The Witherspoon Building, an 11-story sandstone landmark in Center City, is officially trading in its suitcase crowd for long-term tenants. Owner SSH Real Estate is converting the property from short-term rentals into 186 year-long apartments, with leasing already underway and move-ins expected to start the first week of April. The shift ends the building’s recent run as an apartment-hotel and signals a steady, long-term rental play for the historic tower.
The new setup is heavily weighted toward one-bedrooms: 158 one-bedrooms, 18 studios and nine two-bedrooms. One-bedrooms are coming in at about $2,500 per month, while corner two-bedrooms are asking between $3,500 and $4,000. On the sidewalk level, the Witherspoon has two ground-floor retail bays. One is already taken by a brick-and-glass design studio, and an approximately 2,000-square-foot space remains on the market, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Why SSH Pivoted
SSH is framing the move as a straight-up response to what the numbers are telling them. “The apartment market is very strong, but the hotel market fluctuates,” founding partner Pete Soens told The Philadelphia Inquirer. For a building like this, volatility apparently lost the argument.
Before the switch, SSH had master-leased the property to Sonder. That operator later wound down its operations and pursued Chapter 7 liquidation in November 2025, according to Business Travel News. Rather than jump back into the short-term arena after that disruption, SSH opted to reset the Witherspoon as a conventional, year-to-year residential building.
Where This Fits In Center City
The Witherspoon’s new life as a standard apartment house is landing in a Center City rental market that is quietly tightening up. Apartment vacancy downtown sits at roughly 7.5%, and developers have started bringing projects back online, as reported by PHILADELPHIA.Today. For a well-located building, that is not a bad tide to be riding.
The property itself dates to 1896 and was originally built as offices for the Presbyterian Church, a history chronicled by ULI Philadelphia. SSH, which owns other Center City assets, is using the conversion to lock in steadier cash flow from a highly walkable, transit-rich address that has already proven it can attract tenants, short-term or otherwise.
According to public materials on SSH Real Estate, the firm has a track record in adaptive reuse, including earlier work on the Witherspoon itself, which makes this pivot a logical extension rather than a radical reinvention. SSH says it hopes to lease the remaining retail bay to a neighborhood-serving business and to price and position the apartments so they can compete with newer, higher-rent buildings in the core.
For renters, the bottom line is simple: where there was once a boutique short-stay operation, there is now traditional downtown housing. Leasing details are being handled through SSH and standard local rental listings for anyone who wants to swap the hotel vibe for a longer stay.
