819 Chestnut St

Where 819 Chestnut 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 837 ft of exterior wall, and across 11 residential floors the building carries 9,212 ft of it in total, divided among the 282 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.74: 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 25.6 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 819 Chestnut St scores 32 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 37, Interior depth 0, Scale 100, Finance 0 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Most of what it earns comes from daylight efficiency, and what holds it back most is interior depth, at 0 out of 100: deepest interior point 89 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft.

Built in 1926

Philadelphia records this building as going up in 1926, which puts it in the interwar stock.

As a rule, steel or concrete frames with punched windows and plates still narrow enough for daylight to reach the middle, often with high ceilings. Among the most convertible stock there is, and the reason so many early conversions were of buildings this age. 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 58% daylight figure above deserves.

What the conversion would cost

$360 per square foot all-in across 454,742 sq ft of converted floor, or $163.7M in total — about $581K for each of the 282 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 189,526 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 282 homes is $55.5M.

What would have to be true

A $108.2M gap before any grant, $98.2M after the modeled one. The smallest single change that would close it: average unit size 64% down.

The shortfall before any grant is $108.2M. Closing it from the value side means each of the 282 homes finishing at $581K rather than the $197K the model assumes — 195% more. Closing it from the cost side means getting all-in cost down from $360 to $122 per square foot.

A modeled RESIDE grant of $10.0M moves that threshold to $545K a home. That is still above the $197K assumed, leaving $98.2M uncovered, which is why the grant does not unlock this one.

Nor do all four levers have to move. For 819 Chestnut St, one alone would close the gap at:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 819 Chestnut St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Center City Philadelphia

819 Chestnut St ranks 92nd of the 103 buildings screened here, against a median score of 67.

Its floor plate is better lit than 12% of them, and shallower than 12% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 39th 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

58th of 65 zoned CMX5 — the comparison that shares its rules, rents and streets.

65 of the screened buildings are zoned CMX5. 819 Chestnut St ranks 58th 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 89 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: 101 N Independence Mall E

The screened building closest to 819 Chestnut St in converted floor area is 101 N Independence Mall E: 488,820 sq ft over 11 stories, against 454,742 sq ft over 12 here.

101 N Independence Mall E scores 46 and 819 Chestnut St only 32, and the difference is a hard fail rather than a matter of degree: the lower one is capped at 35 because its deepest interior point is 89 ft from a facade, past the 80 ft threshold beyond which conversion requires carving a light well. On the money they sit in the same place: each falls short even with the modeled grant. The two stand about 2,000 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 819 Chestnut 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 819 Chestnut St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 460 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

• 917 Chestnut St
  9 stories · 79% daylit · 257 estimated homes · scores 64/100 (Worth a feasibility study)
  about 460 ft away
• 734 Sansom St
  6 stories · 95% daylit · 42 estimated homes · scores 79/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 620 ft away
• 700 Chestnut St
  6 stories · 100% daylit · 36 estimated homes · scores 83/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 730 ft away
• 701 Market St
  5 stories · 40% daylit · 247 estimated homes · scores 15/100 (Unlikely)
  about 850 ft away