Image credit: Lillie Marshall

Located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Fishtown sits at the top of America’s most artistic places with a vibrant splash of creative street arts, architecture, and art galleries. Home to the arts and America’s finest murals, VisitPhilly writes,  “There’s no shortage of cool in Fishtown, which has emerged as Philly’s truest harbor of artistic, culinary, and musical acts. This classic working-class neighborhood, so named due to its history as an epicenter for the commercial shad-fishing industry, offers a colorful exception to the city’s gridded urban rule with its collection of narrow streets beset with modest row homes and independently owned businesses. North of Girard, south of Lehigh, east of Front, and west of the Delaware River, Philly’s young creative class roots itself here with hopes to take ideas from gestation to reality.

Image Credit: Lillie Marshall

Image credit: J Mayer Photography

“Cool Fishtown is where Philly’s culinary, art, and music trends take off. A magnet for hipsters and creative types, the neighborhood marks the first Fridays of the month by opening galleries and studios along Frankford Avenue to the public. Fishtown vibrant nightlife includes hip bistros, beer gardens, and a retro arcade. Indie bands perform at the landmark Johnny Brenda’s, a lauded gastropub.”

“The history of Fishtown begins with the Lenape Native Americans, who called the area Shackamaxon. In the early 1600’s, Swedes, German, Dutch, and English settled on scattered plots of land, and on April 23, 1683, William Penn negotiated a land exchange to acquire Shackamaxon.

In the early 1700s, English businessman Anthony Palmer purchased a large tract of land that he named Kensington after a suburb of London. This was combined with Shackamaxon. The Consolidation Act of 1854 brought the area into the present city limits. Legend has it that Charles Dickens named the area Fishtown after seeing the fish sold in the open-air farmer’s market on Girard Avenue.”(Free Library of Philadelphia).

Image credit: HELLOLAROUX