Rittenhouse isn’t just a neighborhood, it’s a lifestyle. Home to hotels, boutiques, top restaurants and high-end shops, this neighborhood buzzes with activity all year long. One of the highest income urban neighborhoods in the country, James Harper was the first to build a home on the square. Built in 1840, the stately home sits at 1811 Walnut Street and is currently home to an outpost of Barney’s New York.

Rittenhouse Square, the one-block square park that lends the neighborhood its name, is popular with young families, readers, and artists. The park hosts festivals and fairs, as well as weekly farmers markets in the spring and summer months. One of five original open space parks planned by Pennsylvania founder William Penn, it has been a gathering place for more than three centuries.

Blocks from busy Market and Broad Streets, the Rittenhouse neighborhood is easily accessible by public transit, connecting to the rest of the city and beyond.  Five bus routes service the neighborhood, as do three rail lines – the BSL, PATCO and SEPTA Regional Rail connecting to Wilmington and Newark Delaware.

Rittenhouse Row – Walnut between Broad and 18^th Streets – features luxe boutiques and trend setting stores, including the first outpost of perennial trend maker Anthropologie. Within in the neighborhood sit many cultural institutions, including the Curtis Institute of Music, the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Rosenbach Museum & Library, Plays & Players, the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum, and 1812 Productions, a small comedy based theater company.

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