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Eyes on the city's skyline

Web site offers latest -- and highest -- Phila. views.

Maule on the roof of the Loews,the former PSFS building.
Maule on the roof of the Loews,the former PSFS building.Read more

Look up.

Brad Maule has been doing it for five years, documenting the planning and construction of dozens of Philadelphia's high-rise buildings on his Web site, www.phillyskyline.com.

The site is updated daily with information on buildings that have been proposed or are under construction, and it includes commentary about city life, politics and sports. Maule posted 2,000 photos of the construction of the Comcast Center.

He says his site draws 2,500 to 3,000 visitors a day. Many are in the commercial real estate business, which he says views the site as an information resource.

"He has provided great commentary on what's going on through his photo essays, his guest columns and other types of forums," said Andy Kaplin, a developer who said he regularly perused the site to check out his competition.

Justin Petersmeyer, director of sales and marketing for the Residences at Two Liberty Place, invited Maule a month ago to take shots of the views from all over Two Liberty. Maule launched a section last week on Two Liberty featuring the photos he took there. Petersmeyer said he did not have to pay for the spread.

"With the Internet and digital world, we can update photos quicker than with traditional print," he said. "Brad has the ability to show photos that have not been used in any current marketing materials."

Kaplin already has on the site a photo tour of his seven-story condominium development, 22 Front, in Old City. The tour shows the building's views of the river, the Ben Franklin Bridge, and the skyline.

Kaplin did not pay a fee either. Instead he volunteered to take Maule on a tour, and Maule said he returned the gesture by featuring Kaplin's project - using the photos Maule had taken.

"I'm a real estate junkie, and Brad provided just a daily outlook on what's going on in Philadelphia," Kaplin said. "He was one of the first people to visually put together a database of existing or proposed major real estate projects in town."

Through that database, which Maule calls "The Skinny," Kaplin said, "I got to view the competition and what others were doing."

The traffic to his site has allowed Maule, 30, to take in a few dollars from advertisers. He began posting Google ads last year and is now phasing in local advertising. He has also received commissions for his photos from marketing and engineering firms. Last year the revenue amounted to about $8,000. It's all profit, he said, because the site has virtually no overhead costs.

"I've been pleasantly surprised," Maule said of the site's growing popularity. "In a sense, it justifies the long hours that I put into it.

"At the same time, I would be doing this anyway," he said. "I'm just happy that people are finding use in what I'm doing."

Maule moved to Philadelphia from the mountain town of Tyrone, Pa., in 2000, the same year that the idea to build what would eventually become Philadelphia's tallest building - the Comcast Center - was born.

Maule said the discussion between Liberty Property Trust and Robert A.M. Stern Architects really started in 2000 for One Pennsylvania Plaza, which was later renamed the Comcast Center.

"I was very excited about the Comcast building because I would get to watch a skyscraper go up," he said, "seeing it go from an idea to a nearly 1,000-foot-tall skyscraper."

In addition to the Comcast Center, his other favorite building is the Loews Hotel in the former PSFS Building at 12th and Market.

"The architecture of the Loews Hotel is bar none the best in Philly," Maule said in an interview on the 33d floor of the tower, which is among his main hangouts.

Maule spends about three hours a day working on the site. Last year he started filing the archives of previous articles.

He graduated from Shippensburg University in 2000 with a journalism degree. His pen name, B Love, which he used for a travel column he wrote for the college newspaper, stuck.

He makes no bones about what has brought him his career and audience.

"I do what I do because of the Internet," Maule said. "This job has afforded me, in addition to great flexibility, a great window into how the Internet works."

He supports himself with a part-time job for the Web-hosting company Datarealm Internet Services.

Maule said Datarealm closed its office in the Architects Building at 717 S. 17th St. in 2003 as the advent of high-speed Internet allowed employees to work from home.

Maule, who spends a considerable amount of time dealing with developers and architects, has Tourette's syndrome. He said the neurological disorder had not hampered his work. Among his symptoms are frequent blinking, clearing his throat, clenching his leg muscles, and jerking his neck and back.

"Yes, it can be life-altering," Maule said, "but you can also live a perfectly normal life with it, too. As for me, it isn't crippling ... but it's definitely always present."

In May, Maule bought a three-bedroom rowhouse in Fishtown, made partly possible by the proceeds from phillyskyline.com.

His days are often spent walking around the city taking photographs. He bought his camera two years ago, and he took most of the images that appear on his site.

"Photography is such a big part of what I do," Maule said. "I've always got my camera with me."

Maule had his aviator sunglasses on and his digital camera around his neck on a recent afternoon while walking about. He hardly ever drives. His feet get him almost everywhere, and when they can't, SEPTA does.

He says he gets e-mails from soldiers in Iraq and from people who grew up in Philadelphia and moved elsewhere.

"The e-mails from soldiers in Iraq say, 'Thanks for bringing me home while I'm over here in the desert,' " Maule said. "The ones from those who have moved away often say, 'Thank you for posting that neighborhood photo essay. It brought back memories.' "

Maule said he wants the site to be more than something completely worshipful of building. And it includes plenty of commentary that takes issue with many of the city's projects.

His site, he said, "gives an honest look at the city - warts and all.

"It's telling the story you see, and not telling the story people want to hear."