Tag: featured

Philadelphia loves a rowhome. Or is it rowhouse? Disciples of each term, which describe the same kind of building style, interconnected houses lining a street or alley, fiercely debate which they prefer. But the original phrasing is even more specific and dates back to the 1800s, when “Philadelphia Row” became a catchall for the kinds of houses many Philadelphians lived in, and still live in today.

These houses haven’t just been domestic retreats from the busy streets of our city, however. For many female Philadelphians through history, rowhomes have also been the spaces in which the domestic combined with the economic, as women began to run businesses out of these neatly organized homes, entering the workforce without leaving their living rooms. 

As a female-owned business proud of its commitment to gender equality, and as a real estate company, Solo Real Estate is doubly interested in the history of these row-home-based industries and the women who ran them. Exploring the past use of these buildings adds fascinating layers to both our understanding of our city’s past and our experiences as owners and renters. 

Why run a business out of a house, you might ask? The answer lies in necessity and respectability, both in equal measure, more often than not. We talk a lot about women entering the workforce, but the truth is, women throughout history have always worked and contributed to, or were the sole breadwinners for, their families’ incomes. But for most women, that work was safest, most available, and easiest to access in the home. Jobs like mending, cleaning, dressmaking, paid childcare, accountancy, clerkship, and even writing and translating work would often be jobs that women would perform from their own homes. Selling baked goods, sewing up ball gowns, copying out documents, these were largely respectable labors and represent some of the early businesses run by women out of Philadelphia row homes. Tutoring, music lessons, and private instruction were also ways women made money and supported themselves from the security and comfort of their own living rooms. The writer of this blog post used to take private acting lessons in a row home on South Broad Street in the 1990’s!

Some of these businesses even predate the American Revolution. In 1762, Mary Smith and Sarah Melton purchased what is now 126 Elfreth’s Alley and used it both as a residence and as their dressmaking shop. Melton ran this business, then known as a mantua maker, mantua being the term for the dress style popularized in the 1600’s, with Smith for four years until her death and then for 28 years, both on her own and with Elizabeth Carr, a divorcee who ran the business herself after Melton’s own passing. More information on this rare but not-unheard-of women-run business at the time can be found here: https://www.elfrethsalley.org/podcast/2020/6/23/episode-1-the-dressmakers

Not only did women run businesses out of Philadelphia row homes, but one row home actually became the center of Philadelphia’s struggle for women’s rights. When the New Century Club was founded in Philadelphia in 1878, it was one of the first women’s clubs in the country. Founded to give women a space to discuss science, literature, and the arts, it quickly became a space of organization, offering educational resources to women, serving as a meeting space for ideas, and turning towards social reform, civil rights, and women’s liberation. By 1882, Elizabeth Sproat Turner,  a Philadelphia-born abolitionist and suffragette, along with other club members, founded the New Century Guild, an offshoot of the club dedicated to women’s labor, specifically. The goal of this club was to support working women, providing education and opportunities for women to turn their labor into a more stable and long-term vocation. Soon, this new organization demanded a headquarters. Where else but a Philadelphia row home? In 1906, the Guild purchased 1307 Locust Street, transforming it into a space that could meet the needs of the organization, which included bookbinders, nurses, secretaries, lawyers, artists, writers, and so many more professional women looking to help others professionalize. Offering classes, community, and support, the Guild was the center of social reform and women’s issues, and by the time it moved into 1307 Locust, it had over a thousand members. Today, this building is still a business run out of a rowhome, as it has been renovated and preserved, and functions as a boutique hotel now called Guild House Hotel. 

As you walk down the majority of the streets of Philadelphia, you’ll encounter row home after row home. As you do, consider the women who lived and worked in these spaces, and the many stories we don’t know because these businesses often functioned outside of the official ideas of incorporation or professionalism, spheres often barred to women in the past. 

The work done in living rooms and kitchens remains an essential part of the city’s social and economic history. Unearthing these stories teaches us more about Philadelphia’s past and the human experience and adds to the layers of time, painting our many historic row homes. Maybe even the one you live in today. 

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Solo Real Estate, a company founded by Stanley Solo in 1951 and taken over by Deborah Solo in 1990. In 2025, Alejandro Franqui, Deborah’s son, joined her as a partner in the company, while I, her daughter, Leah Franqui, also contributes to the family business as a writer. While we at Solo are thrilled to reach this important milestone and plan to celebrate our company history with some exciting announcements later this year, we also thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to talk about the first Solo family business – Lousols Department Store. 

Growing up, I was aware that our family had had a department store named Lousols, named by my great-grandfather, Louis Solo. This choice implied to me that my creative writing impulses had come from, perhaps, a different ancestor. However, it wasn’t until we decided to write this post that I realized how little I really knew about this story, and how many gaps there were in it. What follows is, if you’ll excuse the metaphor, patched and stitched together from research, interviewing Deborah, attempts at a memoir Stanley Solo wrote at various times in his life, and family lore. We’re lucky to have all that and to realize that the Solo family has been a part of Philadelphia and its business community for over a century, a fact that makes us all very proud.

