An expressway that never came turned South Street into Philadelphia's bohemian and counterculture corridor. In the 1960s, the city proposed running an expressway along South Street through the Queen Village and Society Hill neighborhoods, and the uncertainty of imminent demolition drove property values down and drove out conventional businesses. Into the cheap storefronts moved artists, musicians, counterculture shops, and Philadelphia's Black community from the adjacent neighborhoods.
When the expressway was cancelled in 1974, South Street had become a neighborhood of galleries, theaters, record stores, and restaurants that drew the young and creative. The Act, an underground theater presenting provocative work, launched careers here. The street was immortalized in the song South Street by the Orlons in 1963.
As gentrification took hold in the 1980s and 90s, South Street became a tourist and nightlife destination while losing some of its edge. The independent shops, tattoo parlors, and music venues that remain coexist with restaurants and bars serving the weekend crowds. Walk west toward the river for several blocks; the character of the street changes block by block in ways that tell the history of the neighborhood.