The former Lawsonia Building, at 1106 Spring Garden Street, has recently been demolished. The Lawsonia Building was a two-story office building with a brick facade and wooden windows. After plans to renovate it into apartments fell through a few years ago, the building fell into serious disrepair. Developer Maplewood LLC bought the property and has created plans to build a new apartment building with retail, which the Lawsonia Building wasn’t designed for. The new building is being designed by Varenhorst Architects.

This new building will be six stories and 62 feet tall. It will have 79 rental apartment units, eight of which will be deemed affordable units. There will be four retail units on the first floor along Spring Garden Street, with a total of 5,500 square feet of space. The development will have a sizeable courtyard in back, with a walkway leading to Spring Garden Street. A decorative gate will be at the entrance to this walkway on Spring Garden and there will be planters in front of the building and new street trees in back behind the courtyard. The facade will have porcelain panels and alternating angled window openings, and each unit in the building will have a balcony. A green roof will cover almost the entire roof and about 85% of the development will be green space or permeable pavement. An underground parking garage will have 27 parking spaces, including two ADA-accessible spaces and two spaces for electric vehicles, and the building will have 32 spaces for bicycle parking.

This new building on Spring Garden Street adds a significant amount of population and retail to an underdeveloped stretch of the thoroughfare. This new apartment building joins another large new apartment building at the intersection of 12th & Spring Garden Streets, two others at the important intersection of Broad & Spring Garden, and three other large new apartment buildings on Spring Garden between Fourth and Eighth Streets. While the loss of the Lawsonia Building is unfortunate, the redevelopment will help bring back a formerly forgotten area of the city.

By Gabriel Gottlieb