Rittenhouse Square : In The News

Now that's a home run: check out Cliff Lee's gorgeous Rittenhouse condo. It can be yours for $6.9 million.

Original source: Philly.com

Philly's latest upscale hotel gets some attention.

Walking into the Radisson Blu Warwick Hotel is like walking into a modern European techno club — which is either good or bad depending on your taste. The Blu brand is literally reflected in light strips surrounding mirrored entryways, while electronic music plays at medium volume in the background of the white and silver lobby. With all new guest rooms, fitness center and lobby, the hotel reopened as a Radisson Blu last November. The exterior of the hotel, a landmark that opened in 1926 as the Warwick Hotel, was mostly left intact during the $20 million renovation.

Original source: The New York Times
Read the complete review here.

The Wall Street Journal highlights the Rosenbach Library & Museum, an amazing private collection of books and manuscripts located on a gorgeous, out-of-the-way street near Rittenhouse Square. Gems include the manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses, early editions of Chaucer and a huge collection Maurice Sendak's paintings, illustrations and editions (including original drawings of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen).

To handle scholarly materials, the Rosenbach requires not the usual white gloves demanded by other libraries but a good old-fashioned hand-washing (latex can do more damage to delicate paper than clean, oil-free hands). I couldn't resist asking to see and touch one piece that stopped my heart and brought tears to my professorial eyes. It was the manuscript whose purchase got A.S.W. Rosenbach started on the final, and greatest, chapter of his buying career. In London in 1885 Sotheby's had sold at auction the manuscripts of six letters of John Keats. Oscar Wilde, enraged by the salacious intermingling of art and commerce, wrote a protest sonnet. Thirty-five years later, at Manhattan's Anderson Galleries, Rosenbach bought the poet's penultimate letter to Fanny Brawne, his fiancée, dated July 5, 1820, before his departure for Italy, where he died of tuberculosis seven months later. The great poet was also a typical, temperamental 24-year-old young man who, finding his girlfriend flirting with his roommate, wrote to her with envy, jealousy, rage and sadness, "I will resent my heart having been made a football."
Original Source: The Wall Street Journal
Read the full story here.

Local food-centric blog Foobooz releases its annual list of the city's best bars. It's no surpise that the top ten are dominated by spots with serious beer programs—top-shelf suds have become Philly's calling card. Pub & Kitchen takes top honors, up from no. 10 last year.

If you want to be number one on the Foobooz Top 50 Bars list you had better bring it every day. And Pub & Kitchen does just that, with excellent food, a well curated beverage program plus excellent and dare we say, attractive service.

Source: Foobooz
Check out the full list here. 

The New York Times catches up with Georges Perrier's exit at Le Bec-Fin and the changing tastes of fine dining in Philadelphia.

In recent decades, though, that din was starting to get a lot louder elsewhere. Around the same time that David Lee Roth stopped sleeping, diners in cities like Philadelphia -- diners, like me, who were totally psyched to have some ethereal hummus before, say, going to a Van Halen concert --  started waking up to a new way of going out to dinner.

Colman Andrews, the editorial director of The Daily Meal, told me that Le Bec-Fin represented “the last of a dying breed. Every city of any size used to have at least one ‘fancy’ French restaurant, where the food was serious, the atmosphere was a little starchy and the service was correct. But the audience for good restaurants today wants their dining experiences to be casual and comfortable. They may still demand good, complex food, at least some of the time, but they don’t want to have to dress up to enjoy it, or to feel as if they’re dining in a museum.”

Original source: The New York Times
Read the full story here.

Philadelphia's own Capogiro, which has four area locations, was named the No. 1 place in the world to eat ice cream by National Geographic.

Made with the freshest ingredients (such as milk from Amish grass-fed cows), the artisan gelatos and sorbettos handcrafted each day at Capogiro Gelato include flavors not seen anywhere else—Madagascar bourbon vanilla, melograno (pomegranate), nocciola Piemonte (hazelnut), Saigon cinnamon, Thai coconut milk (with a dash of rum), and zucca (long-neck pumpkin).

Original source: National Geographic
Read the full story here.

Inc. magazine examines how Philadelphia startup TicketLeap has cashed in on the growing number of haunted houses using its online ticket exchange.

The haunt industry is bigger than you might think. The Haunted House Association, an industry trade group based in High Point, North Carolina, estimates that there are about 2,000 haunted attractions in the Unites States, which generate between 400 and 500 million dollars in ticket sales each year.  

Stanchak hopes to take a piece of that business. He says he began noticing an upward trend in haunts using the service in about 2008. The company, which ranked No. 357 on the 2010 Inc. 500 with an 857 percent growth rate and $2.1 million in revenue, now services about 200 hundred Haunts, but expects the number to rise.

