Finding Fishtown

We counted 400 fish signs, asked restaurants, and spoke to locals. We now need your help to draw Fishtown’s boundaries.

Published

“There never really was a Fishtown, government-wise. It was a localism,” explains Kenneth Milano, a Kensington-born historian and cofounder of the Kensington History Project. Perhaps this is why it’s hard to know exactly where Fishtown’s boundaries are.

This isn’t a unique problem — the same can be said for many areas in the City of Neighborhoods, such as South Philadelphia, whose borders we tried to define two years ago.

“No one [in the old days] would ever call above York Street ‘Fishtown.’ That would have been sacrilege,” Milano said. “With the new folks, they don’t know. The [real estate agent] told them.”

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Decades of gentrification in the River Wards have blurred the lines as developers tagged their properties with the coveted Fishtown brand, even as they ventured into what were generally defined as sections of Kensington. (And which Kensington? East Kensington? Olde Kensington? South Kensington? How about Norris Square? And Olde Richmond? And Port Richmond?)

The argument is about more than what to call a few blocks: A neighborhood name can shape a place’s identity, its perceived desirability, and even how it is marketed and valued.

Still, shouldn’t neighborhoods be defined by the community itself? We want you to draw where you think Fishtown’s boundaries are. But first, let’s see what other people believe …

Click anywhere on the map to start drawing your Fishtown boundary

  • Milano said parish boundaries originally helped reinforce neighborhood identity. Milano, 67, has lived on York Street since age 5 and described the conventional Fishtown as a triangle bounded by Norris, Frankford, and the Delaware River.

  • The Inquirer’s map of neighborhoods agrees with Milano — although it’s worth mentioning that this map, used internally to help our reporting stay consistent, was created in the 1980s. The Milano-Inquirer definition is definitely conservative when compared to more recent attempts to set boundaries.

  • By contrast, Zillow’s Fishtown is nearly twice the size. The real estate website includes not only Front Street to the west, but also goes as far north as Lehigh Avenue.

    Zillow maintains its own set of neighborhood boundaries “by reviewing sources such as city maps, the Census Bureau, and neighborhood associations,” Zillow spokesperson Briahna Healy said.

  • There’s some overlap between Zillow’s boundaries and the 19125 zip code. While residents might feel a strong attachment to the last five digits of their address, zip codes exist solely to help route mail. This makes it hard to use 19125’s scraggly borders to define Fishtown — especially when sections that reach that far north are Kensington by any definition.

  • Somewhere in the middle is the Fishtown Neighbors Association border — sticking with Front Street to the west but extending only as far as York Street to the north. These boundaries “go back about 20 years when FNA was a community organization that needed boundaries to help dictate what projects to work on,” said John Scott, current president of the FNA.

    Their boundaries are a single piece in a jigsaw puzzle with surrounding neighboring associations. It explains why some streets are included and others aren’t. For example, the area between Front Street and Frankford Avenue is included because “if we didn’t include them, they would probably be stateless,” Scott said.

    This also means that a lot of boundaries are largely codified because the FNA can’t expand without encroaching on neighboring associations — unless, that is, new streets are built, like those in the Northbank development on the Delaware. Now the FNA is about to adjust its boundaries for the first time in a quarter-century to encompass streets south of Schirra Lane.

  • If we look at all of these definitions at the same time, there is a clear overlap that we can safely call Fishtown.

    However, much of the fringe is up for debate. Does Fishtown stop at Front or Frankford, for example? Is York the border, or is it Norris, or even Lehigh?

    It’s time for some good, old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground reporting.

  • A defining feature of Fishtown are the whimsical fish signs on house facades. Our theory: Surely a painted fish wouldn’t make sense in Kensington. We hit the streets and logged every house that had a fish sign.

    Largely, the signs are contained to the FNA-defined borders. But we found a large pocket of signs east of York Street and even a few signs north of Frankford — although they are outnumbered by milk bottle signs to honor Kensington’s old Harbisons Dairy plant.

  • Fish signs are only one way to delineate Fishtown boundaries. We also looked at restaurants and what neighborhood they describe themselves as belonging to: Fishtown, Kensington, or unsure.

    Fishtown has been known for its dining scene since Johnny Brenda’s established the beachhead in 2003. As development marched on, restaurateurs and dining guides followed the cue of developers and real estate agents: We’re in Fishtown.

    Today, that’s not entirely the case, as even upscale restaurants are comfortable calling themselves Kensington, though they could claim Fishtown. At Fiore, chefs Ed Crochet and Justine MacNeil use East Kensington for their Italian restaurant north of the York Street roundabout. Directly across is Emilia, chef Greg Vernick’s popular new Italian spot, which doesn’t state its neighborhood in its marketing materials. Resy, its reservation booking platform, calls it Fishtown-East Kensington.

    Seemingly everyone says Middle Child Clubhouse is in “Fishtown.” But by dint of its location on the west side of Front Street, it’s arguably in South/Olde Kensington. Yuhiro, a sushi restaurant on Susquehanna Avenue just west of Frankford, markets itself as Fishtown but it could be considered in Kensington.

    Then there are the restaurants where it’s even more unclear because they list multiple neighborhoods, or none at all. For example, Picnic, on Martha Street, uses East Kensington in its Instagram bio but has used Fishtown in public relations campaigns. Where is Meetinghouse, a noted bar at Memphis and Cumberland Streets? Chef/co-owner Drew DiTomo thought for a moment: “Its parish is St. Anne’s and I quite like that.”

  • Finally, we decided to ask people in the gray areas a simple question: “Where are we?”

    We found Matt Murphy and Kaitlin Dirkx at Hagert and Tulip Streets — south of Lehigh, north of York, still in 19125. “It’s kind of a curious pocket of the River Wards,” said Murphy, who emphatically called the area “Olde Richmond.” But, as Dirkx added, “they let me into the Fishtown Neighbors Facebook group. My address must have fallen in line.”

    Mark Opdyke, who lives on a side street just west of Frankford Avenue near Norris, insisted that his side of Blair Street is in Fishtown. He pointed across the street toward the Blair Garden townhouses, built in 2018 and sold as “Fishtown,” chuckled, and called that side “Kensington.”

    At Frankford and Dauphin, Nick Campione’s family has owned AC Auto Repairs for 70 years. Its facade boasts a mural proclaiming, “Welcome to the Neighborhood” with an inscription explicitly describing it as “Fishtown and East Kensington.” Campione won’t take sides: “This is the best of both worlds here.”

    Finally, we caught up with Stephanie Goodman and Justin Frye on the west side of Frankford Avenue near Dauphin, in front of the Groove Hound, a doggie day care. Goodman called that stretch Fishtown, adding that it’s two blocks from the house she bought in 2018 across from Philadelphia Brewing Co., which proudly says it belongs to East Kensington. Though Goodman said the real estate agent advertised her block as Fishtown, Frye believes it’s in East Kensington. “Ten different people and 10 different answers,” he said.

  • So it’s now time for you to decide. Let us know where you think the boundaries of Fishtown are by drawing on the map.

Staff Contributors

  • Design, Development, and Reporting: Sam Morris
  • Reporting: Michael Klein
  • Sign Auditors: Sam Morris and Jasen Lo
  • Illustration: James Olstein
  • Editing: Charmaine Runes
  • Copy Editing: Brian Leighton
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Topics mentioned in this story

FishtownKensingtonFrankfordPort RichmondMeetinghouseMiddle Child Clubhouse