3. PA, Philadelphia: Germantown 21st c

The disconnect between Germantown's past and current buildings and population show as pockets of wealth and maintenance occurs where there are historically significant buildings. Today, the neighborhood remains quite poor, with more than half of the population making less than $25,000 a year. This can be contrasted with adjacent institutions such as Germantown Friends School, a private Quaker K-12 school whose tuition is approximately $25,000 a year. Long exacerbated problems of decline - vacancy, blight, crime, racism, depopulation - have contributed to the recent closing of Germantown High School along with other public schools across Philadelphia, raising questions of what happens next for such a large building. The African-American population, once newcomers, has its own identity in the neighborhood. Reparations and revision of history are emerging. In 2009, documents from the Chew family revealed past dealings with the slave trade in southern states of Maryland and Delaware. Their estate, the historic Cliveden has long stood as the site of the Revolutionary War's Battle of Germantown. With this recent news a revision of history is undergoing between black reparations groups at odds with the traditional telling of the neighborhood's history. Other sites in the neighborhood, such as what is perhaps Philadelphia's oldest African American burial grounds, is under dispute between PHA housing developments and African Americans in the neighborhood.