Ridge Avenue, the Hill, and Andorra
Roxborough is 19128, up on the ridge between the Schuylkill and the Wissahickon. Ridge Avenue is the spine, not the boundary — the neighborhood sits on both sides of it, on an old Lenape trail along the high ground. Andorra and Shawmont sit at the top near Cathedral Road; Ivy Ridge is down toward the river; Manayunk is 19127, downhill and southeast on the same side of the Schuylkill, not across it. Leverington, Lyceum, Green Lane, Domino Lane, Umbria, Terrace, Gates, Sumac. Gorgas Park at 6300 Ridge, Wissahickon Valley Park down the eastern flank.
The physical fact that drives this page: Roxborough falls roughly 370 feet from Andorra to the river. Nowhere else we buy is built on a hill like that.
A Housing Stock That Has Almost Nothing in Common With the Rest of the City
The parcel data makes the contrast blunt. The median 19128 house is about 1,458 square feet on a 4,520-square-foot lot with roughly 34 feet of frontage — nearly triple the lot of a Frankford rowhome — median build year 1950. Only 29% of the stock is rowhouse; 34% is twin and 21% fully detached. On one street you can pass:
- Stone houses in Wissahickon schist — about 1,087 here, roughly 8.6 times Frankford’s count.
- Median build year 1920, the oldest on record 1717. Terrace, Ridge, Leverington, Manayunk Ave,
- Lyceum, Sumac and Shawmont are the stone streets.
- 1920s–30s stone or brick twins, deep lots, front porches, six or seven rooms.
- Postwar rows with the garage underneath, on sloped streets where you climb steps to the door.
- Split-levels and detached singles, sixties through eighties, toward Andorra — median build
- year 1964, median 1,648 square feet, lots averaging over 8,500.
Retail buyers want this stock and financing works on it, which is why the advice here differs from our Kensington page’s.
Hillside Lots, Retaining Walls, and Stone
The condition issues here come from topography and from stone, not from abandonment:
- Retaining walls, and the zoning that governs them. Much of the neighborhood is on a grade
- steep enough that Philadelphia’s Steep Slope Protection rules apply: at 25% or more, earth
- disturbance is prohibited; from 15% to 25% it needs Planning Commission approval. A wall two feet
- or higher needs a permit, and when one bows it’s an engineering repair.
- Water moving downhill. Rear yards pitched toward the house, window wells that fill.
- Schist, and the lime mortar rule. Same stone as Germantown. The National Park Service is
- unambiguous: repointing mortar must be softer and more permeable than the masonry. A cement
- repoint pushes stress into the stone and cracks it.
- Slate at end of life. Much Pennsylvania slate — the soft-vein stone from the Northampton
- County belt — lasts roughly 70 to 110 years, so a roof laid between 1900 and 1930 is at or past
- that now. Other slates last far longer. The first question is which you have.
- Aluminum branch wiring. Solid aluminum branch circuits went in roughly 1965 to 1973, and
- about 30% of 19128’s stock dates to 1960–79 — double Frankford’s share. The Consumer Product
- Safety Commission found pre-1972 homes with aluminum wiring are 55 times more likely to have
- connections reach fire-hazard conditions. The fixes are a copper rewire or approved crimp
- connectors at every one — 30 to 100 per house.
- Original everything, immaculately maintained. The commonest condition up here: a house owned
- by the same couple since 1974, spotless, un-updated.
The Real Reasons People Sell Up Here
Roxborough is not a blight market, and the data is emphatic: vacancy and tax delinquency each run about a third of the citywide rate, and the Land Bank owns essentially nothing here. Roughly two-thirds of parcels have a Homestead Exemption on file — real owner-occupants with clean title. The tell for what generates our calls: median monthly ownership cost without a mortgage runs around $672 here against roughly $2,075 with one. A large, free-and-clear, long-tenured population. What we get called about:
A parent died and the children live in Chester County or Arizona. The house is fine. Nobody wants to fly in four times for a listing, a cleanout and three weeks of showings — often with fifty years of contents across a garage, an attic and a basement.
Downsizing on a deadline. A retirement community has a date attached and the money is needed by it.
A reverse mortgage came due. The borrower passed or moved out permanently, and the heirs have a defined window to satisfy the loan before the servicer forecloses. One of the few genuinely time-sensitive situations we handle, and more common here than anywhere else.
A divorce, or siblings who can’t agree. Someone needs the house turned into numbers.
The Inheritance Tax Bill Surprises Nieces and Nephews Most
Pennsylvania charges inheritance tax on who inherits, with no size exemption. Children and grandchildren pay 4.5%, siblings 12%, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends 15%. A surviving spouse pays nothing.
That last tier catches Roxborough families regularly, because a long-lived aunt with no children often leaves the house to nieces and nephews — and at this end of the city 15% is not a rounding error. The return is due nine months after death, and Pennsylvania discounts the tax 5% if you pay within three months, which most families never hear about until it’s expired.
Should You Even Be Talking to a Cash Buyer?
Often, no — and we’d rather say it here than after you’ve spent your afternoon. A tidy Roxborough twin with a driveway will sell on the open market, will appraise, and will draw financed buyers. With time and someone local to manage it, a listing usually nets more.
We’re the right call for a hard deadline, out-of-state heirs, a reverse-mortgage clock, a house that won’t appraise because of the roof or the retaining wall, or a situation where certainty is worth more than the last few percent. Tell us which one you’re in.
(267) 507-5453 · 1800 E Schiller St, Philadelphia PA 19134
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