This map contains the boundaries and names of fifteen neighborhoods in West Philadelphia. Various state and local agencies may use neighborhood boundaries that differ from those used here. The Digital Database has an automatic zoom for each of the neighborhoods. While the ability to zoom in and out from the maps is not yet possible on this Web site, there is an example of a zoomed view of the Mill Creek neighborhood .

West Philadelphia was, and still is, primarily a residential community. There are few factories and warehouses compared to other parts of Philadelphia. With few exceptions, these are segregated within a narrow band along river and railroad. West Philadelphia's business districts primarily serve the needs of local residents or those passing through.

West Philadelphia is multi-racial and multi-cultural. There are many middle class families and many people living in poverty. The population is mostly African-American with a large Caucasian population living near Drexel and Penn--University City, Spruce Hill, Powelton, and Garden Court, and a growing Asian population, particularly in Walnut Hill, composed of immigrants from many countries.

Most of West Philadelphia's neighborhoods are composed of blocks of small rowhouses, some with porches, and some with tiny gardens. There are also neighborhoods of large, single-family homes with gardens. Market Street is an important boundary. North of Market, in Mantua, Belmont, Mill Creek, and Haddington, are hundreds of blocks of narrow streets lined by small, two-story rowhouses. South of Market and west of University City, in Spruce Hill, Garden Court, Cedar Park, and Cobbs Creek, there are also many blocks of rowhouses, but these tend to be more spacious, with yards. (See Block Types map.)

The differences in the character of West Philadelphia's neighborhoods and their fates in recent times is partly a function of when and for whom they were originally built. The ample homes of stone and brick in Spruce Hill and Powelton Village were largely built by 1895, intended for middle-class families. Many of these houses are detached, single-family or two-family homes and tend to be set back from the street with a front garden and back yard. The yards provide residents with outdoor space, and passersby with the view of flowers, shrubs, and trees in front gardens. Most sidewalks are broad and lined with street trees. This gives the public realm of street and sidewalk a pleasant, spacious quality. Spruce Hill and Powelton have maintained their attractiveness to middle-class families and to faculty, staff, and students at nearby institutions like Drexel and Penn. The houses themselves have accommodated shifts in life styles over the years; many have been homes for a single family, boarding houses, apartments, fraternities, or communes. Although West Philadelphia, as a whole, lost population between 1970 and 1980, these two neighborhoods maintained or even gained residents. Both neighborhoods are racially integrated.

Mantua, Belmont, and Mill Creek were also built by 1895, but these neighborhoods have fared differently. They were built extremely densely with small, mainly two-story, rowhouses for families of very modest means. Except for blocks built in Mill Creek after World War I, few houses have even a tiny garden. When originally built, there were no parks or playgrounds, just block upon block of narrow streets and sidewalks lined with houses. Here and there, this grid of two and three story houses was broken by large tracts of land for cemeteries and hospitals. Today, many houses in Mantua, Belmont, and Mill Creek are badly deteriorated, and several public housing projects tower over the older homes. Portions of these neighborhoods lost more than 30 percent of their population between 1970 and 1980; many of those who remained are unemployed and include some of the City's poorest residents. These neighborhoods now have extensive "open space" in the form of vacant lots. In recent decades, many vacant lots have been replaced by playgrounds, ballcourts, playfields, and gardens. Pocket parking lots in Mantua have relieved parking problems in a neighborhood that was not designed for the automobile. Gardens, both private and communal, now offer streets in these neighborhoods some of the same amenities that front gardens give to other parts of West Philadelphia.

In 1895, there were several clusters of houses in the area north of Market known as Haddington, including a number around mills. Haddington was entirely built by World War I with blocks of rowhouses, many with porches. The mills have since vanished, and new housing now stands in their place. Cedar Park, south of Market, was open land in 1895, but was also largely developed by 1910, with rowhouses and attached homes surrounded by yards. Black Oak Woods, now Black Oak Park, was one of the first such neighborhood parks in West Philadelphia, constructed at the same time as the houses.

Other neighborhoods--Garden Court, Walnut Hill, and Cobbs Creek--were built in the years between World War I and 1927. In Cobbs Creek and Garden Court, the automobile was accommodated, sometimes with a driveway to a garage in the backyard; often with a back alley to garages in the rear or underneath the house in the basement. Cobbs Creek is the largest of these neighborhoods. There are few vacant lots, and local shopping districts seem thriving and busy. Most streets are broad, but few have street trees. The blocks are composed of brick or stone rowhouses with small yards. These front gardens are quite diverse. Walnut Hill, with its many large, apartment buildings, presents a striking contrast to the surrounding blocks of low, rowhouses and detached, single-family homes with yards. West Philadelphia High School takes up several large blocks in the center of the neighborhood.

There is wide diversity among West Philadelphia's neighborhoods in the income, employment, race and ethnic background of the people who live there and in access to private open space and public parks and playgrounds. These disparities give rise to equally wide differences in the needs of these neighborhoods. Such diversity and disparity present a challenge to any community-wide landscape plan. Each neighborhood has different resources to draw from, different limitations, and different opportunities.