Olde Kensington, Philadelphia
Learn about Olde Kensington's industrial history, the building at 1516 N 5th St that became Billy Penn Studios, and how adaptive reuse has brought this corner of Philadelphia back to work.
01 — Olde Kensington
We're in Olde Kensington, between Girard and Berks, Front Street and 6th — north of Northern Liberties, west of Fishtown, two miles from Center City. For about a century the area was dense with heavy industry, intermixed with the rowhomes and houses of the people who worked in it. By the end of the 1800s the district was the center of the American textile business, and the scale of it is hard to picture now.
“From the tower of the Bromley Mill at Fourth & Lehigh Avenue there are more textile mills within the range of vision than can be found in any other city in the world.”
John James MacFarlane, 1912 — via NKCDC's Kensington history
Then it went. The Highways Act of 1956 and the growth of the suburbs pulled manufacturing out of the city, and between 1955 and 1975 Philadelphia lost three quarters of its industrial jobs. The work left, the people followed, and the factories stayed exactly where they were.
02 — How We Found Out
Until recently we thought the five story building containing the lobby was the oldest part of Billy Penn Studios. Building this website in July 2026, a member of our team used artificial intelligence for the first time to review all the historical information we had on the property.
AI provided sources new to us, particularly the 1878 “Hexamer” survey list. In the list of surveys, one gave an address at the southeast corner of N 5th, Oxford and Randolph — our corner — with a very detailed drawing and map. But that might have been the end, if the same member of our team hadn't also been a former geographer. The drawing wasn't oriented the way we look at maps today. Turned and resized against current aerial imagery, the site plan was a perfect match for the dimensions of Billy Penn Studios. The discovery took human and robot intelligence — which makes us think of a brewery a few blocks up 5th St.
The survey as it was drawn in 1878 — the building and the site plan on one sheet.
Two buildings matched existing areas — turned and resized against a current aerial.
Twelve windows on Building 2, seven on Building 1 — the same counts on the building today.
Why some units have window cuts on both sides: they were once exterior walls.
03 — The Building
It turns out the oldest portions of Billy Penn Studios date to 1867, formerly Jacob Schoening & Sons — a manufacturer of morocco leather and wool. The 1878 Hexamer fire insurance survey gives construction dates of 1867 and 1868, and documents the works in detail — tanning, wool pulling, drying lofts, boilers and steam dryers. Two of those five story sections still stand on the southwest side, and the building widths, masonry walls and former exterior window openings all match the survey.
Between 1895 and 1910, J.H. Billington & Co. took the facility over from Jacob Schoening & Sons. The district was full of textile mills, and Billington made the wooden bobbins and spools they wound their thread onto. Later maps show Billington expanding across the site and connecting the two original buildings into one. And the lobby? Still absent from the 1922 Philadelphia atlas, but there on a 1928 aerial. With that, we went to the Philadelphia City Archives.
Jacob Schoening & Sons, morocco manufacturers and wool dealers. No. 1 erected 1867–8, No. 2 rebuilt 1871, No. 3 erected 1853.
The plot plan: tan house, wool pulling, drying lofts, coloring house and steam dryers, between N Fifth and Randolph.
Jas. H. Billington Co., bobbin factory, on the 1910 atlas.
The 1922 atlas. The lobby building isn't there yet — it appears on a 1928 aerial.
Bobbins, spools, shuttles and skewers. The factory address is 1537 to 1545 Randolph Street.
An H.C.L. Miller veneers sign, still fixed to the plaster toward Building No. 1 when renovation began, with pencil dates from the 1920s written across it — a later trade working the complex after Billington.
Building No. 1. The window shape still matches what the surveyor drew in 1878.
Building No. 2, rear windows in Unit 504 — evidence of an originally free standing building.
Unit 502, in Building No. 1, before construction began in 2018.
Unit 502 fitted out, before the interior glass went in.
Unit 504, in Building No. 2, before construction.
Unit 504 finished — the original brick and timber left in place.
