Amanda Shulman's Fourth Restaurant Just Took Rittenhouse's 84-Year Pharmacy Space

Amanda Shulman and Alex Kemp signed a lease on 1736 Spruce Street, the southeast corner of 18th and Spruce, for their fourth restaurant under Libbie Loup Hospitality. The couple already runs Her Place Supper Club on Sansom Street, My Loup on Walnut Street, and Pine Street Grill overlooking Fitler Square. They filed a liquor license application with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board this month, transferred from the closed Le Pain Quotidien on Walnut Street and held under Her Place's corporate name. Shulman told the Philadelphia Inquirer the concept itself is still undecided.

The space carries real history. Barclay Pharmacy ran there from 1959 to 2023, after founder Bernard Friedman moved it across the street from its original 1939 location on the same corner, 84 years on that corner between the two addresses. His son Russell Friedman took over in 1974 and ran it largely alone until closing. The building itself is a mid-19th-century Italianate townhouse with past owners including the Wetherill and Wanamaker families, currently wrapped in scaffolding. A pharmacy fit-out hands a restaurant group no hood and no grease trap. Signing the lease before locking a concept is a bet on the block and the operator's own track record.

For Rittenhouse landlords holding onto long-tenured, oddball retail space, this is the tenant profile to watch for. A local operator with three restaurants already running within a half mile will take on a full concept conversion without a name locked in, because the group's own track record and the walkable radius carry the deal. Shulman said the plan is to keep every project within a 15-minute walk of home. That radius is turning into Center City's tightest lease market, one signing at a time.