Apartment Building

Fire tore through an apartment building in South Philadelphia early Thursday, leaving more than a dozen people temporarily homeless. The cause of the fast-moving blaze at 2001 S. Fourth St. in Pennsport, which firefighters needed almost two hours to control, was not clear. Firefighters rescued several people from the three-story building, and one resident was taken to Methodist Hospital in stable condition. The building has 11 units, and houses 15 to 20 people. The two-alarm fire erupted a day before the nearest firehouse is scheduled to close temporarily under a cost-cutting measure launched by Mayor Nutter in August.

A mistake in 1963 turned Steven Korman into a pioneer. He had built the cylindrical building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, across 18th Street from where the Four Seasons Hotel stands in Center City, as an apartment tower. It didn't do well. So Korman experimented with renting to people who needed a suite for longer than a typical hotel stay but less than a year-long apartment lease. He made this move in partnership with Trust House Forte, a London-based luxury hotel group.

Should every apartment building and condominium complex buy a defibrillator? Should you have one in your house? Should fire departments and building inspectors try to ensure that one is stuck on the wall of every dwelling, just as they do with fire escapes and smoke detectors? Many homeowners and building managers are wondering whether they should spend the $2,000 or so these machines cost. One president of a large co-op in a Philadelphia suburb recently put the question this way: "Why should we bother buying an AED [automated external defibrillator]

Gregory Reaves and Leslie Smallwood-Lewis stood at the window of a third-floor unit at Diamond Green Apartments just as a SEPTA commuter train pulled away from Temple University Station, bound for Center City. "See," Reaves said, smiling. "You couldn't hear the train, could you? That's solid construction. " Undergrads are not known for adhering to a vow of silence, leading many landlords to shun them. Reaves and Smallwood-Lewis believe, however, that quiet surroundings and proximity to the Temple campus will quickly fill their five-story, 92-unit building with 350 paying students.

A Philadelphia development company and building-trade unions are expected to face off in court in just one episode of what has become a turbocharged battle over union hegemony in Center City construction. So far, there have been accusations of violence and intimidation against the developers by the unions; a counteraccusation by the head of Philadelphia's building-trades council that developers Matthew and Michael Pestronk tried "to hire some muscle to beat me up," and a question of whether the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections got itself improperly involved in the fray by shutting down the job site Wednesday afternoon.

A two-alarm fire forced the evacuation of residents of an apartment building in Northeast Philadelphia. Dave Schrader, spokesman for the Red Cross of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said at least 30 apartments were affected by the fire at the Atrium Apartments at 2555 Welsh Road. He said agency volunteers were meeting with residents to determine if any needed assistance. No injuries were reported in the fire. Initial reports indicated the fire broke out in a cock loft of a fourth-floor laundry room.

WASHINGTON - Builders have found a way to make money in a decrepit home market: apartments. Permit requests to build apartments jumped to a three-year high last month. In 12 months, they've surged 63 percent. Blame the housing bust, which left many people without the means, the credit or the stomach to buy. More people need apartments. The demand has driven up monthly rents. And apartment-home builders are rushing to cash in. That said, the overall home market remains depressed.

The Downingtown Zoning Hearing Board has approved a zoning variance which will permit additional units in the John Edge Parke House, an apartment building at 320 E. Lancaster Ave. The board voted 2-0 Thursday to allow Thomas Parke, a Florida college student who owns the property, to increase the number of units in the building from three to four. Lois and Thomas Edge Parke, parents of the owner, said that their son, who was absent from the meeting, planned to redesign the interior of the building but not add to the exterior.

An unidentified woman was found stabbed to death in the outside stairwell of a Runnemede apartment building early yesterday, authorities said. The woman had been stabbed numerous times in the front and back of her body and had suffered numerous blows to her head, according to Edward F. Borden Jr., the Camden County prosecutor. Borden said investigators believed that the woman was killed elsewhere and that her body was dumped in the stairwell perhaps an hour or more before she was found.

It's easy to find the abandoned three-story apartment building at 102 Chester Pike in Collingdale. Not only is it the tallest structure in the borough, according to local officials, it's also the biggest eyesore, with its boarded-up windows, rusty fire escape and weed-choked grounds. What isn't so easy to find is its owner, identified as Catherine Bollinger of Lansdowne. Borough Council President William E. McGowan said Monday night that the borough had made repeated efforts to contact the woman through the mail but registered letters sent to her Lansdowne address kept coming back unopened.

A two-alarm fire forced the evacuation of residents of an apartment building in Northeast Philadelphia. Dave Schrader, spokesman for the Red Cross of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said at least 30 apartments were affected by the fire at the Atrium Apartments at 2555 Welsh Road. He said agency volunteers were meeting with residents to determine if any needed assistance. No injuries were reported in the fire. Initial reports indicated the fire broke out in a cock loft of a fourth-floor laundry room.

