Frontier taverns
Here’s yet another bar opening in a fringe neighborhood. Look for The Institute to open at 12th and Green in the next two to three weeks.
Once known as “Brandywine,” this is a neighborhood - north of Spring Garden, east of Broad, south of Girard, west of 9th Street and the rail viaduct - with a seedy, occasionally dangerous rep. I covered at least a half-dozen murders there in the ’90s, most tied to its incredibly shabby PHA units. It’s home to the city’s biggest gun shop and its biggest intake center for the homeless.
But if you’ve driven up 13th Street lately, you know the section is changing. Those old housing units were bulldozed long ago and replaced with tidy public housing. The expansion of Chinatown has brought a bunch of suppliers to the vicinity. The continuing development along N. Broad Street has spurred a bunch of loft rehabs (so many, in fact, that Realtors are calling it the Loft District).
I think we’ve got a trend here. Like Fishtown and that Newbold section of South Philly (scene of earlier urban frontier taverns), the neighborhood’s housing is relatively inexpensive, it’s close to Center City and near public trans. Is The Institute on the cutting edge of the city’s next hot, new neighborhood? Hell if I know - I write about beer.
Speaking of which, here’s The Institute’s initial rundown: Twelve taps, including Founders Centenial IPA, O’Reilly’s Stout, PBC Walt Wit and Kenzinger, Flying Fish Farmhouse Summer Ale, Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, Troegs Hopback or Sunshine Pils, plus a handful of macros. No kitchen initially, but maybe something by the end of summer.