BIG DREAMS aren't exactly new to Girard Avenue.

Way back in the 1820s, the street's namesake, Stephen Girard, had the grand vision to build a monumental boarding school for fatherless boys.

To see just how monumental, mark your calendar for a Thursday between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., when the gargantuan Founder's' Hall at Girard College (intersection of Girard and Corinthian) is open free to walk-in visitors. How big is it? Let's just say that the rain gutters along the roof are six feet wide.

Since the 1860s, Girard Avenue has also drawn religious pilgrims chasing the biggest dream imaginable: a miracle, via prayers to the late Philadelphia Bishop John Neumann.

In 1977, the Vatican certified three miraculous cures and made Bishop Neumann a saint. And the faithful say that the intercessions keep coming at the National Shrine of Saint John Neumann (5th and Girard, open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.)

Yes, that's Saint John Neumann himself on view in the glass casket under the altar. As it turns out, unusual interment is something of a Girard Avenue theme. Sixteen blocks west, the body of Stephen Girard is entombed in a marble sarcophagus in the lobby of Founder's Hall.

Vision quest, '08

What's new in the big-dreams department is a flurry of entrepreneurial moxie along the length of Girard Avenue.

After decades of blight, the whole street seems to be abuzz with ambitious business plans - for outfits that run the gamut from shops and restaurants to a mom-and-pop fish-ecology enterprise that aims to establish the Good Housekeeping seal of sustainable seafood.

"It's energizing to be here," says Spanish-born Nicole Marcote, a budding retail mogul who co-owns a fancy-foods store called Quince (209 W. Girard) with her mother, who's a public-school Spanish teacher and has just opened the stylish vintage consignment shop Reverie (205 W. Girard) with a different group of partners.

Among the scores of other eager-beaver entrepreneurs that the Daily News found operating on the avenue between Frankford Avenue and the Schuylkill is Derick Warren, a muscular former bartender, restaurant manager and casino worker - "I did it all," he says - who now owns a genteel coffeehouse called the Coffee House (113 W. Girard), in the shadow of the Market-Frankford El tracks.

This summer's most genteel touch is Warren's homemade simple syrup for sweetening customers' iced drinks.

Kensington rising

The Coffee House is situated on the block where the Market-Frankford El meets SEPTA's Route 15 trolley, at the crossroads of the cluster of gentrifying neighborhoods that some hip young things are now calling Port Fishington.

Two blocks west, enterprising Fishtown native Amanda Bossard (Girls' High, class of '92) has just opened the seafood shop Otolith (143-47 W. Girard Ave.) with her husband and former school chum, Murat Aritan. "We met at Meredith. I was 8. He was 10," she says.

More recently, they've both fished commercially in Alaska. The two own a 65-foot boat, the F.V. Sunset, from which they're now shipping restaurant-quality fish across the country for sale at the shop and by special order (otolithonline.com).

And that's just the first frame of the young couple's feature-length dream.

Bossard and Aritan plan to add a casual-dining restaurant to their Girard storefront. (Before that, look for them selling beer-battered halibut sandwiches on the Parkway during 4th of July festivities). They also intend to become a national watchdog for sustainable seafood: Keep your eyes peeled for the Otolith seal of approval, already on their own canned salmon.

A couple blocks west of Otolith, we come to Mr. Moxie himself: Joe Matisoff, a buttoned-down banker with 35 years in the business. At age 59, instead of resting on his laurels and his money bags, Matisoff decided to rehab a dilapidated Kensington landmark and - here's the moxie part - start a brand new indie bank.

One homey little extra at Hyperion Bank (199 W. Girard Ave.) is the plate of free cookies at the counter, baked on-site. A bigger attraction is the spectacular stained-glass window on the ceiling of the institution's 2nd floor offices - the jewel in the crown of the building's award-winning historical renovation.

