New life for Stiffel

Tears, pickets, protest songs - defeat. That was the scene two summers ago, when the dwindling number of elderly people who relied on the Jacob and Esther Stiffel Senior Center tried in vain to save the then 83-year-old South Philadelphia institution.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia said it was losing $200,000 a year on the building at 2501 S. Marshall St. Another $400,000 was needed just to fix the roof and boiler. The numbers weren't working and, despite marches, showcases and a shower of media attention, the place shuttered, the patrons dispersed.

The federation sold the massive building for $325,000 to something called Temple Housing Assoc. (Its address is a post office box in Jackson, N.J.) And the center's hardy supporters feared it would fall prey to neglect and vandals before being razed into memory.

They didn't count on Rachel Hildebrandt and her bicycle.

Hildebrandt discovered the Goodwill Industries store on Oregon Avenue a year ago and would peddle there regularly as she was finishing her master's degree in historical preservation from Penn Design's program. Along the ride, she'd marvel at the Hebrew lettering and iconography still on the facades of the buildings on Sixth and Seventh Streets near Porter.

At the same time she was digging into her family roots - on one side they were Jewish - and she learned her maternal grandfather had settled in South Philadelphia upon arriving from Russia.

"I was stunned," Hildebrandt, 26, said by phone Thursday. "I didn't realize there had been such a large community there."

As it happened, Hildebrandt's best friend from grad school, Sharon Reid, was working on a project of her own: She was trying to find historic buildings in Philadelphia that needed protection. She was volunteering for the Preservation Alliance, and together they conspired to add the Stiffel Center to the agency's list of most endangered buildings.

Since its beginning in 1928 as the Jewish Education Center No. 2, Stiffel had served as the community's axis mundi, welcoming and educating the waves of immigrants from the Pale of Settlement. As I began a column two springs ago, "When you told someone you were from Marshall and Porter, you were saying you grew up around the brown-brick building where Eddie Fisher sang in the chorus, where the elders played gin rummy, and young guns learned to arc two-handed set shots under impossibly low ceilings."

The women's efforts not only led to placement on the endangered list. In June, the city certified the Stiffel Center as historically important, making it much more difficult for anyone to tear down.

"We were biting fingernails," said Ben Leech, the Alliance's director of advocacy. "First, it was on the market, then it was under agreement. No one knew the owner or what their intentions were. We felt we were possibly racing the wrecking ball."

Fifteen properties wound up being protected by the Philadelphia Historical Commission in June. To celebrate, those who fought for them have been invited to a party Oct. 15 at the Philadelphia History Museum - the freshly reopened former Atwater Kent - where they'll enjoy cocktails in the map room, standing on a floor map of the city and stars that mark each certified property.

The friends of the Stiffel will hobnob with those who worked to preserve such icons are Joe Frazier's Gym, the Chinatown Y, the Horn & Hardart automat.

"It's the best we could have hoped for," said Bobby Rosin, who taught art at the center for 28 years and has since moved to the South Philadelphia Older Adult Center. "Ironically, a young person riding her bike by discovers this building, which was such a fixture, which had such a tradition, in the neighborhood since 1928, and she is the instigator for saving its life.

"It's a shanda what the federation did. And I don't mind saying that."

That's a shame.