Private equity investor Gregory L. Segall, a Philadelphia Republican who was a key backer of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s 2023 campaign, has resigned from three city boards as he weighs other “civic engagement” opportunities, according to a copy of one of his resignation letters obtained by The Inquirer.
Parker, a Democrat, appointed Segall to the Philadelphia Gas Works board, the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission, and the Mayor’s Business Roundtables. Segall resigned from all three effective Aug. 31. He also served as a vice chair of Parker’s transition committee when she was taking office.
“While I am stepping away from this role, I remain committed to civic engagement and intend to explore other ways to continue the journey I have been privileged to pursue over the last several years,” Segall, the chairman and CEO of Versa Capital, wrote in his letter resigning from the Mayor’s Business Roundtables, an advisory group convened by Parker.
Segall’s moves come as candidates are gearing up to run in next year’s municipal elections, when Parker and all 17 City Council members are up for reelection.
Candidates in the primary election have until early spring to decide whether they are running.
Claudia Vargas, a journalist who formerly worked for NBC10 and The Inquirer, reported this week that Segall was considering running for Council.
When contacted by The Inquirer, Segall, who lives in Chestnut Hill, said Wednesday he is “not running” for Council.
“People have suggested multiple forms of public service, including Council, and I have no plans or commitments at this time,” Segall, 63, said in an interview.
Segall said he continues to “strongly support Mayor Parker, and my highest and best hope is that my public service will be in aid of her continued success.”
Parker on Wednesday declined to comment on the report of Segall exploring a run for office.
From 2022 through 2025, Segall and his wife donated $37,300 to Parker’s campaign, according to campaign finance records. He also gave $150,000 to a super PAC backing her 2023 run, and $6,200 to her transition committee, the records show.
“The 2023 election took place at a time of crisis in the city, and getting the right leader was never more critical,” Segall said. “So the reason for my commitment to her was quite simple: Before I’m a Republican, I’m a Philadelphian.”
Gregory Segall, Chairman and CEO of Versa and Supporter of Mayor Parker, speaks at the Union League of Philadelphia Presidential Luncheon in Philadelphia, Pa., on Thursday, September 18, 2025.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Citing Republican Party sources, Vargas reported that Segall was considering running for one of the two at-large seats on Council that are elected citywide and are set aside by the Home Rule Charter for minority-party or independent candidates.
Republicans held those seats for about seven decades until Councilmembers Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O’Rourke won them over the last two election cycles as members of the progressive Working Families Party.
Brooks is considering challenging Parker in next year’s mayoral election, sources previously told The Inquirer, which would require her to resign from her Council seat.
The Philly GOP has been strategizing ways to recapture the seats, and a run by Segall, a wealthy businessman who could potentially help fund his own campaign, could be a major opportunity for the party.
Segall donated $2,500 to the Republican City Committee last October.
GOP chair Vince Fenerty said he has met Segall and thinks he is a “nice and honorable man.”
“We’re a party that welcomes any potential candidate, and the decision to endorse would be up to our ward leaders,” Fenerty said in an interview Thursday.
Brian O’Neill, who represents the 10th District in Northeast Philadelphia, is currently the only Republican on Council. Democrats hold the remaining 14 seats.
Ned Warwick, 81, of Philadelphia, former foreign correspondent and foreign, national, and Pennsylvania editor for The Inquirer, former news director for WPVI-TV (Channel 6) and international news director for ABC-TV, former reporter at the Bulletin, mentor, sailor, pilot, and die-hard Phillies fan, died Monday, Sept. 14, of complications from Parkinson’s disease at his home near the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Born in Philadelphia and reared in Germantown and Mount Airy, Mr. Warwick graduated from Chestnut Hill Academy and attended Temple University. He knew he wanted to be a newsman when he was 16, his wife, Joan, said, and he spent much of his free time reading newspapers in the high school library.
He went on to work as a young city-side reporter for the Bulletin from 1969 to 1974 and a veteran editor and reporter for The Inquirer from 2001 to 2008. For TV, he was a news writer and assignment editor at WPVI from 1975 to 1981, news director at WTVD in Durham, N.C., from 1981 to 1986, and back as news director at WPVI from 1986 to 1990.
Regarding the transition from print to TV work, he told Inquirer TV columnist Gail Shister in 1977: “The TV reporter’s job is more difficult because they have to be journalists and performers. It is in fact easier for a TV reporter to move over to print than vice versa.”
Mr. Warwick became a foreign correspondent for The Inquirer in 2006.Newspapers.com
From 1990 to 1995, Mr. Warwick was based in London as ABC’s director of news operations for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He worked with celebrated anchorman Peter Jennings, supervised dozens of other international TV types, and directed coverage of many of the world’s top stories.
Actually, he told The Inquirer as he left for London, he did not expect the job to be much different from covering news in Philadelphia. “You can gather news around the corner or across the border,” he said. “But the essential business of newsgathering still remains the same. You’ve still got to get the story.”
He nearly became the story in 1992 when he got pinned down in a gun battle while traveling in Somalia. “He always wanted to be a newsman and travel the world,” his wife said, “and he did. He loved the news. He loved ABC.”
At The Inquirer, Mr. Warwick was the foreign and national editor for five years and a foreign correspondent in Jerusalem during and after the 2006 Lebanon war. He returned to Philadelphia in 2007 to be deputy business editor and Pennsylvania editor for a year.
The Inquirer covered Mr. Warwick’s return to WPVI-TV in 1986. Newspapers,com
“He was a good listener and could manage a reporter’s needs,” former Inquirer staff writer Miriam Hill said. Former Inquirer staff writer Sally Downey said: “He was a very classy guy.”
In 2006, his byline appeared in The Inquirer over dozens of war zone stories from Gaza City, Bethlehem, Acre, Ramallah, Huwwara, Turmus Aya, and elsewhere in the Middle East. On Oct. 17, 2006, he opened his story from Kafr Qalil with: “The sharp heat of summer lingers on the stony hills of the West Bank, and the pale olives are still ripening on the trees, thirsting for just a little of the fall rains that won’t come for a few more weeks.”
“He was a lyrical writer,” Hill said. Former Inquirer editor William K. Marimow called his style “fluid” and “very solid.”
Mr. Warwick also reported on the royal family from London and reviewed books for The Inquirer. He worked briefly as an editor at large with Bloomberg News after leaving the paper in 2008 and retired in 2010.
Out of the office, Mr. Warwick was a sailor and a pilot. Courtesy of the family
He mentored others wherever he worked and with the Rittenhouse Writers’ Group, and completed a first draft of his own book. “His mind was always crafting a story, seeing a story, or preparing to tell one in a way that made everyone near him want to listen,” said his daughter Katie Bishop.
“No matter what was going on,” said Nathan Gorenstein, a former colleague at The Inquirer, “he was a good human.”
Out of the office, Mr. Warwick was a sailor and a pilot. In 1986, when he was news director at WPVI, Shister asked him whether flying an airplane or directing a newsroom was more challenging. “Clearly,” he said, “if you don’t pay attention in either business, you’re going to crash.”
He cheered openly for the Phillies even during the lean years and continued to follow them closely after becoming ill. “One of the first things he would ask in the morning,” his wife said, “is who won the game.”
Edward Ramsey Warwick was born May 19, 1945. The oldest of three children, he was the great-grandson of former Mayor Charles Warwick. He left Temple and earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., in 1969.
Mr. Warwick’s local TV work was covered in The Inquirer in 1988. Newspapers.com
He married Polly Price, and they had a daughter, Katie. After a divorce, he married Gayle Roth, and they had daughters Megan and Eliza.
“He always made us feel like having three daughters was his greatest joy in life,” his daughter Megan Osborne said. “He taught us to throw a ball and let us braid his hair.”
After a divorce, he married Joan Hunter, and they enjoyed museums, the theater, and the orchestra. They traveled the world together. He was a longtime runner and a fashionista, and studied Buddhism.
He lived with Parkinson’s disease for eight years. But he refused to quit city living for the suburbs, his wife said, and he never lost his sense of humor and zest for life.
Mr. Warwick was a longtime runner and a fashionista, and studied Buddhism. Courtesy of the family
“Dad was a giant of a man in every sense of the word,” his daughter Eliza said. His wife said: “He never, ever complained. He made me a better person.”
In addition to wife, daughters, and former wives, Mr. Warwick is survived by four grandchildren, a sister, a brother, and other relatives.
A memorial service is to be from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, at the Germantown Cricket Club, 411 Manheim St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19144.
“Come here, in my car, sexy girl,” Horsch told the girl, according to an arrest report.
When police found Horsch circling the neighborhood that March night, officers recovered a pair of high-powered binoculars, a digital camera, a telephoto lens, an eye patch, and a condom from inside his Jeep, the prosecutor on the case said.
Horsch was convicted of two misdemeanor counts of luring a child into a motor vehicle and corrupting the morals of a minor at a trial in Municipal Court in 2010. He was sentenced to 2½ to 5 years in prison, and would have been required to register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law, said Jill Fertel, the prosecutor who handled the case.
But Horsch insisted he did nothing wrong, and requested a new trial in Common Pleas Court. Another prosecutor took over the matter.
The victim and her mother became too afraid to testify in court again, according to two people familiar with the matter. The case fell apart and prosecutors dropped the charges. The original conviction was vacated, and in 2015, Horsch successfully petitioned a Common Pleas Court judge to expunge the case.
Fertel, in an interview Tuesday, said Horsch — and that outcome — had “haunted her for the last 16 years.”
Horsch was known to prowl Kensington to recruit women in addiction to appear in his violent pornographic works in exchange for drugs, cash, and a place to stay at his home. But the details of the expunged conviction, which have not been previously reported, indicate Horsch may have also sought underage girls — and suggest that law enforcement was alerted to his troubling behavior nearly two decades ago.
(Top from left) Gabrielle Amarando, Nicole Fusaro, Maribel Fresses, Amy McHale, and Blair Tonzelli. Nicole Fusaro, Gabrielle Amarando, and Maribel Fresses are presumed dead. Blair Tonzelli and Amy McHale are still missing, but last seen at Horsch’s home.Obtained by The Inquirer
Now, the court records in the case — the sole known sex crime Horsch is believed to have been charged with — are at risk of being destroyed.
