1400 Myrtlewood Street

left behind: Neighborhood hairstylist Sarah Williams doesn't see an enticing view when she looks down her street in Brewerytown.
Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Growth meets blight north of Girard.

by Mike Newall

Brewerytown. Lunchtime. The sky is overcast. The air is thick as mud. At 31st and Girard, a shirtless child in jean shorts rides his bike beneath a Westrum Development Corporation billboard featuring two yuppies enjoying their lavish new apartments. "It's your turn," reads the sign. On 30th Street, across from the 17-acre swath of land where John Westrum is completing the first batch of a planned 700 market-rate townhouses and condominiums, construction workers sit on a stone wall in the shade of some trees and unwrap their sandwiches.

Around the corner, on the 1400 block of Myrtlewood Street, there is no respite from the unforgiving humidity. There are no trees on what's left of this sliver of a block. Most of the surviving row homes are shuttered. Trash and broken glass line the sidewalk. Weeds strangle vacant lots. Two young men hang on one corner, hands in their pockets, eyes following each passing car. At the other corner, PGW workers lay the gas lines the neighborhood had requested for years but which arrive only now, just in time for the new homes nobody here can afford.

Tracy Epps sits smoking on a stoop. "At one point, not too long ago," he says, "this was a full block like the nice blocks around here. Now it's a crackhead block. We tried to get rid of the crackheads but they come back like cockroaches."

The 1980s were full of gang wars, he says, but now things are worse. "Every few days there's a shooting."

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Sarah Williams, Myrtlewood's hairstylist, has set up a patio chair in the street. Her client, Darnell, a thirtysomething bellhop in a University City hotel, has traveled to the old neighborhood to get his hair braided. "A lot of people be up in this chair," he says. "She's good. Real good." Williams smiles shyly. "I was going to school for haircutting," she says through a cloud of hairspray. "But now I just do the guys in the street. Fifteen dollars for straight braids. Thirty and up for more extravagant stuff."

The haircut over, Williams excuses herself to go inside and put some water on her face.

There are only a few old-timers left here. There's Mr. Muscle — who's five foot nuthin' and thin as a reed — and Miss Nann. Mr. Muscle is sick and does not like to be pestered by strangers. Miss Nann is a graceful woman with silver-lined hair and skin the color of coffee with cream. She has called this place home for 45 years. She stands on her stoop in a flowered dress. "At one point this was a nice neighborhood," she says. "We had people and department stores and movie houses and restaurants." She shakes her head at the development site. "But they'll be getting rid of the last of us soon."

Tracy and Sarah laugh as the little ones race their bikes. The sun is beginning to break through the clouds and the laughter and sunlight spill into the abandoned house on the west side of Myrtlewood, where the squatters, hookers and crackheads go to lay their heads. On the trash-filled floor, a woman lies on a mattress. Her eyes are heavy and reddened like coals. Her arm hangs off the bedding. The walls are crumbling plaster. "No," she yells to a visitor. "It's not alright if you come in here." With that, the visitor steps back into the sunlight and watches the children play.