04 — The Lobby
At the archives the building arrives as a card — a Building History Record for 1528–48 N 5th, every permit ever pulled on the property listed by year and number. Three of them are 1922. On 14 June, Billington took out a permit to tear down about six dwellings and sheds along N 5th. Eight days later came the building permit: a machine shop and storage, brick, 36 feet tall. Forty thousand dollars. Ground broken about 25 June.
Then, five months later and with the work still underway, a second permit dated 24 November adds two more floors to the middle 48 foot bay, taking it to four stories and 54 feet — matching the height of our lobby building — and changes the use from storage to light manufacturing. The architect on all of it was F. L. Hoover & Sons of 1023 Cherry Street, who acted as contractor too. And the truss roofed portions of Billy Penn Studios? The card shows permits dated 1953, 1955 and 1957. So likely then.
The Building History Record for 1528–48 N 5th. Three permits in 1922, then alterations in 1953, 1955 and 1957.
14 June 1922. “Tear down dwellings, sheds, etc.” Fee: three dollars.
22 June 1922. A machine shop and storage, 175 feet along N 5th by 97 deep. Cost, $40,000.
Long Leaf Yellow Pine — specified for the joists, girders, columns, posts, rafters and truss chords.
24 November 1922. Two floors added to the middle bay: four stories, 54 feet, light manufacturing.
Girders 12 by 18 inches. Columns stepping down as the load lightens: 18 by 18, then 16, 12, and 8.
The third floor, units 307 and 308, before any of it was touched.
Fourth floor factory windows — original sash, original openings.
Fourth floor before restoration. Longleaf posts, plank floors, daylight from both sides.
The top floor, before restoration.
The tower at the top of the stair.
05 — The Billy Penn Corporation
As is common in adaptive reuse, the building carries the name of a former occupant in their honor. After Billington, the Billy Penn Corporation, an aluminum manufacturer, operated at 1516 N 5th St for decades as one of the building's primary occupants. Truss roofed buildings were added at some point in the later decades — still visible in the third floor ceilings and atrium.
We call the result rowhome factories. What looks like a single building is 23 original tax parcels and more than 150 years of Philadelphia manufacturing.
Since people ask: much of the painted artwork visible on nearby buildings isn't ours. The Billy Penn Corporation operated out of more than one building in the area. Our own script is a descendant of that lettering.
06 — The Beams
The old growth forests of the Eastern United States were clear cut to build the country — beginning in the colonial era and peaking in the late 19th and early 20th century. Pennsylvania was cut harder than most. Its lumber went into the mills, railroads, and rowhomes, and the northern counties were stripped so completely that what was left of them earned a name — the Pennsylvania Desert. It's hard to fathom, but the lumber built our nation. It was replanted thanks in large part to a forestry movement that began here in Philadelphia, which is why PA now has millions of acres of forest and parkland.
By 1922, when the lobby section went up, nearly the entirety of the northeastern USA had already been cut. So timber this size would have had to come from further south — likely Georgia, the Carolinas or Alabama. In the early stages of the building's transformation the beams were tested for load bearing capacity and identified as Southern Yellow Pine — and the 1922 permits name the species outright: Long Leaf Yellow Pine. Given their size, the pines were probably 200 to 400 years old when they were cut. The wood you see in the lobby is likely 300 to 500 years old.
07 — Adaptive Reuse
Over the last two decades those vacant mills and factories have been turned into lofts, studios and workspaces. That process has a name — adaptive reuse. Rather than knock a building down and start again, you keep the structure that is already standing. Billy Penn Studios is one of those buildings.
This one had incredible bones for it, although many aspects of what you see now are not original. Learn more in the architecture section.
Visit the Lobby →
Historical research and building chronology reconstructed by Joseph Gruber from archival maps, insurance surveys, Philadelphia building permits, aerial imagery, and surviving architectural evidence. With thanks to the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network, the Philadelphia City Archives, the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Library of Congress.
08 — Visit
The lobby and Bean2Bean café are open to the public. No appointment needed to walk in. Pictures encouraged — tag us @billypennstudios on the gram.