The records are on file at the Criminal Justice Center, but when The Inquirer sought to review them on Monday, a clerk denied that request.
Because the case had been expunged, the clerk said, the records should have been destroyed years ago. The filings could not be reviewed, he said, and would ultimately be destroyed in accordance with state law.
The Inquirer sent a letter Monday night to administrative judges in Philadelphia’s First Judicial District, asking that the records be preserved in the interest of the public, and that they be unsealed because of the ongoing investigation into Horsch’s connection to missing women.
“Horsch is dead, and this case has extraordinary public interest and news value,” the newspaper wrote. “The filing could hold pieces of information that are irreplaceable and important to the public and the criminal investigation.”
Fertel — who left the district attorney’s office in 2018 — said there are likely essential records of the case that remain in the court file, including notes of testimony, psychology examinations, and letters from Horsch’s defense lawyer submitted as part of his sentencing hearing.
She said the sex offenses triggered a sexually violent predator assessment of Horsch, and recalled that the psychologist was “horrified” by Horsch’s pornography and feared he could be violent.
“This is the only sexual offense he was ever convicted of, that I know of,” Fertel said in an interview Tuesday. “His conduct and his films and video were part of the sentencing. What he was doing [in Kensington] was part of the sentencing. That record is important to have, if we’re to prevent this from happening again.”
Police said they have so far recovered footage on hard drives inside Horsch’s home that appears to show five women dead — including a video of Horsch filming himself while strangling a woman to death with a zip tie. Two other women, including Horsch’s ex-wife, were last seen at the home but remain missing.
Luring a child
Around 7 p.m. on March 20, 2009, the 9-year-old was walking on Ontario Street when Horsch, in a green Jeep, slowed next to her.
“Yo, come here,” Horsch said, before getting out of his car to approach her and calling her “sexy,” according to the arrest report.
The girl ran home and told her mother an old man in a green Jeep had asked her to get into his car. The mother ran outside and chased after the Jeep, which circled the block and drove off, the report said. They called police, who responded and found Horsch in his car near the 3200 block of Kensington Avenue, the report said.
The girl identified Horsch as the man who approached her, the document said.
Fertel said that during the trial, the victim cried on the stand, at times prompting the judge to leave the bench to comfort her as she testified before Horsch, who was standing just feet away.
Horsch was released on bail.
While Horsch was facing those charges in Philadelphia, in July 2009, police responded to his home in Chalfont — where he lived before moving to Olney in 2013 — after a 21-year-old woman called to report a break-in. When officers arrived, they found 455 marijuana plants and two shotguns spread among five partitioned rooms in the basement, according to the Bucks County Courier Times.
Officers also recovered bondage gear, photographs of bleeding women, and a homemade movie labeled with the word “rape,” the newspaper reported.
Court records show that the woman who called police later told investigators she struggled with a heroin addiction and had met Horsch while doing sex work in Kensington. (That woman died of an overdose in January 2016 when she relapsed, her mother said in an interview this week.)
When Horsch returned home that night in July to find police raiding the property, he ran down his tree-lined suburban street, according to the news report.
He was later arrested and pleaded guilty in federal court to manufacturing drugs and illegal gun possession, and was sentenced to 54 months in prison, plus five years’ probation.
Ligature marks on the arms of an unidentified woman in Raymond Horsch’s 2003 two-volume photobook “Eroto: To The Prurient Interest.”Obtained by The Inquirer
Fertel said that, as she prosecuted Horsch in Philadelphia, she learned details of the Bucks County drug raid — including that officers had found disturbing pornography, guns, and explosive materials at his suburban home. That became part of her case, she said, and led her to ask that Horsch be sentenced to the maximum penalty of five to 10 years in prison.
Common Pleas Court Judge Roger Gordon — who presided over the case — sentenced Horsch to 2½ to 5 years.
But then Horsch appealed, and the case collapsed after the child and her mother became too scared to testify against him again.
Fertel said the materials found in Horsch’s home, and the psychologist’s fears of his potential threats to the community, have been seared in her memory ever since.
“He was able to treat women in this fashion for decades and no one has stepped up to protect them. No one was able to stop him,” Fertel said this week. “Everybody knew about it.”
A ‘fabricated thing’
Horsch, who died in May 2025, boasted about his criminal career as a drug manufacturer and document forger. He also spoke openly about how he recruited drug-addicted women in Kensington to appear in his violent pornographic photos and films that featured drug use, overdoses, and staged hangings, drownings, and killings.
But Horsch vehemently denied ever trying to lure a child into his car. He spoke about it years later, in a 2013 interview with the Rialto Report podcast, and said the 9-year-old girl had lied.
“It’s just a totally weird, fabricated thing,” he said. “All you have to do is go to the state sex offender list and you won’t find my name there.”
In his 2003 movie Slaves, Horsch played a semiautobiographical character who, in one scene, described approaching a young girl in a mall. The girl’s mother, Horsch’s character said, then yelled, “Get away from my daughter!”
“The place froze, literally froze. Time stood still. Every eye was on me, from every direction, hundreds of eyes,” Horsch said in the movie. “And I realized in an instant that, to every single person there, I was a child molester.”
Raymond “R.C.” Horsch in character for film role, 2014.S. E. Stokowski / Wikimedia
As Philadelphia police sort through more than one million photos and videos on the hard drives recovered from Horsch’s home on West Chew Avenue in Olney, they have encountered what they believe was staged violence as part of his art — and also photos and a video of what they now believe were real missing women, dead inside Horsch’s home.
So far, police have identified five women in the footage who they now believe are dead: Maribel Fresses, Gabrielle Amarando, Nicole Fusaro, a 25-year-old woman who has not been identified at the request of her family, and another woman investigators are still working to identify.
Two other women who were last seen at Horsch’s Olney home — Blair Tonzelli and Amy McHale, his ex-wife — remain missing.
Police have so far reviewed only about 30% of the materials on the hard drives.
Fertel said she hopes revelations about the 2009 case will draw more attention to the exploitation of women in Kensington.
“No one was getting arrested for what Raymond Horsch was doing,” she said. “This is an opportunity for people to recognize that this is wrong and that we can’t let it happen again. We can’t let this happen to more people.”
The little bird of an idea to open a restaurant circled the blue skies of Fred Mogul’s imagination for many years while he was preoccupied with other passions. The first few decades of his career were spent in journalism, working in print and at wire services from Nebraska to Jerusalem, then in public radioas a news reporter, first at WHYY, followed by 18 years at WNYC in New York.
But that little bird persisted, which is how this cheerfully quirky all-day cafe and restaurant in Chestnut Hill — the Blue Warbler — eventually came to be. Having been steeped so long in the perpetual turbulence of the media industry, Mogul was not deterred bythe famously daunting risks of building a restaurant.
“I wanted to do something else for social good and contribute to the world in having a communal gathering place while feeding people,” he said, conjuring a destination that combined the best attributes of a bakery-cafe, a diner, and a local tavern. “But I also want it to be a little surprising, playful, and unpredictable.”
To open such an intriguing place in Chestnut Hill, especially,would absolutely be a good deed. That neighborhood’s chronically underperforming dining scene, despite its abundance of well-to-do residents and quaint retail district lining Germantown Avenue, is such an enduring enigma that the last time I wrote something really nice about a restaurant there was nearly a decade ago when I reviewed Mica, which sadly did not survive the pandemic.
The dining room at the Blue Warbler on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026 in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff PhotographerThe dining room at the Blue Warbler on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026 in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
But here was Mogul’s vision of the Warbler come to life with such vibrant warmth on a Saturday night, and it was as if this bustling three-month-old newcomer had been ensconced at the corner of Germantown and East Willow Grove Avenues for years.
The slate-blue bar trimmed with white oak was lined with customers sipping Cardamaro spritzes, blushing pink Clover Clubs, and sage gose beer from Germantown’s Attic Brewing Co. Meanwhile, eager diners waited patiently near the front door for their turn in the 71-seat dining room, where comfortable banquettes along the window and a cluster of tables on a raised rear platform create a sense of intimacy within the open space.
As a world-beat soundtrack pulsed with tunes from Brazil, Nigeria, and Afghanistan, the Warbler’s eclectic dinner menu — ranging curiously from Middle Eastern meze to smoked arctic char spread, mushroom kebabs, a tuna melt sandwich, and a faux-meatloaf platter — ultimately landed on the table less chaotically than it reads.
The bacalao, salt cod croquettes with green yogurt and lemon relish at the Blue Warbler.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
We swiped rounds of fluffy pita through silky hummus topped with cuminy Moroccan carrots and a spicy-smoky drizzle of harissa crunch. I savored the oceanic tang of warm salt cod fritters against the refreshing coolness of yogurt sauce greened with parsley, dill, and mint.
I’ll admit to the lowest expectations possible for the “meatloaf” made with Impossible meat. But this kitchen, run by chef Daniel Berret (formerly at CO-OP in the Study hotel in University City and Chestnut Hill Brewing Co.), seasoned that loaf nicely with a sweet onion and herb boost, lacquered it with a molasses-ketchup glaze, then added appealing sides of plancha-roasted king oyster mushrooms and fresh-cooked frites with a sriracha mayo dip. It was a comfort winner I’d return for.
Yes, there’s a vaguely retro sensibility to this globe-hopping collection of flavors, as well as the unabashed offering of tofu steaks and wheat meat as entrees in an era when vegetarian cooking has grown into a more vegetable-focused phase. The fact that there is no red meat or poultry on this menu, which does include fish, will be a no go for some.
But as Mogul told my colleague Michael Klein at the Warbler’s opening, he refuses to define this space by “what it lacks” or simply as “that vegetarian place” so much as a neighborhood-centered hub that is inclusive. The handsome dining room and breezy backyard patio are inviting. The service is genuine and outgoing. And the kitchen brings earnestly wrought flavors to everything it makes — including the hand-rolled bagels that anchor much of its daytime cafe menu.
