"There is no Fairmount without Bookhaven. We are happy and humbled to carry on its legacy." That was the sign taped to the door back in May, after a married couple from the neighborhood bought the shuttered bookstore at 2202 Fairmount and promised to bring it back. It is September now, and if you check Bookhaven's own website today, it still says what it's said since that promise was made: reopening summer 2026.
Summer, by any calendar you want to use, is over. Directly across the street, a haunted house with a hard opening date is already selling tickets by the half hour. That gap between a promise and a date is the actual story of Fairmount Avenue this fall, and it is worth walking the corridor with that distinction in mind before you decide what's really changed.
What You Can Actually Walk Into Right Now
Start with what's real and open, no asterisks. At 1833 Fairmount Ave, Manong has been running for months now, a Filipino-American steakhouse from chef Chance Anies, who built his following at Tabachoy before deciding a full sit-down restaurant belonged on this block rather than in a hotter zip code. It is not a pop-up or a soft launch. It is a restaurant that made a choice about where it wanted to be.
Nearby, Figs closed for good this spring after 25 years in business, the last decade of them under chef Salvatore De Cristofaro, who told the Inquirer he wanted to leave on his own terms. "You've got to leave when you're on top," he said. Landi Prendi bought the space, targeted an end-of-May opening, and by all signs hit it: Valentina Italian Ristorante is open now, serving a from-scratch menu that includes lamb shank, duck breast, seafood pasta, and tiramisu, with dinner service daily from 5 to 11 p.m. and brunch on weekends. That is a business you can walk into tonight, not a plan you're waiting on.
The Sign That Still Says Summer
Bookhaven is the harder case, and it deserves an honest accounting rather than a hopeful one. The store operated for nearly 40 years under Rolf and Ricci Andeer before closing abruptly in March, a decision the Andeers attributed to their own declining health. In May, the building sold to Eliza and Ilia Ovechkin, a couple who live in the neighborhood, along with Eliza's father Marc Brilliant. Eliza told the Inquirer the goal was to reopen by summer.
That target has now passed without a public update, at least none that's made it onto the store's own site. This isn't a knock on the new owners. Taking over a two-story, tens-of-thousands-of-books operation is not a fast process, and nobody who has watched Fairmount's retail turnover this year would bet against them. But if you've been telling people the bookstore is back, it's worth checking again before you repeat it. As of this writing, it isn't yet.
Where Thirsty Dice Used to Be
The space at 1642 Fairmount Ave has been empty since Thirsty Dice closed, and its absence registered on the block because it had been a gathering spot, not just another storefront. Queen & Rook, the board-game bar that built a following on South Street under co-founders Edward Garcia and Jeannie Wong, announced in May it would take over the space. Garcia has described the build-out as leaning into a retrofuturist look, drawing on 1970s space-age design and solarpunk rather than the medieval-fantasy theme of the original location, while keeping the core of what made the South Street spot work: a large board-game library, a cocktail program, and a menu close to the flagship's, with the possibility of small plates and video games depending on how the layout shakes out. It is not open yet, but unlike Bookhaven, it hasn't missed a self-announced date, because it never gave one.
The Rite Aid Site Isn't Just a Parking Lot Anymore
If you've walked past 20th and Fairmount and wondered what's happening behind the fencing, the answer has a name and a number attached to it. Developer Yoav Shiffman bought the former Rite Aid site out of the chain's bankruptcy auction and, as of January 2026, was preparing to break ground on a three-story building of roughly 15,000 square feet, with 28 apartments above about 9,000 square feet of retail split into five commercial spaces ranging from 1,300 to 3,000 square feet, some combinable. What's worth noting isn't the size, it's the intent behind it: the plan calls for ground-floor tenants that generate steady daily foot traffic from people who already live here, not destination retail pulling crowds in from other parts of the city. That's a specific bet about what this stretch of Fairmount Avenue is for, and it lines up with everything else that's opened, sold, or moved in this year.
The One Date You Can Actually Put on a Calendar
Everything above involves some degree of waiting. Eastern State Penitentiary doesn't. Halloween Nights, now in its 35th season, runs select evenings from October 2 through November 7 this year, with five haunted houses, historic tours, themed bars, and live performances staged inside a real 10-acre former prison at 22nd and Fairmount. The Fair Chance Beer Garden, run in partnership with Triple Bottom Brewing, returns as part of the lineup, and it's worth knowing what that partnership actually does: it creates paying jobs for people who've experienced homelessness or incarceration, which is a different kind of programming than most Halloween attractions bother with.
Tickets sell in half-hour entry windows and the popular ones do sell out, so if you're planning to go on a weekend in October, buying ahead is the difference between getting in and standing on the sidewalk. Weeknights tend to be lighter if you'd rather skip the crowd.
Two Saturdays, One Block
Last Saturday gave a preview of how packed this corridor can get once fall programming stacks up. The Fairmount Fall Fest ran from noon to 8 p.m. along the 1700 to 1900 blocks of Fairmount Avenue, with more than 50 artists and vendors, food trucks, a beer garden, and a kids' zone. At the same time, a few blocks over at 2201 Fairmount, the long-running Phila Flea Market set up around Eastern State with more than 150 vendors selling vintage clothing, records, and furniture, an event that's been anchored at this corner since 1990. Two different organizers, two different crowds, one stretch of avenue, the same afternoon. If you missed it, we put together a broader look at this fall's flea and vintage market calendar around the city, including how the Fairmount market fits into the wider rotation.
What This Actually Adds Up To
None of this is a story about decline, and none of it is a story about a neighborhood suddenly becoming something it wasn't. It's a corridor where a handful of things happened at different speeds. A restaurant with two decades of ambition behind it opened on schedule. A haunted house with 35 years of institutional muscle behind it has a date nobody needs to double check. And a beloved bookstore, bought by people who clearly meant it when they taped that sign to the door, is still working through what it takes to actually reopen. All three of those things can be true on the same block at the same time, and the only mistake is treating a promise and a confirmed date as if they carry the same weight.
If you're the kind of person who tracks this stuff neighborhood by neighborhood, storefront by storefront, that's exactly the kind of local read the team at Philly Home Collective lives for. Whether you're already a neighbor here or just like knowing what's actually happening three blocks from the museum steps, we're always glad to talk Fairmount.
