Home Sweet Home: 7th & Lombard in Philadelphia
South 7th & Lombard Streets. Photo by Diane Bianchi. Sitting on the marble steps of my grandmother's house, I watched the neighborhood play baseball across the street at Starr Garden Park in Philadelphia. Home base was to my right and third base was to my left. Cars parked parallel along the curb, feeding the coin meters, narrowing the street to a single lane. Chain-link fencing enclosed the whole park. From my grandmother's second-floor bedroom, peering through wide-slat Venetian blinds, I had a higher view: the baseball diamond, the basketball court, the playground where I rode the Stagecoach and the swings, and beyond it all, the neon Levis Hot Dogs sign on 6th Street. An old canopy of trees bordered that open space, out of place amid the three-story brick rowhomes on every side. I sometimes wondered what had been there before Starr Garden. Was it a forest? Or was it full of buildings where people lived and worked? My grandmother's parents bought the storefront house...