It clearly has the neighborhood’s full attention, as evidenced by the customer who noted that an early version of cinnamon rolls for breakfast was topped with a wave of chai frosting that reminded them of “a Trump combover,” says Mogul. “That image could not be unseen, so we went to DIY schmearing with the frosting in ramekins instead!”
Chocolate hazelnut babka, chai cinnamon roll, and griddled cornbread at the Blue Warbler on June 11. The presentation of the cinnamon roll has since been changed with the frosting served on the side.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
As a restaurant novice, Mogul still has a lot to learn — but he has eagerly embraced input from those with expertise. Just as he turned to Ambit Architecture and In House Studio to tastefully transform the longtime Foster’s Drugstore into its first use as a restaurant (note the salvaged original terrazzo floors and a serious ongoing attempt at soundproofing), he engaged restaurant consultant Arthur Cavaliere to translate his broad vision for the food into workable menus.
It all comes down to execution by Berret and his crew, and for me, the dinner service was the most successful. Aside from the tasty meze nibbles — including salty-sweet haloumi-stuffed dates and a smoky baba ghanoush topped with crispy cornmeal-fried Japanese eggplant — there is an appealing array of grilled skewers to start.
I especially enjoyed the “Chesco” portobello kebab whose long ribbon of mushroom is threaded like an accordion onto the skewer, glazed with date molasses and tamari, then served over a walnut tarator sauce. I also unexpectedly loved another Impossible meat creation: a version of kofta zestily seasoned with onions and garlic in the style of a Balkan ćevapi sausage, garnished with an herbal chimichurri over tzatziki yogurt.
The Chesco skewers at the Blue Warbler on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026 in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff PhotographerThe Balkan kebab skewers at the Blue Warbler on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026 in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Such mock-meat successes opened my mind to the panko-crusted, lemon-infused tofu steak. It was not bad, especially over a colorful pile of sauteed asparagus and watermelon radish. But it was a bit boring compared to the most satisfying entree here, a whole smoked eggplant that’s deep-fried into a schnitzel, then placed over a black garlic aioli beneath a juicy tumble of fresh heirloom tomatoes tossed with Thai basil, sesame, and tart sumac.
The grilled whole branzino was a perfectly fine option for those craving fish, but it, too, was ultimately less engaging than that eggplant.
The smoked eggplant schnitzel at the Blue Warbler on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026 in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
The desserts begin with two solid renditions of crème brûlée, including a classic vanilla custard, stylishly dusted with dried rose petals, and a seasonal variation that has so far ranged from strawberry to matcha and corn. I was most impressed by chef de cuisine Renee Rowlett’s creative deconstruction of a peach crisp into something lighter and more seasonal: A half peach caramelized with demerara sugar was posed over a crunchy mound of brown sugar-toasted almonds and buckwheat groats (a nod to the Ashkenazi Jewish thread woven through the Warbler’s menu) beside creamy maple soft-serve.
The peach crisp at the Blue Warbler on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026 in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Breakfast, lunch, and brunch are obviously key to the Blue Warbler’s success as an all-day cafe. And while this corner room soaks in the sunshine and exudes a pitch-perfect laid-back aura — I’d happily hang out here and drink that bold Cuban roast brew from Mayorga — our daytime meal was not the layup it should have been.
I would have loved my well-cooked omelet with zucchini, onion, peppers, and feta (and especially that side of cuminy tomato shakshuka sauce) but the kitchen forgot to add the zucchini. I’ll never pass up a socca chickpea pancake, but the Warbler’s rendition was unfortunately thick and scorched. The classic American-style pancakes with butterscotch were doughy. The cheddar biscuits were dense. Next time, I’ll definitely try the Turkish breakfast of eggs, tomatoes, and cucumbers over labneh with harissa.
Turkish breakfast at the Blue Warbler, in Philadelphia, June 11, 2026.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
I’ll give the Warbler bonus points for hand-rolling their own bagels, even if the overly fluffy sourdough interior is not my ideal (not to mention the heat bubbles blistering its crust, which should be smooth). It nonetheless worked well enough as a vehicle for a breakfast sandwich stuffed with cheddar, eggs, arugula, and red pepper aioli. I especially liked that bagel hollowed out and stuffed with zesty green herbal tofu purée and tangy red peppadew peppers for the Herbivore sandwich.
All these flaws can surely be fixed with some tweaks. And considering how well the kitchen infuses seasonal creativity into the grab-and-go items that cycle onto the counter display on the bar throughout the day — from the muffin-shaped herb-and-feta “egg bites” to a fig- and fontina-topped schiacciatta bread still warm from the oven — such modifications are easily within their reach.
Mogul has already been so dialed in to all the details since embarking on making his restaurant dream a reality, I’m hopeful the Warbler will do that soon. There is already so much to appreciate at this promising — and needed — new addition to Chestnut Hill, I’ll look forward to watching it grow.
A schiacciata topped with figs and fontina at the Blue Warbler in Chestnut Hill.Craig LaBan / Staff
Breakfast and lunch 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. Dinner 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday, until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Brunch 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. No dinner Monday or Tuesday.
Main plates, $15-$32 (including sharing platters).
Wheelchair accessible.
About a third of the menu is gluten-free or can be modified.
Menu highlights: Dinner: trio of meze dips; bacalao fritters; haloumi dates; smoked arctic char spread; Balkan and Chesco skewers; eggplant schnitzel; Impossible meatloaf; peach crisp. Breakfast-lunch: omelet; the Herbivore; egg bites; schiacciatta.
Drinks: Fresh and fruity takes on classic cocktails — Clover Club, Mai Tai with fresh orgeat, a pear martini, an amaro spritz, a spicy margarita, and fizzy Sgroppino — are worthwhile, alongside a selection of thoughtful N/A options. Local beers on draft and an international selection of well-priced wines by the glass ensure there’s something for everyone.
Owner Fred Mogul at the Blue Warbler, in Philadelphia, June 11, 2026.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
In the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, I went to New York to report on a story about Johanna Sigmund, a young woman from Wyndmoor who perished after one of the hijacked planes rammed the north tower.
Over the course of my career, I’ve spent more time than anyone would want writing pieces about people whose lives were cut short prematurely. One of the most memorable was Johanna, whose story and positive spirit remain seared into my soul.
Johanna’s parents invited me, a stranger, into their home at their worst hour. They took the time to tell me about their only daughter, and shared photograph after photograph after photograph — Johanna smiling after she ran the New York City Marathon, Johanna posing with her girlfriends at a wedding, and so on.
One image stood out.
It was a photo of Johanna, 25, and her brother, John, 23, smiling while standing arm in arm at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. The photo was taken two months before the terror attacks. In the background loomed the twin towers.
An article by Paul Davies about Johanna Sigmund in the Oct. 19, 2001, edition of the Daily News.Staff
Johanna’s story has stuck with me for a quarter century, but her life is emblematic of the promise and potential of so many others who were lost. At least 40 people with ties to Philadelphia and its western suburbs were killed in the attacks, including 18 from Bucks County, 11 from Montgomery County, five in Chester County, eight from Delaware County, and three from Philadelphia. It may be impossible for any of us to fathom how many other lives were forever impacted by the horrors of that day.
I wondered how Johanna’s family and friends had fared over the years.
So much has been lost in the 25 years since 9/11. Johanna would have turned 50 on the first day of summer — the longest day of sunlight. Her elegant beauty remains frozen in time, and — all these years later — her life remains a catalyst for good.
A scholarship fund set up in her name continues to help students attend St. Malachy School in North Philadelphia, as well as another at her alma mater, Springside Chestnut Hill Academy.
Johanna packed a lot into her brief time here. She was the captain of the field hockey, lacrosse, and squash teams in high school. She studied economics and played field hockey at Fairfield University, and spent a semester in Paris before moving to New York in 1998 with three friends from Philadelphia.
When I met with Johanna’s roommates a few weeks after the attack, they shared stories of her love of cooking, dancing, and listening to U2, often replaying the song “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” that begins, “I’m not afraid of anything in this world.”
From left: Johanna Sigmund, Rory McDevitt, and Kim Ongaro were all bridesmaids at the wedding of their friend, Lexie Beatty, in May 2001. Sigmund was one of the victims in the 9/11 attacks.h
Johanna cared for others. She distributed pizza and McDonald’s to the homeless people in her neighborhood. She helped a woman who was thrown from a taxi get to a hospital. Johanna spent the night by her side and returned home in the morning with blood on her clothes.
Kimberly Ongaro, a roommate and friend from Springside, called her “an angel.”
The toughest interview in the weeks after the attack was with Johanna’s boyfriend, Joe Bonavita. They had dated for several years and had discussed marriage.
Their final weekend together was a whirlwind. They went to the Yankees game Friday night and drove to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., on Saturday, met up with friends, attended the Army football game, and walked through the cemetery for soldiers, which included Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
On Sunday, Johanna competed in a 5K race down Broadway before continuing on as part of her training for the Philadelphia Marathon. She and Joe shared dinner that night.
Johanna Sigmund and her boyfriend, Joe Bonavita, at the wedding of her friend Lexie Beatty Morris.
Johanna did not feel well on Monday, but went to work. When she was still under the weather on Tuesday — Sept. 11 — Joe urged her to stay home.
But she went into the office at an investment firm on the 93rd floor of the north tower.
Joe worked near the Trade Center. As he exited the subway, he saw the first plane smash into the north tower.
A life upended
I located her brother, John, and emailed him. He responded a few minutes later and graciously agreed to speak. When we connected after 25 years, it almost felt like old friends catching up.
John told me how 9/11 upended his life.
He had planned to move to New York after college, but lost interest after the attack. He visited ground zero to commemorate the first anniversary. President George W. Bush greeted families, including John’s aunt, who offered veiled advice regarding the plans to invade Iraq. “I hope you are making a prayerful decision,” she told the president.
Bush was taken aback, but continued shaking hands before circling back to tell John’s aunt that he prayed every day.
A photograph of Johanna Sigmund running in the New York City Marathon in November 2000.
