Shad fishermen gave Fishtown its name, and the neighborhood has become the symbol of Philadelphia's twenty-first-century revival. Fishtown takes its name from the shad fishermen who worked the Delaware River here in the eighteenth century, and it developed as a working-class neighborhood of factory workers and dock laborers through the industrial era. When manufacturing left in the latter half of the twentieth century, Fishtown declined severely.
Then in the 2000s, the same combination of cheap rents, vacant buildings, and proximity to the river that had defined the neighborhood's decline began attracting a new population. Bars like Frankford Hall, restaurants like Suraya, the music venue Fillmore Philadelphia, and the concert hall at the Icehouse brought both residents and visitors. The neighborhood has retained more of its working-class housing stock than similar neighborhoods in other cities — the long rows of modest brick rowhouses that characterize Philadelphia's residential fabric — even as incomes and property values have risen dramatically.
Walk along Frankford Avenue, the neighborhood's main commercial street; the mix of longstanding neighborhood businesses alongside new restaurants and bars tells the story of a neighborhood in transition without having lost its identity entirely.