Society Hill

Society Hill is a historic residential district in central Philadelphia, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city and a dense survival of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century architecture. Its brick rowhouses, cobbled alleys and Federal-style doorways surround early churches and small hidden courts. Badly decayed by the mid-twentieth century, it became a landmark case of urban renewal, restored rather than demolished from the 1950s. Visitors walk narrow lanes near the tiny Elfreth's Alley.