Love Philly? So do we. Let’s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today.
Spanning 11th to Broad streets and South Street to Washington Avenue, Hawthorne has no single corridor or landmark — its identity settles in smaller places: a table left unwatched, brimming with plants and trinkets; a folding table of hand-carved wood; a coffee shop with scents reminiscent of Addis Ababa.
Rooted on the curb
Most days, all passersby see is a folding table by the curb: a shallow tank of goldfish available to adopt, trays of propagated houseplant cuttings and a QR code for Venmo — pay what you can. The garage behind it usually stays shut.
On a Saturday, the garage door was up, revealing a denser version of the same instinct: terrariums, birdcages, driftwood, an array of Buddha statues and jars of sea glass catching the afternoon light. Out front, the garage’s owner, Andy Dinh, chatted with a neighbor from the house behind his, her dog tucked in her arms.
Dinh has lived on the block 25 years and calls the collection simply a hobby that got away from him. “I don’t have any online presence,” he said of his collection. “I just come down here and hang out.” He’s watched this stretch of South 11th Street go from rows of abandoned houses to one of South Philly’s most densely gardened corners — a turnaround that he calls, without hesitation, “a good thing.”
But that visible greening rests on a deeper bedrock. The neighborhood’s turnaround was driven by HOPE VI redevelopment and city eminent domain seizures that displaced long-standing families, erasing intergenerational homes and replacing roughly 550 public housing units with just 245 new units. For newer arrivals, the quiet street feels like an organic rebirth; for those removed during the urban overhaul, the loss remains a lingering wound.
Dinh has since added a free plant library and a golden rain tree he spent years getting city approval to plant. Its lantern-shaped seed pods drop seed each year for the next round of cuttings. “There’s some small thefts,” he said of the unwatched table, “but it’s the honor system.” Raised Buddhist in Vietnam, he said the block’s mix — Italian, Mexican, Vietnamese, blue collar and increasingly affluent — is “real. It’s organic.”
A table on the boundary
A few blocks north, Lancelot Radcliffe — Lance, to regulars — has sold hand-carved wooden sculptures from a folding table for decades, as long a tenure as Dinh’s. “I try to be as cordial as I can be,” he said of the people who pass, kids especially, some of whom he’s watched grow up.
Asked how the neighborhood’s changed, Lance didn’t hesitate: “From a little bit bad to better.” Car windows used to turn up smashed some mornings; not anymore, he said, tracing the shift to a wave of longtime troublemakers who “either go to jail, or maybe they die” and, either way, aren’t around now. He supports himself entirely on what people choose to pay — $2, sometimes $10 — for work he says draws on his own family background.
Lance’s corner, on South Street between 11th and 12th — where the corridor’s constant foot traffic and ambient noise press right against Hawthorne’s quiet residential boundary — carries history he never mentioned.
A state historical marker there commemorates the Standard Theatre, once owned by John T. Gibson — Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black entrepreneur in the 1920s — which hosted Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith before closing in 1931. Today, the marker shares its block with one of Isaiah Zagar’s mosaic murals, the same folk-art tradition behind South Street’s Magic Gardens a few blocks east. A Jazz Age landmark, a mosaic mural and Lance’s table all share the same stretch of sidewalk.
A porch for the public
On Catharine and South 12th streets, toward Bella Vista, Guzo is a small Ethiopian café whose name means “journey.” Owner Wubet Negash opened it to bring a piece of Ethiopia to her adopted neighborhood, now heading into her third year.
“The community is very supportive,” she said, describing regulars from a nearby afterschool program who treat the café as a third place — charging phones, waiting for the bus, doing homework between classes at Palumbo High School down the block. She’d braced for the students to be her biggest challenge; instead, “that became my least.”
Local art rotates on Guzo’s walls every three months, sold with zero commission, student work from Palumbo hanging alongside adults’. Negash pours a traditional coffee ceremony most weekends with a clay jebena and sini cups, kolo served alongside as a gesture of welcome. Her signature dish, gluten-free injera made from teff, is often prepared by her mother: “I won’t purchase it at a store,” Negash said. “I just don’t want contamination.”
Her one real friction point isn’t the neighborhood — it’s the city. She’s been repeatedly ticketed over outdoor seating she believes was cleared during zoning, seating she says functions as a safety measure for students waiting on parents or buses. “I’m not sure why [the city’s] not getting back to us,” she said.
Over the imploded footprint
The green space lending this piece its name sits at 12th and Catharine, its physical ground mirroring Hawthorne’s complex history. Hawthorne Park occupies the footprint of the former Martin Luther King Jr. towers, imploded in 1999. Built by the city and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society as part of the HOPE VI redevelopment, the half-block park offers shade trees and an open lawn that doubles as an informal neighborhood amphitheater.
A short walk away, that concentration of public space expands around Ridgway Park, where the Hawthorne Cultural Center and Carpenter Studio form a tight cluster where green space, youth programming, and neighborhood art-making sit within a block of each other.
Unscripted continuity
Positioned just below South Street — a commercial corridor navigating complex cultural tensions and safety concerns — Hawthorne’s quiet stability relies on street-level presence rather than enforcement. Sidewalk anchors like Dinh’s plant table, Lance’s carving cart, and Guzo’s open doors do more than share local craft; they offer an informal, resident-led stewardship that keeps the neighborhood grounded. In a landscape transformed by decades of top-down redevelopment, Hawthorne’s true character remains entirely homemade.
Walk without missing a beat
Start at Broad and South Streets and walk east past Candy Chang’s sidewalk oracle mural, The Atlas of Tomorrow. Continue between 12th and 11th Streets to visit Lance Radcliffe’s carving table near the historic Standard Theatre marker and an Isaiah Zagar mosaic mural. Head south down quiet 11th Street to spot Andy Dinh’s open-air plant garage. Turn west onto Catharine Street for an Ethiopian coffee at Guzo Café, then wrap up at 12th and Catharine in Hawthorne Park — the neighborhood’s central green backyard.
