Historic, hip - and homey

"You're astounded at how much could have happened in such a relatively small area of the city," said historian Alice L. George, author of Old City Philadelphia: Cradle of American Democracy, published last year.

Old City and Society Hill form "a unique area that is at the center of national history, state history and city history," she said. "It's a fascinating part of how we came to be what we are today."

Also impressive is the transformation in those neighborhoods once Philadelphia ceased to be the nation's capital in 1800, she said.

"The neighborhoods had to reinvent themselves for a world in which they were no longer the center of the universe," said George, who lives in Center City. "They've gone through rough periods of transition, but they're hot addresses now."

Old City became a neighborhood of warehouses and manufacturers, where petticoats and beer pumps were made.

The area now known as Society Hill was, in the 1800s, home to black achievers and the first black-controlled church, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal.

By the mid-1950s, its streets were trash-strewn, its housing neglected. It was the first of the two neighborhoods to experience rebirth, a house-by-house renaissance championed by Edmund Bacon, the legendary head of the city Planning Commission.

It was Bacon, too, who challenged the Old City Civic Association to revitalize its main strip, Market Street. G. Stockton Strawbridge, the civic-minded head of the old Strawbridge & Clothier department store, got behind the effort in a big way.

The neighborhood's warehouses have become galleries, its factories pricey condominiums. Nightlife is nearly as big a draw as tourism.

"Isn't it unbelievable what they've done here with all the restaurants?" marveled Barry Shane, a third-generation Old City merchant at Shane's Candies.

"What really got this going," Shane said, looking toward Market Street, "is when they redid the lights and the streets and put in all the brickwork."

Many tourists at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are surprised at how everyday life bustles along amid the fabled colonial treasures, Kellogg said.

These are neighborhoods, after all, where behind facades with heavy brass knockers and historic plaques people eat meat loaf, do homework, pay bills.

"A lot of cities have found that when they have set aside a historic area, it's gone touristy, but it hasn't had the day-to-day vibrance of these areas," said George, the author.

In Society Hill's Three Bears Park, for example, children dangle from play equipment just over a wall from the home of Philip Syng Physick, who is known as the father of American surgery.

Some out-of-town visitors find details of colonial and contemporary life equally fascinating, Kellogg said.

"They'll say, 'You don't know the people in your neighborhood,' " Kellogg said. "I tell them, 'We open our doors and walk down the street together. We raise our children together.'

"It's nice to get beyond that idea that the city is inhospitable," she said.

Out-of-towners often tell Kellogg how impressed they are that Philadelphia "saves all its old buildings," but they are unaware of the landmarks that have fallen - such as the 18th-century Elisha Webb Chandlery on South Front Street, which was demolished to make way for parking in 1993 - in the drive to change and grow, Kellogg said.

Fortunately, many important historic buildings have survived.

At Second and Spruce Streets is the city's only remaining pre-Revolution tavern, called A Man Full of Trouble, where sailors would sometimes bunk four to a bed. (City Tavern, nearby, is a reconstruction.)

At Third and Walnut Streets is Bishop William White's residence. White, who lived there from 1786 to 1836, was the rector of Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, a clergyman to the elite, and his home had one of the first indoor "necessaries" in the city.

Farther down Third Street is the home of Samuel Powel, the last mayor of Philadelphia before the Revolution and the first mayor after the creation of the United States.

He and his wife, Elizabeth Willing, were a power couple, and their Georgian brick manse at 244 S. Third St., with walled garden and ballroom, was the scene of some of the era's best parties. George and Martha Washington were regular guests.

It is one of Kellogg's favorite stops in Society Hill. Visitors get wide-eyed at the story of what almost happened there.

By the early 20th century, the elegant townhouse had become a warehouse, the headquarters of an import-export business that dealt in Russian horsehair. Its owner, obviously aware of its historic value, sold off woodwork and other architectural details from its interior to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

On the verge of being razed to make way for a parking lot, the home where one can imagine Washington doing the minuet was rescued and is again the scene of social events.

Meshing old with new is a delicate dance and one that has been so important to the vitality of Old City and Society Hill.

"There's been a lot of care to date to protecting the old, as much as possible, and letting the new blossom," George, the author, said of the historic neighborhoods. "It keeps them alive."