Arts / Culture / History

City Landmarks

An inventory of cultural landmarks found within the borders of the City of Philadelphia.

Flickr (Phila. only)

Flick is an online, interactive photo database, where users can search for photographs by thematic descriptors and locations through the mapping application. Thematic descriptors include mood/visual keywords, tags, and account names of photographers, collectors, or other viewers who upload photos to the database. Photo data is also accessible to users through a feed (RSS) that yields recent, exportable photo uploads, and an API. With free registration, users can also upload their own photos, create profiles, edit, comment, and participate in forum/group culture for non-commercial use. Commercial use requires a negotiated agreement.

Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network

The Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network contains geographic materials connected to the history of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the City of Philadelphia. The available resources include aerial photographs, city directories, atlases, surveys, property maps, topographical maps, and transportation maps. An interactive map viewer enables users to view layers of historic maps at various transparencies in conjunction with a current streets overlay.

The historic maps in the map viewer are available as tile services for appropriate projects - contact the project for further information.

Inventory of African American Historic Sites

An inventory compiled by the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia containing all the known African American historic sites in Philadelphia. Data fields for each site include Site Name, Address, Neighborhood, Significance, Site Type, Date Built, and Architect. This inventory of 400+ structures includes churches, schools, businesses, homes, clubs, benevolent associations, and more.

Inventory of Historic Religious Properties

Founded as William Penn’s “Holy Experiment,” Philadelphia has a centuries-long history of fostering and constructing prominent houses of worship throughout the city. In recent decades, as congregations face declining membership and shifting neighborhood demographics, these historically- and architecturally-significant properties have often suffered from deferred maintenance, insensitive alterations, and partial or complete demolition.

Advocacy organizations like the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia and Partners for Sacred Places have focused on this issue for years, highlighting the threats to Philadelphia’s neighborhoods and communities if these structures continue to be abandoned or lost. Over the summer of 2011, in order to more fully understand and address the issue, the Preservation Alliance partnered with Philadelphia Historical Commission and Partners for Sacred Places to develop a comprehensive index of historic churches covering the entire city. Compiling, verifying, and updating data from a number of different sources, University of Pennsylvania graduate student Molly Lester assembled a database which includes every purpose-built house of worship constructed in the city before 1960.

Data elements include: current congregation, original congregation, address, year of construction, original architect and whether or not the build is on the Philadelphia or National Historic Registers.

Mid-Century Modern Architecture Inventory

Mid-century modern architecture and buildings of the recent past are enjoying a resurgence of appreciation and interest nationwide, but here in Philadelphia, our eclectic collection of postwar buildings is often overlooked. To help identify and celebrate these emerging landmarks, the Preservation Alliance is compiling a list of notable structures built within the city between 1945 and 1980. The inclusion of a building in this inventory does not imply endorsement of it for designation or other purposes, nor does its absence imply a lack of significance. Rather, the list is meant to illustrate the breadth and depth of design from an era often overshadowed by earlier periods and styles.

Neighborhood Advisory Committees (NACs)

DHCD’s Neighborhood Advisory Committee (NAC) Program offers community-based non-profit organizations the opportunity to lead and engage neighborhood residents in activities that support the City’s core objectives.

Now & Then: Modern and Historical Images of Philadelphia

Now & Then provides access to historic and contemporary photographs of Philadelphia. When accessed via a location-aware web browser, the app loads photographs taken near the user’s location. Historic photographs are from the PhillyHistory.org database. Contemporary photographs are from Panaramio.com.

OpenMaps

Explore Philadelphia’s most popular open geographic data in one easy to use mapping tool. This tool was built by the City’s Office of Innovation and Technology’s CityGeo team.

Percent for Art Locations

Locations and basic information on public art that is part of the Percent for Art program. Updated as needed.

Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project

An online database of architectural and historical information and images for 35,000+ structures, 110,000 images+ images and maps and biographies of 5,000+ architects in the 5 county region around Philadelphia. Development was a collaboration between private, academic, and public entities led by the Athenæum of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Dance Calendar

Listing and RSS feed of upcoming events listed on The Philadelphia Dance Calendar including dance events within arts festivals, independent and/or local productions, and performances featuring contemporary styles and multi-cultural dance traditions. Users may search the listings by date, keyword, location, category, and whether or not it is a recurring event.

Philadelphia Dance Class Calendar

Listing and RSS feed of upcoming dance classes listed on The Philadelphia Dance Class Calendar. Users may search the listings by date, keyword, location, category, and whether or not it is a recurring event.

Philadelphia Dance Directory

The Philadelphia Dance Directory contains a list of dance related organizations in the greater Philadelphia area. The listings can be searched by keyword, location, or category. RSS feeds are available for the newest listings, featured listings, most popular listings, and most discussed listings. Users can also create custom feeds based on their search criteria.

Philadelphia Public Art @philart.net

Philadelphia Public Art @philart.net includes photographs, descriptive information, and location information for artwork in Philadelphia. The artwork can be browsed by title, artist, year, people, landmark, architecture, size, content, tours, and exhibits. A search function is also available. An RSS feed provides information on new entries and images updates to the database. The site is not affiliated with any non-profit, public, or governmental arts organization.

Philadelphia Registered Historic Districts

Historic districts listed on the Philadelphia Register. Data was updated by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission in August 2017. The public can confirm a property’s historic status by contacting the Historical Commission at 215-686-7660.

You can also download a dataset of the Historic sites.

Philadelphia Registered Historic Properties

Historic sites listed on the Philadelphia Register. Data was updated by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission in July 2017. The public should confirm a property’s historic status by contacting the Historical Commission at 215-686-7660.

You can also download a dataset of the Historic districts.

PhilaPlace

PhilaPlace is an online interactive database of both contemporary and historical multimedia record, including personal/neighborhood stories, photography, and video, of individuals and communities in the Old Southwark and Greater Northern Liberties Areas. Users can search locations (neighborhoods, streets) and set thematic parameters to learn more about events, businesses and people who were memorable to the different communities. Entries in the database are visualized as feature markers in an interactive map tool, accompanying the search. PhilaPlace was developed by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

PhillyHistory.org

PhillyHistory.org is an online database of historic photographs and maps from the Philadelphia City Archives and four additional area institutions. A project of the City of Philadelphia Department of Records, the database contains images dating back to the 1850s and can be searched by geographic criteria such as address, intersection, place name, and neighborhood as well as keyword, date, collection, topics, and other criteria. Images and maps are associated with a location using the database’s geocoding feature. Users can create a free account to save images, bookmark searches, and submit error reports.

PHLmaps

The City of Philadelphia’s ArcGIS Online organization that hosts references to open data releases as feature services and AGO map applications shared with the public. Maintained by the City’s Office of Innovation and Technology’s CityGeo team.

Speculative Monuments for Philadelphia

This data describes proposals for future monuments collected from Philadelphia residents and visitors to during Monument Lab events. Each proposal was transcribed and analyzed by the Monument Lab team, and is identified with the location of the proposed monument.

Theatre Alliance Calendar

A feed on current and upcoming performances, featuring in the Theater Alliance of Greater Philadelphia’s events calendar. Feed includes event information on description, venue location, run dates, performance start times, and ticket prices.

WeWorkInPhilly

WeWorkInPhilly is a community-edited guide to the People, Companies, Groups, Projects, Products, and Resources that make up the creative, technology, and business community in Philadelphia. The project, launched in July 2011 as a joint effort across the local tech community, is “owned by none and supported by all.”