EVEN AFTER THE jury foreman announced Wednesday that Donte Johnson was guilty of the first-degree murder and rape of Sabina Rose O'Donnell, and even after the young woman's mother and other relatives told the court of the anguish of losing her to his senseless brutality, Johnson slouched forward in his chair and maintained his innocence. Johnson's shocking statement came after Common Pleas Judge Glenn Bronson had lambasted the defendant as "an extreme danger to the public" and lacking "any normal sense of decency.

Donte Johnson had been in police custody for just a few hours when he started talking, a Philadelphia homicide detective told jurors Friday. Before investigators collected a DNA sample from him, the 18-year-old from North Philadelphia confessed to raping and strangling Sabina Rose O'Donnell in a lot on the edge of Northern Liberties. When detectives showed him a photo of a man on a bike — an image taken from surveillance footage near the crime scene on June 2, 2010, when O'Donnell was slain — Johnson said: "That's me. " He then wrote "Me" under the image, Philadelphia Detective Thorsten Lucke said.

A Philadelphia development company and building-trade unions are expected to face off in court in just one episode of what has become a turbocharged battle over union hegemony in Center City construction. So far, there have been accusations of violence and intimidation against the developers by the unions; a counteraccusation by the head of Philadelphia's building-trades council that developers Matthew and Michael Pestronk tried "to hire some muscle to beat me up," and a question of whether the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections got itself improperly involved in the fray by shutting down the job site Wednesday afternoon.

SABINA ROSE O'Donnell was wearing only a pair of beige socks, her eyes were partially open and a swarm of flies flew from her mouth when Christina Sirochman found her in a grassy lot shortly before 10 a.m. on June 2, 2010. Sirochman, who came upon the young woman's remains while walking her dog, told a jury Wednesday that she called out to the woman and bent to touch her to see if she was alive. "It was just like touching a piece of glass," an emotional Sirochman recalled.

In a low but steady voice, Donte Johnson on Monday rejected an offer from the District Attorney's Office to plead guilty and receive a life-without-parole prison sentence in the June 2010 rape and murder of Sabina Rose O'Donnell, the 20-year-old Northern Liberties woman whose slaying behind her apartment building rocked the trendy community. Johnson, 20, of 11th Street near Poplar, rejected the same offer in December 2010, when city prosecutors were talking about seeking the death penalty against him. They've since opted not to pursue the death penalty, which means Johnson, ironically, would face a life sentence if a jury finds him guilty of first-degree murder.

On the 1200 block of North Orianna Street, a narrow, almost alleylike road that juts off from Girard Avenue on the edge of Northern Liberties, the walls facing a grassy plot of land have been brightly painted with colorful flowers, butterflies, and stars. The grass is mostly clear of litter, the plantings around the trees are well-maintained, and the air smells sweet and floral. The spot is oddly quiet. Girard Avenue is just a few steps away, but the sound of traffic is faint, even in daylight.

AFTER BEING arrested for allegedly raping and murdering 20-year-old Sabina Rose O'Donnell in June 2010, Donte D. Johnson reportedly confessed to stalking the woman through Northern Liberties for her bike and dragging her off the bike to a vacant lot behind her apartment building, where used her bra to strangle her. "I shouldn't have did it. I shouldn't have put my hands on her. All over a bike," an 18-year-old Johnson said in his statement to...

Growing up in Birmingham, Ala., I never thought I would do what I did last week, which is stay at the Tutwiler Hotel while I was in town for a retirement party. Back then it wasn't so much that the Tutwiler was segregated, which it was when I was a child in the 1950s and '60s, as it was that any hotel would be too costly for my family. Then, too, we didn't own a car or take vacations, so who needed a hotel? The Tutwiler was built in 1914 as a luxury hotel that could entice the American Iron and Steel Institute to hold its convention in Birmingham, which owed its very existence to the steel companies attracted to the region after the Civil War by its abundance of coal and iron ore. Birmingham didn't exist before the Civil War, a fact that surprises people who assume its infamy as a bastion of segregation meant it was among the antebellum towns within the Confederate states.

A 31-year-old man was shot and killed early today during an argument in the entranceway to his apartment building in Philadelphia's West Oak Lane section, police said. The victim, whom police identified as Quasay Johnson, left his apartment and went to the vestibule of the building on the 7000 block of N. 15th Street about 12:30 a.m. after receiving a phone call, police said. Witnesses told police they heard some men arguing and then a round of gunfire. The victim was shot three times in the chest and once in an arm, police said.