Life high above Center City

Snow began falling as afternoon slid into evening. With the lights of Center City twinkling around and below her, Jane Miles stood by the vast expanse of windows that line one side of her new 27th-floor condominium in Symphony House, watching.

"The snowflakes look so big up here," she said, more than a little awe in her voice. "With all the cars whizzing by in the streets below, it's like being in another world."

A world high above Philadelphia that, even a few years ago, Miles and her husband would have been very exclusive residents of.

But as condo towers grow more commonplace in the city, taller, well-heeled buyers are choosing to feather their nests in the clouds - or as close as several hundred feet above street level can get them.

High-rises have been sprouting in Center City since the mid-1980s, when Willard Rouse breached the brim of William Penn's hat on City Hall with One Liberty Place. Today, the city's tallest residential building is right next door - the 848-foot-tall Two Liberty Place, which now has condos on the uppermost 20 of its 58 floors.

There are about 25 condo buildings with 10 or more stories from the Delaware River to Rittenhouse Square, said Realtor Allan Domb, who has specialized in high-rise condos for 27 years.

The higher you go, the pricier the living. In Center City, average condo costs range from $275 a square foot in Old City to $1,200 on Rittenhouse Square for the biggest spaces on the top floors. A view of the square could add $25,000 to the cost of a $1 million-plus condo, Domb said.

In December, Jane Miles, 64, and husband Michael, 66, moved to their perch at Broad and Pine Streets, a few stories below the Symphony House summit. But living the high life was not new to them, though the couple had spent 25 years on five acres in Villanova.

"We waited at Waterfront Square until Symphony House was ready," said Jane Miles; the couple owns four Waterfront Square units as an investment. The Mileses considered staying by the river but decided they'd rather be in the thick of downtown Philadelphia as well as above it.

Jane Miles worked with a decorator friend and photos from designer magazines to "meet the challenge of creating a new space" that won't obstruct any of the views.

Over time, a particular view might become just part of the scenery.

These days, Howard Needleman acknowledged, when he looks out the 17th-story windows of his home in the 22-story east tower of the Barclay on Rittenhouse Square, he gazes not at the park but at South Philadelphia.

That's "such a pretty view, a vast area of lights, the stadiums, the oil refineries, the planes taking off and landing," said Needleman, 67, who with his wife, Sandra, 69, moved four years ago to the Barclay after 25 years in a 3,500-square-foot house in "the woods" of Cherry Hill.

"It's not that I ignore it [the [park view]," he said. "I have a room where I read and watch TV and work out, but I'm not as conscious of the view as I was. I see it, but it is no longer brand-new."

Guests see things differently, of course. They spend a lot of time looking out the Needlemans' windows, which offer panoramic views.

Broad vistas aren't the only advantage to living aloft. It's peaceful up there.

"The farther up you live, the more muffled the sounds of the city are," Needleman said. "When we first moved here, we were conscious of what I call Philadelphia crickets - the burglar alarms that sound day and night." After a while, though, from 17 floors up, "you are no longer conscious of them."

Elizabeth Hibbs and William J. O'Brien III bought their penthouse at 1830 Rittenhouse only last month, but from their terrace they already have noticed the difference between life on the street and life above it.

"It seems less noisy than on the street. It's just as quiet inside, even with the doors open," said Hibbs, who is in her early 40s and is chief operating officer of a Bucks County company that makes hyperbaric oxygen chambers.

It's warmer and less windy up there, too, she said.

"Last Sunday night, we were up here most of the day, and then we went down to the street. The wind was howling, and we'd never have known it if we hadn't gone down there."

So far, she said, penthouse living has no downside. Well, maybe one.

"It's just the delivery people," Hibbs said. "Some of them won't come into the living room because they can see how high up we are."

Their penthouse is in "a big, older stone building with its rounded corners. It has so much life and so many stories," she said. "I love history and I love Philadelphia, so I'm trying to restore the penthouse to the way it looked when it was built [in 1912], with crystal chandeliers and sconces, like the old Bellevue."

Working with interior designer Susan Taylor of Yardley's Black-Eyed Susan, they have removed shutters from all the windows in the penthouse, so no views are obscured. In the dining room, one wall is being covered with mirrors so that people on both sides of the table will get the same view of the city.

"I don't think I'll ever get used to the beauty," said O'Brien, a family physician also in his 40s. "It's a light show every night," especially vivid from the terraces of the east and west sides of the penthouse.

"We keep walking from room to room," Hibbs said. "It's like looking at a series of pictures that keep changing."

Though unimpeded views from every direction are what they paid big bucks for, that wasn't the only thing that brought these couples, and thousands of others, to Center City.

The Mileses and the Needlemans are retired empty-nesters. They wanted to be able to walk everywhere, have a large choice of cultural offerings and restaurants, and not worry "about taking care of a big house," Jane Miles said.

They also wanted to be close to friends who had made the same choice.

"It's like a fraternity," Needleman said. "I walk out the door, and I always bump into someone I know and we start talking."

For younger buyers like Hibbs and O'Brien, it's all that and more.

Amid the renovations, "I took the workers out to lunch the other day," O'Brien said. "And as we were walking back across the square, we saw Liz in the window of the penthouse.

"We waved to her, and she waved back."

See video of the city from the 27th floor as one owner talks about "living on the outskirts of heaven." Go to http://go.philly.com/ViewFromAbove

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