BY Courtney DuChene
Nov. 11, 2024
Brady Ettinger has long lived in South Kensington. A DJ who works under the name DJ SYLO, he appreciates the neighbor’s gritty, artistic feel — hip restaurants and coffee shops dotting the street corners, loft apartments built inside refurbished factories.
So, when he began his latest apartment hunt, he was surprised how corporate his choices felt — steel beams, glass facades, amenities like pools and fancy gyms. Spaces that say “office park” rather than “cozy living room.” You’ve probably seen a number of these buildings go up in Philly over the past few years. Nearly 80 percent of new rentals that went on the market citywide in 2023 were high-end. The boom is especially apparent in Olde Kensington, and its neighbors Northern Liberties and Fishtown, where more than 10,000 apartment units are expected to be built between 2023 and 2025.
“A lot of these apartment buildings that I was looking at, they felt almost like luxury fortresses,” he says.
But there was one newcomer that didn’t seem so soulless: Ray Philly. The newish (last year), 110-unit apartment complex, located on North American Street, was built by Russian-American art collector Dasha Zhukova as part of a real estate venture that aims to build apartments designed to promote community, especially amongst artists. Her flagship location in Philly features artist studios and a maker’s space, in addition to apartments. (Ray Harlem technically started development first, but Philly’s location opened first).
Ettinger used to walk past Ray Philly while it was under construction. A Google search led him to the complex’s website, where he connected with the company’s mission. He moved in a little more than a year ago. Now, he’s the building’s unofficial resident DJ. They’ve hired him to spin at a few events.
Figure: Ray Philly exterior, photo by Ethan O’Grady
“It was clear they wanted to not just be near cool restaurants or anything, but actually play an active role in the creative community in the neighborhood,” he says. “I realized that there were some really amazing people behind the project, and I reached out to them and I just let them know who I was. Immediately I thought there could be something there for us to not only just connect, but actually create together.”
Zhukova was born in Moscow to oil tycoon Alexander Zhukov and molecular biologist Elena Zhukova (who is now married to Rupert Murdoch). She grew up in the United States before first marrying Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich; after divorcing him, she later married Stavros Niarchos III, scion of a Greek shipping family.
Zhukova has long been involved in various business and philanthropic ventures — launching the clothing label Kova & T, serving as editor-in-chief of the fashion magazine Pop — before making her mark on the art world. She co-founded the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow in 2008, and its corresponding Garage Magazine in 2011. She founded Ray in 2021.
Like Ettinger, Zhukova was seeing new residential developments go up, both in the U.S. and abroad, that were less than inspiring. These buildings were disconnected from the places Zhukova saw people actually spending time. She recalls people spending hours in the galleries and cafe at the Garage Museum . Visitors who came to see art wanted to stay and talk with friends, surrounded by beautiful things.
She wanted to bring that energy to residential spaces, especially because so many people have reported feeling lonely in the wake of the pandemic. An American Psychiatric Association report from this year shows that one third of adults reported feeling lonely every week.
“What really struck her was that they wanted to just hang out and chat … and meet friends and just spend time in an inspiring place,” says Anais Cooper-Hackman, director of programming and partnerships at Ray Philly. “She got to thinking, how can we adapt this for a residential context?”
So, Zhukova decided to build spaces where people can live and create. She built a team of women architects and investors and started looking for up-and-coming neighborhoods, with creative communities that might be a fit for the brand. She was living in New York, so an opportunity to redevelop the National Black Theatre, to include mixed-income housing, seemed like a good fit. She also had her eyes on Portland, Austin, Nashville and Denver, the Wall Street Journal reported. Philly’s up-and-coming River Wards — which Forbes called “America’s Hottest Neighborhood” in 2018 — already housed multiple art galleries, so it also fit the bill.
Ray Philly opened in 2023. The 110-unit building has a facade of textured, red brick. Painted on the upper left corner is the phrase “When Under One Sky,” the work of Philly-based sculpture and text artist Michelle Lopez. The ground floor features six artists studios, which the company leases out.
Ray is designed so residents will actually meet their neighbors. An open concept lobby, dominated by an emerald U-shaped couch, brings together the group kitchen, coworking spaces and lounge. Mid-century modern furniture gives the whole space a Brady Bunch feel. Strewn about are various art books. Ettinger will spin records casually on the roofdeck to draw people outside in the summers. He also performed at the building’s opening party.
“It was electric,” he says. “I got to DJ in a creative way. I played all sorts of stuff and took chances.”
Zhukova’s team curated artwork from Philly-based artists to decorate the walls. Overlooking the rust-colored staircase in the lobby is a triptych wall hanging depicting a Black woman gazing over her shoulder. She’s surrounded by lush, green plants. Ray commissioned the piece, called “Find What Grounds You” from Philly artist Marian Bailey. The Commonweal Gallery, five blocks east of Ray, worked with the team on its production and installation.
Figure: Marian Bailey’s “Find What Grounds You,” photo by William Jess Laird
“We worked with not only independent local artists, but also artists that are working with galleries here in the city, so that we could support the full ecosystem of art making and collecting,” Cooper-Hackman says.
The building has a maker space for residents, where they’re encouraged to get messy. Splash around some paints. Start work on a clay project.
