1600 Market St

Where 1600 Market St is

Its block in Center City Philadelphia, drawn from Philadelphia's own building outlines and street centerlines.

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

33 ft of exterior wall for each home the screen estimates — enough for two- and three-bedroom homes across the plan.

The typical floor has 617 ft of exterior wall, and across 38 residential floors the building carries 23,457 ft of it in total, divided among the 702 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.76: close to a square or a circle, the most efficient envelope an office can have and the least generous one for apartments: little perimeter to divide among homes. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 18.5 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 1600 Market St scores 55 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 69, Interior depth 27, Scale 100, Finance 11 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Most of what it earns comes from daylight efficiency, and what holds it back most is finance, at 11 out of 100: remaining gap is 53% of conversion cost, scored from 60% down to 0%.

Built in 1982

Philadelphia records this building as going up in 1982, which puts it in the late-modern stock.

As a rule, typically the hardest to convert: the deepest plates of any era, large central cores, and floor-to-floor heights tight enough that running residential drainage under a ceiling can be the thing that ends a project. That is the era’s general tendency rather than a finding about this building — the model reads an outline and a height, and can see nothing inside — but it is the first thing an architect would want to know, and it colours how much confidence the 75% daylight figure above deserves.

What the conversion would cost

$360 per square foot all-in across 881,431 sq ft of converted floor, or $317.3M in total — about $452K for each of the 702 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 222,588 sq ft of windowless core, which has to be gutted, re-plumbed and sprinklered like the rest of the building and then earns nothing. Against it the model sets a completed value of $197K a home, which for 702 homes is $138.1M.

What would have to be true

A $179.2M gap before any grant, $169.2M after the modeled one. The smallest single change that would close it: average unit size 55% down.

The shortfall before any grant is $179.2M. Closing it from the value side means each of the 702 homes finishing at $452K rather than the $197K the model assumes — 130% more. Closing it from the cost side means getting all-in cost down from $360 to $157 per square foot.

A modeled RESIDE grant of $10.0M moves that threshold to $438K a home. That is still above the $197K assumed, leaving $169.2M uncovered, which is why the grant does not unlock this one.

Nor do all four levers have to move. For 1600 Market St, one alone would close the gap at:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 1600 Market St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Center City Philadelphia

1600 Market St ranks 63rd of the 103 buildings screened here, against a median score of 67.

Its floor plate is better lit than 43% of them, and shallower than 32% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 15th largest by estimated homes. The full survey of all 103 buildings ranks and maps every one of them, and the list by address links each to its own page.

Within the CMX5 zone

38th of 65 zoned CMX5 — the comparison that shares its rules, rents and streets.

65 of the screened buildings are zoned CMX5. 1600 Market St ranks 38th of them against a median score of 67. 28 score 70 or more, their median deepest interior point is 58 ft from a facade against this building’s 69 ft, and together they would hold an estimated 30,650 homes. The group’s top scorer is 112 N Broad St, at 93.

Its nearest match in size: 1601 Market St

The screened building closest to 1600 Market St in converted floor area is 1601 Market St: 887,997 sq ft over 36 stories, against 881,431 sq ft over 39 here.

1600 Market St scores 55 to its 61, and with the size held roughly equal most of that shortfall comes from interior depth: 27 out of 100 here, 54 there (deepest interior point 58 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft). On the money they sit in the same place: each falls short even with the modeled grant. The two stand about 200 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 1600 Market St $10.0M, on the assumption it qualifies. Whether it does, no published dataset can say.

That figure assumes the building meets the Act’s vacant-and-abandoned test, which turns on code-enforcement and receivership records no city publishes.

It does not sit in a 2018 designated Opportunity Zone, so it would not draw that Section 201 priority.

Other buildings screened near 1600 Market St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 220 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

• 1650 Market St
  61 stories · 63% daylit · 1,439 estimated homes · scores 35/100 (Marginal)
  about 220 ft away
• 1601 Market St
  36 stories · 74% daylit · 702 estimated homes · scores 61/100 (Worth a feasibility study)
  about 220 ft away
• 1625 Market St
  19 stories · 81% daylit · 270 estimated homes · scores 67/100 (Worth a feasibility study)
  about 340 ft away
• 1500 Market St
  43 stories · 46% daylit · 1,854 estimated homes · scores 21/100 (Unlikely)
  about 340 ft away