Around 1905, Deborah’s grandmother, Rebecca Solo nee Muchnick, moved to Philadelphia when she was about fourteen years old, dusting the New Jersey farm soil of her childhood off her shoes, determined to leave her origins, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, John “Zevulon” and Matilda “Tillie” Muchnick, who had settled into American agricultural life. Along with her older sister Charlotte, Rebecca came to Philadelphia armed with little, at most a middle school education, and sheer determination. Luckily, Charlotte had sewing and embroidery skills as well, which would stand the sisters in good stead in the life they quickly started building for themselves in Philadelphia. Within the next few years, Rebecca quickly met and married Louis C. Solo, a jovial contrast to her steely determination (family legend is he gave himself the middle initial C, standing for nothing at all, in an attempt to seem more professional, although in his draft card from World War II, he listed his name as Louis Carl Solo). 

Together, Louis and Rebecca, with Charlotte’s help, created a dry goods store. By 1920, the store exclusively sold women’s clothing and was located at 133 South 13th Street, where an ad from 1921 proclaims “Lousol’s have originated a number of chic new modes at a specialized price”. Here, Charlotte’s sewing and embroidery skills were put to good use while Rebecca was the engine behind the business. By 1932, the Solos decided to expand, and they bought a building at 1318-1320 Chestnut Street, right at Chestnut and Juniper. An announcement in the Philadelphia Inquirer proudly announced that “the deep windows and interior space for an excellent setting in which the smartest of autumn fashions will be displayed to please the fashion taste of discriminating Philadelphia women.” The new store competed directly with other major local department stories like Strawbridge and Clothier, The Lit Brothers, Gimbels, and John Wanamaker’s, sold the latest styles in women’s and children’s fashions, and clothed Philadelphia residents in elegant garments, with its products regularly listed in the Inquirer’s style section of the period.

In the late 1930’s, Louis and his business partner, Harry Bernbaum, decided to renovate their store, including the façade. They hired Thalheimer and Weitz, an architecture firm established in 1924 by Clarence S. Thalheimer and David D. Weitz, local architects who had grown up in Strawberry Mansion, to create a new deco-style façade for the building, a radical change from its existing Victorian aesthetic. The firm made quite a mark on Philadelphia over its decades of work, including at least 46 projects, which you can check out here, and itself was a family business, with Jack Thalheimer becoming a partner and taking over the company, creating Thalheimer Associates. When the new façade and store renovations debuted in 1939, ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer described the store as “The Greater Lousols of Tomorrow” and a “castle in the air”, and the paper itself gushed over the work, describing “this attractive shop” with “veined Alabama marble boarding on light greys and whites. Glass brick is used profusely. Stainless steel forms the base facia and slash molds and gives the store a sparkling appearance. The façade is further beautified by a bronze awning hood.” In 1940, as the business expanded, the firm of Toll and Barkan did more internal renovations, and at this point, the store encompassed at least four floors in two buildings. 

The store in its heyday employed dozens, including Doris Hillebrand Ashley, a local fashion illustrator, needlepoint designer, and textile conservationist, who was hired by Louis as art director for the store. It’s nice to think that Louis, who worked with his wife and sister-in-law, and was Deborah’s grandfather, was egalitarian and pro-women, and we don’t have much evidence to the contrary, so why not! That said, tensions between Bernbaum and the Solos (blamed afterwards on Rebecca betraying Louis’s allyship!) eventually came to a head and resulted in Bernbaum buying the Solos out of the business. Louis Solo opened up a fur shop at 1704 Walnut, a building he owned in the 1940s. This building would eventually become offices for the real estate business that his son, Stanley Solo, would eventually create in 1951. Stanley would move his offices around Rittenhouse Square a few times, ending up in 1704 Walnut sometime in the 1970s. Outside of hawking furs, Louis Solo spent the rest of his life buying up other real estate in the area, including 2017 Chancellor Street, our current offices, and his longtime home. 

Growing up, Deborah did have pieces of Lousols’ inventory, but the family didn’t think to preserve them. As Deborah puts it, “We did have furs from his store and probably clothes with the label, which were given away over the years. It was only as an adult that I wanted to know more, and I wish I had pressed my father more on the story of our family, which I didn’t, and wanted an article of clothing with the label.” At that point, Deborah often looked for her family company’s label in thrift stores but never found it. For decades, we thought we’d never reclaim something from Lousols and made our peace with that. But when I started sewing (perhaps inheriting my interest from Charlotte, “Aunt Lottie”, whose sewing bag I still have), taking classes at Spool (now closed, though its sister company, Loop, remains), I also created a sewing blog, and I put out a call to vintage-loving collectors to keep their eye out for the Lousols label. Years later, someone actually contacted me, and we were able to secure an item, a gorgeous 1940’s blazer that fits Deborah beautifully, finally getting our hands on a Lousols original. 

As a family, we realize how lucky we are to know this much about our history. It is an honor and a privilege to have been part of Philadelphia’s history in so many ways, and to know some of that legacy and to have the material objects that speak to it. For decades, the Solo family clothed Philadelphians. Now, Deborah, Alejandro, and Leah contribute to housing them. We are lucky to be able to help Philadelphians feel comfortable and housed, and we are so honored that we can, and have long been, a part of people in Philadelphia loving where they live, be it in how they look, or what building they call home. From Lousols to Solo, we are part of the fabric and bricks of this city, and we are so happy to share our story with you in the 75th year of Solo Real Estate.