Every Block Party in Philadelphia, Mapped

68,553 block party permits, 2006 to 2016. Every single one is on this map. Filter by year. Filter by event type. Zoom in and find your block.

My block in Fairmount held its annual July 4th block party this year. I signed the petition — same as last year, same as the block did for years before I moved in. That got me wondering: how important are block parties in Philadelphia, really? I went looking for the data, and what I found was interesting enough to write up.

Between 2006 and 2016, Philadelphians filed 68,553 permits to close off their blocks and throw a party.

Where the parties are

The dot map is fun to explore, but the per-permit view doesn't tell a neighborhood story. Step back one level and look at the same data aggregated by zip code. Filter by year. Watch the heat move.

What I found

A few patterns jump out.

The top five zip codes for block parties are 19140, 19143, 19132, 19121, and 19134. If you know Philadelphia, you know those zip codes. North Philadelphia. West Philadelphia. The neighborhoods that are majority Black and Hispanic. Whether that's a reflection of community culture, residential density, weather patterns, or something else entirely — I don't know, and I'm not going to guess. I just know where the permits are.

The top ten streets in the city are mostly in North Philadelphia. N 8th, N 7th, N 13th, N Franklin, N 6th, N 9th, N Marshall, N 18th, N 16th, W Huntingdon. These are not wealthy streets. They are streets with rowhouses, double porches, and a tradition of standing outside.

One block — 3500 Ryan Ave, in the Logan neighborhood — had 71 block parties in 10 years. That's an average of 7 per year. I don't know who lives there. I do know that a single block, somewhere in Philadelphia, was closed off for a block party more than 70 times in a decade. There are probably thousands of people who went to a party on that block, who have some memory of the folding tables, the speakers, the kids on bikes.

The 4th of July is the city's block party holiday. On July 4, 2009 alone, 1,168 Philadelphia blocks held a block party — the most in any single day in my data, by a wide margin. The top five days in the data are all 4th of July or Labor Day weekends. When Philadelphians block-party, they block-party on the holidays.

The peak year was 2008, with 7,679 permits. Permits held relatively steady from 2006 to 2012, then dropped to about 5,800-5,900 a year from 2013 onward. I don't know why. The application fee, the rise of police involvement, the permit process getting harder — these are all things that changed in this period. The data doesn't tell me which one.

247 serenades. That's a permit category. Someone in Philadelphia loved someone else enough to get a city permit and close the street for a serenade, and 247 times over 10 years someone did. It's a wonderful piece of data to have.

What I don't know

I don't know who applies. The permit requires 75% of households on the block to sign a petition, so this is a community activity by design — but the applicants' names are redacted from the public version. I don't know which blocks were denied. I don't know what actually happened at the parties. I don't know how many unpermitted block parties happened that I'll never see. All I have is where, when, and what kind.

Philadelphia has roughly 40,000 city blocks. About 1 in 4 of them held at least one permitted block party in this 10-year window. That's a hard number to argue with.

An aside

This article is about data, but block parties are personal for me.

I grew up in Canada, in a suburban cul-de-sac. On July 1st — Canada's 4th of July — the parents on our street would bring out lawn chairs, a few BBQs, snacks, and folding tables to the dead end, the bulb side of the cul-de-sac. No permits. No city paperwork. Just neighbors deciding to be in the same place.

Since I moved to Fairmount, my block has a July 4th block party with a permit each year. I signed the petition last year, and I signed it again this year (2026). It's a core part of my neighborhood experience.

We also have the unofficial version, sporadically every few weeks all summer. Five or ten of us end up meeting in the street in the evening. Someone goes back for wine, someone else produces a bag of chips, and we just talk while the kids play. The only rule is that somebody has to yell "CAR" when a car is coming, because the block isn't officially closed.

The other side of Fairmount life is when the block isn't a party, it's a 311 audit — I wrote about doing a family walk to chase down open abandoned-car tickets in a second Fairmount abandoned-car walk. Same neighborhood, same stroller, very different reason to be out on the sidewalks.