Innovation within the industry is especially important for smaller haunts, Stanchak says, because it's a seasonal business. Haunts stay open from just September 1st to November 1st, so there's little room for error in marketing and logistical strategies.

Original source: Inc.
Read the full story here.

Local restaurants are getting a reputation for farm fresh ingredients, according to OffManhattan.

To taste the freshest produce in the region, you can shop one of the city’s many farmers market, haul your selections back home, and crack open a cookbook. Or you can take the effortless route, and settle into one of the top farm-to-table restaurants in Philadelphia.

Uniquely positioned between ‘Jersey Fresh’ territory and Amish Country, Philly offers its chefs an impressive variety of local, seasonal ingredients from which to craft their award-winning menus. And diners will be excited to know that much of this produce makes its way from farm to plate just one day after harvesting. Yes, the peppery radishes and buttery greens in your appetizer salad may have been plucked from the dirt just hours ago.

Source: OffManhattan
Read the full story here.

Philadelphia's rich landscape heritage makes for a city painted in shades of green, according to The Huffington Post.

The transformation of the urban core, as I've written before, is hot, hot, hot. Currently, there's a great deal of attention focused (justifiably) on the much-talked-about opening of the second phase of the much-talked-about High Line in New York, which has put yet more vim into that city's vigor. But if you want to see some serious va-va-voom, set your sites on Philadelphia (and don't get all snarky quoting W. C. Fields now). Philadelphia's exceptional array of parks and open spaces, and the visionary, entrepreneurial and civic-minded people behind them, is where to really see a city center in high gear (and the BYOB restaurant scene is taste bud nirvana).

For more than three centuries, city planning, landscape architecture and a unique civic ambition that emphasizes horticulture as much as the pedestrian experience in its public spaces and streetscapes, have made Philadelphia a fascinating city. From the five squares that were at the core of William Penn's 1683 plan to Dan Kiley's mid-20th-century design for Independence Mall, which connected Franklin Square to the north and Washington Square to the south, the city has a landscape heritage that few others can boast.

Source: The Huffington Post
Read the full story here.

Walk Score ranks Philadelphia fifth in its listing of the most walkable cities in America.

Philadelphia's most walkable neighborhoods are Center City West, Center City East, University City. Philadelphia's least walkable neighborhoods are Byberry, Torresdale, Fox Chase.

Source: Walk Score
Read the full story here.

The month-old Museum Without Walls audio program uses technology to give many of Philadelphia's outdoor sculptures museum-quality perspective, reports the Associated Press.

Its self-guided audio tours are available 24-7 in several different formats: You can call phone numbers listed with each sculpture, use a free smart phone app, download the audio at http://museumwithoutwallsaudio.org to an MP3 player, or scan a special bar code (known as a QR or quick response code) on the free "Museum Without Walls" map at locations around the city.

The project's first phase includes 51 outdoor sculptures at 35 stops along a three-mile stretch of the bustling Benjamin Franklin Parkway from downtown to leafy Fairmount Park, a route popular with bicyclists, runners and walkers.

Original source: Associated Press
Read the full story here.

Beauty and style editor Ysolt Usigan goes on a whirlwind tour of our city, dispelling the New York elitist notion that we're its "sixth borough," reports The Huffington Post.

When it came to partying, two speakeasies, and I was had! Once defined as "an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages" in the '20s and '30s, I discovered two venues with that feel nestled in Philadelphia's Penn Center neighborhood. First stop: the sexy Ranstead Room. With entrances through El Rey's kitchen and outside on the street (just look for the door marked with double Rs), I had cocktails with names so complicated I can't even remember them. Even though it was quite dim inside, the naked ladies gracing the walls were hard to miss. The venue is hot, to say the least.

From vintage shops to lux salons, even vast department stores with plenty of preppy and chic options to boot, there's no question--Philly knows style. I picked the best time to visit the city, too, with the Philadelphia Collection 2010 series underway. From September 23 to October 2, the city's many boutiques, stylists, designers and modeling agencies were hosting various independently produced events.

Original source: The Huffington Post
Read the full story here.

The travel section at Ireland's Herald.ie is high on Philadelphia for a variety of reasons, imploring the Irish to visit for our safe downtown, good eats and arts and culture.

It's puzzling why Philly isn't on most Irish people's radar. It's more historic than Boston, as Irish as Chicago, 30pc cheaper to live in than New York and has a food culture to match San Francisco.

The city centre proper, (known as Center City) is thriving, unlike many US urban areas. Sections of 15th Street are hubs of restaurants and nightlife, while the area's aptly titled Avenue of the Arts is the local equivalent of London's West End or New York's Broadway theatre districts. The best bit? It feels perfectly safe to walk around, by day or night (don't try this at home, kids).

Original source: Herald.ie
Read the full story here.