the milder messages. “I’m an introvert,” says Brown. “I let my art speak for
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When a fire truck shrieked past mere feet away from Jay Basch at two years old, his mother noticed he didn’t react. He kept looking at a store’s window display. Jay’s parents soon had him tested at the Shriners Children’s Hospital. “The doctor told them, ‘Your son is healthy in every way, except he can’t
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The sun shone bright on a landscape cross-hatched with felled trees on a walking tour of the Cobbs Creek Golf Course on April 4. The Cobbs Creek Restoration and Community Foundation, the organization overseeing the revamping of the golf course, had the trees cut down, said Dana Henry, the tour guide and a spokesperson with
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