"Point Breeze would never be the same without Mamie Nichols, believe me," Philadelphia City Councilwoman - now president - Anna C. Verna said in a 1992 Inquirer profile.

As founder and executive director of the Point Breeze Federation since the 1960s, Mrs. Nichols was credited with revitalizing the South Philadelphia neighborhood bounded by Broad and 23d Streets, Washington Avenue, and Moore Street.

It was not easy.

"You gotta be strong to live in this world," Mrs. Nichols said in that 1992 article. "This world was not made for weak people."

On July 1, Mamie Melton Nichols, 91, died of lung cancer at her home in Point Breeze.

She was honored most recently last year, her daughter Rochelle Solomon said, when Diversified Community Services named its new education building at 22d and Tasker Streets the Mamie Nichols Center.

Born in Norfolk, Va., Mrs. Nichols left William Penn High School in the 1930s to care for her mother, then earned her general equivalency diploma in the 1960s.

The Point Breeze Federation, which Solomon said was a community reaction to the North Philadelphia riots of 1964, was Mrs. Nichols' lifeblood until she retired in 2005.

After raising her children - all of whom graduated from college - she earned a bachelor's degree in social work from Temple University in 1974 and a master's degree in counseling from Antioch University in Ohio in 1977.

In a 1984 Inquirer profile, she was described as "large, straightforward, a go-getter type of woman."

Mrs. Nichols told the reporter that in 1970 "we went around and counted 928 abandoned buildings in the neighborhood. Today we're down to about 60."

Point Breeze, the reporter wrote, "where abandoned houses once outnumbered the trees, now is believed to be the greenest urban neighborhood in the country."

From 1978 to 1983, residents had transformed 51 blocks and 48 vacant lots that were "supposed to die a natural death," Mrs. Nichols said, into a neighborhood of gardens and tree shade.

She and her friend Haroldline Trower, head of the Point Breeze Beautification Committee, worked with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to develop 11 parks and 13 community vegetable gardens, and to line the sidewalks of 18 blocks with trees, window boxes, and curbside planters.

On July 29, 1983, the Horticultural Society named the neighborhood a "Greene Countrie Towne."

Mrs. Nichols said she hoped that one day bus tours would drive through Point Breeze and announce, "This is where low-income people live, with pride and dignity."

In the 1970s the Philadelphia School District had closed Landreth Elementary School at 1201 S. 23d St., where John Wanamaker was reported to have been a student in the 1800s.

For 12 years, Mrs. Nichols sought out private and public investors, successfully enough that in June 1983 the Landreth held its grand opening, offering 51 apartments for low-income seniors.

In December 1983, Mayor W. Wilson Goode appointed her to the Philadelphia Planning Commission.

In 1991, Goode presented her with the Philadelphia Bowl for improving community life in the city.

In 1994, the Friends of Philadelphia Parks honored her at a ceremony in Memorial Hall and the Brandywine Workshop, a visual-arts organization, gave her its fifth annual lifetime achievement award.

A founder in the 1950s of the Home and School Association of the G.W. Childs School on South 17th Street, she was on the boards of the Friends of the Queen Memorial Library on Federal between 22d and 23d Streets, the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, and the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network.

"The whole time I was coming up" in the 1950s, Solomon said, "she worked at nights, cleaning at the electric company, while my dad worked days at the naval base."

In the 1960s, Solomon said, her mother was what is now known as a nonteaching assistant at South Philadelphia High.

"I've lived in Point Breeze all my life," Mrs. Nichols told an interviewer in 1993, "and I don't want to live any place else."

Besides daughter Rochelle Solomon, she is survived by sons Russell Jr., Ronald, Reginald and Richard; daughter Rebecca McJett; 13 grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews. Her husband, Russell Sr., died in 1975.

A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Simon the Cyrenian Episcopal Church, 1401 S. 22d St., Philadelphia.

Contact staff writer Walter F. Naedele at 215-854-5607 or wnaedele@phillynews.com.