Northern Liberties

This guide to Northern Liberties in Philadelphia follows developer Bart Blatstein's early-2000s bet on an open Italian-style piazza, built on the cleared, weedy lots of a shuttered brewery that neighbors thought was a fantasy. It traces how he spent years stitching together nine adjoining properties, eventually raising five hundred apartments and shops and restaurants around the plaza at the center. Blatstein described the obsession simply: it is one thing to dream, he said, and another to watch the vision come to be.