Personally, I would dissuade anyone I loved from living at 19th and Thompson. I'd rather be WROng then Right.....get it?

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I live on the other side of ridge. No, I would not categorize that area as safe.

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I rode by that area several times on my bike recently (most recently about five hours ago) taking pictures.

There's a lot of open space in that area, great swaths of vacant lots where derelict housing was knocked down. There's a remarkable combination of squalor and rebirth there. It will take a certain kind of person to live in that neighborhood, where I suspect there is considerable fear and resentment (on the part of some residents) of gentrification and/or displacement by the Temple University campus expansion occurring just east and north of there.

There's a really gorgeous mural around a block away on Ridge Avenue. Here's a link to a picture.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lblanchard/1173725145/

Here's another shot that gives a sense of the vacant space. This is a few blocks northeast of 19th and Thompson.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lblanchard/1174577508/

Not knowing anything about you (such as your age, gender, physical size and fitness, street smarts, etc.), I would suggest that you spend some time driving, biking, walking the area. And I would note, as Malloy pointed out, that in the recent past 19th and Thompson was pretty much at the center of one node of gun activity. No one has bothered me, but I'm an obviously eccentric and rather large middle-aged lady on a bike with a camera and a "Block Captain" t-shirt, and I think that may have something to do with why they leave me alone.

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Where is the rebirth in that immediate area? pics?

Sorry -- I've been mostly taking pictures of murals, and just grabbed the church shot because the "wee kirk i' the fields" look struck me.

However, there is a block of new housing directly west of the church (in other words, there is church-parsonage-new housing all in a row). I went back a couple days later to look at the church and it's the damndest thing -- two completely cleared city blocks, one bordered by fine old trees, between the church and the Ridge, and these brand-new houses next to the church (which I believe is on Oxford Street, but I could be wrong). There's one of those little minor streets bisecting one of the blocks, and the teeny-tiny kids were riding their scooters and big wheels there.

If you click around in my photostream to the Ridge on the Rise mosaic/garden, you'll see additional new construction in the background. (ETA: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lblanchard/1174581642/ )

As I said, it would take a very particular kind of person to move there. But I get land lust just looking at those empty blocks.

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I believe the church is at 20th and Jefferson-The same type of new suburban-looking twins they just built on the 1500 blocks of 19th, Uber and 20th are going below Jefferson in between 19th and 20th, and above CBMoore, again between 19th and 20th.
That big open triangle between Ridge and 20th has great potential- any ideas?

I think you're right about the church. There are new houses, might be twins, on that same block.

Is the triangle the one with the Ridge on the Rise mural? Or is that at 21st?

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At 2:13 p.m., police found Sidney Anthony, of the 1300 block of Ridge Avenue, with a gun shot wound to the head in an alley behind a Chinese restaurant on the 1200 block of North 16th Street in Francisville, about a block from St. Joseph's Prep. The 55-year-old was dead at the scene, officials said.

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No, I think that's at 21st.

Yes, the very glittery and colorful and frequently overgrown Ridge on the Rise thing is 21st and Ridge.

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