Interior Designer in Society Hill

JG Interior Design provides in-home interior design in Society Hill, Philadelphia's oldest residential neighborhood, led by Julia Ginzburg. She helps owners of 18th-century Federal and Georgian townhomes live comfortably inside genuinely historic rooms, usually starting with a Fresh Eyes Visit and a written plan in 48 hours. Serving Society Hill and Philadelphia.

A Society Hill home that is almost there

Society Hill is the most historic residential district in Philadelphia, a dense square of colonial streets between Walnut and Lombard, running east from Washington Square toward the Delaware River. It takes its name from the Free Society of Traders, the merchant group granted this land by William Penn in the 1680s. Walk it today and you are walking past some of the oldest occupied houses in the country: brick Federal and Georgian townhomes, cobblestone lanes like American Street and the alleys off Delancey, the restored market shed at Head House Square, and the colonial churches tucked between the blocks.

The homes here carry real history and real expectations, which is exactly why a generic redesign falls flat. The problem is rarely that a home looks bad. It is a beautiful, serious house where the rooms never fully resolved after the restoration, or where the furniture from the last place sits awkwardly against 230-year-old millwork. You have stopped seeing what is off, yet you feel it every evening.

That is Julia Ginzburg's work: the last twenty percent. Twenty-six years of walking into homes like these and naming the two or three changes that take a place from almost-right to finished. She is based in Huntingdon Valley and works throughout Society Hill and the rest of Philadelphia, in person, room by room.

The Federal and Georgian townhouse stock of Society Hill

The housing stock here is older and more protected than almost anywhere else in the city. Much of it predates the Revolution or followed shortly after, and the neighborhood you see today owes its survival to the urban renewal of the 1950s and 60s, when hundreds of colonial homes were restored rather than torn down and the modernist Society Hill Towers went up alongside them. The result is a small district holding two very different kinds of homes:

• Federal and Georgian townhomes. The signature Society Hill house: brick, two or three bays wide, with fanlight transoms over the door, dentil molding, deep window reveals, wide-plank pine floors, and a formal front parlor. The bones are exceptional and the quirks are real, low ceilings, tight winding stairs, and rooms sized for 18th-century life.
• Restored colonial rowhomes and trinities. Smaller houses on the side streets and courts, often one room per floor over a steep stair. Every inch of layout and storage counts, and the original scale has to be respected rather than fought.
• Society Hill Towers condos and townhouses. The I.M. Pei towers and their low-rise townhouses are the opposite world: open, glassy, mid-century, light on ornament. Here the task runs the other way, adding warmth, texture, and a sense of permanence to a clean modern box.

Two homes a few doors apart can need almost opposite things. A Georgian townhome needs its formality softened and its rooms made livable; a Tower condo needs soul built into it. Knowing which is which, on sight, is most of the job.

Living comfortably inside a genuinely historic home

The real design problem in Society Hill is not taste. It is the gap between owning a historic house and actually living in one. People buy here because they love the architecture and the sense that the home has a past, then discover that a parlor laid out for formal visiting in 1790 does not hold a sectional and a television, that the kitchen at the back is small and dim, and that honoring the period and raising a family in it can feel like competing goals.

Julia's whole approach is to close that gap without erasing the history. A period home does not have to be a period room. The point is to let an 18th-century house carry a 21st-century life gracefully: a formal parlor that works for how you really spend an evening, a dining room that gets used, bedrooms that feel like rest rather than exhibits. That means designing around the fixed things rather than against them, so the mantel becomes the anchor of the room and the awkward jog in the floor plan gets a purpose instead of an apology.

Working within Society Hill's preservation rules

Society Hill sits inside a protected historic district, and owners here are preservation-minded by nature. The exterior, the brick, the windows, the doors, the cornice, is tightly controlled, because the streetscape is the whole point of the neighborhood. What that means for an interior project is freeing: the inside of your home is yours to shape.

Julia designs inside those lines. Most of what finishes a home here, layout, lighting, upholstery, window treatments, rugs, and art, lives entirely on the interior and touches none of the protected fabric. The aim is a home that reads as true to its period from the sidewalk and lives like a modern home the moment you step inside. For owners who want to think through the full scope first, she offers an interior design consultation in Philadelphia that starts where a historic home should, with what to keep, what to change, and in what order.

Colonial floor plans and the problem of light

Almost every older home in Society Hill shares the same two constraints: it is narrow, and it only gets real daylight at the front and back. A typical townhome might be eighteen to twenty feet wide and far deeper, with windows on the two short ends and long party walls down each side. The middle of the house, where the stair and often a bathroom land, can sit in near-permanent shade, and the deep-set colonial windows let in less light than a modern opening would. This is one of the most common things homeowners ask Julia to solve, and it is rarely fixed by opening a wall in a protected house. It is fixed by design decisions that move light and the eye through the whole plan:

• Reflect what light there is. Mirrors across from the windows, lighter wall finishes, and glass or open-backed pieces carry the front and back light deeper into the house.
• Layer artificial light properly. A single ceiling fixture flattens a period room. Table lamps, wall lights, and a warm bulb temperature give the middle floors depth they never had.
• Keep sight lines open. Low, leggy furniture and a clear path front to back make a deep colonial home read as longer and lighter than it measures.
• Use scale honestly. Oversized pieces choke these rooms. Right-sized furniture, placed with real gaps around it, is what makes a historic home feel generous rather than stuffed.

Handled well, a narrow Society Hill home does not feel dark or cramped. It feels intimate and calm, which is what drew people to these streets.

Room by room in a Society Hill townhouse

A colonial townhouse works vertically, so the rooms do different jobs than they would in a house that spreads out on a floor or two. The front parlor, the room the street sees through its tall windows, usually holds the best light and an original mantel, so the work there is scale and sight lines: seating that fits the width without blocking the path deeper in, anchored on the fireplace rather than the television. The kitchen sits at the rear, often the tightest room in the plan and the one most in need of warmth, frequently opening to a small garden or brick courtyard the old city makes precious. The stair is the spine of the house and usually its darkest part, and a runner, wall lighting, and art turn a steep climb into part of the home. Up top, the primary bedroom often has the best light and a view over historic rooftops, yet it runs out of budget first and ends up a lovely shell with a bare mattress and one lamp. Soft textiles, layered light, and window treatments are what turn it into a genuine retreat.

What a Fresh Eyes Visit actually looks like

Most projects here start with one visit rather than a big commitment. Julia spends about ninety minutes in your home, walking it room by room, listening to what feels off before she says a word about what to change. Owners of a historic home rarely need a hundred new ideas thrown at them. They need someone to name the two or three moves per room that will actually finish the space without disrespecting it.

Within 48 hours you receive a written, prioritized plan: the layout that resolves each room, the lighting the home was missing, the pieces worth buying and the ones you already own worth keeping, all in order and against a budget that respects the house. From there the choice is yours. Many homeowners carry the plan out themselves, a room at a time; others bring Julia back to source and install. Either way you leave with clarity instead of another open question, and if you do not, you do not pay. If you live elsewhere during a restoration or split your time between homes, she also offers virtual interior design that follows the same plan-first method remotely.

What Society Hill homeowners actually pay

For the full breakdown, see what an interior designer costs.

Serving Society Hill and greater Philadelphia

Julia works as an interior designer in Philadelphia across the city's neighborhoods, from the colonial homes of the old city to the newer buildings along the rivers. Just south, the smaller rowhomes of Queen Village share the same narrow-and-historic footprint, and to the west the refined homes around Rittenhouse ask many of the same questions: good bones, real history, and the last twenty percent left undone.

Frequently asked questions