After college, John, a Spanish speaker, spent a year with AmeriCorps teaching literacy to second graders in Kensington. After he explained to one class’s teacher why he wanted to take off for the anniversary of 9/11, she had her students write notes of support. John was struck by how many kids shared stories of loved ones they had lost to violence.
“Everyone has their 9/11,” he said.
Along the way, we all pay a price. Some more than others. But how one responds is a lesson for all as we navigate these trying times 25 years after 9/11.
John said he wonders how his life would have been different if not for Sept. 11. After a year teaching in Philadelphia, he moved to Texas, in part to get away. He earned a master’s degree in art education at the University of Texas in Austin before going on to teach at Say Sí, an after-school arts program in San Antonio.
John’s attempt to get away brought him back to New York. One of his students won an art award that included a trip for the student and teacher to Carnegie Hall. The artwork was displayed at the Winter Garden located near ground zero in May 2010.
“My heart sank,” John said. “I didn’t want to go anywhere near ground zero.”
Even then, nearly a decade after the towers fell, ground zero remained little more than a giant pit with the Freedom Tower slowly rising alongside it. In a macabre daily scene, tourists jammed the sidewalks, gawking and posing for pictures in front of what John could only see as a mass grave, while street hustlers sold photos of the hijacked planes crashing into the towers.
John tried to maintain his composure as he made his way through the gauntlet to the Winter Garden, but a man stepped in front of him and tried to sell him a fiery photo from the attack.
John snapped. He grabbed the stack of photos from the man, threw them in the air, and cussed him out. The two got into a tussle. After the fracas, John tried to gather himself by channeling his sister’s unflappable spirit.
John Sigmund (center) holds a picture of his sister, Johanna, as he and his family run down Kelly Drive toward the finish line of the Philadelphia Marathon in November 2001.d
“Johanna, help me,” he said to himself while overlooking ground zero. “I need to get it together.”
‘Beyond coincidence’
John calmed down and carried on. After the event, he met friends at a nearby bar. John was telling them about the run-in with the street hustler when he suddenly saw Johanna’s old boyfriend, Joe Bonavita, across the bar.
Joe had moved to New Orleans but, in a twist of fate, was in town for a 9/11 event. The two were not close but quickly bonded. John viewed the reunion as his sister’s handiwork.
“Some things are beyond coincidence,” he said.
Eventually, John did move to New York. The city helped him better find himself. After years of worrying about disappointing his parents or adding to their suffering, John told them he was gay. His parents, who have a deep Catholic faith, were supportive.
Twelve years ago, John returned to Philadelphia and fell in love with the city, and especially Fairmount Park.
After running the Philadelphia Marathon in November 2001, John Sigmund holds a photo of his sister, Johanna, and wears two medals around his neck — one he earned after finishing the race and another his sister won after completing the New York City Marathon in November 2000.Courtesy of Tony Webb / Office of the City Representative
But tragedy struck again in September. Three days after the 20th anniversary of 9/11, his father died.
For John, September remains the cruelest month. But he credits a strong support network of cousins and friends for helping him navigate life’s challenges — and added that Johanna always feels close by.
“I have a thing with the wind,” John said. “When I think about her, the wind will kick up.”
After losing his sister and father in September, John and his partner, Jaime, decided to add some positivity to the month. They got married last Sept. 26 and are planning an anniversary party in a couple of weeks.
This fall’s restaurant openings reflect an industry hedging its bets: established operators expanding into the suburbs and repurposing familiar spaces, and newcomers pursuing narrowly drawn concepts built around omakase, caviar, Korean barbecue, cocktails, and live-fire cooking.
I count about five dozen restaurants in the region’s pipeline, with Italian concepts (no surprise), all-day service, and experience-driven dining recurring throughout the list. In addition to 60 restaurants opening between now and late December, two other restaurants are expanding: Lovat Square in Chestnut Hill is adding dinners and Palm Vintage across from City Hall is adding nighttime sushi service.
By comparison, last year’s fall roundup covered 53 restaurants. All of those opened except for three that are now a full year behind schedule: Adda in Fishtown is shooting for October, Ayat near Rittenhouse Square is aiming for November, and Brunch Bulls in Point Breeze is targeted for December. (Although this year has seen its share of closings, especially among longstanding restaurants, each of last fall’s restaurants is still open.)
Brand new and notable
Aogami (4343 Main St.): Underground sushi is coming to Manayunk as chef Tom LoMonte joins chef Moon Krapukthong to offer a 16-course omakase in a 20-seat BYOB setting beneath Krapukthong’s Yanako and neighboring Chabaa Thai Bistro, starting Sept. 25. LoMonte — a veteran of Zama, Izakaya by Yanaga, Pod, and Yanaga Kappo Izakaya — will lead the omakases at 6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; reserved sushi-bar seatings will run Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays alongside hand rolls and à la carte service. LoMonte describes the atmosphere as energetic and less formal than typical omakase counters. Upstairs, Yanako will continue serving rolls, sushi platters, udon, tempura, and yakitori.
The Buttery (1099 Germantown Ave.): Malvern-based bakery and cafe the Buttery is preparing a Philadelphia location at Piazza Alta in Northern Liberties, near Scusi and Terra Grill. It recently opened a Bryn Mawr location and expanded its original Malvern operation into dinner service with Neapolitan pizza and shareable plates. An opening date has not yet been shared.
Nick & Nora’s Oyster Dive (560 Stokes Rd., Medford): Michael and Jeniphur Pasquarello (La Chinesca, Piccolina) are bringing a raw bar and American kitchen to a corner space with a large deck at Ironstone Village. The broader menu will include steak frites, burgers, fish, vegetables, and small plates, says Michael Pasquarello, who hopes to open in 60 to 90 days.
Chef Chaz Brown (left) is partnered with his brother Clifford Brown (center) and John Skeele in Rumblefish, 1700 N. Third St.Mike Prince
Rumblefish(1700 N. Third St.): Chef Chaz Brown is targeting November for this 900-square-foot, fast-casual Caribbean fish-fry restaurant at Third Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue. Brown — a Trinidadian American chef whose resumé includes Nobu, Le Bec-Fin, Fatty Crab, and television’s Top Chef — will focus on invasive species such as lionfish, snakehead, green crab, and Chesapeake Bay blue catfish when available. (The catfish turned heads at the recent Oxtail Exchange at Forman Arts Initiative.) Brown uses gluten-free corn flour with Trinidadian spice blends and serves the fish on po’boy-style rolls baked by Angelo’s Bakery in Conshohocken. The mostly takeout operation will have counter seating, a 25-seat covered patio, slaws, fries, sea-moss drinks, and Solo Kola Champagne.
Pennsylvania suburbs
Alessandro’s Enoteca (915 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr): Alex Fiorello’s third restaurant will bring a bar-focused Italian concept to the former Enoteca Tredici space in Bryn Mawr Village in mid-to-late October. Fiorello and culinary director Matt Arcomone, whose resumé includes Osteria, Vetri, and Palladino’s, are planning house-made pastas, wood-fired pizzas, live-fire cooking, and dry-aged meats. It’s intended to have a stronger evening and bar scene than Fiorello’s Wayne restaurants.
Bruzi (281 Montgomery Ave., Bala Cynwyd): Two couples with Calabrian roots plan to open this Southern Italian restaurant in the former Aldar Bistro in late fall. Expect house-made pastas and Calabrian dishes such as fusilli with slow-cooked meat sauce, baked lamb, and grilled tuna, plus cocktails and an opening list of about 100 Italian wines.
Capperini (137 S. Easton Rd., Glenside): Eastern Montco will get an upscale Italian-Mediterranean destination with a liquor license from Ilya Vorobey and partners including members of the team behind Capri in Queen Village. Vorobey is aiming for October or November.
Casa de Fehu, 482 Jacksonville Rd., Hatboro.Michael Klein / Staff
Casa de Fehu (482 Jacksonville Rd., Hatboro): Hatboro couple Anthony Shalamov and Anastasia De Roy are developing this polished restaurant with European-inspired cooking and an upscale atmosphere, possibly with a tie-in to a local brewery that would allow alcoholic drinks. Shalamov is targeting an October soft opening.
Cecilia (266 E. Fourth St., Bridgeport): The team behind Blue Bell Inn and the Copper Crow is just about ready to open this contemporary American bar-restaurant in the extensively renovated former Taphouse 23. The roomy property includes a large patio and a wood-burning oven. The menu emphasizes familiar American dishes, positioning this as an all-purpose neighborhood destination.
Donatelli’s (1 Washington Ave., Newtown): Restaurateur Habib Troudi, who owns Panache and Ristorante Castelloin Blue Bell, is behind a top-to-bottom overhaul of the former Rocco’s at the Brick in downtown Newtown. He said he is hoping to open the Italian steakhouse in October.
Rendering of the Garden by Pieri Winery, 127 E. Elm St., in Conshohocken.Courtesy of Christina Pieri
The Garden by Pieri Winery (127 E. Elm St., Conshohocken): Winery owner Christina Pieri and restaurateur Brian Pieri (StoneRose, Bar Lucca, Cerdo) are targeting a mid-October opening of their year-round indoor-outdoor restaurant beside the Schuylkill River Trail, an offshoot of Christina’s Coopersburg winery. A wood-fired kitchen will serve seasonal American food, including brick-oven pizzas, focaccia sandwiches, salads, steaks, and fish, at lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday. The property will include a covered patio, fire tables, a turf area, and pickleball and bocce courts.
The Hungry Hub (11 S. Orange St., Media): Media native Cassidy Moretti and her mother, Glenda, are taking over the former Rivalry Cafe with a family-run breakfast and lunch operation. The Hungry Hub also plans later hours and a late-night menu, broadening its role beyond that of a conventional daytime cafe. An Oct. 1 opening has been announced.
The Iron Oven (58 S. York Rd., Hatboro): Alex Nalbandian’s Southampton bar-restaurant — known for an expansive American menu, cocktails, craft beer, brunch, and dishes ranging from wings and burgers to flatbreads and entrees — is adding a second location in eastern Montco: the former Ross & Co. He’s aiming at November.
