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Vidas Athletic Complex, formerly Drexel Field, home to Drexel University’s outdoor varsity sports teams, provides a splendid greenspace venue on the eastern flank of West Park Apartments in West Powelton. 

The headquarters building at the Lee Cultural Center is a rehabilitated red-brick country mansion built around 1806 by the Italian-immigrant land broker Paul Busti. In the early 19th century, Busti’s 112-acre rural estate, formerly Mill Creek Farm, was known as “Blockley Retreat.”

Located on the north slope of the West Park ridge at 4328 Haverford Avenue, the Lee Cultural Center offers an array of recreational, athletic, and cultural arts activities for young people, including a Parks & Recreation swimming pool and summer swimming program. 

The West Park Apartments playground faces the North Tower

The view is toward the North Tower.

This photo shows the South Tower in its landscaped setting.

The view is east toward the elevator towers of West Park Apartments in West Powelton. These refurbished “towers in the park” constitute the only remaining high-rise public housing project in West Philadelphia.

West Park Apartments rises above the 46th St. Station of the Market Street Elevated. Looking toward the South Tower.

Contemporary photo of Martha Washington Elementary School. For all the public housing innovations and sprucing up in the Mill Creek neighborhood east of 48th Street, this landmark school serving low-income African American children remains under-resourced and under-performing.

N. Lex Street as it appears today with the porticoed and rail-porched, accessorized redbrick rowhouses the Public Housing Authority built to replace the block’s decrepit and abandoned buildings, which the Authority bulldozed in 2002. Number 816 (at left in the photo), in its earlier coming-apart version, was the crack-house site of the notorious “Lex Street Massacre.”