For five months, the building at the top of the parkway didn't know what to call itself. Two blocks away, on Fairmount Avenue, a dining room that helped invent the neighborhood's identity sat completely dark, waiting for someone to decide what it should become. Only one of those uncertainties resolved itself quickly.
If you live in Fairmount, you've probably had an opinion about both. That's the thing about this neighborhood right now: the loudest story is institutional, and the quieter one is the one that actually shapes your walk to dinner.
A Museum That Changed Its Mind
In October 2025, the Philadelphia Museum of Art rebranded as the "Philadelphia Art Museum," a move meant to modernize the institution and match how most people already referred to it in conversation. The legal name stayed the same. The public reaction did not go the way anyone planned. By November, museum director Sasha Suda had been dismissed from her role, a departure that led to a lawsuit alleging breach of contract and wrongful termination.
The rebrand lasted until February 2026, when the museum reversed course and restored the original name, "Philadelphia Museum of Art," four months after the change was introduced.
That whiplash happened while the museum was also gearing up for the biggest year in its history. This year marks its 150th anniversary, and the institution is using the milestone to anchor its role in the city's Semiquincentennial programming. The flagship piece is A Nation of Artists, a joint exhibition with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts that combines American art holdings from both institutions along with the private Middleton Family Collection. It opened in April 2026 and runs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through July 2027, with a companion run at PAFA through September 2027. If you haven't been yet, you still have close to a year to catch it.
The name saga made headlines. The exhibition is the part that will actually be on your walls, figuratively speaking, for most of the next year.
The Corner That Didn't Move At All
While the museum was arguing with itself about branding, a much smaller piece of neighborhood identity sat frozen in place. The London Grill, at 23rd and Fairmount, closed in May 2019. It has been dark for seven years. As of this month, that's finally changing.
Building owner Jack McDavid told the Philadelphia Inquirer's food desk in mid-August that he's readying the space for a new tenant. The concept doesn't have a name yet, and there's no timeline. What we do know is the building's history carries real weight on this street. Michael and Terry Berch McNally took over the mid-19th-century building in 1991, when it was known simply as London, and their run there is part of what turned Fairmount Avenue into the dining destination it is today. McDavid, who bought the property from the McNallys in 2019, isn't new to the corridor either. He founded Jack's Firehouse down the street in 1989, two years after opening Down Home Diner at Reading Terminal Market.
Here's what makes that seven-year gap worth noticing. It isn't a sign that Fairmount's restaurant scene stalled. It's the opposite. The street kept turning over inventory around that one frozen storefront the entire time. Longtime owner Salvatore De Cristofaro sold Figs, his Fairmount Avenue BYOB, back in May 2026, closing out nearly six decades in the restaurant business that began after he arrived in the U.S. as a teenager from Italy. The buyer, private chef and cooking instructor Landi Prendi, reopened the space that same month as Valentina Italian Ristorante.
So in the time it took one owner to decide what to do with one building, the block around it ran through at least one full turnover of its own. The London Grill space wasn't a bellwether for the neighborhood's health. It was an outlier held in place by a single ownership decision, not by demand.
What a Regular Week on the River Still Looks Like
Strip away the headlines and Fairmount in late August runs on a schedule that has nothing to do with any of this. Boathouse Row lights up every night from dusk until around 10 p.m., a fixture that got a $2.1 million overhaul in 2024 funded through the Joanna McNeil Trust and the City of Philadelphia. The system runs on 6,400 LED lights capable of 16 million color combinations, and unless there's a special booking, you're seeing the standard white glow reflected in the Schuylkill from Kelly Drive most nights.
The heavy rowing calendar that closes Kelly Drive for hours at a stretch, the Stotesbury Cup in May, the Independence Day Regatta over the July 4th weekend, is behind the neighborhood by the time August rolls around. What's left is a drive that belongs to evening runners and cyclists without the road closures.
The neighborhood's other August fixture landed just this past weekend. The Philadelphia Zoo's Summer Ale Festival, originally postponed by severe weather, ran on Aug. 22 with more than 100 beers, ciders, seltzers, and spirits alongside food trucks and live music. Early admission tickets ran $75 to $99, general admission $65 to $85, and $45 for nondrinkers, all rain or shine, 21-plus. If you're in Fairmount, that's a walk from your front door, not an event you plan a trip around.
The Read on the Neighborhood
None of these threads are really about each other, and that's the point. A 150-year-old institution spent five months publicly second-guessing its own name while sitting on one of the most anticipated exhibitions in its history. A single restaurant building sat vacant for seven years not because the street couldn't support a tenant, but because one owner was slow to decide. Meanwhile the actual rhythm of the neighborhood, the lights on the river, the zoo festival, the churn of BYOBs changing hands, never paused for any of it.
If you're trying to read Fairmount's character from the outside, the museum's name change is the story that travels. If you actually live here, the story that matters more is the one playing out at 23rd and Fairmount, where a long-dark corner is finally about to tell you what it's going to be.
We'll be watching that corner too. Neighborhood-level detail like this, the kind that doesn't show up in a market report, is exactly what The Josh Allen Team tracks day to day for buyers, sellers, and neighbors who just want an honest read on where things stand. If you're weighing a move in Fairmount or anywhere else in Center City, reach out anytime.