For a peek, take the lobby elevator to 2, where you'll also find what Matisoff calls "the CEO pop-up button" - a silver bell to summon help if there's no receptionist at the desk. Since his office is the nearest one to the bell, he says, "I'm the one who pops up."

Have trolley, will travel

The neighborhood around Quince, Otolith and the bank has recently become a well-traveled annex to trendy Northern Liberties (traveled, especially, by arty young people on bicycles), with enough restaurants, retailers and art galleries to be a destination in its own right. See our day tripper's map on Pages 4-5.

More clandestinely, the rest of Girard Avenue is also starting to patch together a resurgence, with new policing, lighting, tree-planting and other efforts falling into line along the route of the restored Route 15 trolley.

While a lot of the territory is still "very much in the urban-pioneer category," according to Rojer Kern, a planner for the City Commerce Department, the tea leaves look auspicious. "It's just starting to take off," he says.

On this front, the big dreamers are the members of the Girard Coalition, a collective of neighborhood groups along the length of the avenue. Along with brass-tack politicking, they've hung decorative banners on lampposts and issued design guidelines for sprucing up storefronts.

Cornerstone Market & Produce (19 W. Girard Ave.), a high-end neighborhood grocery store, is a poster child for the new look that the coalition's after, with a colorful cloth awning and an inviting chalkboard menu. Metal security gates and boarded up windows are specified under the guidelines to be Girard Glamour Don'ts.

Outer boundaries

One worthwhile destination in the avenue's edgier precincts is Tequila Sunrise Records (525 W. Girard), specializing in used and new vinyl LPs - including some from the ambitious young owner's own Tequila Sunrise label.

If you're into obscurities like reissued LPs by the '60s psychedelic rocker Elkin Koray, congratulations, you've reached heaven. When he came up with his business concept a few years ago, owner Anthony Vogdes says, "my thing was to be a boutique-y specialty record store."

Like a boutique wine shop, Tequila Sunrise has a neatly typed précis attached to nearly every record in its inventory, detailing its provenance and character. Vogdes, a former record store clerk, says that he cribbed the idea from the hyper-organized record stores of Tokyo, where these helpful mini liner-notes are common. "I feel like it's full disclosure."

The men's clothing store EndustrE (2826 W. Girard), run by an entrepreneurial start-up team of Muslim artists and designers, is another boutique retailer on an unlikely block.

EndustrE's chic store fixtures and urbane clothing labels - including Z-Brand shirts (as seen on Usher and Will Ferrell) and Kentucky jeans (as sold by Southern California's Fred Segal) - would be more at home on Walnut Street than out here at the frontiers of Urban Pioneerland.

A lot of the inventory is exclusive to the store (and the affiliated Kamouflage at the Cheltenham Square Mall), since EndustrE's keen-eyed buyers try to stock emerging brands that no one else is carrying locally. The look is hard to classify, bridging urban and LA style. "I think the right word is contemporary-artsy with an edge to it," says store clerk Hamid Holloman, one emerging designer to watch.

A milestone - and a deal

This summer the Althea Gibson Community Education and Tennis Center (1000-1038 W. Girard Ave.), North Philly's little athletic center that could, celebrates its fifth anniversary.

As big dreams go for giving kids hope, this one's right up there with Stephen Girard's colossal old school. Founder and director Bronal Harris basically willed the modern five-court tennis gym into existence in June 2003. She and it now serve hundreds of 8- to 17-year-olds, many from public housing nearby.

In addition to tennis drills, the center teaches math, reading, science, chess, Scrabble, nutrition, gardening and graphics.

The downside to being a beacon for the neighborhood? Harris says that some enthusiasts have taken to cutting holes in the fence to use Althea Gibson's three outdoor tennis courts after hours.

To stem the tide and raise much-needed cash, she's inviting any adult who donates $50 or more to use the center's pristine outdoor courts on evenings and weekends this summer - in good conscience and with the lights on at night. Players must reserve court time a day in advance; call 215-360-7453 for more details. *