“If you’re a painter, and instead of having a whole artist studio space that you have to pay for, you can just go down to the makerspace at Ray Philly with your materials, and you’re free to make a mess there,” Cooper-Hackman says. “We think that everybody is creative.”
No formal training is required. But if you feel you need a little guidance, Ray’s partnered with InLiquid Art and Design, a gallery that’s across the street, to host workshops for residents so they can learn from professionals and try new techniques. This fall, photographer Jaime Alvarez is teaching a cyanotype workshop, and Scott Holford is leading one on screen printing.
“Community-based support for artists and craftspeople is an essential component of a healthy society. A great way to cultivate community support is to bring arts programming to alternative spaces — outside of museums, galleries and academic settings,” says Sam Davis, communications manager at nearby InLiquid, a 25-year-old art consultancy, gallery and artists hub and Ray Philly neighbor. “Hosting arts programming in residential spaces allows the public to interact with or create artwork in a setting they’re familiar with.”
On a Thursday in October, people dressed in jean jackets and knit hats mill about North American street, wandering in and out of Ray’s studios. Some sip wine out of plastic cups. It’s Second Thursdays, a project Crane Arts, The Clay Studio, Ray Philly and other cultural institutions on North American Street created to promote local artists and showcase how the neighborhood has become an arts hub. Forman Arts Initiative also recently acquired the 2200 block of North American Street to build a community oriented, arts campus.
The programming exposes residents to the work of local artists. One exhibition in The Clay Studio features artists with traditional and experimental takes on dinner plates. An artist in the show paints in one of Ray’s spaces.
In Ulises, an art bookstore that occupies one of Ray’s studios, people shuffle through a deck of cards with prompts that encourage emotional exploration. Downstairs, people watch a film screening. Both are part of The Erotic Project, a multimedia collaboration between Philly artists and others around the U.S. that explores how people are caring for themselves, physically and mentally, post-pandemic.
“I think it’s been helping connect the greater North American Street area,” Lauren Downing, one of the co-founders of Ulises, says of Second Thursdays. The store has been in the Fishtown/Olde Kensington area since it opened in 2016 — first working out of Icebox curator Tim Belknap’s garage and later as a pop-up in Icebox itself. They hope Ray will be a longer-term home. The love that the studio has a garage door they can open to let the public in, a nod to their origins.
“Since May, we’ve noticed it gaining more and more traction,” Downing continues.
Next door, in Ulises’ gallery, snapshots — of a child sitting in a fountain, of a woman staring at the ocean from a rocky shore, of a man crossing the street — are placed haphazardly on a white wall. There’s text pasted to the wall, too, posing questions like, What does he like to do? What will she be when she grows up? Does he have someone to love?
Figure: Ray Philly entrance, photo by Peter Sherno
The exhibition is called KLUMP! and it’s by Philly-based artist Ken Lum. “When I take public transit or whatever I’m always speculating. If I see someone on the bus, for example, and I can see they’ve had a long day, or they have a very tough job. I can see it on their body. I can see sometimes it even deforms their body. And so I always ask myself, I wonder what job that person has, I wonder how long it takes that person to get home,” Lum says.
“The show is premised on these full figure pictures of strangers … and then I would just ask a question.”
Some might look at Ray’s model — bringing art- and community-oriented developments to cities — and see the potential for gentrification. Artists are often blamed for kickstarting neighborhood revitalization and causing rents to rise, though research linking the two is mixed.
Ray Philly is a market-rate development. Their rents — $1,400-$1,500 for studios and $1,600-$1,800 for a one bedroom — are in-line with average rents in Olde Kensington, which are $1,287 for studios and $1,880 for one beds. Ray’s apartments are cheaper than those in neighboring Fishtown and Northern Liberties, where average rents are $2,112 for 835 square feet and $2,195 for 879 square feet, respectively.
Cooper-Hackman is sensitive to concerns neighbors might have about artists moving in and rents rising. She emphasizes that the building is not just a home for artists. Anyone can live there. It’s more about creating a space where people can connect with their neighbors and express themselves creatively.
One way Ray Philly has tried to do that is through working with South Kensington Community Partners (SKCP), a registered community organization for the neighborhood. SKCP is based out of one of Ray’s artist studios. They bring community members into the space as the host of zoning board meetings and other events. SKCP also helps people living in the neighborhood address challenges, like rising property tax assessments, that could cause people to move away. SKCP did not respond to requests for comment.
“We don’t want to come in and redefine everything,” Cooper-Hackman says. “That’s why the public programming is important to me. I want to offer people the opportunity to come in and to meet us and to experience something new.”
Ray is in the process of expanding to other cities. Their next project, Ray Harlem, will house New York City’s oldest Black theater company, the National Black Theatre. It includes 222 units of mixed-income housing. The building opens in December. Ray Phoenix and Ray Nashville are in the pipeline.
“There’s a lot of opportunity to build beautiful buildings that people want to live in,” Cooper-Hackman says. “If that part of your experience in the world is softened and smoothed out a little bit and you feel cared for in that way, then you have a little bit more psychic space to explore your creative pursuits, or get work done, or whatever it is you spend your time on.”
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