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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.
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.
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.
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