Lazy Dog(160 N. Gulph Rd., King of Prussia): The California-based bar, known for Rocky Mountain lodge imagery and a broad American menu, is targeting late 2026 at the King of Prussia Mall.
Luna (129 E. Butler Ave., Ambler): FineLine Hospitality, which recently opened Academy Grill in Fort Washington, is behind a stylish revamp of Dettera in downtown Ambler. Chef Marie Lavizzo-Mourey will base her menu on the 20-plus countries bordering the Mediterranean. The project is on track for fall.
Martini & Roz(523 W. Lancaster Ave., Wayne): Fearless Restaurants is turning Wayne’s former Bertucci’s into an ambitious, 300-seat Southern Italian restaurant named for founder Marty Grims’ parents, Martin and Roslyn. Menu will include crudo, oysters, steaks and chops, wood-fired pizzas, house-made pastas, and charcuterie. It will feature two open kitchens, a cheese cave, a tasting counter, and extensive outdoor seating.
Maru (2922 Conestoga Rd., Glenmoore): David Backhus and the team behind the former Oori restaurants are in the early days of a fast-casual Korean-inspired restaurant at their former Collective Coffee & Bakery. Think Korean fried chicken sandwiches, wings, and tenders, supplemented by mochi doughnuts and specialty Collective coffee.
Nudy’s Cafe (122 Park Ave., Willow Grove): Prolific suburban breakfast-and-lunch operator Ray Nudy hopes for late September for his latest diner, across from Marshalls in Willow Grove.
Old Friend (166 E. Lancaster Ave., Wayne): Childhood friends Larry Kagan and Chas McFeely are behind this contemporary American grill, with former Fork executive chef Sam Henzy leading the kitchen. The 86-seat restaurant will center on live-fire cooking in a Josper oven, with dry-aged fish, poultry, and larger proteins intended for sharing. Its compact wine list will be closely tied to the food. A late-fall opening is planned in the Apartments at Wayne Station.
Opus (201 Birch St., Kennett Square): Square Roots Collective will open this 125-seat New American restaurant Sept. 11 in the former temporary home of Hank’s Place, next to the Artelo hotel. Executive chef Matthew Anderson, formerly of Longwood Gardens and Winterthur, plans seasonal dishes, such as Kennett Square mushroom bisque, butternut squash agnolotti, herb gnocchi, and dayboat scallops. The two-story space includes a cocktail lounge, terraces, and work by local artists. Profits will support community projects and nonprofits.
Salt (840 W. Lancaster Ave., Devon): Rich Kim of North Wales’ acclaimed Salt predicts late December for his redevelopment of Devon’s former La Jonquille and Shiraz property into a second Korean barbecue concept, followed in 2027 by Yugo, a carousel sushi restaurant, upstairs.
The Still on State (18 W. State St., Doylestown): Only days open at the Doylestown Inn, this Irish pub-inspired bar/restaurant fills the former Hattery Stove & Still space; it’s paired with an on-site microdistillery called the Tilted Brim.
Taco Heart (120 Coulter Ave., Ardmore): Nano Wheedan is bringing his South Philadelphia breakfast-taco shop to the Ardmore Farmers Market, its first expansion beyond its East Passyunk-area home. Expect Austin-style flour tortillas and breakfast tacos built around eggs, potatoes, beans, bacon, brisket, and house salsas. Opening is set for Oct. 5.
Top Dog Cocktails (110 E. State St., Kennett Square, and 2012 Frankford Ave., Fishtown): Ken Smuckler’s cocktail company plans two vinyl listening rooms this fall inspired by Japanese jazz kissas. Kennett Square’s 750-square-foot space partners with local music venue Kennett Flash, while Fishtown’s 350-square-foot flagship — arguably the neighborhood’s smallest bar — will feature a 15-seat bar, two-turntable DJ station, and retail.
Tusk (50 N. Main St., Doylestown): Mike and Joy Grafenstine, owners of Roberts Block in Glenside and Bonnet Lane Family Restaurant in Abington, are taking over the former Water’s Edge wine bar, combining the martini-and-wine-bar airs of Roberts Block with approachable upscale American comfort food. Target is October.
Vintner’s Table (24 Cricket Ave., Ardmore): Andrea and Marco Folino, behind Kutztown’s Folino Estate Winery, are opening a third location of their Italian-inspired wine bar, salumeria, and lifestyle boutique in downtown Ardmore in October.
New Jersey suburbs
Akira 70 Omakase (249 Marlton Pike, Cherry Hill): Ming “Frank” Zheng is expanding his Japanese holdings — he owns Akira Sushi in Voorhees and Moorestown — with an omakase experience in a former fur salon.
Banjara Indian Bistro (687-689 Berlin-Cross Keys Rd., Sicklerville): Vaneet Chopra, whose family operates Cross Culture in Haddonfield and previously ran Banjara in Chestnut Hill, is bringing the Banjara name to Sicklerville; its dine-in starts Thursday.
Freckled Jawn Brewing(1003 N. Evergreen Ave., Woodbury): Woodbury residents John Wagner and Colleen Gibson are taking over the former Eight & Sand Beer Co., which closed in June after 10 years. Targeting the first week of October, the brewery will introduce new branding and a fresh lineup of approachable beers, emphasizing natural and locally sourced ingredients when possible.
Irishtown Steaks (155 S. Burlington St., Gloucester City): Donkey’s Placealumnus Dave Murphy is targeting Halloween for his steak shop, joining recent Gloucester City entries Lillo’s and Pudge’s Pub. Murphy will use rolls from Boaggio’s, which has a bakery in town.
Penny’s Bagels (212 Kings Highway East, Haddonfield): Chris Fetfatzes and the Happy Monday Hospitality Group (Wine Dive, Grace & Proper) are developing this long-delayed bagel shop in downtown Haddonfield, now with an October target.
Pizzeria Cusumano (872 Haddon Ave., Collingswood): Announced back in September 2021, this passion project from South Jersey’s Sal Cusumano is finally about to start offering his Roman-inspired squares and neo-New York rounds, but “I don’t want to box myself into a certain style.” Cusumano, a third-generation pizzaiolo, is planning a small shop with limited seating. This week, he said it will open in October for sure.
Philadelphia
Adda (1700 Frankford Ave.): New York’s Unapologetic Foods — behind Dhamaka, Semma, and the original Adda — is bringing its energetic Indian cooking to Fishtown, across from the 19125 post office. Expect regional dishes in an informal setting, continuing the restaurant group’s practice of pushing beyond familiar Indian American standards. Originally expected in fall 2025, the Philadelphia location is now targeting an October opening.
Ayat (2021 Sansom St.): Abdul Elenani’s New York-based Palestinian restaurant — first announced in spring 2024 — is looking at a November opening in the former Roxy Theater near Rittenhouse Square. Ayat is known for generous portions of mansaf, maklouba, mezze, grilled meats, and other homestyle Palestinian dishes.
The bar at Bar Caviar, 256 S. 16th St.Kenneth Schutz
Bar Caviar (256 S. 16th St.): Opening in early October in the Dwight D Hotel in Rittenhouse, this bar will pair caviar and seafood with 50 varieties of Champagne and a full wine program in a setting that’s more neighborhood than hushed luxury lounge. Executive chef Greg Vassos’ contemporary American menu, informed by classical French technique and Japanese precision, will feature raw-bar selections, caviar-focused dishes, and seasonal small plates. The restaurant also will operate Parallel, a caviar program emphasizing careful sourcing and extended maturation. In 2027, Vassos plans to follow with Fall Line, a Mid-Atlantic-focused tasting-menu restaurant.
Brunch Bulls (1638 W. Passyunk Ave.): Brothers Derrick “Dee” Long and Jarrick “Jakk” Long are behind this all-day brunch/dinner/dessert restaurant in Point Breeze. They say they’ll be open by December.
Call Your Mother (262 S. 19th St., 1500 Frankford Ave., 12th and Sansom Streets): The lively, Washington-based “Jew-ish” bagel chain is making a three-location push into Philadelphia, starting this week with its Fishtown debut. Menu includes bagel sandwiches, schmears, latkes, coffee, and deli-inspired specials.
Carolyn’s Modern Vietnamese (2015 Walnut St.): This week, chef Carolyn Nguyen opens her deeply personal successor to Revolution Taco, which she co-owned in the space for a decade. Her menu brings together her family’s Vietnamese cooking, the seafood boils and Southern food of her Louisiana childhood, French culinary technique, and the freewheeling flavor combinations that defined her earlier ventures. The 33-seat restaurant serves dinner, and alcohol, in a spare, contemporary dining room.
Corte (1175 Ludlow St.):Corio partners Ryan Mulholland, chef David Feola, and James Smith are taking over the former Mulherin’s Pizzeria at East Market, between Iron Hill Brewery and Mi Vida. Feola will lead a menu built around house-made pastas plus proteins, vegetables, and small plates cooked in the large Mugnaini wood-burning oven. Mulholland will oversee daily operations and oversee an Old World-leaning wine list and cocktails inspired partly by forgotten recipes from century-old books. The dark-wood, earth-toned restaurant is targeting a fall opening.
DiDi (3748 Lancaster Ave.): DanDan owners Kevin and Catherina “Cat” Huang say they are “within a month or two” of opening their fast-casual pan-Asian concept at the Triad apartment building in Powelton Village. DiDi will join Kabobeesh, Karak Cha House, Shibam Coffee, Two Locals Brewing, and other businesses in the growing complex at 38th and Lancaster.
Divers Club (733 S. Fourth St.): Queen Village is in line to get a neighborhood wine bar from Susan Freeman, Chris Fetfatzes, and Heather Annechiarico (Grace & Proper, Wine Dive) in a former hair salon that sits on the same stretch as Famous 4th Street, Southwark, Ambra, and Fitz on 4th. Fetfatzes describes the mood as “dark, scrappy, and European — somewhere between a Paris backstreet wine bar and a graffitied Berlin hangout.”
