Red brick rowhouses off Frankford Avenue, and the corner bar where Creed's Bianca performs.
What Fishtown looks like
Two- and three-storey red brick rowhouses run over ground-floor shops on the narrow streets off , most of them built between the Civil War and 1875. Many corner rowhouses have rounded edges to meet the intersection square on. Some facades are covered in Formstone, a stamped stucco made to look like cut stone.
At , a rounded corner rowhouse wears grey Formstone over its brick and operates as a bar. Former factory buildings stand among the rowhouses on the side streets, brick shells with rows of multi-pane windows.
On Beach Street along the Delaware, the former is a weathered concrete block five storeys tall, with rusted smokestacks and graffiti low on its walls. The Market-Frankford Line runs on elevated steel tracks through the neighborhood, with a stop at . , a walled burial ground near Penn Treaty Park, backs onto rowhouse rooftops. Its headstones and mature trees stand behind a brick gatehouse with a steep slate roof.
Frankford Avenue is the commercial spine, its storefronts holding bars, cafes and breweries between Palmer Cemetery and the river. Johnny Brenda's occupies a curved brick corner at Girard Avenue, its rounded front matching the curved corners of the rowhouses nearby.
Shot in Fishtown
Johnny Brenda's, the bar at Frankford and Girard Avenues, is where Bianca performs in Creed. The AMC series Dispatches from Elsewhere used the mural at as a filming location. The Netflix series Queer Eye shot its fifth season opener, "Preaching Out Loud," at the . The church sits just off Frankford Avenue and is home parish to the episode's subject, Pastor Noah Hepler.
Creed, 2015
Bianca performs on the small stage here while Adonis is out on a run outside. No free photograph of the building's own corner exists, so the picture on this page is the room itself rather than the corner outside. Street View
Locust Point's red brick rowhouse blocks carry the same Formstone stucco that spread from Baltimore to Philadelphia's own working class streets, close to a working waterfront the way Frankford Avenue is. Rounded corners turn up on its rowhouses too, meeting the intersection the same way. Baltimore's white marble steps and taller three storey fronts read differently in a wide shot, so keep the frame tight on a Formstone block to hold the match. Try searching Formstone brick rowhouse block now.
Greenpoint in Brooklyn, New York
Greenpoint's brick rowhouse blocks and tenements sit close to its own former factories and a working waterfront, near the same scale as the streets off Frankford Avenue. Corner storefronts hold the same ground floor shops under upper floor housing. Greenpoint's taller four and five storey buildings and its wider avenues need a tighter frame to match Fishtown's lower two and three storey blocks. Try searching brick rowhouse corner storefront now.
Ancoats has red brick mill buildings and worker housing from close to the same period as Fishtown's own factory blocks, built next to a canal instead of a river. British street furniture, road markings and the canal itself would need dressing out to hold an American read. Try searching red brick mill building now.
