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At
the north end of the Philadelphia neighborhood known as
Port Richmond, there is a pair of
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on Amber
Street, each over a hundred years old. They were built
for the Masland Carpet Company in 1885. |
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Oliver Knitting Company, which occupied a large portion
of one building beginning in the 1950s, eventually bought
the buildings in 1983 and rented space to a variety of textile
businesses. |
The
producers of this film own a production company which
has been a
tenant
in one
of the
Amber
Street
buildings
since 2002.
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| Over
the last
20 years, as the manufacturing economy has been in decline,
the Amber Street buildings and the surrounding neighborhood
have had to adjust. |
| The
adjustment has not always been easy - many other factories
in the neighborhood remain vacant and are deteriorating. |
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| What
is the attitude of these new community members ? How invested
do they feel in what is happening here ? How do long-time
tenants feel about the changes afoot in their building,
and the juxtaposition of old and new ? Do they really
just want things to go back to the way they were ? |
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| Neighborhood
transformation is a process too often over-simplified.
In making this film, we have tried to dig a little deeper.
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We
produced The View From Amber Street as part of this community,
and would like to provoke a wider conversation among residents,
old and new, about how our neighborhood is changing, and how
that change affects all of us.
Meanwhile, a wave of gentrification is gradually moving north
from central Philadelphia. Port Richmond is only now
beginning to see signs of gentrification. |
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