Eggcetera Haus (625 S. Sixth St.): Husband-and-wife team Rey Tamaka and Vina Kencana soon will turn the former Redcrest Kitchen into an all-day bar-restaurant. Tamaka, previously the chef at an Old City brunch restaurant, plans breakfast, lunch, and dinner, moving from specialty coffee and morning dishes into pastas, steaks, cocktails, and comfort food at night. The couple expects daily service, giving the Queen Village-Bella Vista border another full-day neighborhood option.
Field Day (923 N. Second St.): James Beard Award-winning bartender and author Danny Childs and his wife, Katie, have a fall opening targeted for their casual regional cocktail bar in Northern Liberties, next to Cescaphe Ballroom. Childs’ drinks will use locally farmed, foraged, and fermented ingredients. Executive chef Melissa McGrath, known for her work at the idled Sweet Amalia Market & Kitchen, will offer Pennsylvania Dutch-inspired snacks, sandwiches, and tomato pies. Highballs, house-made sodas, boozy gelati, and walk-in seating will help keep the mood informal.
Habibi Supper Club (1515 E. Passyunk Ave.): Miled Finianos is giving his itinerant Lebanese dinner series a permanent home on East Passyunk — possibly by the end of year — serving late breakfast and lunch before he offers ticketed, multicourse suppers.
HYO (1222 Walnut St.): Nightlife veteran Justin Jordan plans an October opening for this Korean tabletop barbecue restaurant behind Hearsay, his indoor-outdoor sidewalk bar and listening lounge. Guests will enter HYO through a phone booth inside Hearsay. The restaurant is part of Jordan’s multilevel entertainment complex, which also includes Celine and the forthcoming Chancellor Room event space and karaoke lounge.
Jean (161 W. Girard Ave.): Emmett chef Evan Snyder and partner Julian van der Tak are going upstairs with a 15-seat tasting menu restaurant opening this fall. Snyder and chef de cuisine Antonio Pizzo will prepare a 12-course menu centered on a 7-foot wood-burning hearth, drawing on Algeria, Tunisia, coastal Morocco, and the southern Mediterranean for culinary influences. A tagine will roast throughout dinner before being served family-style.
Kato (1832 Frankford Ave.): Mei Meichef-owner Jay Ho is taking over the former Izakaya Fishtown space for a restaurant inspired by his Taiwanese father and the food Ho grew up eating. Influences from Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese cooking will broaden the menu. Ho, who hopes to open in late fall, plans to retain the front bar while replacing the rear sushi counter with additional seating that can double as a private dining area.
Lovat Square(184 E. Evergreen Ave.): Former Four Seasons sommelier Damien Graef and journalist Robyn Semien opened this Chestnut Hill wine shop and tasting room in February, offering small-production bottles, wines by the glass, and light fare. The couple, who also own Brooklyn’s Bibber & Bell wine shop, will debut a full dinner menu by the end of September.
Macaluso’s (3101 S. 13th St.): Realtor Joel Gruenke and restaurateur Mark D’Andrea, long-ago roommates at Valley Forge Military Academy, are looking at an early October opening of this white-tablecloth Italian restaurant at 13th Street and Packer Avenue, near the sports complex. D’Andrea’s family owns RoadHouse in Staten Island, N.Y. Gruenke says the moderately priced menu will stick to traditional Italian cooking and offer a full bar. Parking will be available across the street.
Mylar Bar (1636-38 S. Ninth St.): Hospitality veterans Liv Arterbridge and Gina Piccari are turning the former Dino’s Party Center into a festive neighborhood bar inspired by the building’s history. They promise something nostalgic, playful, and deliberately unserious. Drinks will include martinis, punches, classics, and draft beer. Chef Colin White, formerly of Sally and Emmett, will oversee shareable “party snacks,” larger plates, and desserts available late.
Nippy’s on South (1312 South St.): Nurse and first-time restaurateur Nikia Peterson has purchased the former Ms. Tootsie’s building for an ambitious restaurant and bar. Peterson plans a polished setting with seafood towers, steaks, Asian and Caribbean influences, a substantial happy hour, and weekend brunch. The project will revive a prominent South Street property that had remained closed since restaurateur KeVen Parker’s death in 2021.
O’Morrey’s (1720 Sansom St.): Chefs Biff Gottehrer and Kenjiro Omori are developing a cocktail bar on the former site of Genji, the Japanese restaurant created by Omori’s father. The name is a cheeky rendering of the Omori family name. Plans call for a comfortable neighborhood bar in the spirit of the Ripplewood, where both chefs work, with cocktails and a serious food component. Their second joint project, Tako Taco, is months away at the former Bing Bing Dim Sum in South Philadelphia.
Palm Vintage (1414 S. Penn Square): Houston Yang and Mike Beja, who opened this day-to-night cafe and cocktail bar across from City Hall in the Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, are close to expanding into a nighttime scene with cocktails, sushi, oysters, caviar, and light food in a lush, tropical-inspired room meant to offer an escape from Center City.
Panco (2300 S. Croskey St.): Chef Ryo Igarashi, whose background includes Tokio Global and Maru Global (noted for its takoyaki balls), is behind a corner shop in West Passyunk whose menu will focus on Japanese cutlets. He says it’s opening soon.
Philly Curio (2240 Frankford Ave.): Tattoo Arts Convention founder Troy Timpel is creating an intimate Kensington restaurant-bar around his private collection of curiosities (think tribal masks, skeletal displays, taxidermy, and glass-topped tables containing preserved animals). Inspired partly by Savannah’s Alligator Soul, Timpel has discussed a Cajun-Creole menu with small plates and unconventional proteins such as rattlesnake. Drinks are expected to include cocktails, wine, bottled beer, and limited drafts. Target is November.
Philly Po’Boy (102 W. Berks St.): Brothers Chris and Greg Lynch are bringing a taste of New Orleans to the storefront beneath the Berks station of the Market-Frankford Line. Chris spent years cooking in New Orleans, while Greg’s Philadelphia background includes Starr Restaurants and LMNO. Plans call for classic powdered-sugar-dusted beignets, gumbo, and a mix of classic and specialty po’boys like fried shrimp, oysters and roast beef “debris,” plus fries, Creole potato salad, and café au lait from coffee roasted by Applied Arts in New Orleans.
Santé Social(1546 E. Passyunk Ave.): Sommelier Daniel Solway is giving his roving dinner series a permanent home across from the Singing Fountain. The approximately 30-seat space will function less like a conventional restaurant than a flexible hospitality venue, hosting wine dinners, tastings, classes, collaborations, private events, and some walk-in service. Cocktails are being developed with Danny Childs of Slow Drinks and Field Day, while changing chefs and collaborators may shape the food programming.
Somedays Bakery (1601 Walnut St.): Hand-laminated croissants are the foundation of this Queens-rooted bakery, which deals in sandwiches, salads, soft serve, and coffee. It’s targeting the end of the month.
Thalassa (918 N. 28th St.): Matt Maltepes is looking at late October or early November for his Greek-inspired cafe in Fairmount that will serve baklava, croissants, and house-made ice cream in flavors that change weekly. Savory offerings will include small plates such as feta grilled cheese with honey, avocado toast, and bagels with cream cheese. The drinks menu will feature European-style coffee preparations, including frappes and Freddo espresso.
Looking ahead
Two major projects are now on the docket for January, as the owners don’t want to compete with the holiday-season madness:the Pelican Club, Stephen Starr’s flashy Greek-themed restaurant taking shape in the former Devon Seafood Grill on Rittenhouse Square, and the yet-to-be-named “punk French” restaurantthat chefs Justin Bogle and Arthur Cavaliere are creating at the former Winnie’s Manayunk.
The long-closed Mermaid Bar in Mount Airy will retain its name under the new ownership of pizzaiolo Dan Gutter and business partner Alex Carbonell of Circles & Squares and Pizza Plus. The project, announced earlier this year, is aiming at a summer 2027 rollout.
From her home in Mexico, JoAnne Kim started searching for a Philadelphia-area apartment by opening ChatGPT.
Kim, a regular user of the generative artificial-intelligence tool, told OpenAI’s chatbot what she and her husband wanted: a quiet place in Pennsylvaniathat was walkable and dog friendly with good transit access, a strong sense of community, cafes and restaurants, and a lot of things to do.
ChatGPT suggested Ardmore, Bryn Mawr, and Chestnut Hill. The couple chose Ardmore, and Kim asked the chatbot for a list of apartment communities that fit their criteria and included outdoor space.
ChatGPT “helped me become a better apartment hunter, because I was able to use all the data to help me make a decision,” said Kim, a 64-year-old career mentor for university students.
This month, the Kims moved into Montgomery Plaza near Suburban Square.
Generative AI toolsare becoming increasingly popular as more people use them to write emails, summarize documents, and recreate pictures of pets. And, like Kim, renters are also using AI chatbots to find apartments.
In Philadelphia and beyond, the growth of AI is changing the way people search for homes — and it’s prompting some in the industry to change how they do business.
JoAnne Kim used ChatGPT to find the apartment she moved into this month.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
In April, Philadelphia became one of 15 cities where RentCafe, a national apartment search website, rolled out its AI assistant, Ren. The platform is preparing to make the tool available nationwide. Apartments.com launched its latest AI tool — Apartments.com Ai — in June and started an advertising campaign in August to get more renters to use it.
Property managers, too, are trying to find ways to reach people who use AI.
Charlie Marshall, a leasing associate at the Ardmore-based property management company Harrison Richards, which manages Montgomery Plaza, has been tweaking the company’s website to try to get its seven properties more prominent placement in generative AI search results.
Marshall said the handful of people who said they found a building using AI tools seemed more informed and committed than other prospective tenants.
“It was immediately clear they had a good idea of the places they wanted to lease at,” he said. “It was not like some people you see that are touring seven or eight properties. They had narrowed it down to like three.”
Stuart Richens, vice president of product at Apartments.com, said because the company’s AI tool “is immersive and kind of keeps guiding you and helping you, renters are getting much deeper into the search more quickly.”
“And that’s helping them get to that short list more quickly,” he said.
Kim and her husband, a senior data analyst who uses AI, worked with ChatGPT to focus their search. But to find a place that felt like home, Kim also watched local real estate agents’ YouTube videos, read reviews, watched local news coverage, and talked to property managers.
Kim said that because she started with virtual conversations on ChatGPT, “I spent more time thinking about the kind of life we wanted to have. It wasn’t just about finding the apartment. It was the neighborhood, the vibe.”
JoAnne Kim shows the ChatGPT online tool she used to find her apartment.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
‘A more advanced Google search’
AI tools can only do so much.
Vee Gordon, a rental agent with Philly Home Girls, said she worked this year with a New York City couple in their 20s who wanted a two-bedroom home in Philadelphia. They insisted on seeing places that were hundreds of dollars over their $6,000 monthly budget. During a meeting with Gordon, they pulled up ChatGPT.
“They were asking it how to negotiate a rental price down,” she said. “I feel I have more insight on that than what ChatGPT was saying.”
Gordon has worked exclusively with renters — many in their 20s and 30s — for four years in the city and its suburbs. She estimates she has helped sign almost 500 leases.
“This is my expertise,” she said.
The couple didn’t end up finding a place through her.
Jack Olmanson, 27, doesn’t regularly use generative AI tools. But this year, when he and his girlfriend needed to move from Washington, D.C., to the Philadelphia area for her work in the equestrian industry, he turned to Anthropic’s Claude for help.
The couple used it “as a more advanced Google search,” said Olmanson, who works in business management.
“You can be very customized in your asks,” he said. Claude “was good at giving us everything that’s out there that meets our initial criteria.”
The couple wanted a two-bedroom apartment in a walkable area and a building that welcomed Mya, their yellow Labrador retriever.
Olmanson and his girlfriend are originally from Minnesota and didn’t know the Philadelphia area, so they asked Claude to compare suburban towns here to those they knew in the Minneapolis area. They also asked it to make a map of locations with reasonable commute times.
Once they got suggestions from Claude, they did their own research, exploring websites, looking at photos, reading reviews, and taking tours. And they still reviewed Zillow listings they got through email alerts.
They moved into an Ardmore apartment building managed by Harrison Richards in May.
Olmanson recommends renters verify everything an AI chatbot tells them to make sure it’s not making things up. And remember, he said, it’s just a tool.
“You’re still in charge of making sure [a home] is the right fit for you,” he said.
How AI has changed apartment listing websites
When Philadelphia renters begin searching RentCafe’s website of home listings, a button prompts them to “Ask Ren.” Apartments.com encourages them to “Meet your Ai rental adviser.”
Renters using AI tools tend to start broadly with a location and budget and refine searches through a virtual back-and-forth to get to a smaller number of the most relevant listings. Renters can type or talk. Apartments.com’s chatbot supports about 50 languages.
RentCafe found that people who use its tool are twice as likely to click into a listing and 50% more likely to contact propertymanagers than people who use traditional search tools. Users of Apartments.com’s chatbot request 144% more tours.
“Conversational search, we’ve seen, has been very helpful for renters,” said Samantha Skrobot, renter advocate at RentCafe.
This image provided by RentCafe, a national apartment search website, demonstrates how a renter could use its AI assistant, Ren.RentCafe
Renters can use it to figure out realistic budgets anddetermine locations accessible by public transit. They can search for requirements that aren’t included in traditional filters on apartment search websites, such as proximity to a laundromat or library. Users can ask AI tools to compare properties’ amenities and tell them about nearby schools.
Through the chatbots, renters can prioritize certain property characteristics (say, gets a lot of natural light) and indicate where they’re flexible, which they can’t do with traditional search filters. AI chatbots can suggest locations a renter may not have considered that meet their requirements.
On newer 3D tours on Apartments.com, renters can tell the AI chatbot to remove furniture from a room and give dimensions of a space.
Apartments.com’s homepage encourages renters to use its generative AI chatbot, Apartments.com Ai.Screenshot
Adjusting for AI
Because of the growth of generative AI tools, Richens at Apartments.com said that for property managers, “having a very complete listing with every piece of data about the property … is very important because that’s what renters are asking for.”
“And if you don’t have it, how is the AI going to answer?” he said.
Apartments.com is working with property managers to beef up listings.
At Harrison Richards, Marshall has worked to improve how the company’s properties show up in generative AI searches. He asked questions that a renter would ask and noted when the company’s properties did and did not appear.
A Redditor posted a couple years ago looking for Ardmore-area apartments, and someone said they’d lived at the company’s Montgomery Plaza property and liked it.
“That was apparently gold for ChatGPT,” Marshall said.
The property management company has changed heading sizes and where information shows up on its website, so AI tools can more easily pull out answers for renters. Marshall has noticed a difference.
After the changes, he said, the AI tools “would draw out the things we think are important and the things people might have questions about.”
Harrison Richards, an Ardmore-based property management company, has adjusted its website to better position its properties, such as Montgomery Plaza, in generative AI search results.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
But for thousands of residents, many of whom live in North Philadelphia, next year’s tax bills are expected to soar.
Nearly 6,000 homeowners in Philadelphia saw their property assessments this year climb by more than 50% compared with two years ago, the last time the city conducted a mass revaluation, according to an Inquirer analysis of city property assessment data released in June.
Of those homeowners, more than 2,200 saw their assessments more than double.
That is likely to result in sticker shock come tax time next year, because property tax bills in the city are calculated based on home values. The revenue is split between the city and the Philadelphia School District.
Homeowners across the city saw a median 3% increase in their property assessments this year compared with the 2025 tax year. Jumps were higher in neighborhoods that border gentrifying areas, such as in parts of Kensington and West Philadelphia.
But this year, two other areas of the city had the densest concentrations of homes where property assessments increased by 50% or more, according to The Inquirer’s analysis.
The steep rises are clustered in the southern end of Strawberry Mansion, the historically Black neighborhood along the Schuylkill, and in the tiny Hartranft neighborhood north of Temple University and east of Broad Street, where residents are predominately Latino.
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Housing experts and advocates for low-income homeowners have long criticized the city’s assessment system as systemically biased, leaving Black and brown homeowners to pay disproportionately high property taxes. Mayor Cherelle L. Parker convened a task force in 2024 to study the city’s revaluation system, and that group’s recommendations are expected to be released later this year.
Monty Wilson, a senior attorney at Community Legal Services who sits on the task force, said the Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment is the best in the state and has “worked really hard to become more and more accurate.”
But he said bias persists in part because of the unique challenges that assessors face in low-income neighborhoods that can cause volatility in home values, such as higher rates of vacant lots, foreclosures, and other factors.
A 2024 CLS report found that errors were clustered in lower-value neighborhoods where a majority of residents are people of color.
“That means when a property is overassessed,” Wilson said, ”it tends to occur in a Black and brown neighborhood.”
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The Parker administration did not respond to requests for comment.
In response to a previous article about this year’s property reassessments, city officials emphasized that some lower-income homeowners pay relatively low tax bills because of the popular homestead exemption tax break. The program, which any homeowners can apply for and obtain if they live in their house as their primary residence, exempts the first $100,000 from a home’s taxable value.
That means that some homeowners in working-class neighborhoods previously paid little to no property taxes. A sudden increase in valuation, like the ones seen this year in pockets of North Philadelphia, could require they pay bills next year that are several hundred dollars more than in the past.
Take the 2500 block of North Marshall Street. The residential North Philly street sits between West Kensington and Broad Street, and nearly every home saw its assessment increase by 60% or more, according to The Inquirer’s analysis.
Most of the homes there had previously been valued at less than $100,000, meaning owners with the homestead exemption owed no property taxes. Now, many of the homes on the block are valued at about $140,000, an amount that would next year yield more than $500 in yearly tax bills for owners with the homestead exemption.
More than 40% of the Hartranft neighborhood’s residents are below the federal poverty level, which is $33,000 a year for a family of four, according to U.S. Census data.
At Left a property on 2500 N. Marshall St., Philadelphia, PA 19133 is shown Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026, in Philadelphia.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, whose district includes parts of Kensington and North Philadelphia, said the Hartranft area is not like sections of Kensington that have seen an influx of development in recent years and where increases in property assessments may be expected.
It is possible, she said, that lower-income residents who have been displaced from parts of Kensington looked to move west of the neighborhood, increasing demand in the Fairhill and Hartranft areas.
Lozada — who has held workshops in the neighborhood to connect residents with property tax relief programs — said she fears her constituents are being asked to pay disproportionately high taxes and not seeing better city services and stronger public schools.
“How is it possible that someone in Fairhill is paying a higher tax for a property that has not had any investment, in a neighborhood that is not as safe, whose school system is not as great, as somebody that lives in Chestnut Hill, for instance?” she said, referring to the upscale Northwest Philadelphia neighborhood with a $109,000 median household income. “There has to be a better way of doing a more accurate evaluation in every neighborhood.”
In Strawberry Mansion, community leaders said that increased assessments are likely a result of market pressure from Brewerytown to its south, a comparatively whiter and higher-income neighborhood.
“The city has to be super transparent about this assessment system so people can better understand it and not feel that sticker stock,” said Tonnetta Graham, president of the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp. “If we know how they came to their number, it’s easier to chew.”
The 1700 block of North Newkirk Street on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026 in Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr., whose district includes both Strawberry Mansion and parts of Hartranft, did not respond to requests for comment.
Jalon Alexander, a Strawberry Mansion native who this month launched a campaign to challenge Young for his Council seat next year, said he was recently at a block party in the neighborhood where he heard repeatedly from older homeowners who were concerned about their increased assessments.
“They feel taken advantage of, and they feel like it’s coming out of nowhere,” Alexander said. “This is an area where there’s high levels of poverty, and there is not a lot of political or government attention in this area. I’ve spoken with many people whose rates have almost doubled. It’s the biggest issue in the neighborhood.”
Staff writer Michaelle Bond contributed to this article.
Villanova astrophysicist Becka Phillipson wondered what a black hole might sound like.
She found an answer by translating X-ray data from a black hole system into musical notes.
The first time she listened to the audio, the cacophony reminded her of someone pressing every key on an organ at once.
After roughly 30 seconds of this “chaos,” she heard a “coherent, beautiful major chord” ring out.
Her research formed the backdrop for a 13-minute musical composition performed on Saturday at the Chestnut Hill Skyspace, a venue and art installation. The black hole-inspired piecewas one of three in an immersive concert, called “This Silent Music,” centered on collective listening.
The concert intended to create a space where people could sit with and work through discomfort, especially at a time when many feel overwhelmed and disconnected, said cocreator Liz Lang.
“I personally feel like I want to scream every time I open the news,” she said.
Liz Lang minutes before performing during a rehearsal of “At the End of It All,” a 13-minute musical composition that incorporates sounds created by sonifying black holes.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Massachusetts-based composer LJ White used black holes as a metaphor for this theme. He paired Phillipson’s sounds with singing, a marimba, and suspended cymbals.
To him, the chaos of the cosmic phenomenon reflected how marginalized groups can feel powerless and frustrated in society.
The title of his piece, “At the End of it All,” comes from the poem of the same name by Nicole M. Young-Martin, which is “about not being able to predict or control anything, but trying to be your best person regardless,” White said.
Sonifying a black hole
Coming from a family of professional musicians and singers, Phillipson felt like the odd one out in choosing a career in science.
She gravitated to researching black holes — areas of space where gravity is so strong, even light cannot escape.
She thought sonifying black holes could make for an interesting outreach activity for students, while also helping scientists uncover novel information about black holes.
When scientists sonify a black hole, they are not literally recording sound. Most of space is empty and “deathly silent,” Phillipson said.
Instead, they are interpreting the interactions around the black hole.
Using telescopes pointed at the night sky, scientists can collect information in the form of images. Those visual cues, such as brightness, can then be translated into sound. For example, Phillipson decided that, if something brightened, that would translate to a higher-pitched sound.
The environment around a black hole gets brighter and dimmer over time as material interacts with it — akin to a campfire brightening after being fed a log.
“I’m a translator between the light and the sound,” she said.
Scientist Becka Phillipson lis photographed before a music rehearsal named “At the End of It All,” a 13-minute musical composition that incorporates sounds created by sonifying black holes, at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia on Friday, Aug. 7, 2026. The piece also includes narration about black holes by Phillipson.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
A metaphor
White produced and mixed Phillipson’s black hole sounds — piecing them together into a collage that served as the background of his 13-minute composition.
The audio had a “sort of circular sound” and “a lot of swooping,” he said, emulating the spin of a black hole. There was a sense of “things moving around you in a somewhat chaotic way,” he added.
In this, he saw a metaphor for the experiences of marginalized groups who may feel frustrated and helpless.
The piece featuredparts where the singers scream with wild, unbridled vocals, as if reacting to catastrophe. Other sounds are associated with mourning.
“Things are happening that they can’t predict or control,” he said. “I want [the piece] to be cathartic in some way.”
It’s also meant to inspire.
Beneath the chaos of a black hole lies untapped energy that can suck objects inside if one gets close enough, White said.
A black hole behaves like an “infinitely deep funnel,” Phillipson said in narration included in the performance.Throw an object in, and it won’t come back out.
Black holes are also invisible — only detected by their interactions with other things.
“It’s not an energy source that is well understood or can be taken control of,” White said.
The same concept of invisibility could extend to groups of people who aren’t in power right now, White said. For example, he identifies with the transgender community, which he says frequently gets talked about in relation to mainstream society, but often remains misunderstood.
He hopes the piece helps people appreciate the power they have.
“There’s all this latent energy that we have that we could harness,” White said. “We’re not helpless.”
Producer and Soprano Katy Avery rehearses “At the End of It All” at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia. The actual concert took place in the Chestnut Hill Skyspace.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Lang hopes to expand beyond last weekend’s sold-out concert to perform in other Skyspace locations around the world. Light artist James Turrell has designed 100 Skyspaces globally, all featuring a room with an aperture in the roof, facing the sky.
Cocreator Katy Avery was moved by the audience’s reactions at the Philadelphia concert. People found themselves growling along and wanting to vocalize with the performers, embodying the kind of communal atmosphere she had hoped for.
The person sitting next to Phillipson told her he felt like he had to hold his breath the whole time. It was a “feeling like you have a strong emotion and you don’t know what to do with it,” Phillipson said.
She compared her own emotional experience to riding Space Mountain at Disneyland. At first it’s dark around the roller coaster, with eerie, ethereal, sci-fi sounds — much like the soundscape created with her black hole sounds. Unable to see the tracks, the rider feels as if they are going into darkness.
At some point in the piece, the singers came in with somber voices suggesting grief and mourning, with screams reminiscent of metal music.
Those tumultuous sounds gave way to an ending note of hope and power.
The two pieces that followed in the concert were more calming and contemplative.
The black hole composition “was like the precursor to meditation,” she said. “First you have to cry before you can calm down.”
As a resident training atWills Eye Hospital, George Spaeth was perplexed by a 7-year-old patient’s symptoms.
Her legs angled inward, her hair was straw-colored with an odd consistency, and she had intellectual disabilities.
She had come in for faulty vision caused by her lenses — the part of the eye that enables vision by focusing light — becoming loose. Spaeth’s job was to simply prepare her for surgery to remove her lenses.
Yet, he couldn’t help but fixate on the constellation of symptoms she presented with — and the unknown cause underlying them. Nothing in his medical texts fit her profile.
“She didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before,” he said.
He asked nurses to collect her urine for testing, and discovered it was full of an amino acid called homocysteine.
In 1962, he diagnosed the little girl with a previously unknown rare metabolic disorder called homocystinuria (HCU) — making her one of the first patients in the United States to receive the diagnosis.
An Illinois-based nonprofit dedicated to the disease, HCU Network America, presented Spaeth this month with their HCU Hero Award for his significant contributions to the detectionand treatment of the disorder.
In the fall, the Chestnut Hill resident will also collect a leadership award from the Wills Eye Hospital Alumni Society and the Laureate Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
The honors have giventhe 94-year-old ophthalmologist an opportunity to reflect on his decades-long career dedicated to research, finding the humanity in medicine, and emphasizing the importance of humility and curiosity.
“The most important thing that I think any person in any field can do is say I don’t know,” he said.
George Spaeth will be honored with a leadership award from the Wills Eye Hospital Alumni Society this fall.Courtesy of George Spaeth
Solving a mystery
When Spaeth told patients “I don’t know,” he tried to follow up with, “maybe we can find out.”
Through studying the biochemical pathways involved in HCU, he landed on a potential treatment: vitamin B6.
When his patient took it, the homocysteine levels in her urine dropped.
Spaeth was the first to publish on this finding, which led to an uptake in the vitamin’s usage, said HCU Network America emeritus director Margie McGlynn. It works in about 50% of patients with the disorder, and is still used today.
His work also helped spread awareness of the eye symptoms of the disorder, enabling earlier diagnoses.
McGlynn’s sister, who first presented with severe nearsightedness, was diagnosed with HCU in the 1960s by an ophthalmologist who had recently read about the condition in a medical journal.
“I firmly believe that it was Dr. Spaeth’s work and publication on this patient that made this ophthalmologist aware,” McGlynn said.
Spaeth wrote to schools for children with intellectual disabilities and asked if they had any children that fit the symptom profile.
When they sent urine samples, some came back positive for the disorder.
One of the children he diagnosed at Willowbrook State School in Staten Island ended up dying. The boy’s mother told Spaeth she also had a daughter who was 2 years old and seemingly fine.
“We better test your daughter,” Spaeth urged, given that the condition was inherited.
He examined the boy’s sister, tested her urine, and diagnosed her with HCU.
Spaeth started her on the vitamin treatment. Without it, she was likely to end up like her brother.
Decades later, he received a call from her mother.
“She was just admitted to medical school,” he recalled her saying.
Finding the humanity in medicine
Janine Tabas, vice chairman of the Wills Eye Alumni Society, said the society chose to honor him with their leadership award in recognition of his lifetime of accomplishments in patient care, teaching, and mentorship.Courtesy of George Spaeth
Growing up, Spaeth dreamed of becoming a poet or composer, “but I’m no Bach, and I’m no Mozart,” he said.
He studied history as an undergraduate at Yale University before pursuing medicine — the same profession as his father, renowned ophthalmologist Edmund Spaeth.
He found he loved connecting with his patients, through finding out what they loved, and what they feared.
“I was a great believer in putting my hand on the patient’s arm while I was talking to them and finding out who they were,” he said.
In his field, glaucoma, he would often see the same patient for two or three decades.
Spaeth operated on a 19-year-old college student suffering from severe headaches in 1969, and has stayed in touch with her ever since.
Over the years, he watched her grow up and marry a wonderful man. When he fell and broke his leg, she came to visit.
“I just think about what that means,” he said.
Spaeth stopped seeing patients in 2013 to spend time with his wife, Ann, whose breast cancer had returned and stopped responding to treatment. She died that year.
In the years since, Spaeth wrote and published a book for his late wife, Hope for Awareness, about “how lucky I was to be married to an amazing woman, and how unaware I was of how lucky [I was],” he said.
‘One of the forefathers’
Janine Tabas, vice chairman of the Wills Eye Alumni Society, described him as “one of the forefathers of glaucoma” and “an absolute gentleman.”
The society honored him with their leadership award in recognition of his lifetime of accomplishments in patient care, teaching, and mentorship, she said.
When Tabas was a first-year resident at Wills Eye in the 1990s, Spaeth served on the senior faculty. She was struck by his humility and the way he treated everyone as equals.
Spaeth invited her whole cohort to his home for dinner, where they sat on his living room floor together. He also asked her to play tennis, knowing that was one of her interests.
“I was a lowly resident,” Tabas recalled. “And here was the chairman of glaucoma. The guy whose name was on every book in the lobby.”
She has since continued Spaeth’s tradition of inviting the residents out to play tennis.
George Spaeth stopped seeing patients in 2013.Courtesy of George Spaeth
When asked why he thought he was being honored with awards this year, Spaeth pointed to the importance of having humanity and humility and not being “a real jerk.”
“Remember, the most important thing you can do is become a good person,” he said. “If you’re a good person, the likelihood is that you’ll have a good career.”
